FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[10]The second number of a series of articles on Eastern Asia.

[10]The second number of a series of articles on Eastern Asia.

The Divine Attributes the base of all true Art.

Aristotle teaches that: 'The object of the poet is not to conceive or treat the True as itreallyhappened, but as itshouldhave happened. The essential difference between the poet and historian is not that the one speaks in verse, the other in prose, for the work of Herodotus in verse would still be a history; that is, it would still relate what hadactuallyoccurred, while it is the province of a poem to detail that whichshouldhave taken place.' Thus the human soul exacts in the finite creations of the poet that justice which it ever divines, but cannot always see, because the end passes beyond its present vision, in the varying dramas of human destiny written in the Book of the Infinite God.

Carefully keeping in mind that theend of such divine dramas is nothere, we see that, in accordance with the above views of Aristotle, thetrueis not that whichreallyoccurs, but that which our feelings and intellect tell us ought to occur. The actually occurring, theReal, has always been confounded with the abstractlytrue, but they are very different things. Virtue, morality, such as revealed by Christianity, and confirmed by reason, are certainlytrue; but in relation to that which is, to thereal, theactual, what man has ever yet succeeded in realizing the pure, high model set forth in the Gospel? In accordance with the theory that theActualis thetrue, the nature of a saintly hero, a self-abnegating martyr, would not be atruenature; while the fact is, it alone is true to the purposes of its creation.

Sophocles, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Fra Angelico, etc., etc., did not mean by truth in the arts, the pure and simple expression of that whichreallyis, but the expression of that which is rarely foundinthe actual, but is suggested by it. Aquinas makes an acute distinction between the intellectpassive, which merely receives impressions from without, and the intellectactive, which reasons upon and draws inferences from them. The senses can only give or know theindividual; the active intellect alone conceives theuniversal. Our eyes perceive a triangle; but as we have this perception in common with the brutes, it cannot raise us above their level; and to take our rank as intelligences, as men, we must rise from the mere perception of the individual triangle to the general idea of triangularity. Thus it is the power ofgeneralizingwhich marks us as men; and the senses have in reality nothing to do with the internal operation; they but receive the impressions, and convey them to the active intellect. Thus to the impressions given by the senses offinitethings to the passive mind, the active intellect adds the idea ofinfinity. The eager soul, always longing for the infinite, the absolute, then seeks to invest all with that perfection which it divines in the Maker of all; the possibility of which conception of perfection is added or attached by the Creator to the Real, as a supersensuous gift to those made in His own image. Such conceptions live ever firm and fair in the charmed world of the artist, for his world is the Realm of pure Ideas.

Much may be quoted in proof of this view. Cicero says:

'When Phidias formed his Jupiter, he had no living model before his eyes, but having conceived an idea of perfect beauty in his soul, he labored only to imitate it, to produce it in the marble without change.'

Raphael says:

'Having found no model sufficiently beautiful for my Galatea, I worked from a certain Idea which I found in my own mind.'

Fra Angelico furnishes a striking example of working from images found in the soul. He was an artist of very devout character, early devoting himself and his art to God, saying: Those who work for Christ, must dwell in Christ. Always, before commencing a picture which was to be consecrated to the honor of God, he prepared himself with fervent prayer and meditation, and then began in humble trust that 'it would be put into his mind what he ought to delineate;' he would never deviate from the first idea, for, as he said, 'thatwas the will of God.' This he said not in presumption, but in faith and simplicity of heart. So he passed his life in imaging hisown ideas, which were sent to his meek soul by no fabled muse, but by that Spirit 'that doth prefer before all temples the upright heart and pure;' and never before or since was earthly material worked up into soul, nor earthly forms refined into spirit, as under the hands of this devout painter. He became sublime through trusting goodness and humility. It was as if Paradise had opened upon him—a Paradise of rest and joy, of purity and love, where no trouble, no guile, no change could enter; and if his celestialcreations lack force, we feel that before these ethereal beings, power itself would be powerless; his angels are resistless in their soft serenity; his virgins are pure from all earthly stain; his redeemed spirits in meek rapture glide into Paradise; his martyrs and confessors are absorbed in devout ecstasy. Well has he been namedIl Beato e Angelico, whose life was participate with the angels even in this world. Is it not clear that Fra Angelico had found the Realm of the Artist; the fair and happy clime of the Ideal?

Our readers must not confound the ideal with the imaginary: the ideal is rather that which the real requires to invest it with that beauty which it would have possessed had the spirits of Death and sin never thrown their dark shadows over God's perfect work. Let not the poet fear the reproach that his characters are tooideal; if harmoniously constructed, buttruein the higher sense, such reproach is praise.

Man rises spontaneously from the perception of the finite beauty of creatures to the conception of the sovereign beauty of the Creator, which idea has indeed its first condition in the perception of the senses; but it passes on until it extends its sphere through all our faculties, all our moral life, until the distant vision of Absolute Beauty attracts us from the limited sphere of the senses to the realm of the ideal. Thus the artist, that he may appease the insatiate thirst for Absolute Beauty, which ever pursues him, strives to bring down upon earth the divine but veiled images, which he beholds in that fair clime.

Every work of art implies three acts of the intellect: an act, by which the artist conceives the pure idea, the soul of his creation; an act, by which he conceives or invents the form in which he is to incarnate this idea, the body of his creation; and, lastly, a conception of the relations between the pure idea and its material form, the rendering of the body a fit vehicle and indwelling-place for the soul. Three acts—but an artist ofgeniusproduces the threesimultaneously; consequently a marvellous life and unity mark all his works: an artist of mere talent must be contented simply with the production of new combinations of form, since Genius alone can create artistic soul; while the assiduous student, without any peculiar natural gift, is capable of the third act, as it is only an intellectual exercise in which the scientific principles of art are skilfully applied to given forms.

Artists are frequently considered as deficient in the faculty of Reason, whereas no one was ever a great artist without possessing it in a high degree, and mankind are rapidly becoming aware of this fact. It is true they often jump the middle terms of their syllogisms, and assume premises to which the world has not yet arrived; but time stamps their rapid deductions as invincible, for genius dwells in theRealm of the Ideal: the realm, not of contingent and phenomenal actualities, but ofeternal truths. 'For the ideal is destined to transform man and the world entire into its own image; and in this gradual and successive transformation consists the whole progressive history of humanity.'

Genius discerns the true and beautiful in itself, in the world of ideas, in God.

Talent lies on a lower level. It is the power of manifesting to men, whether by words, sounds, or plastic signs, the ideas already suggested by genius, or found by the reasoning faculties.

Genius is intuitive and creative—talent, reflective and acute.

Shakespeare was a poet of unequalled genius—Milton, of unrivalled talent.

Chopin is a composer of profound genius—Mendelssohn, of highly cultivated talent.

Madame de Stäel was a woman of genius—Miss Edgeworth, one of talent.

Elizabeth Barrett is a poet of genius—Tennyson, of talent.

Genius descends from the Idea to theForm—from the invisible to the visible: talent mounts from the visible to the invisible.

Genius holds its objects with and by the heart; talent seizes and masters them through the understanding. Genius creates body, soul, and fitness; talent combines new forms for the immortal souls already created by genius.

Taste, in its highest grade, ranks above talent, and stands next to genius; nay, it is sometimes known asreceptivegenius. It is the faculty of recognizing the Beautiful in the world of thought, art, and nature; in words, tones, forms, and colors. Taste is a higher faculty than is generally supposed. Genius and Taste are the Eros and Anteros of art. Without his brother, the first would remain ever a child. Taste is that innate and God-given faculty which at once perceives and hails as true, ideas, which it, however, has not the power to discover for itself. It should be educated and carefully fostered; but no amount of cultivation will give it where not already in existence, for it is as truly innate as genius itself.

In its lowest form, it is the comprehension of the scientific principles of art, and the judging of artistic works in accordance with scientific rules.

What is known as tact, is a curious social development of the same faculty. Taste is the child of the mind and soul; tact, of the soul and heart. Both are incommunicable.

The word taste is frequently misapplied. Thus a man, with what is blunderingly called a classical taste, is incapable of aught but the classic; that is to say, he recognizes in a new work that which makes the charm of an old one, and pronounces it worthy of admiration. Put the right foot of an Apollo forward, instead of the left, and call it Philip of Pokanoket, and he will fall into ecstasies over a work at once so truly national and classic. He would have stood dumb and with an untouched heart, before the Apollo, fresh from the chisel of the sculptor. Such men have graduated at Vanity Fair, and are the old-clothesmen of art.

Thus the men of talent are almost invariably recognized and crowned in their own days; because they always deal with ideas in a measure already familiar to the multitude. But, alas for the sensitive child of genius! The bold explorer of untrodden paths must cut away the underbrush that others may follow him; he must himself create the taste in the masses, by which he is afterward to be judged. His bold, daring, and original conceptions serve only to dazzle, confuse, and blind the multitude; and as it requires time to understand them, to read their living characters of glowing light, the laurel wreaths of appreciation and sympathy, which should have graced his brow and cheered his heart, too often trail their deathless green in vain luxuriance round the chill marble covering the early grave of a broken heart. Ah, friends! Genius demands sympathy in its impassioned creations; loving and laboring for humanity, it exacts comprehension, at least, in return. Yet how very difficult it is for an artist to win such comprehension! And, by a strange fatality, the more original his compositions, the greater the difficulty. He must amuse the men of the senses; satisfy the precision of the men of the schools; and succeed in rendering intelligible to the uncultured masses the subtile links of ethereal connection which chain the finite, the relative of his compositions, to the Infinite, the Absolute.

For it is a pregnant fact, with regard to the masses, that only so far as they can be made tofeelthe connection of things with the Absolute, can they be induced to appreciate them. For instance, tell them that the stars attract in the direct ratio of their masses, in inverse ratio to the squares of the distance, and they may almost fail to understand you; but tell them, in the words of the Divine Book, so marvellously adapted to their comprehension, that 'the stars declare the glory of God,' and you are at once understood. Tell them they ought to love one another, because 'they are members of the same spiritual body'—and, although, in this concise statement, you have declared to them the internal constitution of the moral world, revealed the inner meaning of the laws of order, of social harmony, of their own destiny, and of the progress of the race—you may utterly fail in awakening their interest. But show them a Being who lived for this truth, whose life was one of sacrifice and abnegation, who died for its manifestation—they are immediately touched, interested, because you have left the unsympathetic region of abstract formulas; you have given law a visible, palpitating, feeling, suffering, and rejoicing Body—you awaken their love, their gratitude—they adore their godlike Brother, and nowfeelthemselves members of the one spiritual body.

It is this very possibility, on a lower plane, of thus clothing his thoughts with a visible body, which gives the artist an advantage over the man of science, who presents the formula of thelawwith the aid of the contingent finite idea, but without connecting it with its First Cause. Confining itself to the limits of the thing examined, science tries to explain the finite rationale of its being; while art gives its formula by the aid of a material sign, a form or body, which contains or suggests both limits of its double existence, viz.: the finite and the infinite. For the true artist always connects the relative with the Absolute, the second cause with the First; in the finite he seeks the Infinite—therefore he finds mystic and hidden truths in essential harmony with the soul of man. He is always returning to unity. The man of science, on the contrary, always beginning with the variable and contingent facts of this world, is often lost in the wildering whirl of the ever-moving and unceasing variety around him, finding it hard to link his widely severed facts with the Supreme Unity, which gives to all its reason for being, its true worth. Variety and Unity—the created and the Creator!

It is almost universally believed that there is more truth in science than in poetry—a vulgar error refuted both by reason and common sense. Poetry, being the expression of the necessary with the Absolute, must, in consequence, be nearer truth than science, which has, for the most part, its starting point in contingent, variable, and fugitive facts, and either succeeds in seizing in an uncertain manner or fails to seize at all the one Idea imbosomed in such a multitudinous array of facts. The whole creation is but the visible expression of the laws of our unseen God: the man of science mounts from the visible fact to the unseen Idea, while the poet descends from the idea to the fact, thus humbly imitating the work of creation.

It was man who introduced disorder into the finite: regenerated through the incarnation of the Divine, he must labor with all his powers to restore it to its pristine order. He must remodel the physical world by his industry, and task his intellect in the paths of science, that the truths of nature may be developed, that the well-being of his body, his material nature may be properly cared for: by his courage and endurance he must alleviate all wrongs, and set free the oppressed; he must elevate his soul and ennoble his heart by a grateful attention to his religious duties; he must increase and multiply his happy and helpful relations with his brother men by a faithful and devout culture of the fine arts.

The Beautiful does not address itself principallytothe senses; but, by its exhibition of eternal laws,throughthem to the soul, for themanifestation of the Divine attributes is the mystic Heart of all true Beauty.'

To give an example of the different appeals made by science and by art, letus open alternately the pages of the poet and savant, let us take some familiar thing, for instance, a common flower, and see what they will tell us of its character, relations, and worth. The botanist notes the distinctions of the flower, that his herbarium may be increased—the poet, that he may make them vehicles of expression, of emotion. The savant counts the stamens, numbers the pistils, delineates the leaves, marks the manner of growth, classifies, affixes a name, and is satisfied;—the poet studies the whole character of the plant, considering each of its attributes as a vehicle of expression, an ethical lesson; he notes its color, he seizes on its lines of grace or energy, rigidity or repose, remarks the feebleness or vigor, the serenity or tremulousness of its hues, observes its local habits, its love or fear of peculiar places, associating it with the features of the situations it inhabits, and the ministering agencies necessary to its support. It becomes to him alivingcreature, with histories written on its leaves, and passion breathing in its tremulous stems. He associates and identifies it with the history and emotions of humanity. Feeling that even these fragile flowers are symbolic of a moral world, he crowns the bride with white roses, orange buds, or snowy myrtle wreaths, to typify that innocence and chastity are essential to a love that is to last as long as life endures. He wreathes the redeemed with undying amaranth, unfading palms, to symbolize that their meek triumph is for eternity; while he places in the hands of the angels the sculptured chalice of the snowy lily, with its breath of incense and stamens of molten gold, as an imperfect type of the perfect purity, sweet peace, and glorious golden splendor of the Heavenly City.

The pages of the poets are full of beautiful lessons and tender illustrations drawn from the fragile flowers. We cite Lowell's lines to one of our most common flowers:

Dear common flower that grow'st beside the way,Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,First pledge of blithesome May,Which children pluck, and, full of pride, uphold,High-hearted buccaneers, o'erjoyed that theyAn Eldorado in the grass have found,Which not the rich earth's ample roundMay match in wealth—thou art more dear to meThan all the prouder summer blooms may be.Gold such as thine ne'er drew the Spanish prowThrough the primeval hush of Indian seas,Nor wrinkled the lean browOf age, to rob the lover's heart of ease;'Tis the spring's largess, which she scatters nowTo rich and poor alike with lavish hand,Though most hearts never understandTo take it at God's value, but pass byThe offered wealth with unrewarded eye.Thou art my tropics and mine Italy;To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime;The eyes thou givest meAre in the heart, and heed not space or time:Not in mid June the golden-cuirassed beeFeels a more summer-like warm ravishmentIn the white Lily's breezy tent,His fragrant Sybaris, than I, when firstFrom the dark green thy yellow circles burst.Then think I of deep shadows on the grass,—Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze,Where, as the breezes pass,The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways,—Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass,Or whiten in the wind,—of waters blueThat from the distance sparkle throughSome woodland gap,—and of a sky aboveWhere one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move.My childhood's earliest thoughts are linked with thee;The sight of thee calls back the Robin's songWho, from the dark old treeBeside the door, sang clearly all day long,And I, secure in childish piety,Listened as if I heard an angel singWith news from heaven, which he could bringFresh every day to my untainted ears,When birds and flowers and I were happy peers.How like a prodigal doth nature seemWhen thou, with all thy gold, so common art!Thou teachest me to deemMore sacredly of every human heart,Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleamOf heaven, and could some wondrous secret show,Did we but pay the love we owe,And with a child's undoubting wisdom lookOn all these living pages of God's book.

Wordsworth's 'Daisy' is very beautiful, and full of moral lessons:

In youth, from rock to rock I went,From hill to hill, in discontentOf pleasure high and turbulent,Most pleased when most uneasy;But now my own delights I make,—My thirst at every rill can slake,And gladly nature's love partakeOf thee, sweet Daisy!When winter decks his few gray hairs,Thee in the scanty wreath he wears;Spring parts the clouds with softest airs,That she may sun thee;Whole summer fields are thine by right;And Autumn, melancholy wight!Doth in thy crimson head delightWhen rains are on thee.In shoals and bands, a morrice train,Thou greet'st the traveller in the lane;If welcome once, thou count'st it gain;Thou art not daunted,Nor car'st if thou be set at nought:And oft alone in nooks remoteWe meet thee, like a pleasant thought,When such are wanted.Be violets in their secret mewsThe flowers the wanton Zephyrs choose;Proud be the Rose, with rains and dewsHer head impearling;Thou liv'st with less ambitious aim,Yet hast not gone without thy fame;Thou art indeed by many a claimThe Poet's darling.If to a rock from rains he fly,Or, some bright day of April sky,Imprisoned by hot sunshine, lieNear the green holly,And wearily at length should fare;He needs but look about, and thereThou art: a friend at hand, to scareHis melancholy.A hundred times, by rock or bower,Ere thus I have lain couched an hour,Have I derived from thy sweet powerSome apprehension;Some steady love, some brief delight;Some memory that had taken flight;Some chime of fancy wrong or right,Or stray invention.If stately passions in me burn,And one chance look to thee should turn,I drink out of an humbler urnA lowlier pleasure;The homely sympathy that heedsThe common life our nature breeds;A wisdom fitted to the needsOf hearts at leisure.Sweet flower! for by that name at last,When all my reveries are past,I call thee, and to that cleave fast,Sweet, silent creature!That breath'st with me in sun and air,Do thou, as thou wert wont, repairMy heart with gladness and a shareOf thy meek nature!

With still deeper poetic feeling has that untutored bard of nature, poor Burns, written of this little flower:

On turning one down with the plough, in April, 1786.

Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flow'r,Thou's met me in an evil hour;For I maun crush amang the stoureThy slender stem;To spare thee now is past my power,Thou bonnie gem!Alas! it's no thy neebor sweet,The bonnie Lark, companion meet,Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet,Wi' speckl'd breast,When upward springing, blithe, to greetThe purpling east.Cauld blew the bitter biting northUpon thy early, humble birth;Yet cheerfully thou glinted forthAmid the stormScarce reared above the parent earthThy tender form.The flaunting flowers our gardens yield,High sheltering woods and wa's maun shieldBut thou, beneath the random bieldO' clod or stane,Adorns the histie stibble field,Unseen, alane!There, in thy scanty mantle clad,Thy snawie bosom sun-ward spread,Thou lifts thy unassuming head,In humble guise;But now the share uptears thy bed,And low thou lies!Such is the fate of artless Maid,Sweet floweret of the rural shade!By love's simplicity betrayed,And guileless trust,Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laidLow i' the dust.Such is the fate of simple Bard,On life's rough ocean; luckless starr'd,Unskilful he to note the cardOf prudent lore,Till billows rage, and gales blow hard,And whelm him o'er!Such fate to suffering worth is given,Who long with wants and woes has striven,By human pride or cunning drivenTo mis'ry's brink,Till, wrench'd of every stay but Heaven,He, ruin'd, sink!Ev'n thou who mourn'st the Daisy's fate,That fate is thine—no distant date:Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives, elate,Full on thy bloom,Till crushed beneath the furrow's weightShall be thy doom!

With our hearts full of love and tender sympathy with the author of this exquisite poem, let us now look among the botanists for a description of the Daisy. We will find: 'Perenuius (Daisy, E.W. & P. 21), leaves obovate, crenate; scape naked, 1 flowered; or, Leucanthemum (Ox-eyed Daisy), leaves clasping, lanceolate, serrate, cut-toothed at the base; stem erect, branching.' (See Eaton's Botany.)

All honor to the savant! Untiring in his investigations, ardent in his researches, the men of the senses are scarcely worthy to untie the latchet of his shoe, but he is slow in acknowledging thescience of art, and apt to look down upon the artist from his throne of power! Because the artist deals with a different order of truths, unseen and belonging principally to the world of feeling, the savant rarely does justice to the intense study requisite for the mastery of the mere form of art; the long, unrequited, and patient toil requisite for its practice, or the soaring and loving genius required to fill the form when mastered with glowing life. All honor to the savant! but let him not fail to acknowledge the artist-brother at his side, who labors on for humanity with no hope of learned professorships to crown his career, nor venerable diplomas to assure him of social honor and position. Let him not be regarded as an idler by the wayside, nor let 'La Bohème' be any longer considered as his especial type and insignia! The useful and the beautiful should stand banded in the closest fellowship, since Truth must be the soul of both! Honor then the pure artist, while he still lives, nor keep the laurel only for his tomb!

In order to examine scientifically, the mind is generally forced to consider its object as deprived of life; indeed, the functions of living creatures cannot be fully analyzed without being first deprived of life. Science gives us its subject with the most rigorous exactitude, with the most scrupulous fidelity; but, alas! often without that magical kindler of love and sympathy, life. Art gives us its subject with vivid coloring, motion, palpitating life—often, indeed, by associative moral symbolism adding a still higher life to simple being, filling it, as in Burns's lines to the Daisy, with a purer flame.

Science daguerreotypes, art paints its objects. Science is necessarily abstract, discrete; art necessarily concrete. So true is this, that when art begins to decline, it manifests a tendency to pass from the concrete to the discrete, abstract; it becomes self-conscious, reflective, scientific. Body, form, is mistaken for soul, spirit. A discrete idea fails to move us, because it gives us onlysuccessivelythe relations subsisting between it and the First Cause, as its facts must be isolated, its elements decomposed, and presented to us in an inverse order to that in which they reveal themselves to the mind in the spontaneous and natural use of its powers. Science never appeals to our emotional faculties spontaneously; when it does speak to the heart, it is because the mind, linking together the successiveideas given by science, at last seizes upon theUNITYof the whole, supplying by its own conceptions the voids of science. When the savant possesses the creative power in a high degree, as did Kepler, he becomes prophet and artist. The concrete ideas of art appeal immediately to our feelings; emotions excited by them are spontaneous, because they aim at presenting their objects in all the splendor of theirlivinglight. Only life produces life; all our emotions and sympathies pertain to the suffering, the acting, the living—and thus an artistic conception appeals to our entire being. What psychological analysis of youthful and feminine loveliness could move us as a Juliet?

Analysis and reflection suppose the suspension of spontaneity, that is, of the free activity of the soul. Spontaneity and reflection are the two modes in which the spirit manifests its activity. Spontaneity is the living power which it possesses of acting without premeditation, without contingent ideas, of being influenced or determined by some power from without, the action thus produced blending the two primary elements of feeling and thought. This is the distinctive mode of woman's being. Reflection is that operation of the mind by which it turns its gaze in upon itself, and considers its own operations; it compares, analyzes, and constructs logical processes of thought. This is as natural to man, as spontaneity to woman. Now both of these modes are essentially necessary to the well-being of the individual, the one is the complement of the other; the cultivation of the one should never be sacrificed to that of the other. Teach woman to reason; develop spontaneity in man. But as the whole course of our education is solely addressed to the reflective faculties, intended chiefly for their culture, how is spontaneity to be developed? Certainly not through abstract science; for it, with its formulas, occupied only with contingent and relative ideas, addressing itself solely to the faculties concerned with the elaboration of the relative, that is, to the reflective faculties—how can it avail for the cultivation of spontaneity? It can be cultivated only through the due direction of the emotional nature; but how is that to be approached? In the first place through the joys and sorrows, the events of daily life; a training of such importance that the Great Creator, for the most part, retains it in His own hands: humanly speaking, only through the arts, which contain, at the same time, the scientific form of the finite, and the blissful intuition of the Infinite. As wisdom and love mark the works of the Creator, so thought and feeling meet in the creations of the artist, in the arts—but thought alone is concerned with the formulas of science. Now, if spontaneity be more conducive to man's happiness than reflection, then poetry, literature, and the arts are of more importance to him than abstract science. If, in appealing to spontaneous emotions, they give the legitimate influence to the heart which it should possess, because under their influence thought and feeling move in the properunityof their divinely linked being, then must pure, creative, loving, and devout art at last take its rank, when spontaneity shall be regarded as the generatrix of reflection, above the cold and haughty pile reared by the reflective faculties alone, abstract science.

The aspirations of man constantly sigh for the limitless; his soul contains depths which his reason cannot fathom. How rapidly his surging ideas come and go! What flashes of supernatural light—what fearful obscurity! Heaven and Hell war in his soul! Strange visions traverse his intellect, throwing their lurid light into the vague depths of his heart. His power to love and feel seems boundless—his power to know almost at zero. What can he predicate even of himself, with his boundless desires for he knows not what—his fleeting emotions and insatiable wishes! Ah! if the language of poetry, of music, of the arts, came not to gift these passing images with external life, to fix them in the wildered consciousness, they would surge away almost unmarked, like lovely dreams, scarcely leaving their dim traces in the memory. For, with the generality of common minds, the actual is death to the ideal! But art speaks; spontaneity is justified; our inner being, so vague before, stands revealed before us; the beautiful must be the true, the chaos of the moral world is dispelled; we were created toenjoythe attributes of God, which, finitely manifested, are Truth and Beauty; and His light moves over the perturbed chaos of our dim being! What can abstract science, with its cold and finite language, do for a soul athirst for an infinite happiness? Nothing, unless its first postulate be God! Young people, generally, and women, in whom the love of Beauty is strongly developed, have almost a repulsion to the study of science. Wherefore? Because it often seems to exile God from His own creation. Let Him desert Paradise, and it becomes at once a desert. The Infinite is the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley! Besides, the reflective reasoning faculties awaken late with those in whom the intuitive faculties and sensibilities attain an early development. Let woman not despair. What use will there be for the reflective reason, when 'we shall know even as we are known,' and the vision in God shall make the spontaneous bliss of immortality?

The habit of only seeing, only studying, only analyzing the finite, is very apt to inspire the savant with a peculiar distrust of all spontaneous emotion. Ceasing to open his heart to that light from the Absolute, which ought to quicken it into bloom, it learns to dwell only in the sterile world of abstract formulas. If he could find algebraic signs for its expression, he would willingly believe in the immortality of the soul: the characters which he can never learn to comprehend, are precisely those in which dwell the intuitions of the infinite. He piques himself upon the precision of his language, not perceiving it has gained this boasted prim exactitude at the expense of breadth and depth. All honor to the savant! but let him keep the lamp of spontaneity ever burning in his soul. By its light the savage and the woman divine God; without it, he may weigh creation—and 'find Him not!'

Nothing can be more superficial than the intellects of men given over to formulas. They always imagine they can explore the depths of truth, if they can succeed in detecting an inch of its surface. When they arrive at the term of their own ideas, they believe they have exhausted the absolute. They frequently want feeling, because they have, in some way, destroyed their own spontaneity—that inexhaustible source of living and original thought, individualized and yet universal, of ever-thronging and vivid emotions.

The most spontaneous writer of the present day is a woman; fresh, rugged, rich, and natural, as the wayside gold of the Dandelion above described by Lowell—hence her sudden and great popularity with the people. She feels strongly, and thinks justly, and fears not to say what the great God gives her. May she continue to pour her 'wayside gold' through the literary waves of the 'Atlantic'—and still keep the molten treasure bright and burnished for the service of our altar. Let her not fly too near the candles of the clergy, and thus sear her Psyche wings. Need I name Gail Hamilton? Pardon the digression, courteous reader, and let a woman greet a gifted sister as she passes on.

Let me not be misunderstood in my estimate of the spontaneous and reflective faculties: they mustcombinein any mantruly great. If I have dwelt on spontaneity, it is because it has not been sufficiently prized or cultivated. The savant must have the faculties ofthe artist, as had Kepler; the artist those of the savant, as had Michael Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci. Study, reflective power, logical ability, erudition, areabsolutelynecessary; but one of their principal functions is to be able to analyze aright the products of spontaneity; to give the soul the consciousness and comprehension of the innumerable phenomena which arise in it, in its varied relations with the world of ideas. The man who is at the same timespontaneousandreflective, is alonecomplete, be he artist or savant; he lives, yet is able to analyze life. Of such mental character are indeed all men of true genius, whether mechanicians, architects, philosophers, savants, or artists.

The truths surging dimly through the universal consciousness, find interpreters in the men of genius; through them the moral and religious ideas of an epoch take form, and crystallize themselves in poetry and the arts—as the laws of the divine geometry are realized in the crystallizations of minerals. Poetry and the arts may be regarded as thesumof the absolute truths to the conception of which the masses have risen at any given period in the life of a people.

Lamartine says:

'If humanity were forced to lose entirely one of the two orders of truth—either all the mathematical or all the moral truths—it should not hesitate to sacrifice the mathematical, for though it is true if these were lost the world would suffer immense detriment, yet if we should lose a single one of the moral truths, where would man himself be? Humanity would be decomposed and perish!'

It cannot be denied that art has an incontestable superiority over science in appealing toall, in addressing the masses in the language they most readily understand, the language of feeling, imagination, and enthusiasm. It is not intended only for men of culture, of leisure; all classes are to be benefited by its exalting influence. Men whose lives are almost entirely absorbed by occupations necessary for the comfort of their families, can scarcely be contented with the monotonous and wearisome spectacle of actual every-day life. Their cares are very exhausting, agitating the heart and mind with harassing emotions; while the immortal soul thirsts for eternal happiness. Can it be doubted that such dim, vague, unsatisfied longings are the source of much immorality? Mechanical operations, business speculations, commercial transactions, important as they may appear to the utilitarian, are far from responding to the requirements of the intellect, the imperious exactions of the heart. Such men pine unconsciously for a draught of higher life, they grow weary of existence. Literature and the arts may come to their aid, creating for them an ideal world in the midst of the actual, in the bosom of which they may find other emotions, interests, and images. They may open, even in the desert of the most conventional life, an unfailing spring of ideas and emotions, at which the poor world-wearied spirits may slake their mental and moral thirst. The wonders of commercial industry cannot quite chain the minds of men to the material world—it is certain that the thirst for the ideal ever increases in exact proportion with the development of the race. The true and high task of the artist, the poet, is to divine these wants of humanity, to cultivate these inchoate aspirations for the infinite, to hold its nectar to the toil-worn, weary lips, to soothe and elevate the restless spirits, to cultivate, in accordance with the essence of Christianity, this excess of moral and intellectual being, which the occupations of this weary earth-life cannot exhaust.

Besides, is it not true that the very character natural to the artist is peculiarly fitted to exert a beneficial influence on a material and commercial society? The pursuits of commerce are very apt to engender a spirit of utter indifference to everything except material well-being—a spirit of competition and mutual distrust most injuriousto the happiness of society; but the artist is proverbially careless of mere pecuniary gain, and is always full of trust in his fellow men. In the various phases of excitement which are constantly agitating society, he looks only for the manifestation of noble passions and great thoughts. In the base smiles wreathing so many false lips, he sees but the natural expression of kindness; when lips vow fidelity, he dreams of an affection based upon esteem, not upon a passing instinct, a sordid or sensual interest—he believes in a union of hearts. Breathing everywhere around him the high enthusiasm of his own truthful and loving soul, he knows nothing of those perfidious jealousies and bitter enmities which creep and twist in the shade, always hiding under some fair mask; of those coarse intellects opposed to every noble impulse, or of that proud and obstinate egotism which repels every generous emotion of the heart, because it knows thatfeelingcreates anequalitywhich is wounding to its haughty estimation of its own supposed merit.

It is certain that the soul was not created for the accumulation of money, but to enjoy God. It is a free and living power, whose true condition upon earth is the voluntary fulfilment of duty. It was made for this by the God of love. Duty, love to God and man, is the Ideal of human life; and as art and poetry should be the expression of the highest and most universal ideas of the human race, duty should not only be the Pole star of the artist's own life, but its chastening purity should preside over all his conceptions. A profane or unchaste work of art is a sacrilege against the most High; an insult to those divine attributes in whose image that artist himself was made, and which he must constantly struggle to suggest or typify, that the work of his hand prove not a golden calf, an offence both to God and man. The moral ideal always advances as we approach it. 'Be ye perfect as I am perfect,' is the precept of the Master. This is the justification of the poet when he portrays men in advance of the common level of life. ThemoralBeautiful is the realization ofDuty, which the poet should picture in its most sublime form. He may and should sing of the passions, butDuty is the eternal pole star of the soul! The susceptible heart of the artist must respect the majesty of virtue. Unless his escutcheon glitter with the brilliancy of purity, he is not worthy to be one of the Illustrious Band whose high mission upon earth (with lowly reverence be it said) is the manifestation of the Divine Attributes. O Holy Banner, borne through the streets of the Heavenly City by saints and angels, will the artist suffer thy snowy folds to be dragged through the mire of crime? Shame to him when he dallies in the Circean Hall of the senses! Infamy when he wallows in the sty of sensuality!

The effort to apprehend and reproduce the Supernal Loveliness on the part of souls fittingly constituted so to do, has given to our race all the marvels, the softening and elevating influences of the Ideal Realm. The purest, the most exciting, the most intense pleasure is to be found in thepurecontemplation of Beauty. We may indulge in it without fear—no Hock and soda are required after its safe excitements! In this contemplation alone do we find it possible to attain that pleasurable elevation,that excitement of the soul, which we recognize as always dependent upon our introduction into the Realm of the Ideal. This excitement of thesoulis easily distinguished from the excitement of themindconsequent upon the perception of logical truths, the satisfaction of the reason; or from passion, the excitement of theheart. The excitement of thesoulis strictly and simply the temporary satisfaction of the human aspiration for the Supernal Beauty; and is quite independent of the search for finite truths for thegratification of theintellect; or of that of passion, which is the intoxication of theheart. For in regard to passion of the heart, its home lies too near the senses to be entirely safe, and its tendency may be to degrade;—while there may be high and useful truths which do not move thesoulin the least.

The arts, then, always occupied with the reproduction of Beauty, gain their power over the soul of man by reminding him of the Divine Attributes. His thirst for the beautiful belongs to his immortality, for it never rests in the appreciation of mere finite beauty, but struggles wildly to obtain the Beauty above. Inspired by an ecstatic prescience of the glories beyond the grave, we struggle, by multiform combinations among the things and thoughts of time, to attain a portion of that loveliness whose elements pertain to Eternity alone; and thus, when by poetry or music, the most entrancing of the poetic moods, we find ourselves melted into tears, we are not moved through any excess of pleasure, but through an impatient sorrow at our inability to graspnow, wholly, here on earth, those divine and rapturous joys of which, through the poem or through the music, we obtain but brief and indeterminate glimpses:

'Tears, idle tears, we know not whence they're flowing,Tears from the depths of somedivine despair.'

Tears of the created, the finite, for the Creator, the Infinite!

Every phenomenon of the material world is not a sign of the divine thought, when considered apart from its relations with other things, as every isolated word in a language is not, in itself, a sign of our thought. There is something in the nature of things which constitutes the visible sign the symbol of the Invisible. To reveal or suggest the Absolute, it is not sufficient for the artist to combine fortuitously mere natural phenomena; he must be able to select those in which God has incarnated His Idea. Where is he to find a guide through this labyrinth of sounds, forms, tones, and colors?

He must strive to realize the ideas given him by the Creator; he must surround us here with the memories of our lost Paradise; he must repeat to us the mysterious words and tones which God confides to his heart in his lonely walks to the holy temple, in his solitary musings in the dim forests, or in his prayerful hours under the starlit heavens of the solemn midnight.

'With whose beauty (of created things) if they being delighted took them to be gods, let them know how much the Lord of them is more beautiful than they:for the first Author of Beauty made all those things.'—Book of Wisdom.'And they shall strengthen the state of the world; andtheir prayer shall be in the work of their craft, applying their soul, and searching in the law of the Most High.'—Ecclesiasticus.

'And they shall strengthen the state of the world; andtheir prayer shall be in the work of their craft, applying their soul, and searching in the law of the Most High.'—Ecclesiasticus.

Here, then, is the secret—gratitude and love are to be the teachers of the artist. Naught save love will enable him to read the wondrous runes of God's creation; nothing but sympathy can catch the strange tones of mythic music; there is nothing pure, which can be painted, save by the pure in heart. The foul or blunt feeling will see itself in everything, and set down blasphemies; it will see Beelzebub in the casting out of devils; it will find its God of flies in every alabaster box of precious ointment; in faith and zeal toward God it will not believe; charity it will regard as lust; compassion as pride; every virtue it will misinterpret, every faithfulness malign. But the mind of the devout artist will find its own image wherever it exists; it will seek for what it loves, and draw it out of dens and caves; it will believe in its being, often where it cannot see it, and always turn away its eyes from beholding vanity; it will lie lovingly over all the foul and rough places of the human heart, as the snow from heaven does over the hard and broken mountain rocks, following their forms truly, yetcatching light from heaven for them to make them fair—and that must be a steep and unkindly crag, indeed, which it cannot cover.

The artist must direct his eyes to the spheres of Sovereign Beauty; he must lend his ears to the harmonies of the Eternal World, that he may be able to decipher the symbolic signs which manifest the Being of beings, and recognize the voices which murmur His Name; for in humble reverence, yet joyful gratitude, it may be said that God Himself is the First, True, and Last Master of the Artist.

Poetry and the arts have an end, ordained by Providence, with respect to the extension ofsocialintercourse; a sacred duty to fulfil to humanity at large. The signs of the times are startling; religions and governments seem driven by a whirlwind, and it is of vital importance that everything should be cultivated which has any tendency to bring men together, to link multiform variety to unity; the national variety to its distinctive unity; the variety of these distinctive unities, these national governments of all races and peoples, to one great Unity of government, freedom, development, justice, and love. There seems to be but little doubt that our own country is destined to become thecentral heartof this marvellousunity. Is not the very war, now raging over her fair fields, a war for Union? A false element allowed to exist in our code of universal freedom, we mean slavery, like all Satanic elements, has struggled to bring division, faction, disintegration, death, in its train. It has convulsed, but awakened our country. Its reign is almost over; its powers to dissever and destroy are now being rapidly eliminated from a Constitution whose basic meaning is justice, equality, and love. The battle is waging in this vast area of freedom, not for spoil, dominion, vengeance, or ambition, but simply forUnioneven with our enemies! Liberty, union, life, are parts and portions of God's own law; slavery, dismemberment, death, belong of old to Lucifer. Where God and Demon combat, can the strife be doubtful?

We suffer that we may be purified; but a Union broader, juster, and more beneficent than any the world has yet seen, is to bud, bourgeon, and bloom from this bloody contest. The rose of love is yet to grow upon this crimson soil, and brother yet to stand with brother to insure the union of the world. The glory of our present struggle for the happiness of humanity, will yet be hailed by every living soul!

This is the unity sung by prophets, felt by poets, and foreshadowed in the writings of statesmen, historians, and metaphysicians. Industry, politics, commerce, science, and the arts, are the means which God has placed at man's disposal to aid him in the accomplishment of this mighty work. Man isonein the fall of Adam;onein the redemption of Christ. Individuality and solidarity are but man's variety and unity.

It is certain, however, that a mere combination of commercial interests does but little for the heart; science, with its exact formulas, is almost equally powerless; they form together but the bony skeleton of a lifeless union; poetry and the arts must clothe it with the soft and clinging flesh, quicken it with the throbbing heart, and warm it with the loving soul of an all-embracing humanity; and it is, to say the least, very remarkable how exactly this important task is in keeping with the nature of the arts, because they alone express thefeelings, thedistinctive individualitiesof men and nations, while the sciences reveal only the 'impersonal' of the intellect. That a man may demonstrate mathematical problems tells us nothing of his heart; if he paint a single violet rightly, it tells of truth, sympathy, and love. Men never leave in their scientific researches the traces of the different phases of the soul, theimprintof their ownpersonality; the sciences have everywhere thesame character, because they contain discrete and abstract ideas, necessarily the same in all minds.

In the creations of art, on the contrary,feeling, the spirit of life, is added to the pure idea, and this new element ofindividual characterintroduced into the thought is, in its infinite subtlety, sufficient to produce the immense variety which exists in the poetic and artistic creations of different men, of different ages, and of different nations. And the reason of this is very simple; it is because the heart is the seat ofdistinctive personality. We neverlovemen for what theyknow; we love them for what they feel andare. It is consequentlyfeelingwhich is the principle ofunionamong men.

Thus it is through art and literature alone that national individualitiesreallycommunicate with each other; it is through them that what ischaracteristicin each is made known to all; it is through them that embittered, long-seated, and deeply-rooted national prejudices must be dissipated; through them that the fusion of minds, violently hostile to each other only because of their mutual ignorance and misconception of character, must eventually be effected. Before the means of constant intercommunication, daily becoming more rapid and perfect, shall have compassed the whole earth with their lines of lightning, before all nations shall be known to one another as inhabitants of the same city—the artists, through art and literature, will have confided to the human heart of their brethren their own most sacred feelings, the hidden beatings of their life-pulse, so that when the material barriers separating souls shall fall, when steam and iron shall subdue space and time, men of distant climes will no longer stand as strangers to one another, but meet with all the enthusiasm of near and dear friends long since initiated in all the holy and tender secrets of the home hearth; the due place of affection, honor, and gratitude ready for all true souls at the sacred fireside of appreciative fraternal love.

It is remarkable that the art marked and conditioned by the necessity of the mostperfect unity, the art almost exclusively intended for the expression of and appeal to the feelings of the soul, the art without material model of any kind, and consequently the most ideal and original of all, in which the pulse of time itself marshals the tones in order, symmetry, and proportion, coloring them with the joys and woes, hopes and fears of humanity—should now be undoubtedly entering upon a new era of far higher and wider development. This fact contains a germ which is to blossom in the most brilliant bloom; the crowning flower in thatliving unity, which is, indeed, the 'manifest Destiny' of our race.

There is certainly something exceedingly remarkable in the unitive powers of music. In the first place, its present popularization cannot fail to multiply the relations of men with one another, as each separate instrument, like an arithmetical figure, has anabsolute, as well as arelativevalue. It may not be sufficient in itself to produceharmony; but when placed inUNIONwith others, it gains a double or triple value, according to the part assigned it in a musical Whole. A singlejarin time or tune spoils the entire effect of the marvellous variety and order, attained in theutter onenessof any good musical work. The desire to increase the limits of art, to multiply its delicious emotions, will infallibly lead those who cultivate this ethereal study to frequent reunions, in order that they may produce the Beautiful in more fulness, obtain a greater variety of effect and tone, cradled, as it must ever be in music, in the bosom of the strictest unity.

Music has its own trinity, composed of Rhythm, Melody, and Harmony.Rhythmis the pulse of time; the tones register its heart beats and manifest its soul, itsmelody;harmonyis the concurrent sympathy or antagonism elicited by its annunciation in the invisible realm in which it moves. Unity is first manifested in the rhythm; then, as the tonesconsecutivelyfollow each other, the succeeding one always born and growing immediately from the one just expiring, in the consequentmelody; and lastly, as the tones progresssimultaneously, hand to hand, and heart to heart, with the single line or passion of the melody, conditioned and responding to it in all its varied phases—(the individual and collective, the soul and its surroundings)—the grand diapason of harmony rolls on—and the magicunityof music is complete! Hence, part of its power over men. But like all organic, basic life-principles, its relations with the human spirit defy analysis. Its unitive influence cannot be denied, even by those who do not feel its charm. Let them but consider that no public act of humanity implying theprimeval unityof the race, is considered complete without it, and they must be convinced that it is pre-eminently the art of social union. When an entire nation collects as a band of brothers to resist aggression, to repel invasion, it is music, the unitive art, which animates them to seek death itself to resist wrongs which would burden all, its very rhythm keeping in massiveunison,together, the tread of thousands, causing all hearts to throb inonemeasure, and so regulating the most heterogenous masses that they move as it were asonemighty man. And in all public acknowledgments of our collective dependence asonerace upon theoneGod, music alone is considered sufficiently symbolic and tender to express the universal sense of helplessness, of generic trust in His marvellous mercy.

Music blesses the innocent bride with the first chant of foreverunited, and consequently holy love. It hallows at the baptismal font the introduction of the infant into the mysticalonenessof the children of Christ. Even at the grave it softens human sorrow by its heavenly whisperings ofeternal unionin the bosom of Infinite love.

France is ever ready to receive Italian, Sclavonic, and German artists with characteristic and appreciative enthusiasm; and America applauds withnaïverapture that skill, as yet, alas! foreign to her native soil.

'I pant for the music which is divine,My heart in its thirst is a dying flower;Pour forth the sound like enchanted wine;Loosen the notes in a silver shower;Like an herbless plain, for the gentle rain,I gasp, I faint, till they wake again.'Let me drink of the spirit of that sweet sound—More—oh, more—I am thirsting yet!It loosens the serpent which care has boundUpon my heart to stifle it;The dissolving strain, in every vein,Passes into my heart and brain.'Shelley.

Artists and litterateurs are the true representatives of the countries in which they live; because they alone reveal to us the secret throbbings of the great national heart; and the warm and sympathetic feelings which they excite in foreign climes, aregolden linksdrawing more closely the ties of mutual understanding and affection, welding them together in that generousreciprocalesteem and comprehension, which is destined touniteall climes and tongues.

'A touch of nature makes the whole world kin.'

The sympathies of life are widening and increasing. Societies are constantly arising devoting themselves to the solacing of human misery; eager sympathies are evinced by different countries in the sufferings of distant lands; ready and substantial aid is gladly tendered in cases of pestilence and famine; and religious intolerance and bigotry are raving themselves to rest. Christ is more and creeds are less than of old. The fact that a free government is now in successful operation, in which (when one false element, slavery, shall be forever eliminated) the voluntary annexation of new states and new countries would be but new ties ofstrength, with the consentaneous and related facts above quoted, tend to prove that humanity is entering upon a new era; that it is not destined to trail its passionate and quivering wings much longer through the mire of mere materialism; but that newer and higher life is spreadingsimultaneouslythrough all its members; that the elevating love of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, is hourly penetrating it more deeply; that after its intellect shall have been trained by the sciences—its force increased by industry, commerce, and statesmanship—its inmost heart will be developed by the Charities, now, as with the subtile Greeks,onewith the Graces—the arts for the manifestation of the Beautiful. Everything tends to prove, even the wars now waging for national entities, that the human race is approaching thatpromisedphase of civilization, in whichallthe elements are to combine in gloriousunity, sound in witching harmony, and men, full of love to God and man, are to become living stones in the vast temple of the redeemed,onethrough the loving heart of the Brother who died for them all;onethrough Him with the Infinite God, since in Him finite and Infinite are foreverone!

A few words in the cause of those in advance of their times, and we attain the close of our first volume.

It is a startling fact, in the history of humanity, that the benefactors of the race have always been its martyrs and victims; dyeing every glorious gift which they have won for their brethren in the royal purple of the kingly blood of their own hearts. Is this, brethren, to last forever? Shall we never requite the dauntless Columbus, in the wide sea of Beauty? Of all men living, the artist most requires the boon of sympathy. The most susceptible of them all, the musician, plunging into the unseen depths of the time-ocean to wrestle for his gems, feels his heart die within him, when he sees his fellow men turn coldly away from the pure and priceless pearls which he has won for them from the stormy waves and whirlpools of chaotic and compassless sound.

As the artists must be considered as the standard-bearers of that blissful banner of progress to be effected through the culture of thesympathiesof the race, unrolling that great Oriflamme of humanity, on which bloom the Heavenly Lilies of that chaste Passion of the Soul—the longing for the infinite—let us acknowledge that we have failed to render happy the great spirits no longer among us; and let us strive, for the future, not to chill with our mistrust and coldness, not to drive into the sickness of despair with our want of intelligent sympathy, the gifted living, who, as angels of a better covenant, still lovingly linger among us! Let us strive to learn the lesson set before us with such tenderness in the following eloquent words of Ruskin, fitting close as they are to the many which we have already collated and combined with our work from his glowing pages.

'He who has once stood beside the grave to look back upon the companionship now forever closed, feeling how impotentthereare the wild love and keen sorrow to give one moment's pleasure to the pulseless heart, or atone in the lowest measure to the departed spirit for the hour of unkindness, will scarcely for the future incur that debt to theheartwhich can only be discharged to thedust. But the lessons which men receive asindividuals, they never learn asnations. Again and again they have seen theirnoblestdescend into the grave, and have thought it enough to garland the tombstone when they have not crowned the brow, and to pay the honor to theasheswhich they had denied to thespirit. Let it not displease them that they are bidden, amidst the tumult and glitter of their busy life, to listen for the few voices and watch for the few lamps which God has toned and lighted to charm and guide them, that they may not learn their sweetness by their silence, nor their light by their decay.'

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the highest poet of our own century, has thus given us the artist's creed of resignation, closing her chant with his sublime Te Deum:

Voice of the Creator.

''And, O ye gifted givers, yeWho give your liberal hearts to me,To make the world this harmony,—''Are ye resigned that they be spentTo such world's help?' The spirits bentTheir awful brows, and said—'Content!''We ask no wages—seek no fame!Sew us for shroud round face and name,God's banner of the oriflamme.''We are content to be so bareBefore the archers! everywhereOur wounds being stroked by heavenly air.''We lay our souls before thy feet,That Images of fair and sweetShould walk to other men on it.''We are content to feel the stepOf each pure Image!—let those keepTo mandragore, who care to sleep:''For though we must have, and have hadRight reason to be earthly sad—Thou Poet-God, art great and glad!''

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