BY ORDER OF THE CZAR. 99
love art beyond politics. If I did not I should be engaged at this moment in projecting an English Republic."
"I wonder your Rossetti nobility put up with you."
"They have to put up with me, old man; besides we don't talk politics, and (with a self-deprecatory smile) even noblemen like to be associated with intellect, especially when it pays."
"Yes, that is a great matter," Philip replied; "it is the rock upon which I shall split."
"Not at all," said Chetwynd; "it is the artist's business to think of his art, and to leave the question of paying to Fate."
"And yet I fancy you were thinking just now that I should have a much better chance of the medal with a conventional treatment of tragedy than with a realistic study of the tragedy side of Russian tyranny and Russian heroism. Sometimes in one's hatred of Russia one is apt to forget that the tyranny and heroism go hand in hand; that they come from the same people."
"It is generous to think so; you do not regard Ireland as the Poland of our day, and I don't ask you to think of it in that light, though it is an oppressed nationality, and I have faith in my fellow countrymen when I find so many of us acknowledging our misdeeds."
"But if we are to go back to the past for misdeeds it seems to me that the English themselves have had a hard time of it, not to mention the Scotch and the Welsh. But of course all this is nonsense, the Irish troubles are to be mended as the disabilities of the masses have been amended; but if there is the tyranny in Ireland, the abuse of Irishmen, some of my fellow bogtrotters aver, let them rise and be free! That is what other nationalities have done; and if they have the cause let them fight!"
"We were talking of Art, and the interpretation of Tragedy," said Dick; "you are no politician, and you are so
