guides, my philosophers, and my friends; but
their way of life had not led them across his
path: their learning and experience had not
taught them where to seek him. Black men
they had found in numbers countless as the
insects of the air: white men they had found
in masses like clouds of dust, men whose
whiteness was almost too dazzling for mere
earthly eyes; but the whity-brown man was
more rare to them than the black swan, the
philosopher's stone, the elixir of life, the
blue dahlia, the lost books of Livy, or the site
of the Garden of Eden.

It is hard to be told, even by the oracular
voice of recognised authority, that we live
in a world composed entirely of black fools
and white geniuses, of black demons and
white angels; in which the moderate, mediocre,
happy medium, whity-brown man is
totally unknown. If we go into those
numerous lesser worlds that exist within
the greater, there is still the same parochial
faculty for imitating the manners and
echoing the dogmas of the parent state.
There is the literary world or parish, carefully
guarded by its appointed beadles, who
have strict instructions not to admit any
stranger into the temple if he does not wear
a dress of unexceptionable whiteness, scrape
his feet upon the critical scraper, and wipe
them well upon the critical mat. Can it be
that, during all these countless years and
centuries, no whity-brown man ever knocked
at the sacred gate, to be admitted with
a welcome, or sent away howling with a
kick? The appointed beadles have never
seen a man of that peculiar tin; those
who have been refused admittance are all
jet-black idiots; those who are assembled
round the anointed altar, are pure snow-white
men of genius. Look, and judge for yourself.
Books, I am told (as every man must
know who reads them), are of two kinds, and
of two kinds only; those that overflow with
wit, imagination, humour, pathos, and constructive
ability; those that have neither
constructive ability, pathos, humour, imagination
nor wit, and are, moreover, indebted
to a printer's reader for what little grammatical
correctness they may fortunately possess.
The first are the sole, inspired productions of
snow-white geniuses; the second, the feeble
ravings of mistaken jet-black fools. The
moderate, sensible, mediocre, whity-brown
man, if he exists at all in the literary parish,
must live in carefully preserved seclusion
from the public eye; for he never comes forward
either to challenge opinion or to
satisfy curiosity.

There is the great and equally well
guarded parish of art, in which the whity-brown
man was never known to penetrate.
The parish of art knows of only two productions;
the white man's delicious masterpiece,
and the black man's unsightly daub. Everything
is either priceless or worthless. There
is no happy medium. From a Raffaele we
descend to a sign-board; from a sign-board we
ascend to a Michael Angelo. The oracles have
spoken, and we are bound to believe. There
is the pure white man artist, let him be
crowned with diamonds. There is the jet-black
man painter, let him be broken upon
the wheel. The whity-brown man has made
no sign.

Architecture has only two kinds of building,
to show an eager and expectant public.
The scaffolding is removed, and the great
work either stands as a noble palace or a
mean county jail. The white man has
had a limited fund to deal with, but has
raised with it a structure which combines
the practical solidity of the Grecian, with the
spiral lightness of the Gothic. The black
man has squandered unlimited funds upon a
miserable abortion; a patchwork nightmare
with towering steeples suggestive of a Christian
temple, and porticoes like a combination of
gigantic four-post bedsteads: utterly heathen,
from the soles of their plinths to the crowns
of their capitals. The whity-brown man has
sent in neither design nor tender.

Sculpture also knows nothing of the
existence of the whity-brown man; for he
neither comes forward to adorn the metropolis,
nor to disgrace his country; to
caricature our greatest heroes in stone,
nor to hand them down to admiring
posterity in graceful attitudes of marble.
The black man and the white man are still
the only visible artists; the first to be
execrated for his ignorance of the commonest
anatomy; the second to be worshipped
as a worthy wearer of the mantle
of the great Praxiteles.

If I go into the large and important parish
of music, I meet with no better success.
Black composers are reigning like false
usurpers, without the power of putting together
two harmonious notes. Discordant
productions are being scraped upon discordant
instruments by discordant black executants,
listened to and applauded by undiscriminating
black audiences, while white composers
are lying neglected in unmerited obscurity.
Suddenly the picture is reversed; the
white composer is raised on high; ovations,
money, testimonials, decorations, all are too
small to reward his merits; all executants
are too black to give adequate expression to
his immaculate inspirations. But the whity-brown
man, whether singer or composer, has
never yet been heard of in this parish.

The great parish of the drama is filled
entirely by black and white. There are
obscure traditions existing that one or two
whity-brown men have appeared upon the
stage in the course of a century; but the
evidence is not to be relied upon. Whatever
may have been the original colour of
the leading artists, they used every means in
their power to alter the shade; and, rather
than not be considered white, they even consented
to be daubed black.