as it was our purpose only to furnish a fair, honest statement of a subject of considerable importance, yet sometimes much misapprehended. We will close by briefly recapitulating the elements and limitations of the theory.

Christian perfection is synonymous with entire sanctification, and is attainable by every true believer. It is subsequent to justification. It precedes death. It is not absolute perfection; for this is confessed to belong alone to God. Nor does it imply absolutely perfect human powers. It is perfect love. "This is the essence of it; its properties, or inseparable fruits, are rejoicing evermore, praying without ceasing, and in everything giving thanks." It is improvable. "It is so far from lying in an indivisible point, from being incapable of increase, that one perfected in love may grow in grace far swifter than before." It is amissible, or capable of being lost. It is constantly both preceded and followed by a gradual work.

ART. III. CAN WE HAVE AN ART-GALLERY?

1. Description des Objets d'Art de l'Académie des Beaux-Arts de Florence. 1857. Quinzième Edition.

2. Notice des Tableaux du Musée Impérial du Louvre. 9 Edition. Paris.

1854.

3. Descriptive and Historical Catalogue of the Pictures of the National Gallery. By R. N. WORNUM. Revised by SIR CHARLES L. EASTLAKE, P. R. A. Thirtieth Edition. London. 1860.

4. Companion to the Bryan Gallery of Christian Art. By RICHARD GRANT WHITE. New York. 1853.

5. Descriptive Catalogue of "Old Masters" collected by JAMES J. JARVES to illustrate the History of Painting from A. D. 1200 to the Best Periods of Italian Art. Cambridge: Riverside Press. 1860. 6. Il Mondo Illustrato. Turin. 24 Agosto, 1861. Galleria de Pit

ture Italiane a Boston.

TALK of Art during a civil war? Why not? War is fleeting, Art permanent. The former has its root in the tempo

rary disorder of humanity, while the latter is the solid growth of the unquenchable love in the human heart of Heaven's first and greatest law, Order, whose fairest fruit is Beauty. Therefore we may even now talk of Art, and with a practical end in view.

But

The error of American civilization is its one-sidedness. It concentrates its energies on a few points. It wants intellectual breadth. Great progress is attained in certain directions, but mainly in that of material prosperity, the greatest stimulus of which is not so much the sordid love of riches, as satisfaction in the pursuit of them. We are by no means an avaricious people. It is not the glitter of the dollar that attracts. Indeed, prodigality is exalted wellnigh to a virtue. whether we gain or spend money, we derive from it, in comparison with other nations, very little true æsthetic enjoyment. Chevreul tells us that two variously-colored lights taken in a certain proportion produce white light. Thus far there has been no white light in our civilization, from want of harmony between those fundamental principles of human growth which underlie all national progress. Our intellectual, moral, and æsthetic faculties have not established an uniformity of development. One-sided races, like one-sided persons, although producing striking effects in one direction, are ever liable to shipwreck by collision with counter forces, of equal or greater velocity and intensity, coming from another direction. America is now illustrating this law. We are justly suffering for preferring commercial gain to justice, the meaner to the nobler motive, as the foundation of our prosperity. We deliberately built on sand, while stone was ready to our use. What wonder, then, that the storm shakes the edifice, and the very corner-stone is undermined by the flood! We bargained for this. England, also, so far as she establishes her grandeur upon material interests, discarding in her dealings all other considerations except those which would make all countries tributary to her merchants, is likewise drawn towards the vortex of offended law, from which if she hasten not to escape by adjusting the defective balances of her moral constitution, obeying, though late, even as we are trying to do, the higher impulses, must undergo the purification of a great sorrow. VOL. LXXII. 5TH S. VOL. X. NO. II.

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But it is not our present purpose to discuss the moral or political aspects of either nation. We allude to these in passing, merely to show that war should not preclude thought, or even action, in other directions. To permit it to do so would be but repeating the fatal error of one-sided enterprise, which has done so much toward bringing upon us the present distress. And as war is a vigorous stimulant to intellectual activity, it may be hoped that, among the many changes in our ideas and enterprises which it may eventually produce, art itself may take firmer root here, as it has under similar conditions among other nations claiming to be civilized and refined. Timid minds might suggest waiting for a more propitious moment to urge its claims. But where would now be mediæval art, had France, Germany, and Italy taken similar counsel of their fears, when their national unity and manhood were developing amid civil war. They carved and painted and built with all the more zeal and faith because of their trials. Those marvels of painting, sculpture, and architecture which are their present pride, and contribute so powerfully toward their national unity, by perpetuating in everlasting beauty and truth the ideas and aspirations of their youth, were created during dire struggles such as we seem likely ever to be strangers to. In the general expansion of mind which ensued from the agitation of great questions, art secured a beneficent ascendency, contributing largely to refinement of manners and exaltation of life, and forming, as it were, a confraternity of ideas, or a sort of universal "peace society." peace society." Thus it happened that art in its highest significance has been respected when little else was spared by human passions. Independent of the sanctity which religious association cast around art at that period, there was, furthermore, an acknowledged demand, based upon a widely diffused æsthetic taste for objects of beauty. Wherever such existed, like sunlight, they were the common heritage of enjoyment of all. Hence a brotherhood of thought and feeling obtained by means of the influences of art. And so deeply ingrained into the constitution of most European and Oriental races have become the love of the beautiful, and the repose of mind which it induces, that governments are compelled to provide largely for its satisfaction. But in our

own case there is as yet no such call. Accordingly, government takes no notice of this element of human nature, except occasionally under the pressure of private interest or ambition. It is well, perhaps, that for the present it should be so. For, possessing neither knowledge nor taste, whatever it did would, as we see by what it has attempted, only provoke the ridicule of our children, and furnish eyesores for generations to come. But in view of our future, it behooves every American penetrated with a love of art to do all he can to keep the sacred fire aglow in the hearts of his countrymen. It will be no light labor, especially under the disadvantages of the present hour, to bring about a general recognition of high art, with its consequent enjoyment. But God has implanted in every human soul the instinct of the beautiful, and faculties for its guidance and cultivation. These only need to be stimulated to arouse a new sense of exquisite enjoyment, such as a mind apathetic in regard to art has never conceived of.

At no previous period of our national existence have there been more important questions at issue than now. The success or failure of democratic freedom, as opposed to aristocratic domination, is the great point which we are now determining. More than ever do we require the refining and ennobling influences of high art to counteract the too rigid strain of the mind tending almost exclusively toward the development of material strength. That is strong only as it represents the right. We are making history anew, based upon the loftiest principle of civil government,-justice and freedom alike to all. Heroic action is ripening out of heroic thought. If we would perpetuate the trials and triumphs of our time in forms of living beauty, we must bid Art do it. To her alone has Heaven confided the precious gift of a universal tongue.

We cannot create art by a magician's wand. We can, however, provide the means of instruction by which genius and taste in all communities are most frequently inspired to work. In order to do this, it concerns us to know what other nations have done to supply the æsthetic craving, and how far their example is pertinent in our case. Our inquiry on this point now will be confined to painting.

The most common means of popularizing art and cultivat

ing a general taste is by galleries or museums. But even in Europe these have been only quite recently established. Before 1780 there were only three, those of Dresden, Florence, and Amsterdam. As early as the fourteenth century associations of painters had been formed, like that of Florence, A. D. 1350, which was the origin of the present Academy of Fine Arts of that city. But this institution did not possess a gallery until 1784. Indeed, public galleries were not in vogue until long after art itself had degenerated into that impotency and insipidity which preceded its revival in the present century. True, there were noble and royal collections like the Pitti, Borghese, Modena, etc. To these, however, the public had only partial access. But as the churches and public buildings of that period still retained altar-pieces and other important paintings in those positions for which they were originally designed, the people did not miss as much as they otherwise would have done the less important easel pictures of the same masters, in the private collections of their rulers. Later, however, on the suppression of many convents and churches, places of deposit had to be provided for the works of art taken from them. Many of these fell into the hands of individuals, or became the prey of speculators. To prevent their total loss to the public, the several governments promptly instituted galleries, into which were gradually gathered all works of art belonging to them, or which had been declared the property of the state. In this way masterpieces which for centuries had been lost to the public eye, or half forgotten in rarely explored apartments of princely residences, were brought out from their obscurity, and restored to their legitimate function of popular enjoyment and instruction. Yet even in the best of these institutions there was no special order or system, and they had little to recommend them beside the indifferent opportunity they gave to those disposed to study art.

The present Museum of the Louvre is composed of numerous galleries of objects of art and antiquity, embracing the entire range of civilization, founded and conserved on a scale of imperial liberality and magnificence. As the visitor wanders through its long ranges of halls, overflowing with