that Otho was possessed of ample means for continuing the contest. "But he had determined otherwise. His life had been a feverish pursuit, first of pleasure, and afterwards of power. Under the influence of a vivid imagination guided by vulgar delusions, not by personal judgment or experience, he had aspired to the height of human happiness, first in the arms of gorgeous beauty, and again in the purple robe of imperial sovereignty. He had waked from both his dreams almost at the moment when he seemed to realise them; and these visions, as they flitted away from him, left him sobered, but not embittered, disenchanted but not cynical. The world, he was now convinced, was not worth the fighting for: success and victory, fame and honour, were not worth the fighting for his own life was not worth the fighting for. The sentiment of the noble voluptuary, whatever we may think of its justice in general, that they who have enjoyed life the most are often the most ready to quit it, was never more conspicuously fulfilled than in this example.* It is pleasant to think that the last thoughts of this misguided spirit were for the peace of his country and the safety of his friends, to whom he counselled submission. After refusing to allow a renewal of the contest, after providing as he best could for the bloodless recognition of the emperor whom fortune had designated, congratulating himself that he had set an example of clemency, in sparing the family of Vitellius, which the victor for very shame must follow, Otho laid himself calmly on his couch. : "A tumult arising outside his tent, in which Virginius was threatened with violence, together with other of the senators, who at their master's bidding were leaving the camp, he rose, and with a few words rebuked and allayed the wrath of his fanatical adherents. As evening closed, he called for a cup of water, and for two daggers, of which he chose the sharpest, and laid it under his pillow. At the same time he ordered his attendant to quit the place, and show himself to the soldiers, lest he should be charged, in their intemperate fury, with the deed he was about himself to perpetrate. Assured at last that his friends had got beyond the lines, he lay down, and slept for some hours. At break of day he drew forth his weapon, placed it to his heart, and threw his weight upon it. Nature demanded one groan. The slaves and freedmen in the outer chambers rushed trembling to his side, and with them the prefect Plotius. Otho lay dead with a single wound."+ Mr. de Quincey's passing comment on this self-slaughter is, that Otho's motives for committing suicide (if truly reported) argue great nobility of mind; and that the unexampled public grief which followed, exceeding even that which ensued on the death of Germanicus, and causing several officers to commit suicide, implies some remarkable goodness in this Prince, and a very unusual power of conciliating attachment.§ The *Byron's Mazeppa: "And strange to say, the sons of pleasure, Merivale's History of the Romans under the Empire, vol. vi. ch. lvi. Roman end" was re common feeling of admiration with which this " garded at Rome, finds expression in the epigrammatist's query, a propos of Cato Uticensis: Sic Cato dum vixit, sane vel Cæsare major: Dum moritur, numquid major Othone fuit ?* A modern setter-up of the like invidious comparisons, accounts the "eternal blazon" of Cato's exit to be infinitely less worthy of admiration than the suicide of "the profligate Otho,"-inasmuch as the stern Republican killed himself when he considered that all was lost save life and honour; whereas the emperor did so while at the head of numerous and devoted armies, and with every prospect of success in his contest with Vitellius, that he might save the effusion of blood and put an end to the civil war. This, surely, argues the self-styled Morgan Rattler,† was the noblest piece of self-martyrdom the page of history records. On the other hand, observe the interpretation put upon this act by the elder (now, indeed, an antique) of France's two Balzacs. The elaborate old letter-writer being such an artiste en phrases, we must cite the passage in its native garb. "L'empereur Othon fut vaincu parce qu'il n'eut pas la patience de vaincre. Il se tua par délicatesse, et aima mieux promptement périr que de se donner de la peine quelque temps. Il ne manquait ni de conseil ni de force: il avait les plus belles troupes et les plus désireuses de bien faire qu'on eût jamais vues: et néanmoins, pour une journée qui ne leur fut pas heureuse, il abandonna la victoire à un ennemi qui en toutes choses lui était inférieur, et quitta la partie à cause qu'il ne gagna pas du premier coup. Il renonça à l'empire, à l'honneur, et à la vie, pour ne pouvoir plus supporter le doute et l'incertitude de l'avenir; et le soin de penser tous les jours à ses affaires lui sembla si fâcheux que, pour être de loisirt en quelque façon, il résolut de s'ôter du monde."§ But M. de Balzac is in the minority, even among Christian censors of this heathen self-sacrifice,-few being so chary of their admiration, and so little charitable in their analysis of motive, as this. Heathen critics, naturally, were profuse of praise. Even that severe scrutineer of Otho, the exigeant Dion, fairly owns that he kaλλora ámɩðave, made a most beautiful death. Shall we call Goethe heathen or christian, in citing his estimate of Otho's end? Call him or think him what we may, the fact remains that Goethe, when meditating suicide himself, as in early days of Werther whimsies he avowedly did, and when collating the various methods of setting about it, could find among all suicides, throughout history at large, no one that had gone about this deed with such greatness and freedom of spirit as the Emperor Otho. "This man, beaten indeed as a general, yet nowise reduced to extremities, determines, for the good of the Empire, which already in some measure belonged to him, and for the saving of so many * Martial, VI. 32. † Some Rambling Remarks on Horace and Others (Fraser, 1845), already cited in our "Notes" on Cato the Younger, as a Note-worthy in this series. Pour être de loisir, M. de Sacy has remarked, is "too pretty," and spoils the seriousness of the thought. It is merely a subtilité, a trait aigu, a gaîté, in contrast with the gravity of the context. On that account the more like Balzac. Quoted from M. Léon Feugère's Chefs-d'œuvre de l'Eloquence Française au XVIIe et au XVIIIe Siècle. thousands, to leave the world. With his friends he passes a gay festive night, and next morning it is found that with his own hand he has plunged a sharp dagger into his heart." This sole act seemed to Goethe worthy of imitation; and he convinced himself that whoever could not proceed herein as Otho had done, was not entitled to resolve on renouncing life.* How far the young German's imitation of Otho went, the reader is aware, or can guess.-On the whole, however, and regarding the felo-de-se from no jury-box seat, nor from any angle of any theological stand-point, one may pretty fairly sum up the verdict of the majority, in terse Shakspearean phrase, by averring-the irregularities of his life and the peculiarity of his death† considered-that Nothing in his life Became him like the leaving it. DESULTORY THOUGHTS ON BRITISH ART. BY CYRUS REDDING. Ir is not denied by the most insensible to the merit of high art, that it dignifies a nation. To this the rulers of all civilised countries give their assent, if they never make an attempt to carry out the object of which they thus confess the utility. But there should be more than the mere confession of an established truism to dispense benefit from such an acknowledgment. A cold sanction of the opinion is worth little, and, in some cases, is granted only from a feeling of ostentation, or from a desire to approve because others give their approbation to the same sentiment. Various are the reasons given for the deficiency of feeling displayed towards art, in its higher sense, by the people of the north, and that want of taste so apparent in their labours. The Germans, who have peculiar ideas upon all subjects, lay it upon climate. Winkelman, a better critic in sculpture than painting, was clearly of that opinion, if he was not its author. He made no allowance for differences in the mode of thinking in different nations, nor for the prevalent bias to antagonistic pursuits in the population, as the pursuit of wealth in England, for example, is the summum bonum. That there is less sensibility to beauty of every kind in the north than in the south may be true, because nature is more captivating, and the climate more adapted to impart delicate impressions in the south. But it is not likely that a distance not exceeding from the south of England the length of the island, should cause such a dif *Dichtung und Wahrheit, b. iii. † Otho died at the age of thirty-seven, having reigned only three months. "Those who find fault with his life," says Plutarch, "are not more respectable, either for their numbers or for their rank, than those who applaud his death. For, though his life was not much better than that of Nero, yet his death was nobler." -Plutarch's Lives: Otho. ference as to render the inhabitant of Cornwall susceptible of the sentiment which conduces to high art, and deny it to the inhabitant of Sutherlandshire. The value of art, and the capacity to feel its impressions and estimate its merits, must mainly depend upon a familiarity with its better productions, conjoined with leisure to study them among the more influential members of the social body. The true feeling for art is not to be generated amid the all-absorbing anxieties and labours devoted to procure the luxuries and collect the wealth which are the moving principle in our latitude. Here the whole man is bent downward and his sensibility blunted in endeavouring to acquire wealth. He has no time for intellectual aims. The high intellectual men who have adorned our island were as pariahs in the sight of the masses. The possessor of wealth can buy what he does not comprehend; and it suffices for his self-satisfaction that he is the owner of it. To the feeling of genius he is foreign altogether, then how should he be a judge as to its productions? This is in itself sufficient to account for our excellence in the useful arts and in mercantile skill and adventure, but both are as far as the poles asunder from the qualifications which mark the genius which yields works of true taste, and labours of the chisel and pencil, wrought for laborious days, to achieve that which will command the admiration of the present and the coming ages. The social state of a country, the spirit of which is "of the earth, earthy," has naturally affected the artist. In the south, too, he had another motive, which made gain a secondary consideration. He was not only moved by the impulse arising from the love of his art, but for what his art expressed. The artists of Italy, it need scarcely be said, found an impressive motive in religion. The picture and image were admitted into the church. The lamps burned before the shrines and pictures, a part of the Roman Catholic worship copied from the pagan temples, just as Christmas is a transference of the saturnalian games of the heathen. This alliance of religion and the fine arts made the artist feel that with his art he was himself dignified; he became an adjunct to the religion of his country; he was excited by the reflection; it chastened his imagination and elevated his thoughts; his pencil was touched with Promethean fire, and his spirits glowed as if warmed "with live coals from off the altar." It is not a matter of wonder, therefore, that such causes should generate high and noble imaginings. It is from this cause that there are some unreflecting persons who are so enthusiastic as to desire our return once more to the superstitions of the past, only that we may possess a school of art worthy a nation of the highest rank. This egregious error, or defect in judgment, will be partaken by few. We can afford to retain our progression in knowledge, our mental health, our free thought, our civil and religious liberties, rather than resign them in order to set up pictures and images in our churches, or to generate an artificial high art and not feel it, and thus to be able to talk as well as Italy "of our Raphaels, Corregios, and stuff." The cost is too great. We cannot blot out our progress even to possess an Apelles or a Phidias. Happily, this argument, true as it was with the artists of Italy, may yet be satisfactorily met. The superiority of Greek sculpture over that of all other nations will not be denied. Classical antiquity reigns supreme over Italian and all other art. The Apollo and Venus de Medicis are the representatives of deities clothed with ideal beauty, and the Greeks are said to have felt the sentiment of their religion when they formed them, in the same way as the artists of Italy subsequently felt theirs. But if so, it did not prevent the execution of works equally excellent unconnected with their deities. These consummate sculptors were equally successful upon subjects of a less lofty character. Of their religious sculpture, they made an harmonious whole out of the perfect parts of their own natural frame, of which not one whole is ever perfect. This was the source of their ideal, their poetry of sculpture. It would be difficult to say whether, as works of art, the Gladiator, the Laocoon, and others out of the pale of deity, are not equally perfect in their kind. Human nature, in truth, is found in the Elgin marbles. The same skill is discoverable, and perhaps more in the latter than in the former case, because those least versed in sculpture could try the last by comparison, which in the former instance was impossible, for by what standard could the merit of "ideal" deity in marble be tried-an ideal created by the breath of genius at the prompting of unreined fancy? It may, therefore, be inferred that artistic success does not depend upon the excitement produced by any religious belief, although such a belief may have been one great means of creating works of the highest order of art. This cause can never again be as potent as it has been, since intelligence is diffused wider, and juster views are now taken of the Deity in the sight of believers in most of the Christian sects, superstition disappearing more and more from the corrupt divisions into which Christianity had fallen. The works of the old artists reacting in their time upon the mass, partook in the same religious feeling, and this imparted a general interest in art. Hence there was a wholesome discrimination as to artistic works in a large proportion of those who observed them. We cannot accept this spirit of discrimination in art through our more enlarged religious belief. But is it necessary to adopt a species of idol mythology to become sensible of the worth of high art? There are subjects spirit-stirring enough in our national history and in the events of the passing time to be treated loftily. The misfortune is, that those who can appreciate such subjects, heroically treated, are too few to reward the labour, and genius is a delicate plant, not to be reared on the gross food of an age more worldly-minded than ever. How should the drudge of ledgers comprehend that feeling which made Barry, for example, paint those works, free of reward, for the Society of Arts and Manufactures, which have immortalised him, at a time, too, when he was poor-a work of seven years' labour! He played the fool in their eyes. Such a feeling is as difficult for the masses to understand as the art with which it is allied. Nor will the diffusion of education help us out; it may aid in imparting a relish for works of taste in the course of time, but it will raise up no more men of high genius than we should possess without it. Genius strides over obstacles insurmountable to ordinary minds, as the walls of Lilliput were no impediment to Gulliver. Genius can do without ragged schools or college halls when their advantages are too remote to be availWhen a tolerably large proportion of the community shows a just |