to talk of compulsion.  There are possibly some journalists who take a real pleasure in publishing horrible things, or who, being poor, look to scandals as forming a sort of permanent basis for an income.  But there are other journalists, I feel certain, men of education and cultivation, who really dislike publishing these things, who know that it is wrong to do so, and only do it because the unhealthy conditions under which their occupation is carried on oblige them to supply the public with what the public wants, and to compete with other journalists in making that supply as full and satisfying to the gross popular appetite as possible.  It is a very degrading position for any body of educated men to be placed in, and I have no doubt that most of them feel it acutely.

However, let us leave what is really a very sordid side of the subject, and return to the question of popular control in the matter of Art, by which I mean Public Opinion dictating to the artist the form which he is to use, the mode in which he is to use it, and the materials with which he is to work.  I have pointed out that the arts which have escaped best in England are the arts in which the public have not been interested.  They are, however, interested in the drama, and as a certain advance has been made in the drama within the last ten or fifteen years, it is important to point out that this advance is entirely due to a few individual artists refusing to accept the popular want of taste as their standard, and refusing to regard Art as a mere matter of demand and supply.  With his marvellous and vivid personality, with a style that has really a true colour-element in it, with his extraordinary power, not over mere mimicry but over imaginative and intellectual creation, Mr Irving, had his sole object been to give the public what they wanted, could have produced the commonest plays in the commonest manner, and made as much success and money as a man could possibly desire.  But his object was not that.  His object was to realise his own perfection as an artist, under certain conditions, and in certain forms of Art.  At first he appealed to the few:  now he has educated the many.  He has created in the public both taste and temperament.  The public appreciate his artistic success immensely.  I often wonder, however, whether the public understand that that success is entirely due to the fact that he did not accept their standard, but realised his own.  With their standard the Lyceum would have been a sort of second-rate booth, as some of the popular theatres in London are at present.  Whether they understand it or not the fact however remains, that taste and temperament have, to a certain extent been created in the public, and that the public is capable of developing these qualities.  The problem then is, why do not the public become more civilised?  They have the capacity.  What stops them?