of eloquence and of thieving, his winged shoes remark him as he skips from metaphor to metaphor, not daring to trust himself to the partial and frail support of any single figure.  He lures the astonished novice through as many trades as were ever housed in the central hall of the world’s fair.  From his distracting account of the business it would appear that he is now building a monument, anon he is painting a picture (with brushes dipped in a gallipot made of an earthquake); again he strikes a keynote, weaves a pattern, draws a wire, drives a nail, treads a measure, sounds a trumpet, or hits a target; or skirmishes around his subject; or lays it bare with a dissecting knife; or embalms a thought; or crucifies an enemy.  What is he really doing all the time?

Besides the artist two things are to be considered in every art,—­ the instrument and the audience; or, to deal in less figured phrase, the medium and the public.  From both of these the artist, if he would find freedom for the exercise of all his powers, must sit decently aloof.  It is the misfortune of the actor, the singer, and the dancer, that their bodies are their sole instruments.  On to the stage of their activities they carry the heart that nourishes them and the lungs wherewith they breathe, so that the soul, to escape degradation, must seek a more remote and difficult privacy.  That immemorial right of the soul to make the body its home, a welcome escape from publicity and a refuge for sincerity, must be largely foregone by the actor, who has scant liberty to decorate and administer for his private behoof an apartment that is also a place of business.  His ownership is limited by the necessities of his trade; when the customers are gone, he eats and sleeps in the bar-parlour.  Nor is the instrument of his performances a thing of his choice; the poorest skill of the violinist may exercise itself upon a Stradivarius, but the actor is reduced to fiddle for the term of his natural life upon the face and fingers that he got from his mother.  The serene detachment that may be achieved by disciples of greater arts can hardly be his, applause touches his personal pride too nearly, the mocking echoes of derision infest the solitude of his retired imagination.  In none of the world’s great polities has the practice of this art been found consistent with noble rank or honourable estate.  Christianity might be expected to spare some sympathy for a calling that offers prizes to abandonment and self-immolation, but her eye is fixed on a more distant mark than the pleasure of the populace, and, as in gladiatorial Rome of old, her best efforts have been used to stop the games.  Society, on the other hand, preoccupied with the art of life, has no warmer gift than patronage for those whose skill and energy exhaust themselves on the mimicry of life.  The reward of social consideration is refused, it is true, to all artists, or accepted by them at their immediate peril.  By a natural