Celebrities at Play.
Absence of occupation is not rest;
A mind quite vacant is a mind distressed."
O see the great unbend is, we have it on historic authority, a source of infinite amusement to the populace. If that was true in Macaulay's days, it is even less disputable in these, when a special journalism exists mainly to chronicle the small doings of the great, and every newspaper has its personal column. The fierce light of publicity, which at one time beat solely on the throne and its entourage, now shines as brilliantly in Stuccoville as on the mansion or the palace. The goings and comings of the Brown-Joneses and the Fitz-Smythes are made as prominent—at a guinea or a half the paragraph—as those of Dukes and Cabinet Ministers. Everybody knows, or wants to know, everybody else's little weaknesses; and he is a careful man nowadays who hides his idiosyncrasies from the public gaze. Happier still is he who, having his skeleton in his cupboard, can double lock the door and lose the key.
Before the days of society journalism these things were never freely talked of—except with bated breath and in the most profound secrecy at tea and scandal gatherings—during the lifetime of the personage. In his biography they would find a place, when he had no power to resent the impertinent prying into his domestic secrets. Who, for instance, would have dared to print a gossipy par. about Cardinal Richelieu's favourite recreation of leaping over furniture; Peter the Great's diversion of being wheeled in a perambulator over his neighbours' flower-beds; or Pope Innocent III.'s partiality for ninepins? Yet everyone knows and freely criticises the amusements of our Royal Family, our greatest legislators, and most celebrated people. The musical performances of our princes and princesses, and the Princess of Wales's achievements in amateur photography—in which she is an equal adept with the Grand Duke of Tuscany and the Archduchess Maria Theresa—are matters of common knowledge. The caricaturist indulges his fancy, and often his political spite, about Mr. Gladstone's tree-felling, Lord Salisbury's experimental chemistry, Mr. Balfour's golf, Mr. W. H. Smith's yachting, Mr. Chaplin's coachdriving, and Mr. Chamberlain's amateur gardening. When Lord Sherbrooke was known as "Bobby Lowe," his achievements on the bicycle were not only the object of caricature, but the subject of much coarser vilification than ever was the childish amusement of the poet Shelley with his paper boats in the parks. Even Sir W. Vernon Harcourt was openly twitted in the House of Commons the other day by Sir Henry James on his incapacity in shooting.
But the popular knowledge on these matters is not solely due to partisan animosity. The demand for such information is insatiable, and the competition in the journalistic world so keen that the demand is supplied with as much detail as possible. Hence Mr. Irving's dog is as familiar in the public mind as either Scott's canine companion or Dante's cat, and people talk glibly of Rosa Bonheur's pets, Sarah Bernhardt's snakes and tigers, and the monkeys with whose gambols Mrs. Weldon beguiled her leisure hours. Nor is the Prince of Wales's fondness for horses and horse-racing free either from criticism or condemnation.
All this publicity is not perhaps an unmixed evil. Our celebrities at play nowa-
