CHAPTER II.
ART.
Inconsidering the condition and prospects of art in the present age, let us, as heretofore, glance at the several departments of architecture, sculpture, and painting, consecutively, according to their natural order and relative merits.
Archæology is at present achieving for prospective art just what geology is contributing to the progress of natural science. Crumbling relics and fossil impressions are everywhere exhumed, classified and published for the purpose of ascertaining our true relation to historical art and progressive civilization. From this source more copious materials are derived, and a surer as well as better means than language affords for solving the greatest of social problems, since there is more authentic history built into the walls of the Egyptian temples, or those of Greece, or the cathedrals of the mediæval West, than exists in all the chronicles that ever were written. The successive masterpieces of monumental art are unaltered cotemporary records which, in the age of Washington, are becoming easily read, and most lucidly translated into the universal language of mankind. The buildings and subordinate artistic productions of each historic people tell their own tale, and can never be entirely falsified by time or the blunders of copyists; but remain as left by their originators, with the undying impress of their aspirations, or their vagaries, stamped in characters of adamant.
Alexander, the great transition-servitor of Providence in the earlier ages of progress, had been prompted to visit the temples of Ammon, by the tradition that they had been visited by his ancestor, Perseus, in his expedition against Medusa, and Hercules, after the victory of Busiris. Differently inspired, but for the same final end, the great Corsican, born out of Europe, and eager to impel the carof empire even beyond his native island-home, signalized his destiny when he reached the same meeting-place of the obsolete and progressive nations, exclaiming, "Soldiers! from the summit of yonder pyramids forty centuries behold you." The pilgrim, the crusader, and the Hadgi, had successively brought back from those remote regions some degree of that veneration which is connected with hazards undergone from religious impulses. But with his savans round him, and all France quickened by an impulse from America into a higher life, Napoleon's campaign in the land of Ham, first in the history of our race, was the glorious conquest of arts as well as of arms. The Pyramids, like the shrines of Ammon, were temples; and they had been the immemorial centre of art and science. The secrets of all the natural knowledge, the high historic memories, and the mystic rites, of the ancient land of wisdom, seemed to be there still, hidden in those profound treasuries of rock, which neither time, conquest, nor curiosity, had been able to penetrate. But what was then accomplished deserves especial regard and gratitude. Connoisseurs of recondite skill and acute discrimination, led by their sagacious champion, penetrated to the profoundest chamber, wherein, some three thousand years before, some Pharaoh had been interred, and thence gleaned the richest store of antique memorials to be preserved and interpreted in other climes. The only army on earth who could endure the fatigues of such an enterprise were employed to collect the needed materials of advancing civilization; and then another providential act, equally significant, bore those treasures to London and not to Paris. All the oldest and most enduring worth is rapidly concentrating in the youngest and most progressive race. When we come to speak of sculptural art, and of its relation to the amelioration of universal mind, we shall more particularly refer to the wonderful manner in which "the Rosetta stone" came into English hands.
Under the same roof which protects the Egyptian antiquities in the British Museum, are the Elgin Marbles, those glorious fragments of Athens and the Parthenon. Their greatness of manner is far more imposing than any mere bulk and extent; and more original skill and science, more artistic talent is displayed in those mutilated models alone, than in all other classical remains extant. Subsequent creations are the branches only, but the Parthenon isthe root from which their broad and beautiful characteristics are undoubtedly derived. It is indeed strange that, although the architecture of Rome sprung from that of Greece, and all modern styles were derived, through Rome, from the same source, never until our day was discovered the most striking peculiarity of Grecian design. It was reserved for an English architect, Mr. F.C. Penrose, to demonstrate the mathematical and optical principles on which, apparently, the whole art was founded. The Parthenon taught him the brilliant truth that there is not a straight line in the building; and there is good reason to believe that such is the rule with respect to other important Greek structures. Mathematical curves, accurately calculated, were made to correct the disagreeable effect which a perfect straight line has to a practiced eye; but the delicate taste which thus carried classicalism to the highest pitch of refinement, remained in abeyance until the dawn of an age in which monumental art will first revive all previous excellences, and then excel what it supersedes.
Not only has this age opened with an unprecedented acquaintance with Egyptian art treasures, and a more accurate knowledge of the architectural monuments of Greece, but we also enjoy the advantage of other great external aids, such as the excavation of the buried cities skirting Vesuvius, and the unexpectedly rich discovery of Etruscan tombs. As the fitting concomitant of these startling revelations, the great mind of Winckleman was prepared to give a luminous interpretation thereof; and correlative attempts were made by other masters to treat art historically and philosophically in the presence of innumerable pupils zealous in antiquarian research. Referring to the destruction of Herculaneum and Pompeii, Goethe remarks: "Many a calamity has befallen the world ere now, yet none like this, replete with instruction and delight for remote generations." No graphic power can convey to a stranger an adequate idea of the affluence of objects intensely interesting connected with these cities so long buried, and recently disinterred. Successive streets of plebeian homes, but pillared and sculptured as if they were the abodes of patricians, intersecting the radiant confusion of theatres and temples, imbue the visitor with that blended sense of beauty defying decay, of hoary antiquity, and of thrilling domestic incident, which can be felt only amid the solemnstillness of the excavated city. The baptism of fire here became, in the highest degree conservative. It filled up with its train the gap of eighteen centuries, and has made "the trivial fond records" which the prints of hurried footsteps and trembling figures imply, immortal in the marl which hardened over them, and has left them as touching as if they told the fate of some ancient friends. Here we have the ancients as they lived, with many of their houses adorned with the wonderful efforts of Greek genius, skillfully copied by Roman art. We look at them, astonished and enraptured at the gorgeous pomp, and at the luxurious richness of which the East has ever been so proud. The superb collection of varied art which has so recently been rescued from the ruined city, opens to our age a new school of study, and most strikingly exemplifies the progressive changes which befell art from Pericles to Augustus, from eastern Greece to western Italy.
Still more startling are the developments recently made at Nineveh. Like a second Pompeii, it has revealed the secrets of the inner life of a people, the scene of whose existence had long been forgotten. One of the fairest and most celebrated cities of the earth, and the capital of a mighty empire, its very site was for centuries unknown, and its name had become a by-word among nations. Buried beneath the ruins of its own greatness, the sun no longer shone on its colossal walls, its palaces and its temples. The wandering Arab and the enlightened European, alike ignorant of the treasures beneath their feet, rode over the plain beneath which lay buried the pride of Asshur and all the glories of the magnificent Semiramis. That which Jonah describes as "an exceeding great city of three days' journey," and Diodorus Siculus tells us was sixty miles in circuit; that which had once been the centre of civilization, and the scene of the utmost barbaric splendor, had sunk in awful silence and desolation. The change in the general aspect of the region, and the total disappearance of the mighty metropolis and its records, were perfectly appalling, until one English scholar wandered there to discover the strange monuments, and another fitting co-operative, Rawlinson, was raised up to read them. No one appears to have explored the ruins of Nineveh from about six hundred years before Christ, when it was taken by Cyaxares, to the day when Layard displayed its subterranean mysteries to a wonderingworld. During this long lapse of centuries, empires had risen and been swept away, and two new creeds, Christianity and Mohammedanism, had spread over the earth, when slowly and sublimely rising from their colossal tomb, came forth the winged forms of fearful majesty, and were borne to the remote West on the bosom of that mightier civilization behind which they had lingered so long.
The best specimens of original art in every successive monumental style are thus collected in London, and form the finest illustration of consecutive development; but at the same time old England is the least original in her new buildings. The greatest wonder in the three kingdoms at the present day is a monster of talent, and not a model of genius, a huge inclosure of iron and glass, without a single new molding or other feature of recent invention. But what deserves particular notice is the fact, that within that vast non-architectural structure is the finest, and probably the first, chronological exemplification of all the great national styles of preceding times. Like most modern buildings, these specimen-forms are executed in unsubstantial materials, disguised so as to represent precious and praiseworthy works. The Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Alhambra, Mediæval, Renaissance, Pompeian, and Nineveh courts, show at a glance what affluence of architectural invention in past ages existed in the East, and how debased became all attempts in this department of art in western Europe before American colonization began. It would seem as if heaven designed that nothing of marked character should be imported to interfere with early tendencies toward originality in this new artistic sphere, and that afterward all select reminiscences of the old world should be wafted toward us as fast as indigenous taste and power might arise to require their support and assimilate their worth.
The Virginia colony transferred with but little change the degraded cruciform type of sacred architecture common to the mother church of that day, and which decayed utterly with her enforced spiritual dominion. The primitive churches, such as those at Jamestown, Hampton, and Petersburg, are the most picturesque and complete ruins in the United States. The Puritans, on the contrary, built in a manner astutely original, and their rectangular ugliness remaineth unto this day. The early buildings of New England, and in the Middle States, both civic and sacred, unsymmetrical anduncouth as they may appear, have yet an air of originality and strength which will greatly tend to perpetuate the characteristic hardihood of their origin. Greek and Roman temples in small, and miniature cathedrals of mediæval design, executed in heterogeneous materials and with excruciating anomalies, are springing up in every ambitious town. But the most of these are insipid, hollow, and contemptible shams, compared with the plain and truthful, though unartistic edifices which our earnest fathers built. As soon as the passion for paltry imitation shall have exhausted its inanity, we shall see a rugged germ of originality spring from that stock, which will grow into a worthy type of American monumental art.
Several indications already justify this hope. In the first place, in all the great works which require the blending of inventive genius with constructive skill, and which are made flexile as well as firm in their adaptation to novel emergencies and the most available use, our countrymen have no superiors on earth. Our engineering works and national fabrics of every sort are confessedly unexcelled. Structures of popular taste and public utility, such as stores, banks, hotels, and ships, are universally acknowledged to be the finest extant. When our people in general, and architects in particular, shall have given equal thought and zeal to the perfection of religious art suited to our climate and customs, still greater success will doubtless be attained.
It is well known that the Greeks invented the most beautiful order of architecture, called Corinthian, at the period of Periclean decline. The exquisite little memorial of Lysicrates was their only perfected specimen, the proportions of which were never enlarged in the clime of their first bloom. A corrupted Roman modification has often been repeated, but not till the age of Washington, and nearly on the very spot where Liberty first proclaimed her complete emancipation, did an architect conceive the purpose of recasting those perfectly beautiful outlines on a colossal scale. Since Pericles and his age perished, earth has seen no fairer fabric, both as to its material form and artistic soul, than Girard college presents. Compare the Madeleine of Paris, and St. George's Hall at Liverpool, two cotemporaneous masterpieces, nearest to the same order, and most lauded by their respective nations, if you would estimate the actual progress we have made in monumental art. There is morepure Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian architecture executed in marble and now adorning Philadelphia alone, than can be found in Paris and London combined, or in any other three cities of either France or England.
The new House of Parliament now building in Westminster has already cost an enormous sum, and is profusely decorated on the interior and exterior with a great variety of graphic and sculptured art. But one familiar with the palatial and ecclesiastical architecture of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, will search in vain for the first original feature in the whole conglomerated pile. We, too, are building a new Capitol, and how do the two edifices compare as to intrinsic monumental worth? All nations wove native vegetation into their mural and columnar creations down to the middle of the fifteenth century of the Christian era, when all architectural invention manifestly ceased. Thenceforth shields of arms, sheets of armor, and shreds of fiddles or yet emptier fantasies usurped the entablature, darkened casements, and cumbered over-burdened shafts. Hence in the palace of Lords and Commons on the border of the Thames, if amid ten thousand vestiges of feudal fierceness and heraldic insignia, we look for structural adornments fashioned after a leaf, or flower, or tuft of foliage peculiar to the England of to-day, not one can be found. But when the original home of our national legislation was restored near the Potomac, the chief colonnade was surmounted by a new cap, bearing in graceful curve and foliation the clustered wealth of our primitive staple, corn. Since then other indications of native resources have been added; and the architect who is now serving his country and the cause of progressive art so well, boldly lays our entire domain of vegetable glories under contribution to enhance the beauty and characterize the purpose of his marble halls. When completed according to the present design, American architecture, sculpture, and painting, will therein coalesce in consummate excellence to signalize an advance in native art commensurate with the immensity of our republican domains.
Another favorable symptom among us is, that the people themselves, and leading minds in particular, are becoming more inspired with a taste for noble art. This is indispensable to the production of great and worthy national monuments. Had Pericles, andAugustus, and Leo X. not been as familiar with the principles and usefulness of art as any of those that were around them, and had not the artists of their day not been gentlemen in feeling and accomplishments, the monumental arts of their respective ages would never have risen to the elevation with which they are marked. As soon as our countrymen are once thoroughly convinced of the direction in which the true future of the arts lies, the grandest victory will already have been more than half gained. They will then become thoroughly convinced how utterly unworthy of this country and age were the arts both of the ancient Pagans and those of the middle ages; and producers will not help feeling the degradation inherent in their present servile copying. Men of a higher class of intellect, emancipated from hereditary conventionalism, will devote a more earnest search after excellence, and will find it in the greatest purity and profusion, not where it has so long been sought, but in some new and loftier sphere, where the virgin ore is still concealed in its original matrix. This, however, is not to be rapidly attained. To accomplish any thing really great requires centuries of years and myriads of progressive steps. Unartistic millionaires will cease to inhabit absurd houses, or worship in sham temples, as soon as the mass of the people who long since rebelled against tyrannical and absurd laws, shall come to be as appreciative of architectural improvement as they are sagacious and patriotic to promote popular rights. No longer content to fill new States with dried specimens of old civilizations, a generation is about to appear who will cease erecting edifices which are mere monuments of servile ignorance, and will assure posterity that they dared to think for themselves, and had an art of their own. Not one source of pure and lofty inspiration ever existed which does not now exist; on the contrary, many are now extant which former ages had no suspicion of, and it is painful to see them unused for the noble purposes they were given to promote, substituted as they are by mockeries and absurdities which degrade the office of art, and lead the public to suppose that it is an empty bauble, fit only to pander to the grossest sensuality.
True art is not a thing merely to be copied and bartered at such and such a price, but to be studied with affectionate disinterestedness, with reference to the future creation of new styles and higherclasses of beauty, and anterior to the sixteenth century artists wrought constantly upon this principle. Then architecture and its correlative arts were cultivated with a single motive and for only one purpose, that of producing the best possible building with the best possible materials that could be commanded, and without ever looking back on preceding works, except to learn how to avoid their defects and excel their beauties. It was an earnest progressive struggle toward perfection, which, after the stormy period requisite to the founding of our free institutions, we must resume and complete in the more tranquil realm of ennobling art. First learning all that has been done, we are to start from that highest point to surpass it; this has been the process executed by all progressive races, and hence their success. Well might Greece exult in the result of her great battle for freedom; well might each separate state pride itself on the share it had borne in the common struggle, and well might she tax monumental art to give the loftiest expression to her triumphant joy. Kindled with a deep and universal enthusiasm, art was then the reflex of victory, as it is now its noblest monument, and such may it increasingly become in America!
Sculpture, the severest of artistic creations, has already achieved a grand success in our western world. Early success and present proficiency guaranty future excellence of the highest order in this department of the liberal arts. Horatio Greenough of Boston was the first of our countrymen who won a wide reputation in sculpture, and has left works which justify the exalted encomiums he so zealously earned. Hiram Powers soon followed in this serene sphere of genius, and having journeyed unknown from the bosom of the Green Mountains to the "Queen City of the West," he began an artistic career on the banks of the Ohio which has since for many years brightened the fairest glories that gleam in the mirror of the Arno. Clevenger, that noble and magnificent son of the West, was quickened into a generous emulation by Powers, as the latter had been fostered by the kindness of Greenough, and soon the three were harmoniously working together in Florence. Two prime luminaries have been withdrawn from that brilliant constellation to shine in a brighter firmament, but others of not less promise have been added to the sublunary galaxy in rapid succession, so that our sculpturesque school is now second to none extant.
The State which gave birth to our oldest living sculptor abounds more copiously in fine marble than Italy itself; and the statuary, as well as the architect, will yet derive thence the material of his grandest works. The far West is equally rich in the components of bronze, and the more precious metals. At the moment of the present writing, a native artist is erecting in the centre of this city an equestrian statue of Washington of colossal size, which was cast in Massachusetts with a completeness and perfection, it is said, unattainable at any foundry in Europe. It was fitting that the first great leader in this department of national renown should execute his masterpieces for the republic and its metropolis, and that his worthy successors should now be adorning the capitals of the remotest parent colonies with masterly memorials in both marble and bronze. Patriotic hearts can not but be thrilled in observing how in every section of our country spacious studios are devoted to high art, whence busts, portrait-statues, and original groups are elicited by constantly-increased patronage, to adorn private mansions and ennoble the popular taste. Clevenger, when an humble apprentice to a stone-mason in Cincinnati, made his first attempt at sculpture by the light of a midnight moon over the bas-relief of a tombstone; and the first full-length monumental figure cut for "Mount Auburn" was executed by an adventurer in Boston, whom we first knew as a poor country blacksmith, but who is now an eminent and wealthy sculptor. The old world has no cemeteries which in natural beauty and adaptedness to artificial adornment can compare with our own, and these rural cities of the dead will soon become grand repositories of living art. Already is this foreshadowed at Greenwood, around the granite pedestal whereon the yet more enduring majesty of De Witt Clinton looks abroad on the fleeting grandeurs of earth, ocean, and sky. Niches and arcades are opened in all public buildings of recent erection, and good sculpture is rapidly becoming an exquisite delight to the American mind.
So long as the aim of the sculptor is only to advance step by step toward the ideal of perfect beauty, no age can ever excel that of Pericles. The limited powers of mortals are incapable of advancing further in that direction than paganism attained in giving to corporeal charms a material expression. But the age of Washingtonis called to embody intellectual beauty, invested with such feelings as the highest class of Christian development will admit of, and this will enable the modern artist to reach a far higher point of excellence than has yet been attained. The same subsidiary vehicle must be employed to convey a more exalted class of expression, but a nobler aim is opened to the consecrated aspirant, and superlative excellence in sculpture must be the result. Of their kind, the Apollo Belvidere and the Venus de' Medici will ever stand without rivals; but they do not belong to the highest class of art, for the Venus has no more mind than the Greeks usually ascribed to women; and the Apollo, though the noblest animal ever created, is no more in the realm of intellect than "a young Mohawk." Sculpture is not always to remain only an unmeaning transcript of an extinct system of art, but must advance beyond the expression of mere corporeal beauty. What is now most wanted for this, as for all kindred arts, is the power of expressing the loftiest order of intellect, blended with the most refined sensibility which either the heart of sculptured genius can conceive or its hand execute. We believe that capacities adequate to the accomplishment of this consummate end will yet be developed in America, and are convinced that their happy exercise will lead to triumphs of art higher than ever the Grecians, in their hour of most magnificent exaltation, dreamed of. The fine arts of the ancients were only necessary results of their general system, and of the objects they sought through every channel and in every thought; as our ships and engines are not things apart from our commerce or manufactures, but only great facts resulting from them as exponents the most exact. But in due time Americans will elaborate beauty out of the practical arts as earnestly as they now look for profit in them, and then will the world witness the coalescence of the human and divine in sculptured worth the most complete.
Painting was the first fine art cultivated in America, and has never ceased to advance. When George Berkeley came to this country with the benevolent purpose of opening a university for the education of the aborigines, he included the arts of design in his system of education. No founder of schools in the old world ever thought of that. Berkeley had traveled in Italy with a Scotch artist, John Smybert, and chose him to be professor of architecture,drawing, and painting in his projected institution. There is at Yale College a large picture which represents Berkeley and some of his family, together with the artist himself, on their first landing in America, which is supposed to be the first picture of more than a single figure ever painted on our shores.
Berkeley's general scheme was abandoned from necessity, but Smybert settled in Boston, where he married and died. The latter event occurred in 1751, when his pupil, Copley, was but thirteen years old. Trumbull retired from the army, and resumed painting in Boston, in 1777, surrounded by Copley's works, and in the room which had been built for Smybert. Thus was the path of progress opened and increasingly glorified, the greatest of New England colorists, Allston, having first caught the reflection of Vandyke in Smybert. All the best portraits which remain of eminent divines and magistrates of the eastern States and New York, who lived between 1725 and 1751, are from the pencil of this founder of pictorial art in America.
In his "History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States," William Dunlap commemorates more than four hundred and thirty painters who have contributed to the establishment of an American school of art. It is really wonderful that so much artistic merit should have been matured in the midst of difficulties incident to the civilization of a barbarous continent. But Sir Walter Scott, in recommending a work of American genius to Maria Edgeworth, sagaciously accounted for the phenomenon by saying, "That people once possessed of a three-legged stool, soon contrive to make an easy-chair." In allusion to this anecdote, our first great sculptor, Greenough, remarks, "Humble as the phrase is, we here perceive an expectation on his part, that the energies now exercised in laying the foundations of a mighty empire, would, in due time, rear the stately columns of civilization, and crown the edifice with the entablature of letters and of arts. Remembering that one leg of the American stool was planted in Maine, a second in Florida, and the third at the base of the Rocky Mountains, he could scarce expect that the chair would become an easy one in half a century. It is true, that before the Declaration of Independence, Copley had in Boston formed a style of portrait which filled Sir Joshua Reynolds with astonishment; and that West, breakingthrough the bar of Quaker prohibition, and conquering the prejudice against a provincial aspirant, had taken a high rank in the highest walk of art in London. Stuart, Trumbull, Allston, Morse, Leslie, and Newton, followed in quick succession, while Vanderlyn won golden opinions at Rome, and bore away high honors at Paris. So far were the citizens of the republic from showing a want of capacity for art, that we may safely affirm the bent of their genius was rather peculiarly in that direction, since the first burins of Europe were employed in the service of the American pencil before Irving had written, and while Cooper was yet a child. That England, with these facts before her, should have accused us of obtuseness in regard to art, and that we should have pleaded guilty to the charge, furnishes the strongest proof of her disposition to underrate our intellectual powers, and of our own ultra docility and want of self-reliance."
No Walhalla can be made to start suddenly from a republican soil; but we firmly believe that our free institutions are more favorable to a natural, healthful growth of art, than any hot-bed culture under the auspices of aristocrats or kings. Monuments, statues, and pictures which represent what the people love and wish for are rapidly multiplied, and this popular appreciation of high art needs only to be guided by salutary examples to become mighty and prolific beyond any preceding age.
No country ever existed where the development and growth of an artist was more free, healthful, and happy, than it is in these United States. Independence of character is essential to all eminent success, and that is here necessitated by every law of life. Like Alexander, when he embarked for Asia; Cæsar, when he leaped the Rubicon; Phidias, when he adorned the Parthenon; Michael Angelo, when he painted the Capella Sistina; Raphael, when he entered the Vatican; Napoleon, when he invaded Italy; and Columbus, when he sailed for America; the aspirant after exalted art-excellence in our land, must depend mainly on his own genius, and find in that his best patron and reward.
The whole world of ancient art is moving toward this great western theatre of its finest and sublimest development. The continental cities contain a few magnificent collections, but the artistic wealth stored in the many private mansions of the British islandstranscends all eastern lands. Waagen's four large volumes are not sufficient to enumerate the "Art Treasures in Great Britain." These are more secluded than the public galleries of Rome, Naples, Florence, and Paris, but they are not inferior in respect to particular specimens, and are vastly more diversified in general interest. On English soil we may study the graphic, as well as sculptural and monumental history of all authentic eras, with the assurance that as the mental worth we contemplate is removed, it will probably advance still further west. Not a great sale of literary or artistic collections occurs in Europe, when a strong competition is not ventured upon by Americans. We believe that this country will yet possess the chief treasures of England, as that mighty nation has heretofore gathered to herself the choicest productions of anterior times. Giotto's portrait of Dantè in the Chapel of the Palazzo del Podesta, at Florence, was rescued from under a thick coat of whitewash by our countryman, R.H. Wilde; and the young university at Rochester, N.Y., bought the superb library of Neander entire. Restore and reform is the standing order of the day. Palaces are emptied of useless princes and unproductive aristocrats, in order that remains of antiquity and paragons of beauty may find refuge therein, under the protection of the populace who crowd with reverent enthusiasm to their contemplation. Thus are the common people becoming the true conservators of ancient worth, and the most liberal promoters of modern improvement. At this moment the manufacturers in western England buy more fine pictures, and lend a wiser as well as richer support to art than all the personal patronage in the realm beside, the sovereign included.
Every new enactment of the hereditary few is a fresh concession to the popular demand for free access to whatever is beautiful or sublime. Since Charles I., each great institution, the British Museum for example, has been indebted to a private individual for its origin. The common heart therein reads an impressive commentary on all progress, and is ennobled in its joy. Egypt, Assyria, Greece, ancient Rome, and modern Italy, disinterred and intelligently arranged, pass under the simultaneous view of the masses, and every expression of tint, form, and spirit becomes a fresh element of knowledge, a lever by which is set in motion a vast fabric of creative wonder. Thus the sciences and arts unite in a delightfulcombination for the good of humanity, and nothing gives so much lustre to a nation as their perfection.
The cultivation of the fine arts greatly contributes to the respect, character, and dignity of every government by which they have been encouraged, and are intimately connected with every thing valuable in national influence. In contemplating the permanent glory to which so small a republic as Athens rose, by the genius and energy of her citizens, exerted in this direction, it is impossible to overlook how transient the memory and fame of extended empires and mighty conquerors are, compared with those who have rendered inconsiderable states eminent, and who have immortalized their own names by these pursuits. Free governments alone afford a soil suitable to the production of native talent, to the full maturing of the human mind, and to the growth of every species of excellence. Therefore no country can be better adapted than our own to afford a final abode for the best specimens of the old world as models to the new, that by these we may first learn to emulate, and ultimately be enabled to excel them.
We are yet a young people, engrossed with all the distracting cares and toils incident to the primary subjugation of a virgin continent. And yet, perhaps nowhere else are the masses more eager to enjoy beautiful art. Private collections are rapidly multiplying, numerous exhibitions are profusely visited, and public monuments are munificently sustained. At a late meeting of the Royal Academy in London, at which the ministers were present, the premier, Lord Aberdeen, said that "as a fact full of hope he remarked that for several years the public, in the appreciation of art, had outstripped the government and the parliament itself." But in the United States the masses, who in this age are everywhere rising in intelligent supremacy, most directly control the resources of their respective States; and we may soon expect to see diversified types of American art produced which will be commensurate with the matchless charms of our climate, the varied richness of our raw materials, and the grandeur of our national domain.
The best writers on art that ever lived are now enriching our language with the most splendid contributions to a new and nobler order of æsthetical criticism. Not only are such works appreciated with great avidity by the common mind of our land, but thenumerous art-students from America, whose studios are leading attractions in every foreign metropolis, receive the newest light with least prejudice, and profit by progressive principles with most triumphant success.
The more occidental the stage of human development, and the later the period of its existence, the more scope and capital there will be for the exercise of genius. The last national picture executed for the Rotunda at Washington was by a native artist born beyond the Ohio; and the moving panorama, the most original and instructive, if not the most refined species of art belonging to this age in all the world, was invented by an American, amid the wild splendors of the upper Mississippi. In regions yet beyond, Jubal with the chorded shell, and Tubal-Cain, smelting metals and refining pigments for the use of man, will direct those who congregate in cities, and turn the discoveries of reason, with the embellishments of art to the widest and most ennobling public good. We have every reason to believe that as our nationality shall require an artistic expression, local genius will never be wanting to give it an adequate expression; and that the sublime productions of the West will ultimately be appealed to as the finest test of the supreme rank we shall come to hold among the nations of earth.