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II. Those in whom a partial or onesided development has injured the natural balance of the faculties. Thus, the man whose life has been devoted to action in the world, is accustomed to view Art as action without a useful end; or else sees in it only a means of pleasure and sensual gratification. The religionist thinks its influence doubtful or dangerous to the interests of religion and morality.

III. Those persons who are not wanting in a due sense of the value of Art, but who see it only in parts and fragments, or are influenced by fashion, or some dominant mind; and are thus incapable of overseeing it as a whole.

IV. Artists.

We could wish there were a fifth class to be added: but in this age of the world, when we are made familiar with the works of all times, without selection, to oversee the whole, and, through the mass of "works" that obscure it, seize the clear image of Art itself, as the Greeks did, must evidently be granted only to genius, industry, and opportunity, combined. There may be individuals, but hardly a class.

We

We say, and more or less understandingly we believe, that God made man in his image. What are the attributes that we involuntarily attach to the Supreme Being? Are they not Creation, that originates; Action, that sustains; Love, that environs us, and in which we exist? The life of man is passed in the exercise of these same attributes or faculties. believe that Religion is love to God and Man. To action man is spurred by necessity, from the first moment of his being; when he ceases to act he is dead. Man lives, and worships; he now feels the necessity to create. The natural delight in melody, in imitation, first points out the way; he makes a song; he draws a rude outline, and Art already exists.

This threefold nature of man, religious, practical, and artistic, is rarely if ever confided by nature, in full measure, to the same individual; always the one predominates. And thus we have the Priest, the Poet, and the Man of Action; or, in early times, the man of action par excellence-the Soldier; and this is the reason for the fascination that the military profession still retains the soldier has been in all times the visible type of the man of action. The harmonious development of these three attributes is necessary to the harmonious development of the individual man; which explains that wonderful perfection of development that was found in individuals in the earlier ages; so that whilst the progress has still been towards

the improvement of the race, we can point to no more perfect specimens than the Jews and the Greeks possessed.

In all times it has seemed to be the design of Providence to make some peculiar race the depository of the divine fire of a new idea, or at least, the means of its elaboration and interpretation to mankind; and by the steady progress of the idea in such a race an individual development has been attained, that has served as a model to all after times, and which, in its perfection, always suggests a divine inspiration rather than human progress, if the two things can be separated. Such was the progress of a pure religion among the Jews, of a pure art among the Greeks. In their early progress the two were always most intimately united, but after a certain culminating point had been reached, a separation has taken place; Art became a minister to learning; Religion became narrow and bigoted; until in the hands of another race, and under the influence of new ideas, they have been again united for a time.

In those early times Art was grand and ideal, filled with the dignity of its mission. It has been the property and pos session of the people, and not of individuals. The poems of Homer, the early Greek dramas, the Parthenon and its friezes, belonged to every Greek as much as to Pericles; but when its mission was fulfilled, when individuals became the patrons of Art, it lost its high ideal character, and this became its chief aim-to please and interest. Whenever, in later times, Art has resumed a high and ideal position, it has been when, under the influence of dominant ideas, it has spoken to the genius of the people, instead of answering to the narrow demands of patrons. Thus the Art of the Middle Ages achieved its greatness by belonging to the Church, at a time when the Church belonged to the People; for one must always concede to the Catholic Church that it was the representative of the people, when the people had no other representative.

It will be seen that we have spoken principally with reference to imitative art; but our idea of Art includes all poetry, though it is one of the most difficult questions in relation to Art, how far, and in what sense, poetry is an art. A great confusion prevails: in the mind of most men, art in poetry suggests the idea of artifice; men are accustomed to say they prefer nature to art, and though one understands what they mean, the mistake is perpetuated.

Poetry is strictly an art; the first and highest of all the

arts; subject to the same laws, yet wearing their chains more loosely, from its ethereal nature.

Poetry has this advantage over the other arts, that its expression is immediate; it speaks out and at once to all the world; it cannot be made a handmaid of luxury; its ideal nature, its inspiration, is the means by which it exists. Imitative art has a body, an appearance, which can give pleasure apart from its soul, or inspiration; but if poetry be not inspired, it is nought. All other arts must be learnt by slow and laborious mechanical means; the body of imitative or musical art has to be mastered, before the soul can be expressed; there must be access to the most eminent masters; but the poet has only to speak, and the world listens.

Now, to a certain extent, the same is true of poetry which we have said of the other arts. The earliest poetry is always religious and ideal in its character, and belongs to the people; but when all things are in a state of decline, the small class of cultivated men become the heirs and depositaries of those treasures of art which were formerly the free property of all. This age, immediately succeeding what may be called the heroic age of Art, is usually fertile in excellent poets and artists of a secondary class. Living immediately in the presence of works of the highest order, with no bad examples as yet to create a false taste, or lower the standard, such men are in a position to reproduce whatever can be reproduced of the merit of ancient works; but instead of speaking to a now corrupted people, they address themselves to a small, but admirably cultivated class. As the audience differs, so do the works. Religious awe and reverence have disappeared, or are artificially reproduced; Poetry becomes more and more artificial; until a new idea, or a new revelation, calls for new bards and singers.

Following in this course, Art gradually becomes degraded; thus we have seen poetry become an amusement for learned men, and all kinds of bad taste perpetuated, in a chase after a superficial novelty.

Without entering at this time more fully into particulars of the various renovations and ideas that have infused, from time to time, new blood into the body of Art, we now come to a phase of Art peculiar to our own time.

An earnest, yet complex and self-conscious age, looking diligently for light and aid in all directions, recognizes in its poets and artists a false aim, a want of true inspiration, a

frigidity and artifice resulting from the worn-out traditions of elder schools. It demands a more earnest aim, a greater faithfulness; in a word, a return to Nature. Now this demand is founded in a partial perception of truth, and leads to an error not the less inveterate that it is respectable. It arises from the belief that high Art is but an imitation and selection from exalted Nature; whereas the soul of Art is, as has been said, "Creation in the beautiful." This error appears very natural so long as we regard the imitative arts only; for their faithful imitation being the most obvious, comes to be regarded as the essential requisite. But turn to Architecture; when this art becomes degraded, what Nature can we return to, save the Idea we have in our own mind of the true and beautiful; we are to return not to Nature, but to Art; and this return it is the province of Genius to accomplish. The same is true of Music. If, then, there are arts in which there is no imitation of nature, it follows that this imitation cannot be the essence, but only the form which Art adopts; for the essence of all arts must be the same.

The development of this idea of a return to Nature has been productive of notable effects, both for good and evil; and has formed the interior history of much of the art and literature of the past half century; there are signs that it has run its course, and is giving place to other, perhaps not more complete, ideas. Its effect upon painting is visible in an infinite number of pleasing works, possessing both good taste and refinement, generally in the class of portrait landscape; and the apotheosis of the idea may be found in a very singular, eloquent, and even valuable book, called the "Modern Paint ers, by a graduate of Oxford." In the midst of pages of vivid description of Nature, and refined criticism of works of art, we are startled with the assertion repeated a thousand times, that in the British school of our day, and chiefly in one member of this school, resides all that is most valuable in landscape. The error is simply this; that in a certain phase of Landscape Art the English have accomplished things never done nor attempted before. That this phase is not the highest, and that the author with a vivid insight into a part, is incapable of a just view of the whole, would seem probable, even to one who did not know what the English school has accomplished.

In the domain of Poetry the consequences of the dominant idea of return to Nature have been still more striking. All

nature has been ransacked. The poet has rushed to field, wood, and waterfall, and sat down before them to muse, with as much set purpose as the painter does to sketch. The vocabulary being once adjusted, and the general tone of thought and sentiment prescribed, making poetry has become so easy that it is done as a matter of course; every body can sit down before a waterfall; every tenth man can put his "Impressions" into verse; every hundredth can get them printed; the general taste becomes corrupted, sentiment mawkish, language exaggerated. And yet the leaders of this school have been great men, and, in spite of a false theory, have done good work in their time.

Another phase in Modern Art has been the reverse of this. Perceiving the religious nature of high Art, certain men of devout mind have taken as their model that period in Art when its aim was purely religious and ideal. Such has been the tendency of the modern German school of Painting. The result has been to reproduce the faults and shortcomings which were excusable in those early masters, from their imperfect knowledge, without reproducing the deep feeling which atones for them.

The consideration of these various stages of perfection, decline, and renovation, more or less successful, suggests the existence of laws by which they are governed, and the more we examine the subject, the more universal we find the application of these laws to be; we are made aware of the dependence of the artist on his time; and we become conscious that through his works the genius of the time speaks to us; more or less perfectly, indeed, according to the perfection of its interpreter. We arrive at the conviction, that where the genius of a people needs an expression, individual genius will never be wanting to give it utterance. We learn that it is with reason, that the works of art produced by a nation are instinctively appealed to, as the finest test of the rank they are entitled to among the nations. We learn, also, or should learn, this-not to expect or demand of artists a work analogous to Greek, or Italian, or any other art, but rather to look and hope for an artistic expression in new directions. Among the Greeks we have seen Poetry, Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, all developed and carried to perfection in a single period of time, and among a single people. In modern times, on the contrary, each nation and age have chosen a new and separate direction. The genius of Germany finds at one period an

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