and the stars, far withdrawn into faery
altitudes, dance with a gaiety which is more tremendous and solemn than
any repose. The night of this picture is steeped in such a dream, and I
know not whether it is communicated, or a feeling arising in myself; but
there seems everywhere in it the breathing of life, subtle, exultant,
penetrating. It is conceived in the mood of awe and prayer, which makes
Millet's pictures as religious as any whichever hung over the altar, for
surely the "Angelus" is one of the most spiritual of pictures, though
the peasants bow their heads and worship in a temple not built with
hands. I do not, of course, compare otherwise than in the mood the
"Midsummer Eve" to such a masterpiece; but there is a kinship between
the beauty revealed in great and in little things, and our thought turns
from the stars to the flowers with no feeling of descent into an
alien world. But this mood is rare in life as in art, and it is only
occasionally that the younger Yeats becomes the interpreter of the
spirituality of the peasant. He is more often the recorder of the
extravagant energies of the race-course and the market-place, where he
finds herded together all the grotesque humors of West Irish life.

We recognize his figures as distinctly Irish. Here the old rollicking
Lever and Lover type of Irishmen reappear, hunting like the very devil,
with faces set in the last ecstasy of rapid motion. There is an excess
of energy in these furious riders which almost gives them a symbolic
character. They seem to ride on some passionate business of the soul
rather than for any transitory excitement of the body. And besides these
wild horse-men there are quiet and lovely figures like "A Mother of
the Rosses," holding her child to her breast in an opalescent twilight,
through which the boat that carries her moves. There are always large
and noble outlines, which suggest that if Jack Yeats had more grandiose
ambitions he might have been the Millet of Irish rural life, but he is
too much the symbolist, hating all but essentials, to elaborate his art.

In writing of Jack Yeats mention must be made of his black and white
work, which at its best has a primitive intensity. The lines have a
kind of Gothic quality, reminding one of the rude glooms, the lights
and lines of some half-barbarian cathedral. They are very expressive and
never undecided. The artist always knows what he is going to do. There
is no doubt he has a clear image be