278 
INDIVIDUALISM IN ART. 
which is suggested by the fervour, fire, and fascination of it. 
But sound is the really important factor, to the exclusion of 
every other motion or emotion, to be taken into account in 
a consideration of this composer’s work. He, more than any 
previous master, insists that the surroundings shall be in 
accordance with the music; insists that the scenic effects 
shall be good, the poetry good, and the acting and singing 
good. He, more than anyone, so wrote his operas that the 
music should wholly accord with the demands of the situation, 
the poetry, and the action. It is in this that his individuality 
consists; it is this that will cause him to be remembered for 
all times as the originator of a school of music which satisfies 
this analytic age. 
As is the case with music, so has the progress of all the 
arts been. A change from the homogeneous to the hetero¬ 
geneous, from the tom-toms of the savage to the glorious 
compositions of Wagner, Gounod, Sullivan. From the 
drawings of the cave men to the Elgin marbles; to the work 
of Michael Angelo, Raphael, Titian, or Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 
Holman Hunt, and Burne Jones. From the old, old unwritten 
ballads to the epics of Homer and Dante, from the ancient 
bards to Shakspere and Shelley. From the early chroniclers 
to Goethe and Carlyle. From the alchemists and their elixir 
of life to Galileo, Newton, and Darwin. And this progress of 
Art has taken place contemporaneously with the development 
of individuality; and the greater the rate of the progress the 
more pronounced has been the individuality of those who 
participated in the process. 
True progress of Art is always co-existent with the 
prevalence of individualism. The efforts of the Pre-Raphaelite 
Brotherhood, which was a distinctly individualistic movement, 
resulted in an impetus to Art which cannot be sufficiently 
estimated. We in our time see much of the fruit of these 
efforts, but their full significance is hardly yet apparent. The 
fruits of it are yet to ripen in the years to come. All great 
reformations are brought about by the spontaneous action of 
originality and individuality, which will assert itself in spite 
of the greatest difficulties which may assail it. 
The evolution of Art offers an analogy to the nebular 
hypothesis. We have the great nebulous mass, homogeneous 
throughout: by its movements a ring is thrown off which 
condenses into a planet, an individual, with a separate existence 
of its own. This is the production of the individual from 
the mass. The process is continued until the nebula has 
produced many such planets, each of them having a distinct 
individuality. The homogeneous has split up into the lietero- 
