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ready to play the part of traitors to their friends and country. All this seemed to him to heighten the despotism and cruelty of the Russian system, and to confirm the righteousness of the Nihilistic fight against the Czar. But Philip's was not a logical mind; it was moved by impulse, by instinct, it was emotional, artistic, sensitive, and it had a fateful habit of thought and feeling, which qualities possibly may belong to the attributes of genius. At all events Art has nothing to do with political principles, with the philosophies of government, or with constitutional rights; it has to do with sentiment, love, nature, the affections, and with the portrayal of noble actions and fine emotions, with the reproduction of landscape on canvas, the illustration of great events, the glorification of virtue, heroism, patriotism, but it has nothing to do with political debates, with revolutionary action, with real fighting, with the formulation of administrative principles; it is the handmaiden, not the soldier; the rewarder of noble deeds and the encourager thereto. Such at all events was the idea of Art which Chetwynd tried to convey to Philip Forsyth, whom he loved with a sincere friendship.
As a political journalist Dick Chetwynd was not a success; as a politician he was too honest to be anything more or less than a failure. He believed that if the Parnellite faction were sincere in their desire to promote the material interests of Ireland, the question at issue between the two great parties in the State would have been settled long ago. Not that he defended the Tory party in the past any more than he approved of the Gladstonian Administration. It was his firm belief that on many an occasion the Irish question was simply used on both sides as a political shuttlecock, without the slightest reference to what was best for Ireland, England, or the Empire. At the same time he despised the rank and file of the Irish party; believed Parnell to be more or less the victim of
