Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

course is constrained and checked by foreign violence or obstruction. The bending willow sweeps gracefully because it seems to move unconstrained and in perfect freedom. The gambols of the frisking lamb, the curvetings of a frolicsome steed, are graceful because they betoken suppleness of joint, flexile muscle, in short, freedom from all constraint arising from outer force or inner weakness.

The same is true of all instances of the other department of gracethe grace of repose. The grace of repose differs from the grace of motion only in this-that it fixes the eye on the effect of free motion, while the latter turns the attention on the motion itself. It ever, consequently, implies motion, and, accordingly, ever suggests freedom. We awaken the sentiment of grace in repose, when we contemplate, for instance, the delicately turned features of supple infancy; and if we suffer our gaze to penetrate beyond the mere picturing surface to the actual substance imaged upon it, we shall find that it is the free motions of innocence, unperverted and undistorted, put forth in the yielding muscle of infancy.

All expressions of grace, thus, even in the physical world, are but images of freedom; and to the soul that has been trained in a true æsthetic culture, ever speak forth this high element of a rational nature. To such a soul the great artist reveals himself in all the forms of grace that the visible creation wears. With true unerring vision, as truly as the elevated spirit sees peace and purity imaged in the still, deep azure of the sky, or majesty in the shore-clasping ocean, such a soul discerns in all these forms of grace,

"The unambiguous footsteps of the God Who gives its luster to an insect's wing, And wheels his throne upon the rolling worlds."

All æsthetic grace reveals thus at once, a deity in nature, as it images

a moral element there which can only belong to a moral creator and disposer; and furnishes an incomparably higher evidence to every cultivated spirit of his being and his nature, than any arguments of fitness or of adaptation.

Grace, as thus the expression of the highest element of our nature, the peculiarly and strictly moral element, is the highest form of beauty. And the artist who would rise in his landscape to the most pleasing, most impressive exhibitions of beauty, must apprehend firmly this element and give it expression wherever it may find a place. It can not everywhere appear. Freedom must be controlled by rule and law; and grace must submit to the principles of propriety and fitness that rule with absolute sway all things rational. Architecture must have straight lines and angles. Streets and roads must minister to their proper end and design-convenience, and must be often direct; while grace rejects straight lines and angles, inasmuch as they imply constraint. Yet grace can find admission, at least to some extent ;particularly in private, domestic landscape, is it capable of entering in perfect conformity with all the rational elements to be expressed, of unity, fitness and proportion; and there, above all, should the great lesson of man's moral nature everywhere be inscribed, that the image may be stamped by ever continued repetition on the forming spirit of unconscious childhood, and so ever in maturing life recall and foster the substantial truth itself.

The answer that has been given to the question, What are the guiding principles in the art of landscape, implies thus, that there are sentiments to be expressed which the artist may and must firmly apprehend, in order, confidently and intelligently, to prosecute his work.

This answer implies, moreover, that he, with equal firmness and in

tellectual clearness, apprehend the materials and the mode of arrangement, by means of which, and through which he is to express these sentiments. The assumption, therefore, of the possibility and the necessity of this firm apprehension remains to be vindicated.

Of the possibility, generally, of expressing æsthetic sentiments and ideas in the forms of vegetable life, enough has already been said. And to him who has schooled himself in nature, who has been wont to throw himself under the influence of the outer world, and to mark the diverse character of those influences as determined by diverse scenes and objects, little in addition need be said to show the possibility of expressing, in appropriate forms of vegetable life, the specific elements of landscape expression that have been enumerated. It is hardly poetry, or if poetry, it is poetic truth to say, that every vegetable structure and form, from the low creep ing vine to the tall spreading oak, has its own expression; while the unlimited permutation of groups and combinations, both in kind and in place, shows a range and scope of diversified expression as unlimited. It would almost be a reflection on the divine artificer of the universe, to suppose for a moment that the objects of the vegetable world do not, in some sufficient degree, correspond in variety of character with the variety of sentiments, that in his constitution and investiture of nature, he has shown, may, and for man's benefit should be imaged in landscape.

The æsthetic student of nature has without difficulty learned the character of each form of vegetable life, and to him it has become an easy task to translate the peculiar expression of each into its prop. er æsthetic sentiment. The reverse act, to image forth the sentiment in tree and vine and shrub and flower, if more uncommon, or even more

difficult, is the more pleasing effort of a creative mind.

The expression of aesthetic elements by arrangement, requires a higher skill. Here forecast is necessary. Here is needed that high imaginative power, the most essential and most characteristic element of artistic genius-the power to construct proposed forms of beauty from materials, various, multiform, and rude. Out of the countless possible forms which diverse ar rangements of given materials may furnish, he is to keep in his mind steadily his own ideal expression, and then pass before his view the successive possible groups and combinations till the desired antitype appear. Yet this is the common labor of every artistTo arrest the fleeting images that fill The mirror of the mind and hold them fast, And force them sit, till he has penciled off Then to dispose his copies with such art That each may find its most propitious light, Than by the labor and the skill it cost. And shine by situation hardly less

A faithful likeness of the forms he views;

It is to be borne in mind, moreover, that degrees in the richness of the expression are admissible, even when the same sentiment is imaged in the landscape. The coloring, so to speak, may be Rubenslike, deep and strong; or in the manner of Guido Reni, little more than bare light and shade. The composition may vary from the extremest simplicity to the most crowded denseness in almost every kind of landscape expression; and the artist may consult his own skill in the degree of richness he will impart to his work.

This department of his labor implies and requires æsthetic culture. He who knows nothing of the ca. pability of expressing sentiment re siding in the vegetable world, who has never felt the power of scenery grave or gay, on his own heart, or when impressed has never followed out the effect to its producing cause, may well decline the work of adapt

ing grounds to æsthetic expression. It is an art, moreover, that loves the light. The groping, tentative, it scorns. Its work is in intelligence throughout. From beginning to end the true artist proceeds in distinct apprehension of his object and his way. He errs not, therefore, and his result is sure.

But he who would labor intelligently and with confidence must certainly know beforehand, what materials and what arrangement will best express the character of beauty he desires.

[ocr errors]

The exposition that has been given of the guiding principles of practical landscape, will, it is hoped, suffice to show that this is a true art in the highest sense; that, if we adopt the principle in the broadest import, "To spirit, can only spirit speak; only where an idea shines forth do we recognize true art,' landscape is yet not excluded. The very soul of landscape is the expression of a rational sentiment or idea. It is an art that may be cultivated by all. The rudest peasant, as he may feel the power of beautiful and graceful form in landscape, is so far endowed with the power of creating it; while, from the very nature of the art, its power may be exert ed in beautifying the scanty gardenplot as well as in embellishing and enriching the most extended park or field.

It is an art, still further, self-sufficing and independent. Architecture it indeed embraces as a part of its own province. But the recourse, so often made, to eke out its imagined poverty and leanness, to the products of the chisel and the pencil, wrongs the art; and the wrong is generally resented. In the language of the elegant Herder," where this beautiful art beautifies a land, no statues are needed on the way. In full life there meet us with their gifts, Pomona, Ceres, Pales, Vertumnus, Sylvanus, Flora." Where we have the living original, inanimate copies are out of place. In the manifold forms and products of vegetable life, is supplied to the ingenious artist all the materials which the fullest and richest expression can require. Under the mild sun of Italy, arches and vases It is an art, like every other, re- and statues may possibly be introquiring study and labor. A half duced into the villa, as in harmony hour's effort with rule and measure with the general landscape effect. will not suffice to create expressive But even there the admiring traveler, landscape. Nor will the want of after passing out of the rich galleall care or thought, save only to ries of proper in-door art-of statshun the stiffness of geometrical uary and painting, feels no disposi lines, of course secure the expres- tion to stop and study the sculptured sion of real beauty, such even as is forms which line his path to the sometimes found in nature unadorn true and pure landscape. ed by art. Mere irregularity is not when he gives up his spirit to the natural beauty. There may be full power of majestic forest and beauty in the individual tree or or flower-enameled lawn, or winding shrub, while there is no beauty of stream, and sloping hill-side, various arrangement or combination-the yet harmonious, natural, yet breath. essential thing in landscape expres- ing rational sentiment, he gladly sion. "Elegance," to quote still overlooks and drops from view again the garden-poet of our liter- the coarse, storm-pelted statuary which a prodigal, not a refined, art has scattered here and there. In ruder climes, the bolder, sterner forms of architecture alone can be admitted; and these only as propri

ature,

"Elegance, chief grace the garden shows And most attractive, is the fair result Of thought-the creature of a polished mind."

* Ficker.

And

ety, fitness to end, shall evidently require.

It is an art, moreover, of the highest moral value. All true art, indeed, embodies a moral sentiment or idea. The inner life and spirit in every true æsthetic work, in every true æsthetic object or scene, is this moral idea which inhabits and animates it. But landscape is of all arts the most expressive of moral truth. Even the unthinking child feels its elevating, grace-inspiring influence. The unfolding spirit under the constant power of expressive landscape, will mould itself into the forms of beauty and grace which are ever impressed upon it. Abstract rule, cold precept, arbitrary authority, necessary as they are, will yet yield, in power to form to virtuous sentiment, to the force of winning, subduing landscape, ever teaching, yet never obtruding, never irritating, drawing, not driving to the love and practice of what is pure and graceful and lovely. That "Heaven be near us in our infancy," need not be a poet's dream. It should be a common reality. In the sense of whatever is pure and lovely, it may be planted around every dwelling; may smile around every rustic cottage as on every wide-spread park and lawn.

No more effective moral teacher can be conceived. Happy for our land if all over its wide extent, fast as its swelling population dot it over with dwelling and shop, with hall and

temple, and mark it off in yard and orchard and cultivated field and pasture, the spirit of taste might breathe, and, as in the nature of the case is possible, shape each architectural and rural labor into bright forms of loveliness and grace that everywhere should woo to virtue, In crowded city and in sequestered country life, in the scant yard of the humble peasant and on the wide domains of wealth and fortune, in the rude hut and the princely palace, everywhere, the art of landscape may work with all its pleasing, elevating power.

Happy, indeed, for our country, if what kind heaven has placed within our power, if what kind heaven has seemed to devolve upon us as our great mission-work and destiny, neglecting and suffering to die the rude arts of violence and war, our hands and hearts were turned to the great art of peacethe tasteful culture and investiture of our wide extended soil, seeking ever not merely to derive from fruitful nature bare satisfaction of animal wants-mere shelter and food for the body, the low aim to which necessity seems to have bound down the people of other lands, but also, with this, to convert nature into a minister to the spirit's wants, spread over its expanded face images of what is true and sacred, and make earth itself thus an ever present picture of heaven.

MEMOIR OF MRS. MARY E. VAN LENNEP.*

AN eminent painter once said to us, that he always disliked to at

*Memoir of Mrs. Mary E. Van Lennep, only daughter of the Rev. Joel Hawes, D.D., and wife of the Rev. Henry J. Van Lennep, Missionary in Turkey. By her Mother. Hartford: Belknap & Hamersly.

tempt the portrait of a woman; it was so difficult to give to such a picture the requisite boldness of feature and distinctness of individual expression, without imparing its feminine character. If this be true in the delineation of the outer and material form, how much more true

is it of all attempts to portray the female mind and heart! If the words and ways, the style of thinking and the modes of acting, all that goes to make up biography, have a character sufficiently marked to individualize the subject, there is danger that, in the relating, she may seem to have overstepped the decorum of her sex, and so forfeit the interest with which only true delicacy can invest the woman.

It is strange that biography should ever succeed. To reproduce anything that was transient and is gone, not by repetition as in a strain of music, but by delineating the emotions it caused, is an achievement of high art. An added shade of coloring shows you an enthusiast, and loses you the confidence and sympathy of your cooler listener. A shade subtracted leaves so faint a hue that you have lost your interest in your own faded picture, and of course can not command that of another. Even an exact delineation, while it may convey accurately a part of the idea of a character, is not capable of transmitting the more volatile and subtle shades. You may mix your colors never so cunningly, and copy never so minutely every fold of every petal of the rose, and hang it so gracefully on its stem as to present its very port and bearing, but where is its fragrance, its exquisite texture, and the dewy freshness which was its crowning grace?

So in biography, you may make an accurate and ample statement of facts, you may even join together in a brightly colored mosaic the fairest impressions that can be given of the mind of another-his own recorded thoughts and feelings-and yet they may fail to present the individual. They are stiff and glaring, wanting the softening transition of the intermediate parts and of at tending circumstances.

And yet biography does sometimes succeed, not merely in raisVOL. VI.

44

ing a monumental pile of historical statistics, and maintaining for the friends of the departed the outlines of a character bright in their remembrance; but in shaping forth to others a life-like semblance of something good and fair, and distinct. enough to live with us thenceforward, and be loved like a friend, though it be but a shadow.

Such has been the feeling with which we have read and re-read the volume before us. We knew but slightly her who is the subject of it, and are indebted to the memoir for anything like a conception of the character; consequently, we can better judge of its probable effect upon other minds. We pronounce it a portrait successfully taken-a piece of uncommonly skillful biography. There is no gaudy exaggerations in it, no stiffness, no incompleteness. We see the individual character we are invited to see, and in contemplating it, we have all along a feeling of personal acquisition. We have found rare treasure; a true woman to be admired, a daughter whose worth surpasses estimation, a friend to be clasped with favor to the heart, a lovely young Christian to be admired and rejoiced over, and a self-sacrificing missionary to be held in reverential remembrance. Unlike most that is written to commemorate the dead, or that unveils the recesses of the human heart, this is a cheerful book. It breathes throughout the air of a spring morning. As we read it we inhale something as pure and fragrant as the wafted odor of

old cherry-trees Sheeted with blossoms."

We stand beneath a serene unclouded sky, and all around us is floating music as enlivening as the song of birds, yet solemn as the strains of the sanctuary. It is that of a life in unison from its childhood to its close; rising indeed like "an unbroken hymn of praise to God."

« AnteriorContinuar »