ver looks into them, and who is too simple even to know that honesty
has its opposite, represents the still lingering mistake that an
unintelligible dialect is a guarantee for ingenuousness, and that
slouching shoulders indicate an upright disposition. It is quite true
that a thresher is likely to be innocent of any adroit arithmetical
cheating, but he is not the less likely to carry home his master's corn
in his shoes and pocket; a reaper is not given to writing begging
letters, but he is quite capable of cajoling the dairy-maid into
filling his small-beer bottle with ale. The selfish instincts are not
subdued by the sight of buttercups, nor is integrity in the least
established by that classic rural occupation, sheep-washing. To make
men moral, something more is requisite than to turn them out to grass.

Opera peasants, whose unreality excites Mr. Ruskin's indignation, are
surely too frank an idealization to be misleading; and since popular
chorus is one of the most effective elements of the opera, we can
hardly object to lyric rustics in elegant laced bodices and picturesque
motley, unless we are prepared to advocate a chorus of colliers in
their pit costume, or a ballet of charwomen and stocking-weavers. But
our social novels profess to represent the people as they are, and the
unreality of their representations is a grave evil. The greatest
benefit we owe to the artist, whether painter, poet or novelist, is
the extension of our sympathies. Appeals founded on generalizations
and statistics require a sympathy ready-made, a moral sentiment already
in activity; but a picture of human life such as a great artist can
give, surprises even the trivial and the selfish into that attention
to what is apart from themselves, which may be called the raw material
of moral sentiment. When Scott takes us into Luckie Mucklebackit's
cottage, or tells the story of The Two Drovers,--when Wordsworth
sings to us the reverie of Poor Susan,--when Kingsley shows us Alton
Locke gazing yearningly over the gate which leads from the highway
into the first wood he ever saw,--when Harnung paints a group of
chimney-sweepers,--more is done towards linking the higher classes
with the lower, towards obliterating the vulgarity of exclusiveness,
than by hundreds of sermons and philosophical dissertations. Art is the
near