ecstasy, transfixes us with awe and rap

ture.

But a work may belong to a great department of art without being in itself a successful example of it-as an animal may belong to an exalted species without being an exalted individual manifestation of that species-or, as Overbeck's paintings, for a more appropriate instance, may aim nobly at the highest range of Christian art, but not reach it perfectly. For to this there is required a combination of excellences, or that union of spiritual, intellectual, and executive endowment, which enables the artist, who is inspired by noble sympathies, to work them out with the broadest wisdom, of both the rational and imaginative functions of the intellect, and with consummate manipulation, or mastery of material elements. Consulting any acknowledged master-piece of the world-whether a poem, or a musical composition, as well as a painting— we shall see that feeling, thought, and skill, are blended in it, so that while it touches the unsounded depths of the heart, and stimulates the loftiest energies of the intellect, it also ravishes the eye or ear with delight. The sum of the qualities, necessary to the greatest art, therefore, as Mr. Ruskin well says, is simply the sum of all the best powers of man:-"For. as the choice of the high subject involves all the conditions of right moral choice, as the love of beauty involves all the conditions of right admiration, as the grasp of truth involves all strength of sense and evenness of judgment, and as the poetical power involves all swiftness of invention, and accuracy of historical memory, the sum of all these powers is the sum of the human soul.”

Enough! perhaps the reader will exclaim with Rasselas-"you have convinced me that no man can be a poet!" Not the greatest, but still great; for the good Providence, which has scattered along the line of six thousand years only as many of the primal stars as you may count on your fingers, reserving to them the peerless dignity of perfection, to show that the highest powers are not absolutely incommunicable as a single possession-he has yet, dividing his gifts, distributed them with a free and benignant hand. some he has given, in grander measures, love, and to some, wisdom; to some, power-to some, the heavenly vision,

To

which looks with eyes undimmed upon the transfigured glories-and to others, the swift sweeping wings, which fan away the dust of the centuries, or come and go from world to world, like flashing sunbeams-and to others, again, the forging hand, which wrests the secrets of nature, and dissolves its rugged rocks into gems; but to all of us he has also given, if we but use his gifts with humble heart and diligent will, the power to appreciate these, to repeat, if we please, in gentler echoes, the thunders of their voices-to build our châlets and flower-gardens on the sides of their Alps; or, what is better, to catch with our own ears, as we may from our inland homes, some sound of distant seas, "rolling evermore;" and to behold with our eyes some downward sparkle of the ineffable lustre.

A right apprehension of true greatness in art, involves an inquiry into the much-debated question, as to the true ideal of art. Accordingly, our author expends a great deal of characteristic energy on the determination of this all-important point. In order to arrive at the true ideal of art, however, he first propounds his true idea of life: namely, "that the proper business of men in this world is, first, to know themselves and the existing state of the things they have to do with; second, to be happy in themselves and the existing state of things; and, third, to mend themselves and the existing state of things, as far as either is marred and mendable." If anybody is not disposed to this main business, it is because he fears disagreeable facts, and shrinks from self-examination, acquiring, gradually, an instinctive terror of truth and a love of glossy and decorative lies; or, because of a general readiness to take delight in things past, future, far off, or somewhere else, rather than in things now, near, and here, thus begetting a satisfaction in mere imagination, or in things as they are not. Now, nearly all artistic striving after the ideal is only a branch of this base habit-the abuse of the imagination in allowing it to find its whole delight in the impossible and the untrue; while the faithful pursuit of the ideal, is an honest use of the imagination, giving full power and presence to the possible

and true.

The uses of the imagination are, first and noblest, to enable us to bring

sensibly to our sight the things recorded of the invisible world; then, secondarily, to traverse the scenes of actual history, making them real once more; then, to invest the main incidents of life with happy associations, in order to lighten present ills, and summon back past goods; as, also, to give mental truth some visible type in allegory, simile, or personification; and, finally, when the mind is utterly outwearied, to refresh it with such innocent play as shall be in harmony with the suggestive voices of natural things, permitting it to possess living companionship instead of silent beauty, and create for itself fairies in the green and naiads in the wave. *On the other hand, the abuses of the imagination consist either in creating for mere pleasure, false images, when we ought to create true ones, or in turning what was intended for the mere refreshment of the heart into its daily food, and changing the innocent pastime of an hour into the guilty occupation of a life. As examples of the first abuse, Mr. Ruskin, in a most masterly review of it, cites that religious art, (administering a rebuke to one of Raphael's customs in the course of it), which asserted the most fulsome and outrageous lies of the simple facts of Scripture, thereby deadening their import to the souls of men; while of the second abuse, he cites the profane art chiefly after the sixteenth century, which, seeking beauty first, and truth secondarily, soon lost sight of all real beauty, as well as all real truth, and sunk into a mesh of disgraceful sensualism.

Again: as to the true idealism, it has taken three principal forms-the purist, the naturalist, and the grotesque-all permissible, and all admirable within their limits, but the best of them, the naturalist. The things about us, he says, contain good and evil promiscuously, and some men choosing the good alone, they are called purists; and some taking both together, are called naturalists; while others have a tendency to the evil alone, and hence become grotesque. The purest ideal, exhibited by Angelico and many painters of the thirteenth century, results from

* Page 47.

the unwillingness of men of holy and tender dispositions to grapple with the definite evils of life, and is apt to degenerate into a weak and childish form of art. The grotesque ideal arises from a healthful but irrational play of imagination in times of rest, or from the irregular contemplation of terrible things, or from the confusion of the imagination by the presence of truths which it cannot wholly grasp, but it must be held with a firm hand to prevent its running into demonology and wickedness; while the central ideal, the ideal of ideals, as we may say, is that which, accepting both good and evil, accepting all weaknesses, faults, and wrongnesses, harmonizes them into a noble whole, in which the imperfections of the parts become not only harmless, but essential, while, whatever is good in each part is completely displayed. This has been the ideal of all the really greatest masters of the world. On this principle, Homer, Dante, Tintoret, Shakespeare, and Turner worked. And under the influence of this ideal alone, will modern art, if it is ever destined to achieve the most glorious triumph, fulfill its mission.

We should like to extract largely from this part of the book, of which we have given only the baldest abstract, to evince our admiration of much of it, and we should like to criticize largely, to tell in what respects we disagree; but as more interesting topics are at hand, we have only space to utter a word on one or two points. In the midst of that medley of fine things which Mr. Ruskin says, we do not perceive that he strikes the key-note to a proper exhibition of the ideal. His distinctions between the purist, naturalist, and grotesque ideal, carry a certain force with them, and are beautifully elaborated; but they are not philosophic distinctions, because they are not founded on any real relations of contrast. They are simply arbitrary divisions. Purism, as he interprets it, seeking to escape the definite evils of the world, is a weakness, false to the essential conditions of human life, and consequently, as he seems to admit, no true ideal. His grotesquism, again, is made to em

as

brace quite too much. Our blessed little friends, the fairies and elves, Titania and Oberon, and even the spiteful Kobolds, spring from no affinity for evil, and are romantic, rather than grotesque creations; while the art which arises from truths which confuse and baffle the imagination, is simply symbolic or allegorical, or, if more than that, sublime. Mr. Ruskin, however, is unquestionably right in regarding the naturalistic ideal as the true ideal; "naturalistic, because studied from nature, and ideal, because mentally arranged in a certain manner;" but, unfortunately, the very point we want to know most about, namely, what this " mentally arranged in a certain manner," means, he covers with a cloud of talk on "inspiration," "instinct," "imaginative vision," and what not, misty as any German philosophy* that we have lately read. This taking refuge in "inspiration," and the like, after the exceedingly positive statement of Mr. Ruskin, that the laws of art were as plain as the affinities of chemistry, strikes us with as much disappointment as surprise. After being led on through a hundred pages by an expectation that, at last, a great light was to be shed upon the mysterious realm of artistic creation, to find it only a will-o'-the-wisp, rather piques one into some resentment against the guide. "The great man knows nothing about rules," says Mr. Ruskin; "the rules of art cannot be taught." "They are instinctively seen;" they are Godgiven;" all which may be true, and is; but then, how is it that the laws of art may be "learned by labor," and demonstrated, as Faraday demonstrates gases? We cannot but believe, if Mr. Ruskin had studied that philosophy of which

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he cherishes so violent a rabies, that he would have been enabled to write more clearly and consecutively of this "mental arrangement," which is the essential point of his whole inquiry. We cannot but believe, also, that Hegel, for instance, in his profound analysis of the development of art, through its several forms of symbolic, classic, and romantic art, in spite of the overlying metaphysics, easily separable, in what is offensive in them, from the genuine substance of the thought, has cast a great deal of light upon the proper sense of the ideal. At any rate, we know that nearly all that is valuable in Mr. Ruskin's own speculations was anticipated for us in that writer, with much that Mr. Ruskin does not reach, presented with a comprehensiveness of view, and a freedom from petty partialities, which it would materially assist Mr. Ruskin to cultivate. We do not mean to say, by this, that we cept entirely Hegel's æsthetic theories, which have the defects incident to his general scheme of philosophy; but what we wish to commend is, their admirable method, the profound significance of certain parts, and that elevation and breadth of view which generalizes, not from any single form, or age, or manifestation of art, but from a calm survey of the whole field of artistic effort.

point.

ac

But we cannot dwell on this

The most labored, novel, and altogether characteristic part of this work is, a review of ancient, mediæval, and modern landscape--full of eloquent writing and keen criticism-illustrated by effective drawings, but painfully diffuse, and vitiated by superficial learning as well as superficial philosophy. It must be confessed, in the outset, how

ever, that in the execution of the matter Mr. Ruskin had before him a somewhat embarrassing problem-embarrassing, not so much in itself, as in his position towards it. He had already, in numerous works, exhausted the vocabulary of his contempt for modern art, and the modern mind generally. It was base, faithless, mechanical, and altogether given over to the service of the flesh and the devil. At the same time, he had undertaken the championship of Mr. Turner, as the greatest landscape painter of all the world. How to reconcile the two, then, without confessing the inferiority of landscape, as a form of art, or the insignificance of his pet

"the mighty spirit," as he is calledin glorifying whom he had spent so much labor, was the perplexity. If

he admitted the greatness of landscape art, he admitted the greatness of the moderns, inasmuch as they are incontestibly superior to all their predecessors in this respect; while, if he denied the greatness of landscape, he must dismiss his favorite to a subaltern place, and the world would naturally inquire, Why all this fuss about nothing and nobody? Nor does Mr. Ruskin extricate himself from his difficulties, but plunges, as if he were not aware of them, into more hopeless confusion. After some doubts, he confesses that landscape is "noble and useful," and assigns reasons for the opinion, which seem to us quite inadequate. He admits, too, the wonderful devotion of the moderns to the study and representation of his favorite "nature," which, in itself, he regards as an advance upon the ancient or mediæval status; and yet he tries to explain it away, as far as he can-partly on the ground that our seeming love of nature is " pathetic fallacy," arising from a weak and morbid imputation of our own feelings to nature; and, partly, on the ground that we have so emptied nature of all divinity, as to approach her with reckless irreverence and freedom-tearing her very bowels out with our prying mechanical sciences, and slavering and daubing the very face of her august countenance with our sentimental poetry and paint.

Let us state the whole case. The historians, especially of literature, have remarked a difference in the modes with which nature is contemplated by the

ancient, the medieval, and the modern mind. Schiller, in one of his works, expresses a surprise that the Greeksliving in a genial climate, amid the most picturesque scenery, with all their susceptibility to beauty-should nowhere express, in their poetic writings, a sympathy with external nature. They often give faithful descriptions of it; but their hearts have no more share in their words, than if they were treating of a garment, or a suit of armor. Nature has no charm for them, to which they cling with plaintive passion. Gervinus, in his History of German Literature, indulges in a similar strain of thought in regard to the Minnesingers and popular poets of the middle ages. They evince some feeling for nature, but have left no independent delineation of itno loving, tender, self-surrendering delight in it-nothing more than might be involved in it as an accessory to their love-songs, or their chivalric narratives. How different our modern poetic compositions, which fairly welter in sunsets, and flower-beds, and dews, and streams, and mossy dells! Our habitual thought is crystalized into the forms and suffused with the colors of the physical world.

Mr. Ruskin has adopted these hints, and undertaken an elaborate analysis of the differences indicated. Making Homer, Dante, and Sir Walter Scott, respectively, the types of the ancient, the medieval, and modern ages, he deduces the characteristic feeling of each for landscape. His results, stated in a few words, are these: (1) With the Greeks there was no sympathy with nature, as such; only a straight-forward recognition of it as a more or less agreeable fact; no sense of what we call the picturesque; an interest, mainly, in its available and useful properties; in the ploughed field, which gave him cornin the trellised vine, which gave him wine-in the nourishing rains, and in the meadows, good for feeding oxen and sheep. Mountains he rather detested, as he did all weeds and wildnesses. But he cherished a keen delight in human beauty, and a kind, familiar reverence for the deities who resided within the various natural elements. (2) With the medievals, there was a more sentimental contemplation of nature-more undisturbed companionship with wild nature-a love of the sense of divine

32

presence in it-consequently a fallacious animation of it-with apprehension of demoniacal agency--but a continued delight in human beauty, even its dresses and decorations, and particularly in the beauty of woman. Their landscape has a high sentiment of nature; but is often feeble and inaccurate, and exhibits curious traces of terror, superstition, piety, and rigid formalism. (3) With the moderns, we find an intense sentimental love of nature--particularly of clouds and mists-indicative of their fickleness and obscurity; delight in mountains, with no sense of their solemnity; and wild scenery, characteristic of an unbridled fondness for liberty; interest in science, but no sense of human beauty, no relish for costume, an utter want of faith in any divine presence in nature, insensibility to the sacredness of color, extreme despondency of mind, and an eagerness to run away from the dreariness of the present, taking shelter in fictitious romances of the past. “A red Indian, or Otaheitan savage," says Mr. Ruskin, "has more sense of a Divine Existence round him, or government over him, than the plurality of refined Londoners or Parisians.' · All, nearly, of the powerful men of this age, are unbelievers; the best of them in doubt and misery-the worst in reckless defiance; the plurality, in plodding hesitation, doing, as well as they can, what practical work lies ready to their hands. Most of our scientific men are in the last class; our popular authors set themselves definitely against all religious form, pleading for simple truth and benevolence (Dickens and Thackeray), or give themselves up to bitter and fruitless statement of facts (De Balzac), or surface-painting (Scott), or careless blasphemy, sad or smiling (Byron, Beranger). Our earnest poets and deepest thinkers, are doubtful or indignant (Tennyson, Carlyle); one or two anchored, indeed, but anxious or weeping (Wordsworth, Mrs. Browning); and, of these two, the first is not so sure of his anchor, but that, now and then, it drags with him, even to make him cry out

A

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-Great God! I had rather be suckled in a creed outworn, pagan, So might I, standing on this pleasant lee, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn."

The only exceptions, according to Mr.

Ruskin, are Turner and the pre-Raphaelites!

This is no pleasant picture for us, but is, luckily, surcharged. No one can doubt, that notable differences exist between different nations in respect to their feeling for nature. Humboldt, in the second volume of the Cosmos, has discussed the whole subject, with his usual discrimination, and conceives that those differences can only be accounted for as the complex result of the influences of race-of the configuration of the soil-of climate-of government, and of religious faith. He concedes the comparative insensibility of the Greeks and Romans, but claims a high degree of true feeling for nature for the Indian races, the Persians, the Arabs, some of the early Christian Fathers, and for nearly all the moderns since the time of Columbus, including that noble mariner. His studies are more varied, and, we think, more reliable, than those of Mr. Ruskin, who has been led into some imperfect views by the guides to whom he intrusted the inquiry. Neither Homer nor Sir Walter Scott are proper types of the periods they are chosen to represent, though Dante may be. They were only epic, or narrative poets, who deal with nature only as the accessory, or back-ground of their pictures. They do not address her at first hand. Ho. mer was, it is true, a "Greek of the Greeks," but he chanced to live some five hundred years before the Greek mind attained any real artistic development. Had he consulted the minor poets, Simonides, Bion, and Moschus, Meleager, Pindar, and Theocritus, ho would have found innumerable evidences that the Greeks cared much more for nature than the corn and wine she brought them-of a sincere admiration of her beauty-and instances even of the "pathetic fallacy." Casting our eyes over the dramatists, even while reading Mr. Ruskin's book, they fell instantly upon several bits of landscape-painting, as fine as one would care to bless his eyes with. Yet, it must be confessed, that the main interest of the Greeks was in their own humanity.

Nor is Dante precisely the poet that, on first thoughts, we should have selected for the illustration of the mediaval feeling of landscape. He was the master of his age, and his poem was a mirror of the Italy of that age, imaging its principal personages and events,