commence qu'à peine et finit tout de suite,' was a Frenchman's description of certain toilets; and the only advance to be looked for is in greater diffidence in the commencement, and still sharper abruptness in the end. These are the amenities of certain artists; and if the stage is indebted to the music-hall for innovations, it was the stage which first suggested the music-hall.

At the risk of seeming to moralise when we would really elevate 'art,' or to depreciate modern talent' when we would energise its use, we should like to trace this degeneracy to its source- -at least to inquire who is to blame. An Englishman is not necessarily an idiot, nor is he physiologically a sot. If he becomes either the one or the other, it is because his superiors make him so. It is just as easy to train the popular mind in the direction of that which is improving as in the direction of that which is below par. Taste is a matter of education quite as much as of nature or tradition; nor would any one have grossly bad taste unless it were caught by contagion. At least thus much is certain, that if bad taste were once branded-condemned by the popular verdict-it would become disgraceful to profess a predilection for the gross over the delicate and refined. As a matter of fact, there is no more natural coarseness among the lowest classes than there is among the highest: whatever coarseness exists is the result of mere habit, and mere habit is the result of education. Raise the standard of all the music-halls in London on a given date in the year 1876, substitute simultaneously elegant pleasures for such as are uneducated and low, and within a period of three months you would get no one to return to the present barbarian view. The very people who applaud gestures which are the physical exponents of equivocal if not malicious intent would feel themselves insulted if such gestures were repeated when once they had acquired good taste. And so of music, of songs, of cunning rhymes. That ineffable insipidity which divides empire with vulgarity is the result of fixed canons of taste; and those canons are the creation of the managers who have pandered to morbid ideas. Had all managers insisted-we gladly except one or two-upon adopting at the first a good standard, with a view to the elevation of the people, the people would have risen perforce to that standard instead of sinking down into the abyss.

To return to our initiatory question, Cannot some one invent a new pleasure? Here we are in the latter half of the nineteenth century, yet in point of public entertainments we are practically in the same state as were our forefathers in the time of the first George. We have banished certain grosser entertainments, such as the cockpit, the bear-bait, the badger-worry; and we have added a polytechnic and strange séances, with possibly superior concerts. But the point to be impressed is that no new aspiration has called for a new kind of pastime. For example, in the summer, what are the poor

people to do? The parks are very pleasant on fine evenings, but they are not precisely places of amusement. Our Executive does not know how to utilise them. The tea-gardens, such as Cremorne and the Surrey, are chiefly remarkable for statues and gravel walks, for 'bars' and for theatrical borrowings. There is nothing new in them, unless Captain Boyton volunteer his odd swimming, or Signor Somebody invent a fresh peril. Intellect, in its march and its progress -we are perpetually vaunting this march and this progress—has not developed even a new bagatelle out of the mighty stores of the past and the present. Eighteen hundred years ago the inhabitants of Pompeii used to sit in the open theatre on stone tiers. We have invented stalls and very otiose private boxes; but the performances have changed little in character. Music-halls are degenerated theatres. Had tobacco and spirits been popular during the Heptarchy, it is possible that Egbert, when he united the seven kingdoms, might have licensed not dissimilar ventures. The Italian Opera is too exclusive to be numbered in the rôle of plebeian entertainments; for even those who can afford to go to the gallery have to suffer physical pain for their pleasure. Music was known as an amusement before the invention of even sackbuts and psalteries, and we suppose it was paid for in coins far less portable than the sixpence or even the half-crown. The thing to be noted is that the public' has not advanced in the facilities of intelligent pastime, but has in the main only abated the more muscular features of out-door and manly excitement.

What, then, would you propose? is the very natural question which ensues on these depreciatory remarks. Nay, it is for some original genius to strike out an idea which shall electrify popular cravings. We propose nothing. We only say that, since we are told every day that we live in the most enlightened of centuries, and that England is the most enlightened of nations, it seems strange that no meteor of genius can evolve a brand-new entertainment. Given the yearnings for the satisfaction of the mind plus the yearnings for an enlivened repose, and we ask for the discovery of that adequate novelty which shall satisfy both at the same time. It may be assumed, as a principle in psychology, that a man's wants are correlative with his appreciations; that his enjoyment is incomplete unless the proffered satisfaction is equivalent to his highest ideal. It will be replied that this satisfaction is no more possible in pastime than in learning, in business, or in virtue. We grant this. But though the satisfaction be for the most part impracticable, the aspiration should continue to be high; and a point we would insist on is, that it is the duty of the educated to uplift the pleasures of the poor; it is the duty of persons who profess a fine taste to try to impregnate the vulgar; it is a positive obligation to raise the pleasures of the people, with a view to raising their

principles. There cannot be a question that pleasures are educational, quite as much as is labour or suffering. They are more so in one respect, that they are taken spontaneously, and imbibed into the system with a will. Now, since the pleasures of the people-of the hard-working poor-are of necessity limited and cheap, and since the temptations of these classes are gross in the extreme (the alehouse, the skittle-ground, Sunday papers'), it is all the more essential that their higher relaxations should qualify the effects of their lower. The rich will not go among the poor; the educated will not mix with the uneducated; the refined and the exquisite will not soil their perceptions by contact with the rough sons of toil; then all the more reason why they should charitably give attention to the institutions which educate' the poor. Be it remembered that the future interests of England are largely in the hands of the working men, and that if anything should ever upset the Constitution of the country it will come from these ranks-from no other; therefore is it that we should do our very best to uplift, not to degrade, the appreciation of the masses; and chief among the instruments at our command are the pleasures' with which we provide them. You cannot make men read when they are wearied with a day's work; you cannot force them to attend church on Sundays; you cannot persuade them to sit on forms at evening-schools; but you can give them a taste for educating' amusements in preference to debasing and coarse. Very dull, very fallacious was that conduct of certain plaintiffs in shutting up the Aquarium at Brighton; very feeble is that pseudopiety of Sabbatarians which would silence good music on a Sunday; very short-sighted is that Pharisaism of some M.P.s which would close places of instruction on the Sabbath-day,' as if idleness were more profitable than thought. The great masses of the English poor have no opportunity but the Sunday for the study of either nature or art; yet their superiors make them pass Sunday stupidly, providing music-halls for their Saturday evenings. If public-houses may be opened for several hours on a Sunday, and if tradesmen may drive a flourishing business on the condition that they put up one shutter-0, comic homage to the national hypocrisy !-why may not picture-galleries and museums be opened, and why is not good music permitted? There need be no interference with church-hours. Places of instruction might be regulated on the same principle as the hundreds on hundreds of public-houses. There is more need of good instruction than of bad beer, more advantage in cherishing art than tobacco. There are a thousand cigar-shops open every Sunday, which employ the services of at least two thousand people, and this is thought reasonable and even necessary; but the alternate employment of a few scores of guides in our galleries, public libraries, museums, is esteemed to be a breach of a commandment. Inconsistency, shallowness, hypocrisy! Keep to the good principle that

church-hours be sacred from the intrusion of mere artistic temptations; but do not profess that a man must be an idiot in order to pass Sunday like a Christian, or that, while beer and tobacco are ennobling institutions, the fine arts are unquestionably pernicious.

It should be considered, while discussing our London amusements, that the lower classes do not like to show themselves freely in places which are the resorts of their betters. This is a purely English feeling; for it is unknown on the Continent, and it is disgraceful to our upper classes that it should exist. It proves a wrong principle in society-something rotten in our views of civilisation—a radical want of true breeding. Be this as it may, the fact is apparent that in the Royal Academy (admission one shilling), in the Polytechnic (admission one shilling), at Promenade Concerts (admission one shilling), and at other divers high-toned entertainments, the humbler classes very seldom obtrude themselves, though they pay their shilling freely at music-halls. We suspect that the isolation of the poorer classes from the rich is the real reason of their liking low amusements. They take vengeance on the shunning of their superiors by cultivating an opposite ideal. You turn up your noses, and remove the hem of your garments,' the poor seem to say to the rich, if we participate in your cultured entertainments, so we will merit the disesteem which you show us by becoming as rough as you suppose.' Charles Dickens used to poetise on the fine sentiments of the poor, to the detriment, by comparison, of the rich; and in this we think he was unjust, for in reality mere natural refinement is the same in all classes of society. Conventional refinement is little practised among the poor, just as simplicity is not characteristic of the rich; but for innate sensibility there is not much to choose, nor for the faculty of improvement, nor for the desire. Yet if the rich build a wall of partition, the poor can with difficulty jump over it. It is for the rich to interest themselves in the poor, since the poor cannot interest themselves in the rich; nor can the rich do this in better way than by elevating the pleasures of the poor. We have spoken of music-halls, to the exclusion of other places, because they threaten to become public evils by teaching habits of drinking and vulgarity, a passion for bad manners and stupid songs. As an institution, a music-hall might be admirable if it aimed at cultivating the taste. Take Evans's supper-rooms, where you hear excellent singing, and where antics have been for the most part abolished. Even here there might be elimination of certain elements; but the main idea is quite in the right way. Whereas most other night places are theatrical plus bibulous, plus indecent, plus noisy, plus imbecile. Is there no one who can rise to the occasion? There is an opening for a really popular entertainment, which shall be wholly instructive and improving, while light as leisure fancies can desire. A. MARSHALL, M.A.

BRIGHTON REMINISCENCES

No. II. A DECEIVER DECEIVED.

Ar the Pavilion at Brighton, very early in this century, an exceedingly gay party were assembled in the great billiard-room,' as it was called par excellence, for there were two smaller rooms containing tables for the amusement of the Prince's friends, when a more than ordinary increase of them met there. The play was not of an exciting character, nor was it especially amusing apart from the extraordinary self-conceitedness of the players-one a nobleman, and somewhat advanced in years, whose often-reiterated maxim was, 'Once a player, always a player.' He would admit no falling off in his own case; strokes might be made well or the reverse, he had ever a ready excuse for failure; but to own that his hand had lost its cunning, never.

'I am as good at billiards now as when I was five-and-twenty,' he shouted, only this infernal cue is out of shape-warped, don't you see? That is because they are left upon the table when the sun is upon them. I defy any man to make a good stroke with that cue-it should be burnt. I'll tell the Prince about it.'

'Give it to me,' said Lord Castlebray. 'Wait till I make a stroke with it.' The stroke was made, and a better it would be scarcely possible to make. What do you think of that now, eh? By all the flowers, it's as true, that same cue, as some eyes are crooked.'

'Ah, that's once in a way; just because you happened to get the cue the right side up; or perhaps you know the beastly thing, and how to handle it.'

'Faith, that's just it. Knowing how to handle your cue is the secret of winning at billiards,' said Castlebray; and the sounds of ready laughter arose to the elder lord's discomfiture. But he maintained his point; the fault was not in him, but in the cue. never made a false stroke in his life-not he; couldn't; didn't know how, in fact.

He

'I'll bet a 'hundred you can't make a true one once out of three times, take what cue you like. Make one for yourself.' It is absurd to tell me to make one for myself. I am not a cue-maker; but if there is a perfectly straight cue here, I take your bet.'

'Well, look at the General's cue; isn't that straight enough for