article, in which it was made perfectly clear that England would stand ashamed among the nations, if she did not inter her greatest painter in Westminster Abbey.  Only the article, instead of saying Westminster Abbey, said National Valhalla.  It seemed to make a point of not mentioning Westminster Abbey by name, as though Westminster Abbey had been something not quite mentionable, such as a pair of trousers.  The article ended with the word ‘basilica,’ and by the time you had reached this majestic substantive, you felt indeed, with the Sunday News, that a National Valhalla without the remains of a Priam Farll inside it, would be shocking, if not inconceivable.

Priam Farll was extremely disturbed.

On Monday morning the Daily Record came nobly to the support of the Sunday News.  It had evidently spent its Sunday in collecting the opinions of a number of famous men—­including three M.P.’s, a banker, a Colonial premier, a K.C., a cricketer, and the President of the Royal Academy—­as to whether the National Valhalla was or was not a suitable place for the repose of the remains of Priam Farll; and the unanimous reply was in the affirmative.  Other newspapers expressed the same view.  But there were opponents of the scheme.  Some organs coldly inquired what Priam Farll had done for England, and particularly for the higher life of England.  He had not been a moral painter like Hogarth or Sir Noel Paton, nor a worshipper of classic legend and beauty like the unique Leighton.  He had openly scorned England.  He had never lived in England.  He had avoided the Royal Academy, honouring every country save his own.  And was he such a great painter, after all?  Was he anything but a clever dauber whose work had been forced into general admiration by the efforts of a small clique of eccentric admirers?  Far be it from them, the organs, to decry a dead man, but the National Valhalla was the National Valhalla....  And so on.

The penny evening papers were pro-Farll, one of them furiously so.  You gathered that if Priam Farll was not buried in Westminster Abbey the penny evening papers would, from mere disgust, wipe their boots on Dover cliffs and quit England eternally for some land where art was understood.  You gathered, by nightfall, that Fleet Street must be a scene of carnage, full of enthusiasts cutting each other’s throats for the sake of the honour of art.  However, no abnormal phenomenon was superficially observable in Fleet Street; nor was martial law proclaimed at the Arts Club in Dover Street.  London was impassioned by the question of Farll’s funeral; a few hours would decide if England was to be shamed among the nations:  and yet the town seemed to pursue its jog-trot way exactly as usual.  The Gaiety Theatre performed its celebrated nightly musical comedy, “House Full”; and at Queen’s Hall quite a large audience was collected to listen to a violinist aged twelve, who played like a man, though a little one, and whose services had been bought for seven years by a limited company.