But the result is that the world is poorer by the want of the work which only a sense of sympathy between the artist and his public inspires. "Action and reaction are equal," we are told, in science, and the artist cannot produce the best that is in him alone, any more than the most finished musician can play on a dumb piano. The receivers must do their share in the partnership. Mrs. Siddons once said that she lost all her power when annihilated by the coldness of the cream of the cream society of a _salon_, and preferred any marks of emotion of an unsophisticated if intelligent audience, to the chill of fashionable indifference; and when we complain of the poorness of our art, we must remember for how large a share of this we, the present public, are responsible. It may be all very well for the skylark to "pour his strains of unpremeditated art" for his own pleasure and that of the little skylarks; but Shelley must have had the hope that "the world will listen then, as I am listening now." The poet and the painter require intelligent cordial belief and sympathy, which is just what we have not to give, and therefore the reign of the highest art is probably at an end: no Phidias or Michelangelo, no Homer or Shakspeare, are likely again to arise. This is pre-eminently a scientific age--a time for the collection and co-ordination of facts; and what imagination we possess we use in the discovery of the laws by which Nature works, and in the application of our knowledge to the ordinary wants and comforts and pleasures of the human race. Electric telegraphs, phonographs, photographs abound; every possible adaptation of steam in majestic engines (almost, it seems, as intelligent as man), to promote our means of communication and locomotion over the surface of the earth, and of production in every conceivable form; great ships and engines of destruction in war, and (curious antithesis) ingenious contrivances for the saving of pain in disease--everything, in short, connected with the comprehension and subjugation of the material world, is more and more carried to perfection. Yet in spite of these marvellous achievements, unless we can manage to secure a supply of good art, there can be no doubt that there will "have passed away a glory from the earth" which we can ill afford to lose.