“What has happened to-day, Harrington?” asked Wentworth. Harrington told him briefly of the scene in Southac street, omitting to mention what passed in Roux’s house, lest it should lead to questions verging upon the secret which Emily now shared with Muriel, himself and Captain Fisher. “I wish I could feel interested as you do in these political affairs,” said Wentworth, lightly, when Harrington had concluded. “Somehow, I can’t though. Of course, I’m for liberty in my own quiet way, and I pity the poor darkeys and all that, but then it doesn’t come home to me at all. I’m an artist in the grain, I suppose, and art-life and matters connected with it, leave me no interest for other matters.” “Ah, Richard,” replied Harrington, “you must outlive these notions. Art cannot thrive sequestered from life. It may live in the cell, but it will narrow and spire, and it can only branch and broaden into Shakspearean greatness when planted among the ways and walks of men. No man can be a great painter, sculptor, composer, poet, whose heart is not deeply and warmly engaged in the life of his own time. It is the lack of interest and participation in human affairs which makes our modern artists mere imitators and colorists, and so much of modern art weak and pallid—a mere watery reflection of old models and forms of beauty.” “Come, now, that’s heresy?” said Wentworth, laughing. “Talk of poets—look at Shakspeare. What interest did he take in human affairs? He kept the Globe Theatre, studied his part by day, played it at night, and wrote his dramas between whiles. That’s the way his years were occupied. What participation had he in Elizabethan politics? What in the life of his own time? Why, Ulrici says, in substance, that Shakspeare didn’t care enough about the politics of his age to have his mind even colored by them. The critics agree that a more thorough aristocrat or conservative never breathed. Jupiter! according to the critics, he was a perfect despiser of the common people, and a man utterly without patriotism and philanthropy. Your Verulam there, now,” pursued Wentworth, looking at the statue, “was patriot and philanthrope. He toiled for his country and wrought for ‘the relief of the human estate,’ as he phrases it. But the most powerful microscope couldn’t detect anything of that sort in William.” Harrington laughed amusedly.