'ARRY.

Kumara Times, Issue 981, 21 November 1879, Page 4

'ARRY.

(SATURDAY REVIEW. Mr. Matthew Arnold must help to define 'Arry ; he must lend us one of his fine old serviceable formula. 'Arry is the homnw sensuel moyen of the middle and lower classes ; the ordinary sensual man, very ordinary and excessively sensual. In 'Arry " the life of the sense developes itself all around without misgiving ;" his existence is " confident, free," and easy. We all know 'Arry when we meet him ; but circumstances have prevented science from pursuing him to his home. For the world at large 'Arry only exists. when he is at large ; and that much too often for the comfort of people who are, after all, in a sense his fellow creatures. No martyr of social curiosity has yet sought to know 'Arry at home ; to see him at work, or in his family circle. His public appearances and performances are enough at present. They enable us to recognise more than one sort of 'Arry. There is a fine flower of the species whom a contemparory poet (in Punch) has made his own. This 'Arry is the ordinary sensual man in the position of a clerk, or a haberdasher, or a druggist's or photographer's young man. His foible is to imitate the ordinary sensual man of the upper classes. He wear 3 long yellow shoddy ulsters and shiny shoes, and he carries the short of walking stick that was in fashion six months ago. He believes as devoutly a 3 Tittlebat Titmouse, or Balzac himself, in his successes with women. The young man by the name of Guppy, who bought the cheap engravings of British beauties, was his spiritual ancestor. 'Arry is more fortunate ;he can purchase, at a cheaper rate, photographs which are " amazingly intimate," He wears two of these in two big yellow lockets. As concerns the arts, he is fond of burlesque, and enjoys the gambols of those precocious little girls who performances are in fashion. 'Arry also patronises the music-halls, and applauds patriotic minsterelsy. The outer world hear him often, though it seldom sees him except when he is clothed in a shining black apron and in his right mind, selling drugs or what not over the counter in the exercise of his duties. We hear 'Arry all through the small hours, between half-past twelve and four, when " many a wandering cad of noisy nights" is making for his lodgings. Then the gay 'Arry relieves his mind by howling, barking, yelping, screaming, and by uttering such other sounds as " please himself," to quote Herodotus," " while they are disgusting to others." It is as a vocalist that 'Arry is most powerful. Philosophers who have studied the song of birds inform us that the notes which they repeat are the sounds which come most easily, and in the easiest succession, and which therefore become habitual. Applying this theory to 'Arry, it seems plain that his larynx and vocal organs must dfffer so much from those of the rest of the race as to constitute him a new species. The horrible and inarticulate cries which he utters habitually would actually tear the throats, as they do torture the ear 3, of his less developed fellow-creatures. 'Arry never sings; neither the middle-class 'Arry, nor his sturdier, if less elegant, brother of the working classes. He ha 3 not brain enough nor orderliness enough to attempt a tune. His too free, too confident nature would be hampered and trammelled by the conditions of any melodious form of expression. Thus the sleepless listeners to the diversions of the English 'Arry in all parts of the world, must have observed tnat, even if he begins a tune, he never finishes it. He breakes off into a bark or hissing sonnd that ends with a yell. Even if he tried to persevere with a song, his companions would not permit him to go on with it. They shout and howl in the middle of the perfermance till the songster desists. Thus 'Arry differs from his Contimental brethen—Henri and Heinrich and Enrico. They are as noisy as he, but they cannot help being more human and civilised. Their songs disturb the night in France, in Germany, above all in Italy, but at least they do not make might hideous. They have melody and meaning in them, and the music dying, with the measured tramp of feet, down some loDg sonorous street of Genoa, brings its own consolations.

t Arry ib a neglected problem of our civilisation. No other country in Europe can show this shameful spectacle of a part of the population which deliberately puts itself much lower than the animals, and can find pleasure only in meat, drink, and inarticulate noise. Beauty of art or nature, manly sports, and games, all appeal vainly to 'Arry. There seems to be nothing in his nature to which they can appeal. To enjoy them requirGs either repose or varied effort, consciously .directed and regulated, and he is incapable of orderly effort, and incapable of repose. It is not easy to see how the social missionary is to do good to 'Arry, or how £rry is to be " got at " by education. He la so brutally gregarious that no one can find him alone and play on his finer feelings ; he is so dull that he would not attempt argument, or even banter : he would only howl. Nature has produced no animal so near the Yahoo as 'Arry, the flower of our earnest mechanical civilisation. By his pleasures he is known, on hiß holidays he is to be studied for then he escapes from the yoke of civilisation and is really himself. Hie actions have the monotonous regularity of a machine and when one has listened to one vanload of 'Arries, one has heard all of them. Ponderiog these thing as one rends the ".Nineteenth Century," one sees a fugitive vision of manly features, and one hears the voice of Mr Arnold saying in dulcet and melancholy tons, Organise 'Arry!