OUR WELLINGTON LETTER.

Marlborough Express, Volume XXXIX, Issue 111, 14 May 1906, Page 2

OUR WELLINGTON LETTER.

(Our Own Correspondent.)

WELLINGTON, May 12. We have here a most beautiful picture on view. What i.s more, wo have it "free gratis and for nothing." ' I refer, of eour.se, to liolman Hunt's "Light of the World," which the philanthropist Charles Booth is sending round the same world for the 'illumination thereof. It was a noble idea. And it has ennobled many minds if only for the few minutes that their owners have spent in dreaming over the picture; for it makes you dream in spite of all resolutions to the contrary: in the same way as a pathetic scene in a play or a tender par-sage in. a book, about which you have resolved within your manly self to keep a stiff upper lip, with the result that you'a re thankful the lights are turned down, and the only want you feel i« the want cf an opportunity to steal your handkerchief unobserved out of your own pocket and pass it. over your eyes with the air of a man who has a profound conviction that there are too many flics in the world, and that it is time they were put out of the theatre at night time anyhow. 1 declare I have not met a single man in the flesh who did not come away from the masterpiece moved to the depth of his soul. Such majesty, such grace, such tenderness! So marvellous is the spiritual beauty that radiates from the face and form of the Master. There are a hundred people standing in rapt attention behind them awaiting their turn to look, or streaming in front the street are a thousand persons careless and jaunty; they arc just going to see a picture. On the other side of the hundred who are standing spell bound before the figure, another thousand persons are moving away, silent, solemn, touched-to the very quick they are; reverent exceedingly; they have,' in fact, seen a picture: The Picture: besides which they are sure—for has not the revelation been made to them' in a flash in the careless moment of their stopping to satisfy mere curiosity —that they were looking at something beyond the ordinary ken of man. That is how the picture impresses the whole of.the crowd that streams in every day to see it. It is a. great lesson for all who possess great gifts, of the immense advantage they can confer on their leliow men. The singer, the speaker, the poet, the painter, these all have the power to "touch our senses so " and we ought to thank God for them, lliat l&the doctrine, just now familiar .111 the street.

Another moral of the story is that SJ°-r these sit«ations does the iinhstino enter in and raise the cracked voice that is attuned to a marplot or- a mind. I» the press we have had actually a crusade against this masterpiece. They just see nothing in it and they say so in the most patronisi jngly aggressive way known to man • the way of the individual who having the privilege of putting Ins thoughts into the much abused "Wo " knows everything about that privilege except the right way to use it. Hence the feelings of thousands have been outraged by the silliness of the privileged man who-has everything in his composition except tact, which is the child of insight. It is true that he shelters himself behind the pretence that it is the duty to beat down the incompetent critic who pushes; raves, i £ eos iln eve]y stroke o f the painters brush a symbolic meaning. I ad- £ tllß, ldf One might chaff this sort of critic all he deserves, with very funny results. But- don't hurt the Picture- don't forget to\ acknowledge that whatever the critic chose to say m his folly, the picture- certainly seized the souls of the thousands who went to see it. Above all tilings don't forget to tfiank the man who having experienced the benefit of looking on that magnificent masterpiece, determined to give millions of fellow men the opportunity of being advantaged in the same manner and to the same extent. But your Philistine never remembers anything which he ought, not even the lamentable fact tha£ he is a Philistine. ,

A rascal, an egregious rascal, aged withal, for as he stood in the e&ck waiting for sentence, trying to get the same lessened if by some niirfculoul chance that might be, his poor old mouth twitching, has eyes searching for a sign of pity on the face of him - in wnose hand lay the power of -darkening the short remainder of the life had ceased long ago .to be a thing of moment ,in the world- or -of, .any particular use to its owner! He had a sense of humour, too, the old man, sumvhigj>ngh'tly under the eight-and-sisty years so heavily with the records of chains and slavery Jnt£ «aߥ d.:^? wretchedprisoner l^li the.£ ne tinkle in his eye, which «Wh% g \ °f y°»r true.humourist. What chance could I have of a j hearing, m' the face "of ,the terrible ; character you have been given of me by the-police?" It was a fair hitand it brought down the house at the very outset-of the speech. Then he sketched with masterly force the tale of the Ishmaehte with his hand against SVT f? r *no Other reason b^ that the hand of every man is against urn. » But he did so with a double barrel of introduction. When he landed in this country—" dumped," by the way, here by the kindly but inconsiderate authorities of the Mother Colony-he had no more than fifteen sin lings in his; pocket. Naturally he looked for employment, for he was determined to become an honest man— oi that, of course, there could not be the smallest doubt in any man's (mind that heard the accent of truth from the dock that day—and he found none. He looked into the press, but there was no advertisement "Wanted, an old man." There the artist annexed the sympathies of. a vast army of men and women who have arrived a.t the hour when no man will hire theni, and are beginmng^o suspect that1 the civilised world which denounces the barians who hi. the pristine innocence °l the, remoter South Sea Islands strangle all their old. people, would not be sorry if the strangling could be done by somebody with a heart hard enough to accept the full conclusions or economic theories. He did not find any advertisement ottering to embrace old men and give them treble the ordinary wage, or any wage at all for that matter, and his money disappeared. Starvation was not to be thought of. 'Tis a base use or one of God's own creatures. What lease* was there? The old philosopher spread out- his: hands, shrugged his shoulders-, looked at his Honour, who looked down on his blotting-pad. Lvoryone knew that there was nothing lert tor it but the old resources. It was force major. He had to do it. A moral, God-fearing, society-respect-ing philosopher had to put his principles in lus. pocket, swallow -his scruples, and confess that the process nlled both up to some standard of animal satisfaction.

His Honour thought to make a point: said severely, that the philosopher had, it appeared, spent most of his lite -in burgling. But- the philosopher was equal to the occasion. ' That only proves, your Honour, that 1 musu have been a bungler at- the game." The Court fairly roared, except the crier, whose business it was to roar for order; but the crier, being Irish, was too well bred a Patlander— humorous and agin the government— not to laugh. Justice, Jiowever, was swift. Tha philosopher concluded his •appsals with a solemn promise not to do it again, if he only got one chance more. But as it was impossible for him to guarantee that he would find to-morrow the advertisement, "Wanted, an old man," the want of which yesterday sent him back to the thieves' hell, naturally his Honour proceeded to sentence without further consideration on account of that point. Seven years he gave him with obvious reluctance, and the philosopher went back to the usual routine of his mis-soent career.

The town has been crying out ever since for the establishment of the indeterminate sentence system. The town is, in fact, imbued with the ultra modern idea that there is no responsibility except the responsibility of society for the disasters which overtake the poor and the feeble. There is no such thing as will, no such thing as character (???), no fibre in man or woman. It's all a matter of somebody else's shortcoming. How is this, you ask, seeing that the indeterminate system proposes to put the incurable criminal into gaol without hope of coming out before he is reformed? les, that is what the thing purports to mean. But what it does mean is that alter a man is safe under lock and key, with a door ready to" fly open at the .first gsm of repentance and " true sorrow, ' half a dozen cranks will have him out again and away to his old haunts as if nothing had happened, lhe plea would be, of course, the nonrosponsibility of every man for himself and the responsibility of every man for every other man in the world.

Once more wo liave t^e public accounts, and all the able editor^

telling us what they moan and what they doirt moan. Tho street thinks it has" enough of thorn until tho opening of Parliament. It is enough that nobody seems inclined to doubt the fact of the surplus. We shall have to bo satisfied for the future with larger issues.

For example, tho tariff. Tho manufacturers are growing quite frantic-. But they are told now from the housetops that the ministry intends to make a lio-conlidenco of every tariff proposal made outside tho authorised programme. To which they reply that that won't prevent them from moving motions getting thorn talked for days and months, and defeated in a manner worse than any possible ministerial defeat.