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coast, of evergreen trees in winter. If any person has ever studied carefully the look of the running water on the right in the "Niagara," and compared it with the fact in nature, he will ever thereafter look with new interest and knowledge at painted representation of running water. Moreover, the unusual or inaccessible truths of nature should be told in an unmistakable way. If there were several pictures of a glacier, for instance, all easily to be seen, the people would know something about the way truly to represent a glacier in oil painting; then, if any pretender should exhibit a false or inadequate representation of the same thing, his work would be promptly characterized as it deserved, if not by the first-comer, by the better instructed or more observing second-comer; at all events, with authority, and once for all. Observe that this established language of art already exists in sculpture, to a certain extent. It is not easy for a statue of false anatomical proportion to face European critics, who have the Torso of the Belvedere and the Elgin Theseus, or the Venus of Milo and the Townley Muse to refer to. The language of the architect is in lines and shadows and carved forms of nature conventionalized into ornamental propriety. What would become of all the just criticism upon modern architecture, if the great example of what has gone before did not exist to show us what is possible and what is desirable? But there is abundant uncertainty how far the people in our time and our land can be brought toward adequate judgment of art. Nothing is certain but this, that the artists must speak a language which the people can be made to understand, and must help them to understand it.

But the artists must deal with things cared for by the people, with real things. We have said that this includes ideas as well as visible entities. There is every difference between living, real ideas, and borrowed ones. There is every difference between the work of the imagination and sickly fancies born of imperfect education and shallow reading. It is not its profundity or simplicity that will make an idea useful and popular, but its truth, its reality, its importance. In religious art, for instance, any picture must be limited in its influence to those who think in a certain way of religious matters. Hol

man Hunt's great religious picture, "The Light of the World," fails to address those who reject certain long-held dogmas of the Christian faith. And the picture is the worse for that fact, but remains so powerful with those it reaches as to deserve its high rank as a work of ideal art.

Art is like poetry, not like philosophy; the best ideas in art are creations of the imagination, not evolutions of the intellect. Now this word "imagination" has been terribly misused by writers and talkers about art, until timid people are afraid of it; and to call a work of art imaginative is almost equivalent to calling it slovenly, inadequate, untrue to nature. But the imagination is simply the clearest mental vision possible to man; it is the faculty of seeing things not to be seen by the eye. And the creation is not really of the imagination, unless distinct and clear and as easily described as if seen with the bodily eye. The highest art is that which embodies the visions of imagination; this is ideal art, this only great art. But this can only be produced by a man of rare gifts. Now, as it would be foolish for a writer to strive for imaginative power and lie awake with anxiety lest he should not reach imaginative power at last, inasmuch as he cannot gain this thing by trying for it, -so it is foolish for a painter even to inquire of himself whether he have imagination or not. His business as a painter is to see and describe. If he have no sight but that of the body, he will represent visible things and be useful; if his mind also sees, he will record its visions and be immortal. In either case he is safe and well employed. But he is ruined if, having no mental vision, he pretends to have, pretends to himself to have; that is, if he tries to represent things he has not seen. The painter and all his fellow-artists- the archi tect, the stone-carver, the modeller, the designer for manufactures-are workmen who are capable of doing good work only so far as they do that which they heartily believe in and thor oughly understand and see the use of. Their duty is to do in the most thorough way possible all the work they undertake, and not to repine that it is not of a higher order, nor claim too confidently the right to undertake more elaborate and difficult work than that which they have done.

In every kind of art, truth to nature is an imperative law.

And under this law only can the imagination freely do its work, adding to carefulness power, to watchfulness truer insight, to love inspiration, to truth the spirit of prophecy. Truth-telling about nature-external nature and internal, the creation, in short-is the great end and aim of art. Imaginative art is the greatest art, because telling the most important truths. Imagination is the great power in art, because it is the great truth-observing and truth-telling faculty. For if art is good when it is truthful, it is great only when it is truthful about important things.

We have spoken more of landscape-painting than of other kinds of painting or other departments of art; but the conditions are not different in these. Historical art, for instance, whether painting or sculpture, is good when the artist is at home in, and strongly impressed by, the scenes he delineates ; the truest and therefore the most valuable historical art being the record of what the artist sees and knows in his own time, events that happen around him, events of which he makes part. Religious art is good when the artist is religious, and is upheld in his work by a religious community. Ideal art is good when the artist has ideas of importance enough to be worth recording. Copying external nature is good when the artist has eyes that can truly see, and modesty and patience enough to help him record what he sees.

We have seen that, for a good national art, two things are necessary, artists of ability and a public of intelligence. Now, since the latter is necessary as well as the former, it is evident that the critical faculty as well as the creative faculty is necessary for the abundant production of good art. Indeed, it seems as if we had but stated the same thing in two forms of words. But take the second form for the present, the critical faculty is necessary as well as the creative faculty for the abundant production of good art.

Perhaps the best definition we have of the duty of the critical faculty is Mr. Arnold's,-"to see the object as in itself it really is." For judgment on this work or that work is nothing that does not help those who desire to see correctly. Criticism must help the people to see aright. The critic must strive himself to see things as they are, and strive to make his

readers or hearers see things as they are. But if this be the duty of the critical faculty, it is evident that it is the duty of this faculty alike in the people and in the artists. In concluding, then, it is necessary to define this duty of the critical faculty.

The duty of the public is one simple and pleasant enough, if somewhat strange and therefore difficult. It is to learn to love art and to judge of art. It is to try to take an interest in art for its own sake; to notice beauty of form and color whenever seen, and because the forms and colors of nature are nearly always beautiful; to notice all external nature, and grow familiar with the aspect of it; to encourage, and certainly not to suppress, as at the bidding of fashion we all do, the natural desire to have beautiful things, and none but beautiful things, in daily use; to learn to understand sentiment when expressed in the artist's language,- form and color, as well as they already love it in the poet's language, measured words; to sternly reject and rebuke all falsehood, affectation, and pretence. It is, further, to learn to judge calmly of greatness and smallness; to discriminate between different degrees of merit; to determine and adopt a positive standard of right; to discourage all art not approaching this standard, at least in intention and tendency.

The duty of the artists in respect to their critical powers is mainly this, to learn to judge aright of their own work and their fellows'. It is little to say that they must be devoid of jealousy and pride. There must be judgment as well as kindness, and quickness to perceive as well as willingness to perceive. This power is needed by all workmen, because it enables them to take pleasure in their work for its own sake, quite independent of its success in pleasing others, and therefore helps. them to go quietly on perfecting their work, though assailed by unmerited disapprobation from without; also because it enables them to get good from the work of their neighbors,— either warning or guidance. An artist should always be able, either without help or with such help as may be easily procured from intimate friends whom he entirely trusts, to see whether his work of to-day is better or worse than what he has done before, and wherein better or worse; to see whether

a printed or spoken criticism on work of his is true, and how far it is true; to see if his brother-artist has done better than he, and wherein, and whether he can gain anything by study of this brother-artist's work. The more easily and completely he can judge himself and others in this way, the better for his art and for the world.

If these conditions be fulfilled by the artist and by the public, the production of good, if not of great, works of art will be assured.

ART. II. Climatology of the United States. By LORIN BLODGET. Philadelphia. 1857. 8vo.

THE Consideration of the question, "What caused the Secession of the South?" important as it was, during the prosecution of the war, in determining the policy of the Administration, is of still greater importance, now that the war is ended, in its bearings upon the problem of reconstruction. For it is sufficiently obvious that a correct solution of this problem, such a solution as will secure us from a repetition of the Southern Rebellion, by removing or neutralizing the influences which gave it birth, is only possible on the condition of a thorough comprehension of the nature of those influences. In the discussion to which this well-appreciated necessity has given rise, many theories have been educed both at home and abroad, and each has had its earnest supporters; and yet all of these theories seem doubly defective, either as the basis of a scheme of reconstruction or as the foundation of hopes for the future. First, in that they assign secondary causes, while behind them lies something which explains their own presence, and which, having produced them in the past, will probably exert a like effect in the future. Second, in that a great class of potent influences are totally neglected, namely, those effects of geographical situation which may be embraced in the term "climatic influences." The power of these influences in diversifying men. and nations is now generally acknowledged; and when we consider the variety of climate in the United States, - greater,

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