in many parts of the country. The one great characteristic of all clever buildings is this, - good adaptation of a wellchosen model.

The power of mind and the training required to produce even a clever work of art, on a large scale, are considerable. To model and cause to be cut a statue of life-size that shall not at once repel and seem absurd, to paint a picture twelve feet long that shall be impressive, to design a building covering eight thousand square feet which shall be well adapted to its purpose and not offensively ugly,—all these are works of difficulty, as is sufficiently shown to any one who has not tried them, by the frequent failures to achieve these results by men of supposed ability. But the difficulty of achieving a result is not the measure of its value. A clever work of art has generally no value except as a specimen of cleverness, or as a partial test of the artist's power, no value, therefore, except to the author. Moreover, a popular and admired work of art has power as an educational medium. If it does not educate aright, it will educate wrongly, it will not remain without influence. If the huge canvas fails to instruct, to elevate, to sanctify, it confuses, it lowers, it degrades.

The importance of art is great as a help to education, because it addresses and can influence some of the noblest faculties of the soul, not to be reached, or less easily to be reached, by other means. Once the principal means of educating the mass of the people, painting and sculpture retain the power to educate, and can be made to address the uninstructed or the highly cultivated. Now we in America cannot afford to throw away any means of educating ourselves and our fellow-countrymen, cannot afford to let escape us any means to that end within our reach. We have undertaken a task which we may well contemplate with grave anxiety, for its successful accomplishment will only be possible to a wise and virtuous and considerate nation, working in the fear of God and with His aid. We have undertaken to make of this disordered country, full of jarring interests, a homogeneous and organized and peaceful nation, and to bring this about through the dangerous instrumentality of universal equal suffrage. Had we not better educate our people? When some object to universal suffrage,

and there are thoughtful Americans who do so, what is the only defence we can put in? This, that the more the people. are educated, the safer it becomes, and that it in itself tends to educate the people. Good; but let every means in our power be employed to educate the hearts, the feelings, the senses. even, as well as the minds of men. Women will exercise some influence over our future. Can women be rightly edueated without the influence of those arts that have to do with beauty? Not so. We need the fine arts, all the fine arts. A change cannot come too soon in our national mind on this subject.

We believe that a change is possible, is at hand. Signs of change are visible; and though they are faint, they are not. to be mistaken. The visitors to galleries of art have gained some consciousness of a difference between good and bad art, or at least have learned that there is such a difference, and that it is not safe to praise a friend's picture without looking at it, or a large picture because it is large. And the number of visitors daily increases, the pictures attract more attention. But the most marked evidence of the change is in the tone of criticism. The first stage that of indiscriminate praise — has, indeed, passed. The second stage, that of "slashing" critieism, is not yet passed; but this form of error is not powerful or popular, and has only a precarious existence. A little very good criticism has been printed, and some intelligent, if not very original, essays on general subjects connected with the fine arts. And the journalists have learned that they must discuss the arts. The daily newspapers surrender more and more every year of the space of their crowded columns to the record of art matters at home and abroad. Weekly and monthly journals pay for and print discussions of art theories and art practice of a kind hitherto unknown. Journals entirely devoted to the fine arts have been established, and have commanded, if not pecuniary success, at least notice and respect.

We cannot doubt that this change is radical, and the new dispensation to be permanent. The change here follows, at some years' distance, and is partly caused by a similar change in the European mind; and it is contemporaneous with a firm

establishing of these beautiful arts in Europe. It is accompanied by a sudden improvement in the general character and quality of the works of art produced here. And our national character, we are well assured, is exalted enough for a true love of art, as well as of literature, of liberty, or of law.

There is abundant reason to believe that the fine arts have before them a splendid future in America, -a future of results, perhaps, in many respects, different from results elsewhere attained, but not different because inferior. It is not only because we long for this consummation that we also hope for it. We sliare the faith of our countrymen in the future of our country, a future that includes all greatness that can be a nation's lot.

It is not faith that the Americans lack. They have proved their faith by their works. It is clear that they have the most invincible confidence in their country and institutions, and an assured belief that Divine guardianship is vouchsafed to them. In the minds of those Europeans even who are most friendly to us and hopeful of our future, our institutions and our national life are still but experimental. Their strength may have been proved of late, but not their beneficence. It is little to say that the Americans have no such thought as this. They have ample faith, faith not in the perpetuity only of the nation and government, but in the worth of the nation and the good influence of the government. It would be small source of comfort to any one to have helped to save his country, were he doubtful of the value of what he had saved.

If the American people had been only a little less confident of the entire beneficence of their institutions, they would have sometimes hesitated when decision was needed, and faltered in the dangerous and doubtful path. For if any good thing, resulting from any political or social condition whatever, were evidently not to result from the political and social condition. in which we are placed, the trust of the people in their institutions would be but vain confidence, and could not endure.

Three years ago, when the fortune of war was against the national cause, when the failure of our efforts, feared at home, was confidently expected abroad, a great thinker, watching us from Europe, and hearing around him the parrot cry of "fail

ure of republican institutions," thus spoke out the truth, as he understood it: "It is not republicanism that has failed now in America. . . . . Lust of wealth and trust in it, vulgar faith in magnitude and multitude instead of nobleness, besides that faith natural to backwoodsmen, 'lucum ligna,' perpetual selfcontemplation issuing in passionate vanity, total ignorance of all the finer and higher arts and of all that they teach and bestow, and the discontent of energetic minds unoccupied, frantic with hope of uncomprehended change and progress they know not whither, - these are the things that have failed now in America; and yet not altogether failed; it is not collapse, but collision, the greatest railroad accident on record, with fire caught from the furnaces, and Catilines quenching 'non aqua sed ruina.""

Not the whole truth? Surely not. Hasty? Yes, unjust as well: but unjust only because hasty and not the whole truth, not because essentially false. It will not be well for the most ardent lover of his country to deny that a very few years ago all the ill weeds which Mr. Ruskin enumerates were flourishing. It is God's mercy that the fire of war has burned up some of them. Let nobody suppose that there was no sin in the land but slavery, and nobody to blame for the war but selfish and ambitious slaveholders.

Out of the war, that unparalleled struggle that once seemed about to be the nation's last, must come every good thing that a nation needs, or the people will have falsified their hopes and failed to secure the due reward of their sufferings and labors. The future must be not only prosperous and peaceful, but truly great. The nation must be righteous as well as powerful, and enlightened as well as prosperous. The confidence of the people in their institutions, and their love of them, can only be justified by a new life for the nation, healthy and pure, by a government firm and liberal, a policy just and generous, a culture truly refined, an intellectual training at once broad and deep. There must then be no. "contempt for the finer and higher arts, and for all that they teach and bestow." There must be such regard for them, and such cultivation of them, as will truly enlighten and help.

Into the mooted question, Are free institutions likely to pro

duce good art and the love of it? it is not necessary to go far. The argument a priori is of about equal weight in either scale. The arts are found to be about as likely to prevail and grow great under one form of government as under another. It is easy to show that courts and hierarchies must be, from the nature of things, the most munificent patrons of art. It is as easy to show that the energetic people nursed in democracy must be, from the nature of things, the most earnest workers in art. And the argument from history is not more conclusive. Political institutions of all kinds have been proved compatible with great art. Political institutions of all kinds have been proved compatible with the absence of all art. It is impossible to show that the republicanism, monarchism, or oligarchism of any nation has had a direct and overmastering influence over the arts. Great art grew up with rule of priest and total degradation of people in Egypt. Great art blossomed from the root of a most turbulent and reckless democracy in Athens. Great art under an elective sovereignty, in Venice, was joined with popular freedom, extended commerce, and military and naval prowess. Great art existed everywhere throughout Western Europe in the thirteenth century, living and growing greater under the shadow of almost every political institution, crumbling feudalism, new-built kingly absolutism, lingering power of nobles, growing power of sovereigns, self-establishing power of communities, self-aggrandizing power of the Papacy. On the other hand, art was a stranger and an exotic in aristocratic, military, law-giving Rome, in republican Switzerland, among patriarchal Scottish clans; and no form of government kept out the spread of the Renaissance coming from Italy, or could save art from the decadence which followed.

It seems, then, that there is nothing in forms of government alone to lead us to conclude, in any given case, that art will or will not flourish. The fate of the arts is in other things than these, is in the freedom of thought, "accessibility to ideas," willingness to trust to ideas, gravity, chastity, patience of a people. Most foolish, then, and inconsequent is the reiterated assertion that republicanism will have an unhealthy influence upon the fine arts, and equally unwise the assertion that "free institutions secure the greatness of the fine arts." We