LUCUBRATIONS BY OUR ESTHETE.

Observer, Volume 6, Issue 137, 28 April 1883, Page 89

LUCUBRATIONS BY OUR ESTHETE.

The love of the beautiful embraces all things animate and inanimate, and is widely, and often unconsciously, diffused ; bufe there have been instances of a clogged persistence in the pursuit of the ugly that would put to shame a Maori image-carver. When that persistence is exercised on privato property no one suffers but the owner and his family, but, when exercised on the public property, it calls for the interference of the Inspector of Moral Nuisances. Take, for instance, the horrible disfigurement of the oak trees in the Domain — a disfigurement carried out by one man — a mentally-j>achydermatous-hided individual — in spite of the wholesale protests of the public, and carried out, in bravado, to its extremest limit of destruction. Your aesthete, as he perambulates the Domain, heaves a bursting sigh (guiltless of onions) at the miserable vandalism there exhibited, but rejoiceth to see that large numbers of those unfortunate trees are now dying, or dead, in consequence of that maltreatment, and will have to be replaced with other trees that will not so shock our sense of creative beauty with their top-heavy, jolterheaded appearance. The word " jolter-headed " reminds me of those ladies, so numerous of late years, who so overdress their heads and pinch up their bodies . in tight clothes as to be little better than stalking guys, all head and body, like the unfortunate oaks in the Domain. Your aesthete rejoices in the advent of those natty, close-fitting, little straw bonnets, fitting the heads of the wearers to a nicety, and equally attractive to the eye, far or near. These small bonnets are peculiarly suitable for heavy features, which they lighten wonderfully, and really have a refreshing piquancy, after the monstrous creations of the milliners that we have been treated to latterly. The general public sadly require educating as to the difference between Rhyme and Poetry. Poetry may be written in prose, but it tallies better with the moral fitness of things and %'ith j public sentiment that it should be in metrical rythm. Anyone who can string together a bit of doggerel rhyme imagines he hath the divine afflatus within him as big as a blacksmith's bellows, and calls his bantling a poem. Some poetns are polished and perfect in diction and metre, but do not raise any other emotion than admiration for the writer's cleverness, and only appeal to the mind ; others raise a suspicious moisture in our eyes, an uncomfortable lump in our throats, and a feeling in our pEoboseular developments as if we were sniffing at 50 o.p. alcohol or extra distilled ammonia — these appeal to the feelings ; while still other poems (?) raise no other feeling in our breasts than an overpowering desire to introduce our shoemaker to the writer's tailor. Perhaps the feelings evolved, in educated minds, are the best guide as to what is poetry and what isn't.

The judging committee of the late Art Exhibition was not exactly happy in some of its I awards, notably in the award to the best design for a six-roomed cottage. Your aesthete is not uncharitable, bufc he would like those judges to live in that cottage for a few months. Both the sitting-room and parlour doors open against thejj chimnies of those respective rooms, the encl^fi sures of these chimnies being within a few i^^HH of these doors ; while the kitchen fireplac^HßH jammed up by a partition as to rende^^^^H^H highly inconvenient to the cook, to sa 3^SH^^| of the risk of fire caused thereby. -A-i^^^^^fl known architect remarked 'in my nf|MOP " Artists may be good judaaP of pictures, but they are evidently at sea onjMT commonest principles of architecture." Neither can thejoKftygiug committee be complimented on its diflPimination. "Water-colour is far more delicate wHan oil, and brightens or fades very much according to its surroundings ; but we see the whole available space on the walls monopolised by oil, while the water-colours are thrust any where, /cheek by jowl with all sorts of brightcoloured articles of terra cotta and needlework, and also without any backing above the tops of the frames, which of course makes them look dead and poor to cursory onlookers. "^gles,"in his "Talk on 'Change," says, in referring to the sham-fight at Queenscliff, that " There is a prevailing over-aptitude for ruthless, if not cruel, criticism on the part of the Fourth Estate." This truism has certainly not received any contradiction in connection with the critiques on the late exhibition of art. The Herald boldly praises two or three, when it feels the ground is safe, and damns the others with faint praise, much like a cat walking on hot bricks ; while the Star launches out in fulsome praise of its proteges, and, to make amends for it, slashes unmercifully among the rest in a run-a-muck style. As the French, said of the Balaclava charge, " C'esi tnagnifique, tnais cc nest pas la guerre" so it may be said of such criticism, " It is magnificent (in its atrabiliousness), but it is not ci'iticism." And now that it is all over, as Talmage lovefch to say, " Tableau ! Drop the curtain !" The Government, which is so extravagant at ! Wellington, is remarkaV'.y cheeseparing in Auckland ; but, as an augury of better things, they have lately taken it into their heads to expend a few pounds in repairing the disreputable, dilapidated fence round the Government House grounds here. It is a pity that they did not, at the same time, straighten the posts, which lean about either way; apparently in pensive meditation on the i bygone,, glories of the demesne they enclose. I Slantindicular fences are highly picturesque on paper or canvas, but certainly do not satisfy the aesthetic vision when they occur in every-day life. That was a very aesthetically-constructed yarn, told by Pollex the other day, about the discovery of the real, original Noah's Ark. Mark how delectably everything tallies with Scripture, and coincides, with known phenomena. First we have the entombment of the Ark in snow, which congealing forms a glacier 5 then-the slow descent, wrapped up "in the bosom of , that; glacier ; and, \ I&stlyy its slow .protjrußJon .at ; , the; meEipg 4eve^/

plained. Finally, as a, rounding off "oß^^^^H^^H storj, we have the name of the disc^^^^^^^^H G-ascoyne, evidently an aesthetic rendera^^^H^^H word " gascon," from which we derive oiu^KMrarr;'".] " gasconade." _ ; • ■'■•', '"';' There must be an sesthetic genius in the City , „ Council, who worked the Governor's reception at the station, or the {Esthetic axiom, that " things which are plainly visible are often disappointing, while things which are partially concealed, or dimly visible, are always attractive by their semimystery." How nicely the stage was surrounded on three sides by a dense hedge of foliage eight feet high, and how cleverly the railway train was brought up to blockade the front, and hide the inner mysteries of the reception from the expec-fe tant public. Your aesthete attributes it to the** above-named cause ; but there are uncharitable people who assert that it was done from a foreknowledge of the attitudinal gaucheries that the committee were pre-destined to commit, and which they wished to conceal as much as possible from • the sight of a no n- appreciative crowd. In looking over the list of members of the Auckland Society of Arts, one is struck with the number of lady amateurs. T£h bien ! why not ? but your aesthete sincerely hopes that they do not neglect the more solid, if less showy, portions o£ a feminine education, and sacrifice a knowledge of the management of a household to a knowledge of the manipulation of the palette and easel and the embroidery bag. To these ladies, who doubtless look forward to happy homes of their own in the immediate future, he would tenderly recommend the perusal, and the taking to heart, of the moral of the following lines by Owen Meredith 5 for though they may call the sentiments grossly material, still those sentiments are at the same time grossly true : — We can live without poetry, music, or art ; We can live without conscience, and live without heart ; We can live without knowledge, and live without books, But civilised men cannot live without cooks. . ' v We can live without books — What is knowledge hut grieving ; . ~ "* " We can live without friends — What are friends but deceiving ; We can live without love — What is love but repining — But where is the man who can live without dining ? JEsTHETIOTTS.