TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume L, Issue 8534, 14 July 1893, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Once upon a time actors Vanished complained - that. society Illusions. looked at them askance, and treated them too much as if they were a separate race of beings—■ not flesh and blood, like other men. It is curious, therefore, to find a complaint being raised on behalf of the craft that the profession is now admitted everywhere with too much familiarity, and that both the actor and his art are suffering in consequence. Iv a paper on "Audiences" recently read at the Playgoers' Club, Mr Cecil Raleigh, in seeking to account for the captiousness and uncertainty of modern audiences, attributed it in part to the fact that of late the public have become too familiar with the " trade secrets" of the profession. He said:-— " People who formerly knew actors only by name now know them personally and their wives and their families. There was at one time some mystery, some illusion, and therefore some attractiveness about the beautiful young man who, for the sake of the lady fair, expired gracefully in the middle of the stage, in the limelight and a becoming wig, every night at 10.30. Precisely; but when you come into frequent contact with him, when you find he is rather dull at dinner, is over thirty-five, is goingja bit the _emples,fh&s £ I wile aud three children—one an invalid— j that he lives at Lower Totting, takes a good deal of interest in rearing bees, and ha 3 big illusion and tbe attractiveness vauish. It is all very well to blow the trumpet about the social status of the actor, but I doubt very much if it is a good thing for the actor's art that he should be dragged out of the discreet seclusion of his dressingroom into the searching light of day." The reception sometimes given by actormanagers on the stage after a first performance, also, in the opinion of this writer, have a most deleterious effect. People see where the actor's wig joins, they notkiehis make-up, and they get to know somii of the tricks of* the property man.

Then "away goes the mystery, the glamour "J and the fascination of the theatre." This j may be true, but we fancy that in England at any rate, the theatrical profession has ( gained, pecuniarily as well as in status, from its closer connection with fashionable society. Mr Irving, Mr and Mrs Bancroft, ! Mr Toole and a number of others who could ' be mentioned, would certainly not admit that they had been losers by the change, and nobody would believe them if they did. In any case, the day has has long gone by when actors and actresses can be regarded as high priests and priestesses of Thespian mysteries. Even the children now-a-days know too much to regard them with anything approaching awe. Probably few people, even A among our most experienced _,Peculiar agricultural readers, would Industry, be able to tell us what is the most payable stock in proportion to the area occupied Which .landV **as~ ever been known to cany. The answer is, leeches ! Unfortunately, or fortunately, bleeding has gone a good deal out of fashion of late years, and leech-farming is nothing like so extensively oarried on as it used to be. There was a time, however, when tenants" of a few acres of swampy ground were able to make fortunes by its means. A recent writer on the subject states that m the, palmy days of leeching, when "bleed him" was the advice of every physician upon the slightest provocation, a French peasant who had managed with difficulty to pay 300 francs per year for some poor marsh land, sowed the land down in leeches and became a millionaire by renting it at 25,0001. francs (a thousand pounds) per year. A noble Irish landlord, who rented forty acres of meadow to some French leech farmtr?,*was interested and astonished to See how they went about their business. Having fenced and watered the meadow, they proceeded to sow it with leeches, put on broadcast, like the old fashion of sowing wheat, from sacks containing 15,000 leecbear." *»cb. The leech farmer mast give hi* crop-plenty of water and plenty of blood. One way of doing this is to drive old worn out horses and cows into the meadow. Another and more humane way is. to .turn in fresh blood from a ' slaughterhouse. The creatures must be fairly prolific since a leech farmer at harvest time expects a return of fifteen fold from the "crop" he has put in. Our authority states that leeches abound in the rivers of Australia and that at one time a siflgle'Austr&llahCotapany used \b export to Europe ana* America from 2,000,000 to 3,000,000 leeches a year, j The method of catching them, it states, was to throw a freshly .removed sheepskin into ! the water where they live. When the skin is taken out the leeches are found clinging to it by hundreds. In France, even at the present time, we believe the collectors have a still more curious way of catching them. They wade into the water and the greedy animals attach themselves to their bare legs, whence they are promptly removed into the collecting bottles. New Zealand in its time has seen plenty of leeches, but. they were productive of all loss and no profit. They were met with in politics when the Public Works Policy Was in full swing, and for voracity they have never been surpassed. . •'•■ " C. v """ -Mb Temvson Cole, the Art in artist, has been interNew Zealand, viewed by the Otago .Daily Times on the subject of art in New Zealand. He speaks highly of the Art School in Wellington, which, he says, up to date, and in his opinion equal to that in Melbourne. He expresses himselxf astonished, however, at the '■■ sight" *■ hot' elsewhere of rows of easels, with mediocre works set up on others from which the students were to copy, and he illustrated his opinion as to the unhealthiness of this system by stating that it was ac if a li berary student was requested to write an essay upon " lane 3" and the pupil wSS told not WfdrilOng' the lanes to see for himself, but to read,all that he could lay his hands on regarding lanes.

Mr Cole also spoke very New Zealand strongly on the subject "Pot-boilers." of the "pot-boiling' which is going on among New Zealand landscape painters. He said:— "I amsurgrileiclat some of the pictures of the Sounds that Tnave seen. One cannot fail to recognise that they are pictures of the places, but they do set you thinking. If a man. who really has the :true. Reeling goes across the Canterbury Plains he cannot help being arrested, by the roadside scenes; the colour, the composition, the incidents aro as characteristic of. New-, Zealand as is any where "to be seen. It .is a curious idea that if you; want a landscape at "all voumust rush to the Sounds lor it. Coloured photographs I call many °f them,; but there is a terrible demand for them, and so the thing goes oa being repeated. The country is bound to produce artists —landscape .with a few exceptions, they have produced so far nothing important. The public have* no -idealoi the beauty of New Zealand, and never will have until some Btroug comes here whois able to give you an individual conception. I would like to see iPe'tervGraham/Or M'Whirter, or some of the strong characteristic painters, come through the country, or even quieter painters,, such as Waterlow—men who wbiild reprbduce the little sympathetic ' bits' and incidents which you see even, on the* main roads. And John Brett, too ! John Brett would give the colour and David Murray, Waterlow, and Alfred Parsons would give you thO;touchlnpT.nd subtle and beautiful * bits * one -reesairnver the place. Tho colour is_ wonderful, and so is the composition, agd -you have every kind of scenery. X°u j§£ye. renin for any amount of artists, and I such artists as I have named hare and give you these simple arptoiiclong incidents familiar to everyone who observes Nature, -they would touch the hearts' of the people.- At present there is nothing but the cold manufacturing of ' pretty'pictures in New Zealand—Mitre Peak and George Sound are • trotted out 'year after year, and yet you blame the public for nob being appreciative." There is a good deal of truth in what Mr Cole says, and yet we do not believe it is so j much the artists who areT to" blame as the ' Cole would excuse. If Mr Colo were tovisit one the Art that there are many "New. Zealand artists who draw thiii best ihsp&atibns from the very scenes- wherein ; he says they ought to seek them.. Artists must live, however, like other people, and it Is? !#&'■'f> tt hlio who buy pictures insist on' Having Mitre Peak or Mount iGook for their money, that bur artists, are^ obliged to go- on,pointing these even though they feel that' theyjure not getting near the truth of their subject, and might be far better occupied on something nearer heme. The New Zealand artists are Jess jfa> l?lajue in .this, respect than sakie oiUtfseW English brethren.- -In choosing either Milford Sound or Mount Cook they at any rate select a noble gob|ect;, although they may not be able to-attain unto' it. It is ' |sr worse when wo see a Banish galleries, devoting his talents to some work of tawdry, sentimentality or trashy realism merely beo&ese he knows.it.will take the depraved taste of an unthinking-public.