84 THE WOMBAT. 



We are supposed to see things through our natural eyes, not 

 through the lens of a camera ; and to affirm that those stiffened 

 nightmares give us a correct impression of horses in motion is 

 pure nonsense. 



Who ever thought, that when we lifted up a feeble protest 

 against the double-entendre — when we pleaded that ' a spade 

 should be called a spade ' — a wicked and perverse generation 

 would swamp us with the vilest nastiness ? We asked for 

 realism in literature, and we got it — with a vengeance. 



We were not content, when all that was pure and holy- 

 prompted our painters and sculptors to dwell lovingly upon 

 the beautiful, and to veil from our eyes every harsh and for- 

 bidding contour that would remind us that we were animals, 

 pure and simple; we would have that beneficent veil with- 

 drawn ; we would wilfully encroach upon forbidden ground,, 

 and in the art of to-day we must atone for those presumptive 

 sins. We must gaze through bitter tears upon "realistic " art. 

 We must submit to the degradation of seeing the beautiful: 

 human face enveloped in a haze, while every hideous callosity 

 is worked up with the brutal fidelity of a Rubens ! Under the 

 despotism of ugliness the landscape painter is coerced into the 

 production of maps, tinted with various colors, beautiful, per- 

 haps, in their arrangement, but ugly as a representation of 

 the possibilities of landscape art. Under its influence, the 

 study of the nude becomes base — grovelling ! As a counter- 

 part of the beautiful Venus de Medici, the sculptor gives us — 

 simply an up-to-date female, insufficiently clothed ! Cherubs 

 no longer float around us — they are pinned like beetles on a^ 

 wall ! Angels no longer bring us good tidings, but are sus- 

 pended in mid-air, and almost every line of their robes might 

 be drawn with a straight-edge ! We have snub-nosed Jewish 

 Virgins ; mourners in stove-pipe hats ! Corpses ! — anything, 

 and everything but beauty and purity. 



Is it that this or that school of art-exponents is responsible 

 for the tastes of the public in matters ^Esthetic ? Certainly not '. 

 The artist merely reflects the predominant taste of his patrons ! 

 I have, before me, reproductions of all the notable pictures of 



J. S. BAYLEY, 



FISHMONGER AND POULTERER, 



:r,3t:r,i:e] street. 



FAMILIES WAITED ON. -&* OYSTERS A SPECIALTY. 



