Submissiveness, he says, was the key of Uthwart’s character: “it had the force of genius with him”; he entered into his work with serious obedience, but feeling that the perception of great literature was something unattainable by himself; religion too, “its high claims, to which no one could be equal; its reproaches”—he felt it all to be immeasurable, “surely not meant for the like of him.” He is always “repressible, self-restrained, always concurring with the influence, the claim upon him, the rebuke, of others.” He attracts the notice of strangers by his unconscious grace and healthy beauty; he is surprised at the charm he exerts on others, never elated by it, nor presuming upon it. And no doubt it is the intention of the piece to show how his one violation of duty, his single deviation from strict military obedience, brought with it ruin and death—so apparently disproportionate a punishment. But he takes his degradation with the same humble submissiveness, and it is in the same spirit that he meets his death, not repining nor complaining, but simply as the orders of some superior power, whom he is to obey unflinchingly by a sort of sacred instinct. The purpose of the piece, then, is to draw out the beauty of the obedient character, a soldierlike simplicity and tranquillity. It is hardly necessary to add that the accessories are exquisitely finished; the old house, with its scented flower-beds and venerable chambers; the ancient stately school, with the Cathedral to which it is attached; but in this one essay it may be said that the simplicity of the motive does not wholly harmonise with the delicacy of the setting. The thought is tinged and coloured by being seen through a somewhat self-conscious and sensuous medium. One cannot help feeling that Emerald would have disliked being regarded in this light, being made a picture of; that is perhaps no reason why it should not be attempted, but it militates against the success of the story, because one feels that Emerald is caught like a butterfly, in the gauzy meshes of a net, and is being too intimately, too tenderly scrutinised, when he is made for the free air and the sun. And, artistically speaking, one cannot help regarding the extract with which the story ends as a blot. The operation for the removal of the ball, the replacing of the body in the coffin, with “the peak of the handsome nose remaining visible among the flowers”—one feels this to be a harsh realism, with an almost morbid dwelling upon the accidents of mortality, which does a certain violence to the whole conception. Thus, though there are passages in “Emerald Uthwart” which must always rank high among the achievements of Pater, it is impossible to resist the feeling that in this painful story he was attempting effects to which his art could not rise.