of artistic development, there have been and still are two notable causes of disturbance: the opening up of foreign civilisations and the importation of exotic kinds of art (like that of Japan), and the archæological revival of the art of the past, for instance, the Greek and the Gothic. From these have resulted both an impulse of imitation and an effort after novelty, the latter due both to facility of new combinations and to resistance against foreign or historical influence. Now an art which, like that of Burne-Jones or of Whistler, is half archæological or half exotic, cannot possibly be appreciated without some degree of familiarity with the mediaval or the Japanese art from which it has partly sprung; while, on the other hand, an art like that of Manet, Monnet, and Rodin has evidently been pushed into excessive novelty by a violent aversion from the officially accepted forms and methods of the painting and sculpture of the Renaissance and of Antiquity.

There is in the art of this century a degree of individualism, an amount of archæological and exotic research, an obvious desire for novelty at any price, which renders it less organic, less natural, than the art of past times. The result is that its appreciation is no longer attainable by the unconscious training which is conferred by familiarity with previous art, but demands special initiation through critical study. Among our contemporaries it is a matter of everyday experience to find persons extremely appreciative of Greek or Gothic art who yet, like Mr. Ruskin, can see absolutely nothing in the art of modern France; while there are practical artists who can see absolutely nothing save archaic quaintness in the art of Antiquity and of the Renaissance-to such an extent are the perception and enjoyment of one kind of form impeded by the habit and preoccupation of another. Such being the case with the artistic classes themselves, how much more must it be the case with the general public! And from this general public we are obliged in our century to exclude completely the enormous majority of mankind. Tolstoi has not exaggerated matters in saying that barely one man in a hundred comes nowadays within reach of art, appreciated or unappreciated. For here we find ourselves in presence of the other and far greater difference which separates the æsthetic conditions of our century from those of every previous one. The industrial and economic changes accompanying the development of machinery have virtually, as Mr. Ruskin pointed out, put an end for the moment to all that handicraft which formed the fringe of the artistic activity of the past, and which kept the less favoured classes in such contact with the artistic forms of their time and country that,

for instance, the pottery and brass-work of the humbler classes of Greece, and the wood-work and textile fabrics of the poorest citizens of the Middle Ages, let alone every kind of domestic architecture, afforded sufficient preparation for the greatest art of temples and cathedrals-a daily, hourly preparation, embodying in many cases actual mechanical familiarity. Nowadays, on the contrary, objects of utility, machine-made, and no longer expressive of any preferences, are either totally without aesthetic quality, or embody, in a perfunctory and imperfect manner, the superficial and changing æsthetic fashions of a very small minority. Nor is this all. The extreme rapidity of scientific discovery and mechanical invention, the growing desire for technical education and hygienic advantage, the race for material comfort and the struggles for intellectual and social equality-in fact, the whole immense movement of our times, both for good and for evil-have steadily tended to make art less and less a reality even in the lives of the leisured classes, and have resulted in virtually effacing all vestige of it from the lives of working men.

Art, therefore, we may concede to Tolstoi, is in our days largely artificial, often unwholesome, always difficult of appreciation, and, above all, a luxury. Violent and even fanatical as are Tolstoi's words on this subject, they hardly exaggerate the present wrongness of things.

But we hope to have suggested in the course of these criticisms that the present condition of art does not justify Tolstoi's proposal that in the future art should be reduced to being a mere adjunct of ethical education, or, failing that, should be banished from the world as futile or degrading. In pointing out, as we have done, the imperious nature of that desire for beauty which normally regulates all the practical constructive energies of mankind, and subdues to its purposes all human impulses to imitation and expression, imposing a how entirely separate and sui generis; and in clearing up that confusion among conflicting æsthetic theories of which Tolstoi has taken such advantage, we have brought home, we hope, to the reader the presumption that an instinct so special and so powerful must play some very important part in the bodily and mental harmony of man. Further, while indicating the natural mechanism by which, under normal circumstances, the appreciation and enjoyment of artistic forms have kept pace with their changes, and familiarity with the various kinds of beauty in the humblest and commonest objects of utility has rendered spontaneous the perception of the same kinds of beauty in their higher, more complex, and less utilitarian developments, Vol. 191.-No. 382. 20

we have shown that this special and imperious æsthetic craving has created its own natural and universal modes of satisfaction. We have seen that art, considered as the production of beautiful objects or arrangements, has been spontaneously produced, spontaneously enjoyed, and universally diffused, in one or other of its categories, throughout the whole of the past; and, having taken notice of the disturbing influences which have interrupted this normal condition of things in the present, we have shown reason to expect a return thereunto in the future. The wrong condition of things with regard to art is the result of other wrong conditions, intellectual, social, and economic, inevitable in a period of excessive, complex, and, so to speak, compound, change; and as these wrong conditions cannot fail to right themselves, the adjustment of the question of art will follow as the result of other adjustments. In what precise manner this may take place it would be presumptuous to forecast; but this much may be affirmed, that the ascetic subordination of art to ethical teaching will play no part in it. Imperfect, and even in some ways intolerable to our moral sense, as is the present condition of art, as Tolstoi has victoriously demonstrated, let those among us whom it offends reflect that even under such evident wrong conditions it is not mere selfishness to preserve the art of the past and foster the art of the present for the benefit of a more just and wholesome, a more developed and more traditionally normal, future. Moreover art, like science and like practical well-being, will in the long run take care of itself; because, despite Tolstoi's statement to the contrary, art, like morality itself, is necessary to mankind's full and harmonious life.

373)

ART. VI.—THE REFORM OF COMPANY LAW.

1. Report of the Departmental Committee appointed by the Board of Trade to inquire what Amendments are necessary in the Acts relating to Joint-stock Companies incorporated with Limited Liability under the Companies Acts, 1862 to 1890, with Appendix. Presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty. London: 1895 (C. 7779).

2. Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Companies Bill [H.L.]; together with the Proceedings of the Committee and Minutes of Evidence. 1896: 342.

3. Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Companies Bill [H.L.]; together with the Proceedings of the Committee, Minutes of Evidence, and Appendix. 1897: 384. 4. Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Companies Bill [H.L.]; together with the Proceedings of the Committee, Minutes of Evidence, and Appendix. 1898: 392. 5. A Bill intituled An Act to amend the Companies Acts. Prepared and brought in by Mr. Ritchie, Mr. Attorney-General, and Mr. Solicitor-General. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 12th February, 1900.

once remarked in the House of Commons *

MR. LOW Ead been the misfortune of joint-stock companies

always to be legislated for by persons in a state of excitement. The present Government appears to be fully alive to the danger of legislating for companies without due deliberation. For five successive years a Government Bill on the subject has been laid before Parliament. The Bill of this year may possibly be passed. There is a feeling abroad, stimulated perhaps by certain quasi-judicial pronouncements from the Bench, that 'something ought to be done.' But the opinions of those who are best qualified to estimate the probable results of litigation are not unanimous on the question how far this aspiration for reform can be satisfied without unduly trammelling commercial freedom.

The law of this country provides for several different types of company; but the public interest, so far as projects of reform go, is practically centred in one class of companies, namely, those incorporated under the Companies Act, 1862, and certain later amending Acts, as companies with limited liability. The Act of 1862 was based on the principle of affording the most complete freedom for the formation of joint-stock

*Hansard,' 3rd series, vol. cxl, col. 116.

companies with or without limited liability. The best evidence of the soundness of the principle on which the Act was based, and of the practical efficacy of the machinery which it provided, is to be found in the fact that a sum of at least 1,500,000,000%. of capital is invested in companies constituted under the Act. Further, very large sums are invested in Indian and colonial companies constituted under Acts or Ordinances copied in their main features from the Act of 1862. The operations of companies constituted under the Act of 1862 are not confined to the United Kingdom; they are to be found in full business operation, not only in other parts of the British Empire, but throughout the world. No accurate returns are available as to the capital of similar companies constituted in foreign countries ; but it is believed that the capital of French joint-stock companies does not exceed 420,000,000l., and that the capital of German joint-stock companies does not excced 300,000,0007. It would therefore appear that the capital invested in companies incorporated under the Act of 1862 amounts to, and perhaps exceeds, twice the combined capital of the corresponding French and German companies. These figures show the magnitude of the interests which are concerned with the reform of company law, and amply justify the deliberation which the Government has shown in dealing with the question.

The law as to companies embodied in the Companies Act, 1862, still remains substantially unaltered. Various amending Acts have been passed. Some of these Acts effect mere alterations of detail suggested by practical experience of the working of the Act: others effect reforms of procedure, as in the case of the Winding-up Act of 1890, which vested the control of the liquidation of companies in the Board of Trade. None of the amending Acts touch the principle on which the Act of 1862 hinges, viz. that of allowing companies to be formed and managed with the utmost freedom. This freedom has sometimes been abused; and a feeling in favour of fettering it has from time to time been roused by its abuse-for instance, when the Liberator Society collapsed in 1892. This collapse caused wide-spread misery among the lower middle classes, and pointedly drew public attention to the ease with which fraudulent balance-sheets and delusive reports could be manufactured. The year 1893 was not propitious for pressing on projects of reform in such matters, but in 1894 an important step was taken. Mr. Bryce, as President of the Board of Trade, appointed a Departmental Committee, which was directed to enquire what amendments were necessary in the Acts relating to joint-stock companies incorporated with limited liability,