England and where authorities of
all kinds are more alive to its educative capabilities. It is
eminently "safe" ground, does not savour of gossip, and no one need
leave the field of discussion with the feeling that he has been driven
from it. Hence it is the salvation of diplomatists who are
apprehensive of committing their Governments or themselves when mixing
in general society, and it doubtless does good service for the Emperor
also upon occasion. Indeed it is a topic on which he speaks willingly
and well.

Unfortunately for precision of thought and speech, though useful for
the man in the street, the word "art" has been pressed into the
service of metaphor more than almost any other word in language. We
are told in turn that everything is an art--hair-dressing,
salad-dressing (a different kind), lying, flying, dying. The Germans
are trying to make an art of life. Whistler wrote about the "Gentle
Art of Making Enemies." One hears of "artful hussies" and "artful
dodgers." People are described as "artful" in the small diplomacies of
intercourse. Jugglers, acrobats, sword-swallowers, "supers" at the
theatre, the men who play the elephant in the pantomime would all be
mortified if they were not addressed as "artists," In short,
everything may be called an art.

But what, truly, is art? The question is as hard to answer
satisfactorily as the questions what is truth or what is beauty? The
notion "art" usually occurs to the mind as contrasted with the notion
"nature"; the word is derived from the Sanskrit root _ar_, to plough,
to make, to do; and accordingly art may be taken to be something made
by man, as contrasted with something made, or grown, or given by God.
How art came into existence it is of course impossible to do more than
conjecture. The necessities of primitive man may have stimulated his
inventive powers into originating and developing the useful arts for
his physical comfort and convenience; and his desire for recreation
after labour, or the mere ennui of idleness, may have urged the same
powers into originating and developing the fine and plastic arts for
the entertainment of his mind. Or, lastly, if no better reason can be
found, and though Sir Joshua Reynolds laid it down that all models of
perfection in art must be sought for on the earth, it may be that
seeing and feeling instinctively the glory and beauty of the Creation,
mankind began gradually, as its intelligence improved, to burn with a
longing