written which fascinated the Western reader in thousands across the frontier into Turkish terwith pictures of our manners and customs, be- ritory, abandoning their homes and landed poscause they were so different from those with sessions in order to escape the contamination of which he was familiar. Now all this is changed: anti-Christendom. the modern traveler is in nine cases out of ten a • In these days of steam and electricity, not railroad speculator, or a mining engineer, or a only has the traveler no eye for the moral virtues financial promoter, or a concession-hunter, or of a people, but his æsthetic faculties have beperchance a would-be member of Parliament come blunted; he regards them only as moneylike yourself, coming to see how pecuniary or po- making machines, and he esteems them just in litical capital can be made out of us, and how he the degree in which they excel in the art of can best exploiter the resources of the country wealth-accumulation. Blinded by a selfish utilito his own profit. This he calls ‘reforming' it. tarianism, he can now see only barbarism in a His idea is, not how to make the people morally country where the landscape is not obscured by better, but how best to develop their predatory the black smoke of factory-chimneys, and the instincts, and teach them to prey upon each oth- ear deafened by the scream of the locomotive. er's pockets. For he knows that, by encouraging For him a people who cling to the manners and a rivalry in the pursuits of wealth among a peo- customs of a bygone epoch with which their ple comparatively unskilled in the art of money- own most glorious traditions are associated have grubbing, his superior talent and experience in no charm. He sees, in a race which still endeavthat occupation will enable him to turn their ef- ors to follow the faith of their forefathers with forts to his own advantage. He disguises from simplicity and devotion, nothing but ignorant himself the immorality of the proceeding by the fanaticism, for he has long since substituted hyreflection that the introduction of foreign capital pocrisy for sincerity in his own belief. He dewill add to the wealth of the country and in- spises a peasantry whose instincts of submission crease the material well-being and happiness of and obedience induce them to suffer rather than the people. But, apart from the fallacy that rise in revolt against a government which opwealth and happiness are synonymous terms, re- presses them, because the head of it is invested form of this kind rests on the assumption that in their eyes with a sacred character. He can no natural temperament and religious tendencies of longer find anything to admire or to interest in the race will lend themselves to a keen commer- the contrast between the East and West, but evcial rivalry of this description; and, if it does erything to condemn; and his only sympathy is not, they, like the Australian and the Red In- with that section of the population in Turkey dian, must disappear before it. Already the who, called Christians like himself, like him deprocess has begun in Europe. The Moslem is vote themselves to the study of how much can rapidly being reformed out of existence alto- be made, by fair means or foul, out of their Mosgether. Between the upper and the nether mill- lem neighbors. stone of Russian greed for territory and of Brit- " While I observe that this change has come ish greed for money, and behind the mask of a over the Western traveler of late years—a change prostituted Christianity, the Moslem in Europe which I attribute to the mechanical appliances has been ground to powder ; hundreds of thou- of the age-a corresponding effect, owing to the sands of innocent men, women, and children same cause, has, I regret to say, been produced have either perished by violence or starvation, or, upon my own countrymen. A gradual assimiladriven from their homes, are now struggling to tion has been for some time in progress in the keep body and soul together as best they can in East with the habits and customs of the rest of misery and desolation, crushed beneath the wheels Europe. We are abandoning our distinctive cosof the Juggernaut of Progress' — their only tume, and adapting ourselves to a Western mode crime, like that of the poor crossing-sweeper, I of life in many ways. We are becoming lax in think, in one of your own novels, that they did the observances of our religion ; and it is now not ‘move on.' This is called in modern par- the fashion for our women to get their highlance the civilizing influence of Christianity.' At heeled boots and bonnets from Paris, and for our this moment the Russians are pushing roads youths of good family to go to that city of pleathrough their newly acquired territory toward sure, or to one of the large capitals of Europe, Kars. I am informed by an intelligent Moslem for their education. Here they adopt all the gentleman who has just arrived from that dis- vices of anti-Christendom, for the attractions of trict that the effect of their civilizing' influence a civilization based upon enlightened selfishness upon the inhabitants of the villages through are overpoweringly seductive, and they return which these roads pass is to convert the women without religion of any sort-shallow, skeptical, into prostitutes and the men into drunkards. No egoistical, and thoroughly demoralized. It is wonder the Mohammedan population is flocking next to impossible for a Moslem youth, as I myself experienced, to come out of that fire uncon- of the most sacred principles in the name of motaminated. His religion fits him to live with rality, and construct an international code of ethics simple and primitive races, and even to acquire a to be applicable to Turkey alone, and which they moral control over them; but he is fascinated would one and all refuse to admit or be controlled and overpowered by the mighty influence of the by themselves—when we know that the internal glamour of the West. He returns to Turkey corruption, the administrative abuses, and the opwith his principles thoroughly undermined, and, pressive misgovernment of the power which has if he has sufficient ability, adds one to the num- just made war against us in the name of huber of those who misgovern it.

manity have driven the population to despair, “The two dominant vices which characterize and the authorities to the most cruel excesses in anti-Christendom are cupidity and hypocrisy. order to repress them—and when, in the face of That which chiefly revolts the Turk in this dis- all this most transparent humbug, these antiguised attack upon the morals of his people, no Christian nations arrogate to themselves, on the less than upon the very existence of his empire, ground of their superior civilization and morality, is that it should be made under the pretext of the right to impose reform upon Turkey—we morality and behind the flimsy veil of humanita- neither admit their pretensions, covet their civrianism. It is in the nature of the religious idea ilization, believe in their good faith, nor respect that just in proportion as it was originally pene- their morality. trated with a divine truth, which has become “Thus it is that, from first to last, the woes perverted, does it engender hypocrisy. This was of Turkey have been due to its contact with antiso true of Judaism that, when the founder of Christendom. The race is now paying the penChristianity came, though himself a Jew, he alty for that lust of dominion and power which scorchingly denounced the class which most tempted them in the first instance to cross the loudly professed the religion which they profaned. Bosporus. From the day on which the tree of But the Phariseeism which has made war upon empire was planted in Europe, the canker, in the Turkey is far more intense in degree than that shape of the opposing religion, began to gnaw at which he attacked, for the religion which it pro- its roots. When the Christians within had thorfanes contains the most divine truth which the oughly eaten out its vitals, they called on the world ever received. Mohammed divided the Christians without for assistance; and it is mornether world into seven hells, and in the lowest ally impossible that the decayed trunk can much he placed the hypocrites of all religions. I have longer withstand their combined efforts. But, as now carefully examined into many religions, but, I commenced by saying, had the invading Mosas none of them demanded so high a standard lems in the first instance converted the entire from its followers as Christianity, there has not population to their creed, Turkey might have been any development of hypocrisy out of them even now withstood the assaults of 'progress.' at all corresponding to that which is peculiar Nay, more, it is not impossible that her victorious to anti-Christianity. For that reason I am con- armies might have overrun Europe, and that the strained to think that its contributions to the re- faith of Islam might have extended over the whole gion assigned to hypocrites by the Prophet will of what is now termed the civilized world. I be out of all proportion to the hypocrites of other have often thought how much happier it would religions.

have been for Europe, and unquestionably for “In illustration of this, see how the principles the rest of the world, had such been the case. of morality and justice are at this moment being That wars and national antagonisms would have hypocritically outraged in Albania, where, on the continued is doubtless true; but we should have moral ground that a nationality has an inherent been saved the violent political and social changes right to the property of its neighbor, if it can which have resulted from steam and electricity, make a claim of similarity of race, a southern and have continued to live the simple and primidistrict of the country is to be forcibly given to tive life which satisfied the aspirations of our anGreece; while, in violation of the same moral cestors, and in which they found contentment principle, a northern district is to be taken from and happiness, while millions of barbarians would the Albanian nationality, to which by right of to this day have remained in ignorance of the race it belongs, and violently and against the gigantic vices peculiar to anti-Christian civilizawill of the people, who are in no way consulted tion. The West would then have been spared as to their fate, is to be handed over for annexa- the terrible consequences which are even now tion to the Montenegrins—a race whom the popu- impending, as the inevitable result of an intellation to be annexed traditionally hate and de- lectual progress to which there has been no cortest.

responding moral advance. The persistent vio“When anti-Christian nations, sitting in sol- lation for eighteen centuries of the great altruistic emn congress, can be guilty of such a prostitution law propounded and enjoined by the great founder of the Christian religion must inevitably produce Europe into a slumbering volcano, an eruption of a corresponding catastrophe; and the day is not which is rapidly approaching. far distant when modern civilization will find that “Thus it is that the laws of retribution run in its great scientific discoveries and inventions, their course, and that the injuries that anti-Chrisdevised for the purpose of ministering to its own tendom has inflicted upon the more primitive extravagant necessities, it has forged the weapons and simple races of the world, which under the by which it will itself be destroyed. No better evi- pretext of civilizing them—it has explored to its dence of the truth of this can be found than in the own profit, will be amply avenged. Believe me, fact that anti-Christendom alone is menaced with my dear friend, that it is under no vindictive imthe danger of a great class revolution : already pulse or spirit of religious intolerance that I write in every so-called Christian country we hear the thus : on the contrary, though I consider Musmutterings of the coming storm, when labor and sulmans generally to be far more religious than capital will find themselves arrayed against each Christians, inasmuch as they practice more conother—when rich and poor will meet in deadly scientiously the teaching of their Prophet, I feel antagonism, and the spoilers and the spoiled solve, that teaching from an ethical point of view to be by means of the most recently invented artillery, infinitely inferior to that of Christ. I have writthe economic problems of modern 'progress.' It ten, therefore, without prejudice, in this attempt is surely a remarkable fact that this struggle be- philosophically to analyze the nature and causes tween rich and poor is specially reserved for those of the collision which has at last culminated bewhose religion inculcates upon them, as the high- tween the East and the West, between so-called est law, the love of their neighbor, and most Christendom and Islam. And I should only be strongly denounces the love of money. No coun- too thankful if it could be proved to me that I try which does not bear the name of Christian is had done the form of religion you profess, or the thus threatened. Even in Turkey, in spite of its nation to which you belong, an injustice. I am bad government and the many Christians who far from wishing to insinuate that among Chrislive in it, socialism, communism, nihilism, inter- tians, even as Christianity is at present professed nationalism, and all kindred forms of class revo- and practiced, there are not as good men as lution, are unknown, for the simple reason that among nations called heathen and barbarous. I Turkey has so far, at least, successfully resisted am even prepared to admit there are better-for the influence of anti-Christian civilization.' some struggle to practice the higher virtues of

“ In the degree in which the state depends, Christianity, not unsuccessfully, considering the for its political, commercial, and social well-being manner in which these are conventionally travand prosperity, not upon a moral but a mechani- estied; while others, who reject the popular cal basis, is its foundation perilous. When the theology altogether, have risen higher than orlife-blood of a nation is its wealth, and the exist– dinary modern Christian practice by force of reence of that wealth depends upon the regularity action against the hypocrisy and shams by which with which railroads and telegraphs perform their they are surrounded—but these are in a feeble functions, it is in the power of a few skilled minority, and unable to affect the popular standartisans, by means of a combined operation, to ard. Such men existed among the Jews at the strangle it. Only the other day the engineers time of Christ, but they did not prevent him from and firemen of a few railroads in the United denouncing the moral iniquities of his day, or States struck for a week; nearly a thousand men the church which countenanced them. At the were killed and wounded before the trains could same time, I must remind you that I shrank from be set running again; millions of dollars' worth the task which you imposed upon me, and only of property was destroyed. The contagion spread consented at last to undertake it on your repeated to the mines and factories, and, had the move

assurances that by some, at all events, of your ment been more skillfully organized, the whole countrymen, the spirit by which I have been anicountry would have been in revolution, and it is mated in writing thus frankly will not be misconimpossible to tell what the results might have ceived. been. Combinations among the working classes

“ Believe me, my dear friend, yours very sinare now rendered practicable by rail and wire, cerely, which formerly were impossible; and the facili

“A TURKISH EFFENDI." ties which exist for secret conspiracy have turned

Blackwood's Magazine.

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FLESH-COLOR.

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PAINTE
AINTERS assure us that the object most call at the inn, offered to purchase the painted

difficult to imitate is the living human skin. table for a price which more than compensated There needs no artist come from the studio to the owner. tell us this. Humble critics though we be, Fiddles, flies, dead game, and other objects can easily distinguish between the work of na- have been imitated with such fidelity as to be ture and the work of art. There have been regarded by all persons beholding them as origipainted draperies whose folds we could probe, nal or natural productions, and in a church on goblets we could place to our lips, perspective the Continent (I think at Genoa) there is a wall interiors we might walk into, water we could so cunningly painted as to lead the spectator to bathe in, flowers and fruits whose perfumes we be ve that he is gazing, not upon a

at surface, might inhale; but no face or form depicted upon but upon a continuation of the sacred interior. a canvas has ever so far deceived the eye as to Several pages might be devoted to a record be mistaken for the reality.

of similar art illusions in reference to inanimate Perhaps the most successful thing in the way subjects, but, of stories in which the representaof pictorial illusion ever attempted is the famous tion of a human countenance has passed muster diorama of the siege of Paris in the Champs for the living reality, the majority are fabulous, Elysées of the French capital. In that interest- while the best authenticated have usually been ing work the painter, assisted by the mechanist, connected with certain external circumstances has produced that which, to the most practiced which have in some way assisted in the decepeye, seems a natural landscape, in which a real tion. It is related of Titian's portrait of Charles sky, real trees and buildings, real earthworks, V. that, when viewed for the first time in a semiand real cannons appear. Figures of men, paint- darkened chamber near a table at which it was ed on the flat surface of the canvas—upon which placed, the son of the Emperor began to conevery object is traced except that which consti- verse with it, being under the impression that he tutes the foreground-stand out in marvelous re- was addressing his own father. Under similar lief, and, but for their faces, might pass for human circumstances did Cardinal Pescia kneel before soldiers. Here, however, art has failed, as we Raffaele's likeness of Leo X. and present to it are not long in discovering that the representa- bulls for signature, believing the picture to be tions under our gaze are of paint and not of flesh the Pope himself. and blood.

Sculptors have endeavored to give life and Apelles, from whom so many ben trovato animation to their marble productions by the anecdotes in connection with art are derived, is employment of paint, and by tinting the eyes and reported to have painted a basket of fruit so ac- hair ; waxworks have also done their best to decurately that birds came and pecked at it. It is, ceive the eye in various ways; and a word might however, somewhat doubtful whether this may be said of that wonderful flesh-color which in be accepted as evidence of the artist's skill, when our youth was intimately associated with our we consider how easily duped are those members dolls, our toy theatres, our pantomimes, our Guy of the feathered tribe who mistake a clumsily- Fawkeses, and our silk stockings; but to these constructed scarecrow for a live peasant, or a and other efforts to reproduce the human epiderlump of chalk for a new-laid egg. a

mis the moral saying, “Flesh is weak,” might not A far better instance of success in still-life unfitly be applied. painting is furnished by the story of George Mor- Since the time of Giotto and Cimabue the list land, who, being unable to pay the reckoning at of painters who have been remarkable as coloran inn, where the thriftless artist had halted dur- ists is very small indeed. Michael Angelo, though ing his vagrant wanderings, beat a hasty retreat a giant in all else that he attempted, was certainby a low window. On the landlord entering the ly not what is understood as a colorist, and since deserted chamber he beheld upon a table what Michael Angelo lived there have been innumerappeared the untouched meal of his fraudulent able artists who have succeeded in every departvisitor, but which was actually a painted repre- ment of art except that of flesh-painting. Such sentation of the food with its corresponding striking exceptions as Titian, Rembrandt, Vanplates and dishes. The landlord, at first much dyke, Velasquez, Murillo, Paul Veronese, Gioraggrieved by the non-payment of his bill and the gione, the Carracci, Correggio, Reynolds, Gainsdamage done to his furniture, was easily appeased borough, and Etty, have been few and far bewhen a certain connoisseur, who happened to tween; and in more modern times, when art

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competition has been greater than ever it was, with black or ultramarine in the shadows; and painters of their rank have been even propor- over that is scumbled thinly and smooth a warmtionately rarer.

er tint." Similarly the Adonis of Titian in the Of those who have mastered the difficult de- Colonna Palace he describes as being composed partment of color a distinction must again be of “ dead-colored white, with the muscles marked made between the limner of youth and the lim- bold; the second painting has scumbled a lightner of age; for there are many who fail in the color over it; the lights a mellow flesh-color; the one and yet succeed notably in the other. Thus shadows in the light parts of a faint purple hue; it not unfrequently happens that a portrait-paint- at least, they were so at first. That purple hue er is far happier as a delineator of men than of seems occasioned by blackish shadows under, and women and children, and vice versa. Rem- the color scumbled over them. ... I copied the brandt himself is best known by his pictures of Titian,” he adds, “with white, umber, minio, elderly people, belonging, for the most part, to cinnabar, and black; the shadows thin of color.” the least comely class; though it might easily be In a memorandum-book which the English presumed that so great a master of color and portrait-painter kept in the year 1755, when he character was capable of accomplishing almost was receiving only five guineas for a head, is enanything with the brush.

tered the following recipe for flesh-painting : No subject is open to more controversy than “Black, blue-black, white, lake, carmine, orpithat of flesh-painting, for every artist, unless he ment, yellow ochre, ultramarine, and varnish.” follow a particular school or master, has his own At a later period Reynolds altered his system, as way of viewing nature. Give a dozen brothers it is pretty generally known that for his flesh he of the brush the same model to copy from, and, employed raw umber, Indian red, Vandyke brown, though the result may in each case be satisfac- yellow ochre, raw sienna, vermilion, crimson lake, tory, no two will be found to resemble each ivory-black, blue-black, and flake-white. Strange other in point of tone, harmony, and modus ope- to say, some of these pigments are altogether randi. To one the object before him has ap- avoided by more than one great colorist. peared somber and subdued ; to another all is All colors were equally valuable to the late bright, vivid, and fresh; a third has been im- Spanish painter Mariano Fortuny, whose colorpressed by gray and pearly tones; a fourth has ing was as brilliant and true to nature as his gazed as through a mist or a glass which is drawing was graceful and accurate. His method dimmed by frost; while a fifth has observed as of work consisted, so to speak, in the absence of if a magnifier interposed between him and the all conventional method. He was what is termed object he has striven to imitate.

a “once" painter—that is, he endeavored to Upon one canvas the colors will have been match the object before him at once, without thickly and firmly laid, exhibiting such roughness any preliminary groundwork or subsequent reand impasto that the picture can be adequately touching. His work was accomplished piecejudged of only at a given distance. Upon an- meal, one portion being completed at a single other the hues have been placed lightly and thin- sitting before a fresh portion was begun. It is ly, displaying the utmost smoothness and deli- well known that if a head or any part thereof cacy. The flesh-tints belonging to this work did not “come right,” as artists term it, before have been secured only after many coats of paint the day's labor was over, Fortuny would wipe or have been applied, assisted by thin glazes of color scrape it clean off the canvas and begin afresh on and oil administered toward the finish; those ap- another occasion. pertaining to this have been accomplished at once Fortuny was one of the few painters who without any preparatory groundwork or subse- have succeeded in producing work which will quent retouching.

bear close inspection, and yet appear equally To the first of these two opposite methods effective when viewed at a distance. This is belong the Titian and Reynolds schools; to the generally admitted to be one of the most diffilast those of Velasquez, Vandyke, and the more cult things to accomplish in art, as it very fremodern painter Fortuny.

quently happens that a picture, however carefully Sir Joshua Reynolds, after much study of his executed and highly finished, will lose half its favorite masters and many studio experiments, charm when a few yards interpose between it arrived at the conclusion that the human epider- and the spectator, while a work which has been mis, with its lights and shadows, its middle-tints broadly treated, and can not possibly be apand grays, could best be imitated with the fewest proached, will, when inspected at a distance, and simplest colors. He was in the habit of dis- seem smooth and sufficiently complete. secting, as it were, the flesh-tints of his predeces- In one of the galleries at Florence there is a sors. Thus he would discover that a certain head man's head painted with such extraordinary atby Correggio was painted in “ dead-colored white, tention to detail that every hair, over as well as