16 HOW MIND IS INSPIRED. other collects the foulest. Thus it is that we are inspired. Our minds receive from the unseen a spiritual nutriment, which strengthens them in the direction they would grow. With some individuals, cultivation regulates its pace; thought comes orderly, and is systematically progressive. These are our sages and men of science. With others, it springs up in strange exuberance, flashing tropical colors from way-side seeds, burning, scintillating, and startling by its sudden and unequal fires; great truths amid rank weeds; a wilderness of chaotic beauty and noble forms. Out of such inspiration speaks the artist, poet, and seer. While art should partake of the character of inspiration, free, earnest, and high-toned, embodying the feeling which gives it birth, its forms should exhibit a scientific correctness in every particular, and, as a unity, be expressive of the general principle at its centre of being. In this manner feeling and reason are reconciled, and a complete and harmonious whole is obtained. In the degree that this union obtains in art its works become efficacious, because embodying, under the garb of beauty, the most of truth. CHAPTER IV. Art addresses every Mind. - - Nature one Form of God's Teaching, Art another. Nature is God's Art.- Art as the Divine Creative Faculty bestowed on Man. - Few Artists, many Critics. Art has a Message to every Soul. - What is it? - Why Art-Feeling is dormant in America. - Its Effects upon first awakening in the Individual. — Effect of Nature upon Susceptible Temperaments. - The Way to approach True Art. - A Mistake. A Confession. -A Request. - RT being so important an element in education, it must necessarily exercise a cor responding influence over a mind in contact with it. The natural world presents one form of divine teaching, and art another. Both, we repeat, are the incarnation of spirit in form. The first is the direct sculpture, painting, music, and poetry of God himself; the second is the material given to man, with the power of communicating, through the agency of his hands, suggestions of his own nature, the universe, and their joint Creator. By the exercise of this indirect creative faculty the artist partakes of a divine function, insomuch as Divinity delegates to him the infinite talent by which he represents the creative principle, and, by its stimulus, is trained for a loftier being. 18 GREAT ARTISTS RARE. But few men possess the ability to communicate manually the evidence of a divine embassy. All, however, have more or less discerning power, and hence are correspondingly able to receive, and sit in judgment upon, its credentials. Great artists are, of consequence, rare, while competent critics are not infrequent. As artfeeling is innate in all men, though widely differing in degree, art must have a message for every one brought within its reach. What has been that message to you? to us? The first picture that we can recall was a "Coronation of Napoleon I.," which we saw when eight years of age. Our first impression was of wonder how a flat surface could be made to present such an appearance of projected figures, and the impulse was to approach the canvas to detect the mechanical means by which it was produced. When satisfied that it was veritable painting, the story absorbed our attention, and we took our first vivid lesson in history. In America the art-feeling necessarily remains in a great degree dormant, from lack of its objects. Hence, when Americans are first introduced into the world of art of Europe, their feeling being suddenly aroused without the counterpoise of a ripened judgment, they are blinded by excess of light, and manifest their tastes and predilections much after the capricious manner in which children express their wonder and desire upon their earliest entrance into a toy-shop. But their indiscriminate rapture or aversion gradually subsides into an intelligent perception of art-motives, FIRST EXPERIENCE. 19 and an earnest inquisition into its principles; for no people are more eager in the exploration of the unknown, as its horizon bursts upon their vision. Our first great experience was the Louvre gallery. Wandering through its interminable ranges of pictures, or lost in its vast halls of statuary, we became oppressed, confused, uncertain, and feverish; filled with unaccountable likes and dislikes; passing, in a convulsive effort to maintain mental equilibrium, sweeping censures upon whole schools, and eulogizing others as foolishly; hurrying from one object to another with delirious rapidity, as if the whole were a bubble, ready to burst at any moment; until, with a weary, addled brain, but unmoved heart, we gladly escaped into the outer air for breath. Our puny self was crushed by the weight and variety of the intellect incarnated within those walls. With nature on every scale we had long been at home in various quarters of the globe. Her scenes had always brought delight and repose. If new and overwhelming, they indeed crowd emotion into a thrill of joy, or a gush of tearful passion; but it is an excitement that soothes, and leaves the beholder wiser, happier, and better, if there be in him any affinity with the great soul of the universe. Mrs. Browning once told us, that, upon reaching the summit of Mount Saint Gothard, she was constrained, by the force of the mountain gloom and glory, instantly to weep. All persons whose hearts are not made callous by ignorance, vice, or familiarity, are keenly susceptible to the eloquence of nature. 20 MISTAKES OF JUDGMENT. The first interview with true art produces a movement of the soul scarcely less spontaneous and deep, when we abandon ourselves with equal confidence to its influence. But if, in mental pride, we refuse to test its power over our hearts before we have canvassed its claims in the light of an uneducated understanding, confusion and folly are sure to follow. In beginning with art let us walk humbly. Like nature, it primarily addresses itself to the emotions. Set aside criticism, therefore, until we have learned something of ourselves through the language that moves us. To be a critic before we are a scholar is both rash and silly. And, indeed, in learning to judge of art, it is better to seek for beauties and recognize merits before aiming to discover defects and shortcomings. The foundation of art-appreciation must be developed from within. After that comes the time to inquire, analyze, and theorize. We rushed too self-confidently into an unknown sphere, and got well brain-pummelled for our conceit. A series of mistakes gradually led us towards the right road. We have begun to get more correct views of art. They are not its highest or deepest; but they are our highest and deepest of to-day, and, in comparison with earlier ones, wise. We offer them, because there are some minds treading the paths that we have trod, to whom our experience may shorten the way; while to those in advance beseechingly do we cry, Give, give! even as we seek to give! Stoop your flight to ours, even as by these confessions |