Arthur Hughes

Quite by accident, I stumbled yesterday across a painter who immediately won my admiration. You will, of course, recognize his school:


Ah yes, the pre-Raphaelites, famous for their heady symbolism, their hyper-realism, their wives and the mistresses they raised from poverty, their Edenic reds and golds, large chins (not Edenic), and a faerie medievalism. Yet this man, Arthur Hughes, does not appear in the typical list of pre-Raphaelites. He was one of the outside converts to the cause of Rosseti, Holman Hunt, Millais and the brotherhood, eventually becoming friends with many of them, helping them paint the Oxford Union Debating Hall in 1857. Though he acquired patrons and friends in the 50s, he made his career later, being a popular illustrator for Tennyson, George MacDonald, Christina Rossetti, and Thomas Hughes' Tom Brown's School Days (a marvellous yarn).

You should look for his works online, they are plentiful. I only bring him to your attention for four reasons which cause him to stand out from his contemporaries. First, he paints just enough outline and contrast to cause the people and objects in his paintings stand out in all their individuated glory (as Holman Hunt in particular likes to do), while yet blending into the whole as if they were naturally situate, not contrived. I'm no art critic, but I think it may be because he uses a limited palate, so that all the objects in the painting are similar enough in tone and colour that they come to resemble one another. Second, I love his electric greens and purples. Third better than any the pre-Raphaelites I know, he recreates that quaint, cultivated, but slightly wild light which is the glory of the English summer (though only John Constable has made a truly compendious study of it). Fourth, he has a great deal of fun with medieval-style tryptiches and panels. In a word, he's more homely than the rest of them.

Revision of Judgment on Stimulus Bill

I asked my Constitutional History professor, Dr. Moreno, about the likelihood of the cabinet government I discussed three posts ago, as indicated by the progress of the late stimulus bill.

Really, the British custom of calling a Bill what the state is considering, and calling an Act what the state had made law, is far preferable to this American indistinction.

He told me of facts of which I had no knowledge, and which turns my thesis on its head. President Obama had very little to do with the construction of the bill. Essentially he delegated the business to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who promptly began the business of restoring the balance of corrupt investment, which has for so long weighed in the Republican's favor, back to the districts of Democratic congressmen. Many commentators are saying that Mr. Obama's actions in fact demonstrate weakness rather than strength. He's letting supervisory power slip from the executive back to Congress. It is also said that it's a sign of his inexperience.

On Sacramental Things

from On Something (London: Methuen & Co., 1910)

This one's for Davey.

"It is good for a man's soul to sit down in the silence by himself and to think of those things which happen by some accident to be in communion with the whole world. If he has not the faculty of remembering these things in their order and of calling them up one after another in his mind, then let him write them down as they come to him upon a piece of paper. They will comfort him; they will prove a sort of solace against the expectation of the end. To consider such things is a sacramental occupation. And yet the more I think of them the less I can quite understand in what elements their power consists.
A woman smiling at a little child, not knowing that others see her, and holding out her hands towards it, and in one of her hands flowers; an old man, lean and active, with an eager face, walking at dusk upon a warm and windy evening westward towards a clear sunset below dark and flying clouds; a group of soldiers, seen suddenly in manoeuvres, each man intent upon his business, all working at the wonderful trade, taking their places with exactitude and order and yet with elasticity; a deep strong tide running back to the sea, going noiselessly and flat and black and smooth, and heavy with purpose under and old wall; the sea smell of a Channel seaport town; a ship coming up at one out of the whole sea when one is in a little boat and is waiting for her, coming up at one with her great sails merry and every one doing its work, with the life of the wind in her, and a balance rhythm, and give in all that she does which marries her to the sea - whether it be a fore and aft rig and one sees only great lines of the white, or a square rig and one sees what is commonly and well called a leaning tower of canvas, or that primal rig, the triangular sail, that cuts through the airs of the world and clove a way for the first adventures, whatever its rig, a ship so approaching an awaiting boat from which we watch her is one of the things I mean.
I would that the taste of my time time permitted a lengthy list of such things: they are pleasant to remember! They do so nourish the mind! A glance of sudden comprehension mixed with mercy and humour from the face of a lover or a friend; the noise of wheels when the guns are going by; the clatter-clank-clank of the pieces and the shouted halt at the the head of the column; the noise of many horses, the metallic but united an harmonious clamour of all those ironed hoofs, rapidly occupying the highway; chief and most persistent memory, a great hill when the morning strikes it and one sees it up before one round the turning of a rock after the long passes and despairs of the night.
...
Hope is the the word which gathers the origins of those things together, and hope is the seed of what they mean, but that new light and its new quality is more than hope. Livelihood is come back with the sunrise, and the fixed certitude of the soul; number and measure and comprehension have returned, and a just appreciation of all reality is the gift of the new day. Glory (which if men would only know it, lies behind all true certitude) illumines and enlivens the seen world, and the living light makes of the true thing now revealed something more than truth absolute; they appear as truth acting and creative."

Praise Song for Hillsdale Academy

This morning I attended the opening ceremony for Hillsdale Academy lower school, where I am apprenticing this term. The order is as follows:

Pledge of Allegiance
Singing of "Simple Gifts"
Welcome by the Headmaster
Poetry recitation by a student
Announcement of sporting achievements (if any)
Other announcements. Today the headmaster (Dr. Calvert), along with his head-of-years, handed out certificates to all those students who had perfect attendance for their first 100 days at the Academy.
Headmaster's exhortation and dismissal.

I was forcefully struck by the power of this daily rite, and especially by the constant inspirational public acknowledgment of student success. In England there is next to NO celebration of success. In (equivalent of) 8th grade, I wrote a poem which my English teacher very much liked, and considered entering into an upcoming anthology of student poetry. However, it was decided that my poem wouldn't be entered, since no other students in MY year had suitable work. My sixth form (last two years of high-school) didn't even have a graduation ceremony. The students at the Academy, for this reason among others, are unusually excellent as I have seen personally.

I would merely criticize the constant grading and exams. I wish rather that we would copy the grammar-school custom of holding competitions and offering prizes and glory throughout the school year, in all sorts of subjects. This generally encourages hard work even in that most difficult demographic, the bored boys - study the youth of Winston Churchill.

Danger - But Small Cheese, Really

The formulation of the new stimulus package (which is certifying expenditure as far as 2019, when I suppose the assumption, goes, that we will still be in crisis, and still be in need of stimulus) demonstrates a peculiar danger to a custom of our government that, until now, has been, though corrupt and senile, still largely following the forms of the Constitution, if not its spirit. That is that money bills always originate in the House, and that the 'pork' associated with them is added by particular representatives.

Now of this new bill, near $900 billion fat, President Obama claims that none of it is pork. What does that mean? It means that no representatives are personally inserting money clauses into the document. It also means that Mr. Obama's cabinet, and their retainers, are in control of it. Given the vast number of particular benefits the bill actually dispenses, what does this imply? It implies that a relationship is growing between the presidential cabinet and lobbyists that is bypassing Congressional control.

Now I've no doubt that plenty of Congressmen are using lobbyists to get roads for their districts, but I've no doubt that private business are as well, and this time they aren't going through the Congressmen.

We conclude two important things from this little analysis:
1) Congress's hold on the budget is weakened dramatically by this precedent.
2) Executive authority is dramatically strengthened.

(The position of the lobbyists and everyone else appears to be unchanged)

Incidentally, independent money bills are being started in the Senate as well, although this is a direct violation of an express command of the Constitution that bills can only begin in the House. At this time there are actually TWO stimulus bills in Congress - one in each house. The idea is that they will compromise over a final result. Now whether or not anyone is plotting this, doesn't matter, the consequence remains: Congress is being divided against itself in regards to money. In the long run, this is the perfect opportunity for a non-partisan body, one which truly understands the people, one which stands above the corruption, etc. etc. to engineer the compromises, be the guiding light of the whole thing.

This is the exact path to cabinet government.