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Searchology Directory 17
Page 02
And yet there is one thing in the present war which I do in my heart of hearts feel to be worth fighting for, and that is for the hope of liberty. It is hard to say what liberty is, because the essence of it is the subjugation of personal inclinations. The Germans claim that they alone know the meaning of liberty, and that they have arrived at it by discipline. But the bitterness of this war lies in the fact that the Germans are not content to set an example of attractive virtue, and to leave the world to choose it; but that if the world will not choose it, they will force it upon them by violence and the sword. It is this which makes me feel that the war may be a vast protest of the nations, which have the spirit of the future in their hearts, against a theory of life that represents the spirit of the past. And I thus, with some seeming inconsistency, believe that the war may represent the hope of peace at bay. If the nations can keep this clearly before them, and not be tempted either into reprisals, or into rewarding themselves by the spoils of victory, if victory comes; if it ends in the Germans being sincerely convinced that they have been misled and poisoned by a conception of right which is both uncivilised and unchristian, then I believe that all our sufferings may not be too great a price to pay for the future well-being of the world. That is the largest and brightest hope I dare to frame; and there are many hours and days when it seems all clouded and dim.
All this parade and ceremony was, in this case, as it often is, not an _expression_ of real cordiality, good will, and good faith, but a substitute for them. The English commander, who had been specially instructed to bring over the money as well as the bride, found, to his great astonishment and perplexity, that the queen regent had spent a considerable portion of the money which had been put away so safely in the bags, and she wished to pay now a part of the dowry in merchandise, at such prices as she thought reasonable, and to have a year's credit for the remainder. There was thus thrown upon Lord Sandwich the very heavy responsibility of deciding whether to give up the object of his expedition, and go back to England without the bride, or to take her without the money. After very anxious hesitation and suspense, he decided to proceed with his enterprise, and the preparations were made for the princess's embarkation.
Reynolds was well-grounded in Venetian color, Bolognese composition, Parmese light-and-shade, and paid them the homage of assimilation; but if Gainsborough (1727-1788) had such school knowledge he positively disregarded it. He disliked all conventionalities and formulas. With a natural taste for form and color, and with a large decorative sense, he went directly to nature, and took from her the materials which he fashioned into art after his own peculiar manner. His celebrated Blue Boy was his protest against the conventional rule of Reynolds that a composition should be warm in color and light. All through his work we meet with departures from academic ways. By dint of native force and grace he made rules unto himself. Some of them were not entirely successful, and in drawing he might have profited by school training; but he was of a peculiar poetic temperament, with a dash of melancholy about him, and preferred to work in his own way. In portraiture his color was rather cold; in landscape much warmer. His brush-work was as odd as himself, but usually effective, and his accessories in figure-painting were little more than decorative after-thoughts. Both in portraiture and landscape he was one of the most original and most English of all the English painters--a man not yet entirely appreciated, though from the first ranked among the foremost in English art.
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