Ambitious men are men of action; dreamers are men of thought. The one class are positive beings, injuring or benefiting mankind, according as a pure or selfish motive actuates them: the others are negative beings, injuring none save themselves. Dreamers resemble those little angels, who, according to tradition, were generated every morning among the flowers of Paradise, who warble forth melodious sounds until sunset, and then sink back without regret into nothingness. Ambition's votaries must needs be of a sterner stuff, able and anxious to be the slaves of its illimitable hopes, its indomitable will. For its course is ever onward. The embodiment and the source of brave endeavor, unwearied effort, it rouses the energies of thought and being in their might, it sends them tingling along every nerve of sensation, it concentrates them upon its own object, until opposition is futile, success inevitable.

Painting and Poetry Eompared as Media of Expression.

MAN has been his life-long, looking on a painting, and listening to a poem. We write first of the Painting. He has seen the landscape diversified by hill and dale. He has seen it attired in every garb, which a prodigal munificence could suggest. He has seen it in its spring-time of beauty, when the birds made choral music and the zephyrs danced to their song. He has seen it in its winter-time, when it stretched itself to die and the rush of the wind was its funeral wail. He has seen the rivulet, and watched the quiet play of its waters. IIe has seen the sea when the inspiration of the hurricane troubled it.

He has beheld another

he

From earth he has turned his eyes to heaven. painting from the hands of the same Great Artist. Every disposition of light and shade was there. He would have gazed on the full-orbed glories of the sun, but his eyelid closed his vision. Turning from this excess, has rejoiced in "the mild splendor of the various-vested night." Then he uttered the language of Holy Writ: "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and stars which thou hast ordained; what is man that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man that thou visitest him?"

Were a blind man by the ministration of some superior power to receive his sight, he indeed might appreciate the painting which embellishes

all nature.

But we write now of the Poem. Man has heard it in the wind, the waterfall, the deep-toned thunder, and the singing of the birds. Nature has everywhere her "Æolian harp," sweeter than that which made music to Coleridge and his "pensive Sarah." Were a deaf man to hear it, he indeed might appreciate the poem.

This is the Painting, and this the Poetry of the Great Painter and Poet. As these are imitative of the harmonies in the Divine Mind, so the painting and poetry of the human artist are imitative of nature. He bears off the palm, who holds up the mirror most fitly to reflect the truth. 'Respicere exemplar vitae morumque jubebo

Doctum imitatorem, et veras hinc ducere voces."

It is truth which we worship both in painting and in poetry. The poet seeing it and feeling it, breathes it into a poem. The painter, warm with its inspiration, transfers it to the canvas. It is this imitation of truth, of life, though there be a fiction in the identities, which essentially makes the painter and the poet. They have both been on the Mount, and amid

thunder and lightning have received the law. Men have seen the light of their communion service still shining in their faces, and their ministering robes still rustling with the divine afflatus.

Let us proceed now to the comparison of the two arts as media of expression. Expression may relate to the accuracy of the idea conveyed, or to the effect of the idea on the feelings.

Horace says in his Art of Poetry,

66

Segnius irritant animos demissa per aurem

Quam quae sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus, et quae

Ipse sibi tradit spectator."

This is a general truth. Let a man be present and see a desperado seize a knife and implant in the body of an innocent victim. Let him be absent and receive a truthful narrative of the same from the lines of the poet. In the former instance, he will have both a more accurate idea of the event itself and greater violence done to his sensibilities. This is real life, a thing we have looked upon. It is not thus with painting. It is representation, and is not included within the rule of Horace. The murderer is a mimic murderer, the dead are mimic dead. Thus the difference is great between real and represented existence.

First, let us compare the arts in respect to the accuracy of idea conveyed. We comprehend more clearly local relations and physical proportion from the brush of the painter than from the pen of the poet. Painting triumphs in the apparent, poetry in the symbolical. If a painter represent the human form on canvas, he conveys a better idea of the adaptation of its parts and its physical characteristics than it is possible for the poet. But when he would introduce the physiognomy of a man as an index of the heart, or concisely, the symbolical; he fails and the poet triumphs.

Can a painter adequately represent the human heart by means of the organs of the face? Can he concentrate it in the mould of the head, the expression of the eye, the formation of the lip? The Great Painter himself has not done it; much less can the human artist. Could we even conceive of the entire success of the latter, he would cease to be true to nature. The villain does not always bear the villain's countenance. The murderer does not always bear the cain-mark of his infamy. He may look noble. He may know etiquette. He may regard an elaborate toilet. His voice may be as sweet, as when o'er Laura's bier sad music trembled through Vauclusa's glade." And why should he not be so? Judas kissed his Lord, and Joab while twitching the head of Amasa and asking for his health, was pleased to stab him "in the fifth rib." Circe

66

was fair-haired and a captivating singer, but bristles grew on the followers of "the godlike Ulysses." The syrens were very musical, but there were near them some heaps of dead men's bones. Polyphemus offered the hospitality of his cave to Ulysses for a little of his wine, but he only meant that he would eat his companions first; and as a mark of distinguished respect, Ulysses last. The basilisk had pretty folds, but it would destroy fascinated people of simple minds. Thus the form and expression of the human countenance are uncertain indices of the human heart.

What is the human heart? It may be a temple to the living God, it may be a Pandemonium. Man is an anomalous being. As Lord Brougham said of Robert Hall's face, "the upper part belongs to an angel, the lower to a demon."

Prompted by philanthropy, he is urgent in his assiduities toward the afflicted and the disconsolate. He inhales the noxious effluvia of prisons, that others may breathe the braeing air. He rejects every appliance of ease and comfort, that others may enjoy the reality. This is the angel.

Urged on by an unholy ambition, he will pile "Pelion upon Ossa," to make a stairway to his infernal heaven. He will introduce a pestilence into the air, and throw a plague-spot on the sun. He will adjust the proprieties in a tragedy of murder as he would a matter of common-place. He will wring from the orphan and the widow "the last pale hope that shivered at the heart." Like to the fallen archangel, he will mutter, "Better reign in hell than serve in heaven." This is the demon.

But the poet is fitter to delineate these contrarieties in the human heart. He is gifted with more than ordinary sensibility. This sensibility is necessarily active in his intercourse with his fellow-men, as it is constantly subject to impressions. Thus human conduct is observed closely by him, and from the necessity of his nature he becomes deeply read in the philosophy of human action. He may not, like to the Cassius of Shakspeare, or that great dramatist himself, look "quite through the deeds of men;" but his perception is extraordinarily strong and vivid. His felicity in discovering truth is not confined to the heart of man; but it is extended to whatever investigation the energies of the mind are applied. What has been affirmed of the poet, to a certain extent is applicable to the painter. He has much of the same sensibility to impression, the same insight into character, the same divine frenzy with which to prosecute his embodiments. But the cold laws of his art forbid his triumphs in the symbolical; for the question may recur, Can a painter adequately represent the human heart by means of the organs of the face?

Secondly, let us compare these arts in regard to their effects on the feelings. Here poetry bears the palm alone.

We look on a painting as a curiosity, as a gratification to the sense of sight, rather than as stirring the depths of our feelings. It is not thus with poetry. Painting, in its effects, is like to the experience of one entering a palace, beholding the silken tapestries, the splendid colorings, the marble columns, the rich profusion of golden ornament. It is all beautiful, it excites his curiosity; but it belongs to another, his feelings are cold. Poetry in its effect, is like to the experience of one who realizes upon his entrance that the palace is his, his to enjoy and his to dispose of.

Poetry may delight us, as if by the soft accents of an angel. It may produce a grief which will overflow the laboring heart. It may calm down the asperities of our nature. It may heave the breast for the shrill clarion of war. It may dispose us for an inglorious dalliance with pleasure. It may stimulate us to the performance of noble deeds. It may embolden us to fear no danger. It may make a ghost of our own shadow, and scare us in the very light of the sun.

It may make a stick

of wood, a block, a stone into a demon, shaking his "gory locks at me.” may make men into children, children into men.

It

The human heart is a stringed instrument of exquisite workmanship. The poet knows the location of every string and its legitimate sound. He can play upon it the "manly epic," or the jeremiad, a war-song, or a love-song, a hymn of praise to man, or of praise to God.

Would the Marseilles' Hymn in a painting stir the Frenchman in battle more than the Marseilles' Hymn set to music? Would the midnight villain, who " with ravishing strides towards his design, moves like a ghost," shock the feelings more, if transferred to the canvas of Vandyke, than he does in the Macbeth of Shakspeare? or would the stain of blood on that "little hand," which no water of the earth could wash away? Would the forms of Death and Sin, which Milton with internal vision saw at the gates of hell, derive effect by the aid of the pencil?

The poet is a madman. You cannot cure his head by "three Anticyras." But it is his inspiration which has driven him mad. He foams at the mouth, but he talks oracles. Like to the Sicilian bard he may leap into burning Ætna, to be regarded an immortal God, but he tells the truth. Truth, in a state of sanity of mind, will have influence, but truth, in a state of madness, will have greater influence. We listen with rapt attention to the madman, and are almost disposed to run mad with him.

Thus far we have considered the two arts as exhibited in the same imitation. But the sphere of painting is not co-extensive with poetry. Every subject of a painting may be made into a poem, but the converse is not equally true.