Such questions must be answered in the negative.  The age, recognizing perforce the inherent capabilities of the race as a constant quantity, contents itself so far with endeavoring to adapt and reproduce, or at most imitate, such manifestations of the artistic sense as it finds excellent in the past.  The day for originality may come ere long, and nothing can be lost in striving for it, but a capacity for the beautiful at first hand cannot come without an appreciation of it at second hand.  With the number of cultivated minds so vastly increased as compared with any previous period, the greater variety of objects and conditions presented to them, the multiplicity of races to which they belong, and consequently of distinct race-characteristics imbedded in them and brought into play, and the impulse communicated by greater general activity, the expectation is allowably sanguine that the nineteenth century will plant an art as well as an industry of its own.  Wealth, culture and peace seldom fail to win this final crown.  They are busily gathering together the jewels of the past, endless in diversity of charm.  Museum, gallery, library swell as never before.  The earth is not mined for iron and coal alone.  Statue, vase and gem are disentombed.  Pictures are rescued from the grime of years and neglect.  All are copied by sun or hand, and sent in more or less elaboration into hall or cottage.  In literature our possessions could scarce be more complete, and they are even more universally distributed.  The nations compete with each other in adding to this equipment for a new revival, which seems, on the surface, to have more in its favor than had that of the cinque-cento.

UP THE THAMES

Third paper.

[Illustration:  Hampton court—­west front.]

Today our movement shall be up the Thames by rail, starting on the south side of the river to reach an objective point on the north bank.  So crooked is the stream, and so much more crooked are the different systems of railways, with their competing branches crossing each other and making the most audacious inroads on each other’s territory, that the direction in which we are traveling at any given moment, or the station from which we start, is a very poor index to the quarter for which we are bound.  The railways, to say nothing of the river, that wanders at its own sweet will, as water commonly does in a country offering it no obstructions, are quite defiant of their geographical names.  The Great Western runs north, west and south-east; the South-western strikes south, south-east and north-west; while the Chatham and Dover distributes itself over most of the region south-east of London, closing its circuit by a line along the coast of the Channel that completes a triangle.  We can go almost anywhere by any road.  It is necessary, however, in this as in other mundane proceedings, to make a selection.  We must have a will before we find a way.  Let our way, then, be to Waterloo Station on the Southwestern rail.