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[** The following paper had been sent as a contribution to this publication

scarcely more than a week before its author, Mr. John Orchard, died. It was

written to commence a series of “Dialogues on Art,” which death has rendered

for ever incomplete: nevertheless, the merits of this commencement are such that

they seemed to warrant its publication as a fragment; and in order that the

chain of argument might be preserved, so far as it goes, uninterrupted, the

dialogue is printed entire in the present number, despite its length. Of the

writer, but little can be said. He was an artist; but ill health, almost amounting

to infirmity—his portion from childhood—rendered him unequal to the bodily

labour inseparable from his profession: and in the course of his short life, whose

youth was scarcely consummated, he exhibited, from time to time, only a very few

small pictures, and these, as regards public recognition, in no way successfully.

In art, however, he gave to the “seeing eye,” token of that ability and earnest-

ness which the “hearing ear” will not fail to recognize in the dialogue now

published; where the vehicle of expression, being more purely intellectual, was

more within his grasp than was the physical and toilsome embodiment of art.

It is possible that a search among the papers he has left, may bring to light a

few other fugitive pieces, which will, in such event, as the Poem succeeding this

Dialogue, be published in these pages.

To the end that the Author's scheme may be, as far as is now possible,

understood and appreciated, we subjoin, in his own words, some explanation of

his further intent, and of the views and feelings which guided him in the

composition of the dialogue:

“I have adopted the form of dialogue for several, to me, cogent reasons;

1st, because it gives the writer the power of exhibiting the question, Art, on all

its sides; 2nd, because the great phases of Art could be represented idio-

syncratically; and, to make this clear, I have named the several speakers ac-

cordingly; 3rd, because dialogue secures the attention; and, that secured, deeper

things strike, and go deeper than otherwise they could be made to; and, 4th and

last, because all my earliest and most delightful pleasures associate themselves

with dialogue,—(the old dramatists, Lucian, Walter Savage Landor, &c.)

“You will find that I have not made one speaker say a thing on purpose for

another to condemn it; but that I make each one utter his wisest in the very

wisest manner he can, or rather, that I can for him.

“The further continuation of this 1st dialogue embraces the question Nature,

and its processes, invention and imitation,—imitation chiefly. Kosmon begins

by showing, in illustration of the truth of Christian's concluding sentences, how

imperfectly all the Ancients, excepting the Hebrews, loved, understood, or felt

Nature, &c. This is not an unimportant portion of Art knowledge.

“I must not forget to say that the last speech of Kosmon will be answered by

Christian when they discourse of imitation. It properly belongs to imitation;

and, under that head, it can be most effectively and perfectly confuted. Somewhat

after this idea, the “verticalism” and “involution” will be shown to be direct

from Nature; the gilding, &c., disposed of on the ground of the old piety using

the most precious materials as the most religious and worthy of them; and hence,

by a very easy and probable transition, they concluded that that which was most

soul-worthy, was also most natural.”]

Kalon. Welcome, my friends:—this day above all others; to-day

is the first day of spring. May it be the herald of a bountiful year,

—not alone in harvests of seeds. Great impulses are moving through

man; swift as the steam-shot shuttle, weaving some mighty pattern,

goes the new birth of mind. As yet, hidden from eyes is the design:

whether it be poetry, or painting, or music, or architecture, or

whether it be a divine harmony of all, no manner of mind can tell;

but that it is mighty, all manners of minds, moved to involuntary

utterance, affirm. The intellect has at last again got to work upon

thought: too long fascinated by matter and prisoned to motive

geometry, genius—wisdom seem once more to have become human,

to have put on man, and to speak with divine simplicity. Kosmon,

Sophon, again welcome! your journey is well-timed; Christian, my

young friend, of whom I have often written to you, this morning

tells me by letter that to-day he will pay me his long-promised visit.

You, I know, must rejoice to meet him: this interchange of knowledge

cannot fail to improve us, both by knocking down and building up:

what is true we shall hold in common; what is false not less in

common detest. The debateable ground, if at last equally debateable

as it was at first, is yet ploughed; and some after-comer may sow it

with seed, and reap therefrom a plentiful harvest.

Sophon. Kalon, you speak wisely. Truth hath many sides like a

diamond with innumerable facets, each one alike brilliant and

piercing. Your information respecting your friend Christian has not

a little interested me, and made me desirous of knowing him.

Kosmon. And I, no less than Sophon, am delighted to hear that

we shall both see and taste your friend.

Sophon. Kalon, by what you just now said, you would seem to

think a dearth of original thought in the world, at any time, was an

evil: perhaps it is not so; nay, perhaps, it is a good! Is not an

interregnum of genius necessary somewhere? A great genius, sun-

like, compels lesser suns to gravitate with and to him; and this is

subversive of originality. Age is as visible in thought as it is in

man. Death is indispensably requisite for a new life. Genius is like

a tree, sheltering and affording support to numberless creepers and

climbers, which latter die and live many times before their protecting

tree does; flourishing even whilst that decays, and thus, lending to

it a greenness not its own; but no new life can come out of that expiring tree; it must die: and it is not until it is dead, and fallen,

and rotted into compost , that another tree can grow there; and many

years will elapse before the new birth can increase and occupy the

room the previous one occupied, and flourish anew with a greenness

all its own. This on one side. On another; genius is essentially

imitative, or rather, as I just now said, gravitative; it gravitates

towards that point peculiarly important at the moment of its exist-

ence; as air, more rarified in some places than in others, causes the

winds to rush towards them as toward a centre: so that if poetry,

painting, or music slumbers, oratory may ravish the world, or

chemistry, or steam-power may seduce and rule, or the sciences sit

enthroned. Thus, nature ever compensates one art with another;

her balance alone is the always just one; for, like her course of the

seasons, she grows, ripens, and lies fallow, only that stronger, larger

and better food may be reared.

Kalon. By your speaking of chemistry, and the mechanical arts

and sciences, as periodically ruling the world along with poetry,

painting, and music,—am I to understand that you deem them powers

intellectually equal, and to require of their respective professors as

mighty, original, and human a genius for their successful practice?

Kosmon. Human genius! why not? Are they not equally

human?—nay, are they not—especially steam-power, chemistry and

the electric telegraph—more—eminently more—useful to man, more

radically civilizers, than music, poetry, painting, sculpture, or

architecture?

Kalon. Stay, Kosmon! whither do you hurry? Between che-

mistry and the mechanical arts and sciences, and between poetry,

painting, and music, there exists the whole totality of genius—of

genius as distinguished from talent and industry. To be useful alone

is not to be great: plus only is plus, and the sum is minus something

and plus in nothing if the most unimaginable particle only be absent.

The fine arts, poetry, painting, sculpture, music, and architecture, as

thought, or idea, Athene-like, are complete, finished, revelations of

wisdom at once. Not so the mechanical arts and sciences: they are

arts of growth; they are shaped and formed gradually, (and that,

more by a blind sort of guessing than by intuition,) and take many

men's lives to win even to one true principle. On all sides they are

the exact opposites of each other; for, in the former, the principles

from the first are mature, and only the manipulation immature; in the

latter, it is the principles that are almost always immature, and the

manipulation as constantly mature. The fine arts are always grounded

upon truth; the mechanical arts and sciences almost always upon

hypothesis; the first are unconfined, infinite, immaterial, impossible of reduction into formulas, or of conversion into machines; the last

are limited, finite, material, can be uttered through formulas, worked

by arithmetic, tabulated and seen in machines.

Sophon. Kosmon, you see that Kalon, true to his nature, prefers

the beautiful and good, to the good without the beautiful; and you,

who love nature, and regard all that she, and what man from her, can

produce, with equal delight,—true to your's,—cannot perceive

wherefore he limits genius to the fine arts. Let me show you why

Kalon's ideas are truer than yours. You say that chemistry, steam-

power, and the electric telegraph, are more radically civilizers than

poetry, painting, or music: but bethink you: what emotions beyond

the common and selfish ones of wonder and fear do the mechanical

arts or sciences excite, or communicate? what pity, or love, or other

holy and unselfish desires and aspirations, do they elicit? Inert of

themselves in all teachable things, they are the agents only whereby

teachable things,—the charities, sympathies and love,—may be more

swiftly and more certainly conveyed and diffused: and beyond

diffusing media the mechanical arts or sciences cannot get; for they

are merely simple facts; nothing more: they cannot induct; for they,

in or of themselves, have no inductive powers, and their office is

confined to that of carrying and spreading abroad the powers which

do induct; which powers make a full, complete, and visible existence

only in the fine arts. In FACT and THOUGHT we have the whole

question of superiority decided. Fact is merely physical record:

Thought is the application of that record to something human.

Without application, the fact is only fact, and nothing more; the

application, thought, then, certainly must be superior to the record,

fact. Also in thought man gets the clearest glimpse he will ever

have of soul, and sees the incorporeal make the nearest approach to

the corporeal that it is possible for it to do here upon earth. And

hence, these noble acts of wisdom are—far—far above the mechanical

arts and sciences, and are properly called fine arts, because their high

and peculiar office is to refine.

Kosmon. But, certainly thought is as much exercised in deduct-

ing from physical facts the sciences and mechanical arts as ever it is

in poetry, painting, or music. The act of inventing print, or of

applying steam, is quite as soul-like as the inventing of a picture,

poem, or statue.

Kalon. Quite. The chemist, poet, engineer, or painter, alike,

think. But the things upon which they exercise their several faculties

are very widely unlike each other; the chemist or engineer cogitates

only the physical; the poet or painter joins to the physical the human,

and investigates soul—scans the world in man added to the world without him—takes in universal creation, its sights, sounds, aspects,

and ideas. Sophon says that the fine arts are thoughts; but I think

I know a more comprehensive word; for they are something more

than thoughts; they are things also; that word is Nature—Nature

fully—thorough nature—the world of creation. All that is in man,

his mysteries of soul, his thoughts and emotions—deep, wise, holy,

loving, touching, and fearful,—or in the world, beautiful, vast,

ponderous, gloomy, and awful, moved with rhythmic harmonious

utterance— that is Poetry. All that is of man—his triumphs, glory,

power, and passions; or of the world—its sunshine and clouds, its

plains, hills or valleys, its wind-swept mountains and snowy Alps,

river and ocean—silent, lonely, severe, and sublime—mocked with

living colours, hue and tone,— that is Painting. Man—heroic man,

his acts, emotions, loves,—aspirative, tender, deep, and calm,—inten-

sified, purified, colourless,—exhibited peculiarly and directly through

his own form; that is sculpture. All the voices of nature—of man—

his bursts of rage, pity, and fear—his cries of joy—his sighs of love;

of the winds and the waters—tumultuous, hurrying, surging, tremu-

lous, or gently falling—married to melodious numbers; that is music.

And, the music of proportions—of nature and man, and the harmony

and opposition of light and shadow, set forth in the ponderous; that

is Architecture.

Christian. [ as he enters] Forbear, Kalon! These I know for

your dear fiends, Kosmon and Sophon. The moment of discoursing

with them has at last arrived: May I profit by it! Kalon, fearful

of checking your current of thought, I stood without, and heard that

which you said: and, though I agree with you in all your definitions

of poetry, painting, sculpture, music, and architecture; yet certainly

all things in or of man, or the world, are not, however equally

beautiful, equally worthy of being used by the artist. Fine art

absolutely rejects all impurities of form; not less absolutely does

it reject all impurities of passion and expression. Everything

throughout a poem, picture, or statue, or in music, may be sensuously

beautiful; but nothing must be sensually so. Sins are only paid for

in virtues; thus, every sin found is a virtue lost—lost—not only to

the artist, but a cause of loss to others—to all who look upon what

he does. He should deem his art a sacred treasure, intrusted to

him for the common good; and over it he should build, of the most

precious materials, in the simplest, chastest, and truest proportions,

a temple fit for universal worship: instead of which, it is too often

the case that he raises above it an edifice of clay; which, as mortal

as his life, falls, burying both it and himself under a heap of dirt.

To preserve him from this corruption of his art, let him erect for his guidance a standard awfully high above himself. Let him think

of Christ; and what he would not show to as pure a nature as His,

let him never be seduced to work on, or expose to the world.

Kosmon. Oh, Kalon, whither do we go! Greek art is condemned,

and Satire hath got its death-stroke. The beautiful is not the beau-

tiful unless it is fettered to the moral; and Virtue rejects the physical

perfections, lest she should fall in love with herself, and sin and

cause sin.

Christian. Nay, Kosmon. Nothing pure,—nothing that is

innocent, chaste, unsensual,—whether Greek or satirical, is con-

demned: but everything—every picture, poem, statue, or piece of

music— which elicits the sensual, viceful, and unholy desires of

our nature—is, and that utterly. The beautiful was created the

true, morally as well as physically; vice is a deformment of virtue,—

not of form, to which it is a parasitical addition—an accretion which

can and must be excised before the beautiful can show itself as it was

originally made, morally as well as formally perfect. How we all

wish the sensual, indecent, and brutal, away from Hogarth, so that

we might show him to the purest virgin without fear or blushing.

Sophon. And as well from Shakspere. Rotten members,

though small in themselves, are yet large enough to taint the

whole body. And those impurities, like rank growths of vine, may

be lopped away without injuring any vital principle. In perfect

art the utmost purity of intention, design, and execution, alone is

wisdom. Every tree—every flower, in defiance of adverse contin-

gencies, grows with perfect will to be perfect: and, shall man, who

hath what they have not, a soul wherewith he may defy all ill, do

less?

Kosmon. But how may this purity be attained? I see every

where close round the pricks; not a single step may be taken in

advance without wounding something vital. Corruption strews thick

both earth and ocean; it is only the heavens that are pure, and man

cannot live upon manna alone.

Christian. Kosmon, you would seem to mistake what Sophon

and I mean. Neither he nor I wish nature to be used less, or

otherwise than as it appears; on the contrary, we wish it used

more—more directly. Nature itself is comparatively pure; all that

we desire is the removal of the factitious matter that the vice of

fashion, evil hearts, and infamous desires, graft upon it. It is not

simple innocent nature that we would exile, but the devilish and

libidinous corruptions that sully nature.

Kalon. But, if your ideas were strictly carried out, there would

be but little of worth left in the world for the artist to use; for, if I understand you rightly, you object to his making use of any

passion, whether heroic, patriotic, or loving, that is not rigidly

virtuous.

Christian. I do. Without he has a didactic aim; like as

Hogarth had. A picture, poem, or statue, unless it speaks some

purpose, is mere paint, paper, or stone. A work of art must have

a purpose, or it is not a work of fine art: thus, then, if it be a work

of fine art, it has a purpose; and, having purpose, it has either a

good or an evil one: there is no alternative. An artist's works are his

children, his immortal heirs, to his evil as well as to his good; as he

hath trained them, so will they teach. Let him ask himself why does

a parent so tenderly rear his children. Is it not because he knows

that evil is evil, whether it take the shape of angels or devils? And

is not the parent's example worthy of the artist's imitation? What

advantage has a man over a child? Is there any preservative pecu-

liar to manhood that it alone may see and touch sin, and yet be not

defiled? Verily, there is none! All mere battles, assassinations, im-

molations, horrible deaths, and terrible situations used by the artist

solely to excite,—every passion degrading to man's perfect nature,—

should certainly be rejected, and that unhesitatingly.

Sophon.—Suffer me to extend the just conclusions of Christian.

Art—true art—fine art—cannot be either coarse or low. Innocent-

like, no taint will cling to it, and a smock frock is as pure as “vir-

ginal-chaste robes.” And,—sensualism, indecency, and brutality,

excepted—sin is not sin, if not in the act; and, in satire, with the

same exceptions, even sin in the act is tolerated when used to point

forcibly a moral crime, or to warn society of a crying shame which

it can remedy.

Kalon. But, my dear Sophon,—and you, Christian,—you do

not condemn the oak because of its apples; and, like them, the sin

in the poem, picture, or statue, may be a wormy accretion grafted

from without. The spectator often makes sin where the artist in-

tended none. For instance, in the nude,—where perhaps, the poet,

painter, or sculptor, imagines he has embodied only the purest and

chastest ideas and forms, the sensualist sees—what he wills to see;

and, serpent-like, previous to devouring his prey, he covers it with

his saliva.

Christian. The Circean poison, whether drunk from the

clearest crystal or the coarsest clay, alike intoxicates and makes

beasts of men. Be assured that every nude figure or nudity intro-

duced in a poem, picture, or piece of sculpture, merely on physical

grounds, and only for effect, is vicious. And, where it is boldly

introduced and forms the central idea, it ought never to have a sense of its condition: it is not nudity that is sinful, but the figure's

knowledge of its nudity,(too surely communicated by it to the

spectator,) that makes it so. Eve and Adam before their fall were

not more utterly shameless than the artist ought to make his inven-

tions. The Turk believes that, at the judgment-day, every artist

will be compelled to furnish, from his own soul, soul for every one

of his creations. This thought is a noble one, and should thoroughly

awake poet, painter, and sculptor, to the awful responsibilities they

labour under. With regard to the sensualist,— who is omnivorous,

and swine-like, assimilates indifferently pure and impure, degrading

everything he hears or sees,—little can be said beyond this; that

for him, if the artist be without sin, he is not answerable. But in

this responsibility he has two rigid yet just judges, God and him-

self;—let him answer there before that tribunal. God will acquit

or condemn him only as he can acquit or condemn himself.

Kalon. But, under any circumstance, beautiful nude flesh

beautifully painted must kindle sensuality; and, described as beauti-

fully in poetry, it will do the like, almost, if not quite, as readily.

Sculpture is the only form of art in which it can be used thoroughly

pure, chaste, unsullied, and unsullying. I feel, Christian, that you

mean this. And see what you do!—What a vast domain of art you

set a Solomon's seal upon! how numberless are the poems, pictures,

and statues—the most beautiful productions of their authors—you

put in limbo! To me, I confess, it appears the very top of prudery

to condemn these lovely creations, merely because they quicken

some men's pulses.

Kosmon. And, to me, it appears hypercriticism to object to pic-

tures, poems, and statues, calling them not works of art—or fine art

—because they have no higher purpose than eye or ear-delight. If

this law be held to be good, very few pictures called of the English

school—of the English school, did I say?—very few pictures at all,

of any school, are safe from condemnation: almost all the Dutch

must suffer judgment, and a very large proportion of modern

sculpture, poetry, and music, will not pass. Even “Christabel”

and the “Eve of St. Agnes” could not stand the ordeal.

Christian. Oh, Kalon, you hardly need an answer! What!

shall the artist spend weeks and months, nay, sometimes years, in

thought and study, contriving and perfecting some beautiful inven-

tion,—in order only that men's pulses may be quickened? What!

—can he, jesuit-like, dwell in the house of soul, only to discover

where to sap her foundations?—Satan-like, does he turn his angel of

light into a fiend of darkness, and use his God-delegated might

against its giver, making Astartes and Molochs to draw other thou- sands of innocent lives into the embrace of sin? And as for you,

Kosmon, I regard purpose as I regard soul; one is not more the

light of the thought than the other is the light of the body; and

both, soul and purpose, are necessary for a complete intellect; and

intellect, of the intellectual—of which the fine arts are the capital

members—is not more to be expected than demanded. I be-

lieve that most of the pictures you mean are mere natural history

paintings from the animal side of man. The Dutchmen may, cer-

tainly, go Letheward; but for their colour, and subtleties of

execution, they would not be tolerated by any man of taste.

Sophon. Christian here, I think, is too stringent. Though walls

be necessary round our flower gardens to keep out swine and other

vile cattle—yet I can see no reason why, with excluding beasts, we

should also exclude light and air. Purpose is purpose or not, accord-

ing to the individual capacity to assimilate it. Different plants

require different soils, and they will rather die than grow on

unfriendly ones; it is the same with animals; they endure existence

only through their natural food; and this variety of soils, plants, and

vegetables, is the world less man. But man, as well as the other

created forms, is subject to the same law: he takes only that aliment

he can digest. It is sufficient with some men that their sensoria be

delighted with pleasurable and animated grouping, colour, light, and

shade: this feeling or desire of their's is, in itself, thoroughly inno-

cent: it is true, it is not a great burden for them to carry; no, but

it is the lightness of the burden that is the merit; for thereby, their

step is quickened and not clogged, their intellect is exhilarated and

not oppressed. Thus, then, a purpose is secured, from a picture or

poem or statue, which may not have in it the smallest particle of

what Christian and I think necessary for it to possess; he reckons a

poem, picture, or statue, to be a work of fine art by the quality and

quantity of thought it contains, by the mental leverage it possesses

wherewith to move his mind, by the honey which he may hive, and

by the heavenly manna he may gather therefrom.

Kosmon. Christian wants art like Magdalen Hospitals, where

the windows are so contrived that all of earth is excluded, and only

heaven is seen. Wisdom is not only shown in the soul, but also in

the body: the bones, nerves, and muscles, are quite as wonderful in

idea as is the incorporeal essence which rules them. And the animal

part of man wants as much caring for as the spiritual: God made

both, and is equally praised through each. And men's souls are as

much touchable and teachable through their animal feelings as ever

they are through their mental aspirations; this both Orpheus and

Amphion knew when they, with their music, made towns to rise in savage woods by savage hands. And hence, in that light, nothing

is without a purpose; and I maintain,—if they give but the least

glimpse of happiness to a single human being,—that even the Dutch

masters are useful, I believe that the thought-wrapped philosopher,

who, in his close-pent study, designs some valuable blessing for his

lower and more animal brethren, only pursues the craving of his

nature; and that his happiness is no higher than their's in their

several occupations and delights. Sight and sense are fully as power-

ful for happiness as thought and ratiocination. Nature grows flowers

wherever she can; she causes sweet waters to ripple over stony beds,

and living wells to spring up in deserts, so that grass and herbs may

grow and afford nourishment to some of God's creatures. Even the

granite and the lava must put forth blossoms.

Kalon. Oh Christian, children cannot digest strong meats!

Neither can a blind man be made to see by placing him opposite the

sun. The sound of the violin is as innocent as that of the organ.

And, though there be a wide difference in the sacredness of the

occupations, yet dance, song, and the other amusements common to

society, are quite as necessary to a healthy condition of the mind and

body, as is to the soul the pursuit and daily practice of religion.

The healthy condition of the mind and body is, after all, the happy

life; and whether that life be most mental or most animal it matters

little, even before God, so long as its delights, amusements, and

occupations, be thoroughly innocent and chaste.

Christian. So long as the pursuits, pastimes, and pleasures of

mankind be innocent and chaste,—with you all, heartily, I believe

it matters little how or in what form they be enjoyed. Pure water

is certainly equally pure, whether it trickle from the hill-side or flow

through crystal conduits; and equally refreshing whether drunk

from the iron bowl or the golden goblet;—only the crystal and gold

will better please some natures than the hill-side and the iron. I

know also that a star may give more light than the moon,—but that

is up in its own heavens and not here on earth. I know that it is

not light and shade which make a complete globe, but, as well, the

local and neutral tints. Thus, my friends, you perceive that I am

neither for building a wall, nor for contriving windows so as to ex-

clude light, air, and earth. As much as any of you, I am for every

man's sitting under his own vine, and for his training, pruning, and

eating its fruit how he pleases. Let the artist paint, write, or carve,

what and how he wills, teach the world through sense or through

thought,—I will not dissent; I have no patent to entitle me to do

so; nay, I will be thoroughly satisfied with whatsoever he does, so

long as it is pure, unsensual, and earnestly true. But, as the mental is the peculiar feature that places man apart from and above animals,

—so ought all that he does to be apart from and above their nature;

especially in the fine arts, which are the intellectual perfection of the

intellectual. And nothing short of this intellectual perfection,—

however much they may be pictures, poems, statues, or music,—can

rank such works to be works of Fine Art. They may have merit,—

nay, be useful, and hence, in some sort, have a purpose: but they

are as much works of Fine Art as Babel was the Temple of Solomon.

Sophon. And man can be made to understand these truths—can

be drawn to crave for and love the fine arts: it is only to take him

in hand as we would take some animal—tenderly using it—entreat-

ing it, as it were, to do its best—to put forth all its powers with all

its capable force and beauty. Nor is it so very difficult a task to

raise, in the low, conceptions of things high: the mass of men have

a fine appreciation of God and his goodness: and as active, chari-

table, and sympathetic a nurture in the beautiful and true as they

have given to them in religion, would as surely and swiftly raise in

them an equally high appreciation of the fine arts. But, if the

artist would essay such a labour, he must show them what fine art

is: and, in order to do this effectually, as an architect clears away

from some sacred edifice which he restores the shambles and shops,

which, like filthy toads cowering on a precious monument, have

squatted themselves round its noble proportions; so must he remove

from his art-edifice the deformities which hide —the corruptions

which shame it.

Christian. How truly Sophon speaks a retrospective look will

show. The disfigurements which both he and I deplore are strictly

what he compared them to; they are shambles and shops grafted on

a sacred edifice. Still, indigenous art is sacred and devoted to reli-

gious purposes: this keeps it pure for a time; but, like a stream

travelling and gathering other streams as it goes through wide

stretches of country to the sea, it receives greater and more nume-

rous impurities the farther it gets from its source, until, at last, what

was, in its rise, a gentle rilling through snows and over whitest

stones, roars into the ocean a muddy and contentious river. Men

soon long to touch and taste all that they see; savage-like, him

whom to-day they deem a god and worship, they on the morrow get

an appetite for and kill, to eat and barter. And thus art is degraded,

made a thing of carnal desire—a commodity of the exchange. Yes,

Sophon, to be instructive, to become a teaching instrument, the art-

edifice must be cleansed from its abominations; and, with them,

must the artist sweep out the improvements and ruthless restora-

tions that hang on it like formless botches on peopled tapestry. The multitude must be brought to stand face to face with the pious and

earnest builders, to enjoy the severely simple, beautiful, aspiring,

and solemn temple, in all its first purity, the same as they bequeathed

it to them as their posterity.

Kalon. The peasant, upon acquaintance, quickly prefers wheaten

bread to the black and sour mass that formerly served him: and

when true jewels are placed before him, counterfeit ones in his eyes

soon lose their lustre, and become things which he scorns. The

multitude are teachable— teachable as a child; but, like a child, they

are self-willed and obstinate, and will learn in their own way, or

not at all. And, if the artist wishes to raise them unto a fit audience,

he must consult their very waywardness, or his work will be a

Penelope's web of done and undone: he must be to them not only

cords of support staying their every weakness against sin and

temptation, but also, tendrils of delight winding around them. But

I cannot understand why regeneration can flow to them through

sacred art alone. All pure art is sacred art. And the artist having

soul as well as nature—the lodestar as well as the lodestone—to

steer his path by—and seeing that he must circle earth—it matters

little from what quarter he first points his course; all that is neces-

sary is that he go as direct as possible, his knowledge keeping him

from quicksands and sunken rocks.

Christian. Yes, Kalon;—and, to compare things humble—

though conceived in the same spirit of love—with things mighty,

the artist, if he desires to inform the people thoroughly, must imi-

tate Christ, and, like him, stoop down to earth and become flesh of

their flesh; and his work should be wrought out with all his soul and

strength in the same world-broad charity, and truth, and virtue, and

be, for himself as well as for them, a justification for his teaching.

But all art, simply because it is pure and perfect, cannot, for those

grounds alone, be called sacred: Christian, it may, and that justly;

for only since Christ taught have morals been considered a religion.

Christian and sacred art bear that relation to each other that the

circle bears to its generating point; the first is only volume, the last

is power: and though the first—as the world includes God—includes

with it the last, still, the last is the greatest, for it makes that which

includes it: thus all pure art is Christian, but not all is sacred.

Christian art comprises the earth and its humanities, and, by impli-

cation, God and Christ also; and sacred art is the emanating idea—

the central causating power—the jasper throne, whereon sits Christ,

surrounded by the prophets, apostles, and saints, administering

judgement, wisdom, and holiness. In this sense, then, the art you

would call sacred is not sacred, but Christian: and, as all perfect art is Christian, regeneration necessarily can only flow thence; and thus

it is, as you say, that, from whatever quarter the artist steers his

course, he steers aright.

Kosmon. And, Christian, is a return to this sacred or Christian

art by you deemed possible? I question it. How can you get the

art of one age to reflect that of another, when the image to be re-

flected is without the angle of reflection? The sun cannot be seen

of us when it is night! and that class of art has got its golden age

too remote—its night too long set—for it to hope ever to grasp rule

again, or again to see its day break upon it. You have likened art

to a river rising pure, and rolling a turbid volume into the ocean. I

have a comparison equally just. The career of one artist contains

in itself the whole of art-history; its every phase is presented by

him in the course of his life. Savage art is beheld in his childish

scratchings and barbarous glimmerings; Indian, Egyptian, and

Assyrian art in his boyish rigidity and crude fixedness of idea and

purpose; Mediæval, or pre-Raffaelle art is seen in his youthful timid

darings, his unripe fancies oscillating between earth and heaven;

there where we expect truth, we see conceit; there where we want

little, much is given—now a blank eyed riddle,—dark with excess

of self,—now a giant thought—vast but repulsive,—and now angel

visitors startling us with wisdom and touches of heavenly beauty.

Every where is seen exactness; but it is the exactness of hesitation,

and not of knowledge—the line of doubt, and not of power: all the

promises for ripeness are there; but, as yet, all are immature. And

mature art is presented when all these rude scaffoldings are thrown

down—when the man steps out of the chrysalis a complete idea—

both Psyche and Eros— free-thoughted, free-tongued, and free-

handed;—a being whose soul moves through the heavens and the

earth—now choiring it with angels—and now enthroning it, bay-

crowned, among the men-kings;—whose hand passes over all earth,

spreading forth its beauties unerring as the seasons—stretches through

cloudland, revealing its delectable glories, or, eagle-like, soars right

up against the sun;—or seaward goes seizing the cresting foam as it

leaps—the ships and their crews as they wallow in the watery valleys,

or climb their steeps, or hang over their flying ridges:—daring and

doing all whatsoever it shall dare to do, with boundless fruitfulness of

idea, and power, and line; that is mature art—art of the time of

Phidias, of Raffaelle, and of Shakspere. And, Christian, in prefer-

ring the art of the period previous to Raffaelle to the art of his time,

you set up the worse for the better, elevate youth above manhood, and

tell us that the half-formed and unripe berry is wholesomer than the

perfect and ripened fruit.

Christian. Kosmon, your thoughts seduce you; or rather,

your nature prefers the full and rich to the exact and simple: you

do not go deep enough—do not penetrate beneath the image's gilt

overlay, and see that it covers only worm-devoured wood. Your

very comparison tells against you. What you call ripeness, others,

with as much truth, may call over-ripeness, nay, even rottenness;

when all the juices are drunk with their lusciousness, sick with over-

sweetness. And the art which you call youthful and immature—

may be, most likely is, mature and wholesome in the same degree

that it is tasteful, a perfect round of beautiful, pure, and good.

You call youth immature; but in what does it come short of man-

hood. Has it not all that man can have,—free, happy, noble, and

spiritual thoughts? And are not those thoughts newer, purer, and

more unselfish in the youth than in the man? What eye has the

man, that the youth's is not as comprehensive, keen, rapid, and

penetrating? or what hand, that the youth's is not as swift, force-

ful, cunning, and true? And what does the youth gain in becoming

man? Is it freshness, or deepness, or power, or wisdom? nay

rather—is it not languor—the languor of satiety—of indifferentism?

And thus soul-rusted and earth-charmed, what mate is he for his

former youth? Drunken with the world-lees, what can he do but

pourtray nature drunken as well, and consumed with the same

fever or stupor that consumes himself, making up with gilding and

filigree what he lacks in truth and sincerity? and what comparison

shall exist here and between what his youth might or could have

done, with a soul innocent and untroubled as heaven's deep calm of

blue, gazing on earth with seraph eyes—looking, but not longing—

or, in the spirit rapt away before the emerald-like rainbow-crowned

throne, witnessing “things that shall be hereafter,” and drawing

them down almost as stainless as he beheld them? What an array

of deep, earnest, and noble thinkers, like angels armed with a

brightness that withers, stand between Giotto and Raffaelle; to

mention only Orcagna, Ghiberti, Masaccio, Lippi, Fra Beato Ange-

lico, and Francia. Parallel them with post-Raffaelle artists? If

you think you can, you have dared a labour of which the fruit shall

be to you as Dead Sea apples, golden and sweet to the eye, but, in

the mouth, ashes and bitterness. And the Phidian era was a youthful

one—the highest and purest period of Hellenic art: after that time

they added no more gods or heroes, but took for models instead—

the Alcibiadeses and Phyrnes, and made Bacchuses and Aphrodites;

not as Phidias would have—clothed with the greatness of thought,

or girded with valour, or veiled with modesty; but dissolved with

the voluptuousness of the bath, naked, wanton, and shameless.

Sophon. You hear, Kosmon, that Christian prefers ripe youth

to ripe manhood: and he is right. Early summer is nobler than

early autumn; the head is wiser than the hand. You take the

hand to mean too much: you should not judge by quantity, or

luxuriance, or dexterity, but by quality, chastity, and fidelity. And

colour and tone are only a fair setting to thought and virtue. Per-

haps it is the fate, or rather the duty, of mortals to make a sacrifice

for all things, withheld as well as given. Hand sometimes suc-

cumbs to head, and head in its turn succumbs to hand; the first is

the lot of youth, the last of manhood. The question is—which of

the two we can best afford to do without. Narrowed down to

this, I think but very few men would be found who would not

sacrifice in the loss of hand in preference to its gain at the loss of

head.

Kosmon. But, Christian, in advocating a return to this pre-

Raffaelle art, are you not—you yourself — urging the committal of

“ruthless restorations” and “improvements,” new and vile as any

that you have denounced? You tell the artist, that he should

restore the sacred edifice to its first purity—the same as it was be-

queathed by its pious and earnest builders. But can he do this and

be himself original? For myself, I would above all things urge

him to study how to reproduce, and not how to represent—to imi-

tate no past perfection, but to create for himself another, as beau-

tiful, wise, and true. I would say to him, “build not on old

ground, profaned, polluted, trod into slough by filthy animals; but

break new ground—virgin ground—ground that thought has never

imagined or eye seen, and dig into our hearts a foundation, deep and

broad as our humanity. Let it not be a temple formed of hands

only, but built up of us—us of the present—body of our body, soul of

our soul.”

Christian. When men wish to raise a piece of stone, or to

move it along, they seek for a fulcrum to use their lever from;

and, this obtained, they can place the stone wheresoever they please.

And world-perfections come into existence too slowly for men to

reject all the teaching and experience of their predecessors: the

labour of learning is trifling compared to the labour of finding out;

the first implies only days, the last, hundreds of years. The dis-

covery of the new world without the compass would have been

sheer chance; but with it, it became an absolute certainty. So,

and in such manner, the modern artist seeks to use early mediæval

art, as a fulcrum to raise through, but only as a fulcrum; for he

himself holds the lever, whereby he shall both guide and fix the

stones of his art temple; as experience, which shall be to him a rudder directing the motion of his ship, but in subordination to his

control; and as a compass, which shall regulate his journey, but

which, so far from taking away his liberty, shall even add to it, be-

cause through it his course is set so fast in the ways of truth as

to allow him, undividedly, to give up his whole soul to the purpose

of his voyage, and to steer a wider and freer path over the track-

less, but to him, with his rudder and compass, no longer the trackless

or waste ocean; for, God and his endeavours prospering him, that

shall yield up unto his hands discoveries as man-worthy as any

hitherto beheld by men, or conceived by poets.

Kalon. But, Christian, another artist with equal justness might

use Hellenic art as a means toward making happy discoveries;

formatively, there is nothing in it that is not both beautiful and

perfect; and beautiful things, rainbow-like, are once and for ever

beautiful; and the contemplation and study of its dignified, graceful,

and truthful embodiments—which, by common consent, it only is

allowed to possess in an eminent and universal degree—is full as

likely to awaken in the mind of its student as high revelations of

wisdom, and cause him to bear to earth as many perfections for

man, as ever the study of pre-Raffaelle art can reveal or give,

through its votary.

Christian. But beautiful things, to be beautiful in the highest

degree, like the rainbow, must have a spiritual as well as a physical

voice. Lovely as it is, it is not the arch of colours that glows in

the heavens of our hearts; what does, is the inner and invisible

sense for which it was set up of old by God, and of which its

many-hued form is only the outward and visible sign. Thus,

beautiful things alone, of themselves, are not sufficient for this

task; to be sufficient they must be as vital with soul as they are

with shape. To be formatively perfect is not enough; they must

also be spiritually perfect, and this not locally but universally. The

art of the Greeks was a local art; and hence, now, it has no spiri-

tual. Their gods speak to us no longer as gods, or teach us

divinely: they have become mere images of stone—profane em-

bodiments. False to our spiritual, Hellenic art wants every thing

that Christian art is full of. Sacred and universal, this clasps us,

as Abraham's bosom did Lazarus, within its infinite embraces,

causing every fibre of our being to quicken under its heavenly

truths. Ithuriel's golden spear was not more antagonistic to Satan's

loathly transformation—than is Christian opposed to pagan art.

The wide, the awful gulf, separating one from the other, will be felt

instantly in its true force by first thinking Zeus, and then thinking

Christ. How pale, shadowy, and shapeless the vision of lust, revenge, and impotence, that rises at the thought of Zeus; but at

the thought of Christ, how overwhelming the inrush of sublime

and touching realities; what height and depth of love and power;

what humility, and beauty, and immaculate purity are made ours

at the mention of his name; the Saviour, the Intercessor, the

Judge, the Resurrection and the Life. These—these are the divinely

awful truths taught by our faith; and which should also be taught

by our art. Hellenic art, like the fig tree that only bore leaves,

withered at Christ's coming; and thus no “happy discoveries” can

flow thence, or “revelations of wisdom,” or other perfections be

borne to earth for man.

Sophon. Christian thinks and says, that if the spiritual be not

in a thing, it cannot be put upon it; and hence, if a work of art be

not a god, it must be a man, or a mere image of one; and that the

faith of the Pagan is the foolishness of the Christian. Nor does

he utter unreason; for, notwithstanding their perfect forms, their

gods are not gods to us, but only perfect forms: Apollo, Theseus,

the Ilissus, Aphrodite, Artemis, Psyche, and Eros, are only shape-

ful manhood, womanhood, virginhood, and youth, and move us

only by the exact amount of humanity they possess in common with

ourselves. Homer and Æschylus, and Sophocles, and Phidias, live not

by the sacred in them, but by the human: and, but for this common

bond, Hellenic art would have been submerged in the same Lethe

that has drowned the Indian, Egyptian, and Assyrian Theogonies

and arts. And, if we except form, what other thing does Hellenic

art offer to the modern artist, that is not thoroughly opposed to his

faith, wants, and practice? And thought—thought in accordance

with all the lines of his knowledge, temperament, and habits—

thought through which he makes and shapes for men, and is un-

derstood by them—it is as destitute of, as inorganic matter of soul

and reason. But Christian art, because of the faith upon which

it is built, suffers under no such drawbacks, for that faith is as per-

sonal and vigorous now as ever it was at its origin—every motion

and principle of our being moves to it like a singing harmony;—

it is the breath which brings out of us, Æolian-harp-like, our most

penetrating and heavenly music—the river of the water of life,

which searches all our dry parts and nourishes them, causing them

to spring up and bear abundantly the happy seed which shall en-

rich and make fat the earth to the uttermost parts thereof.

Kalon. With you both I believe, that faith is necessary to a

man, and that without faith sight even is feeble: but I also believe

that a man is as much a part of the religious, moral, and social

system in which he lives, as is a plant of the soil, situation, and climate in which it exists: and that external applications have just

as much power to change the belief of the man, as they have to

alter the structure of the plant. A faith once in a man, it is there

always; and, though unfelt even by himself, works actively: and

Hellenic art, so far from being an impediment to the Christian

belief, is the exact reverse; for, it is the privilege of that belief,

through its sublime alchymy, to be able to transmute all it touches

into itself: and the perfect forms of Hellenic art, so touched, move

our souls only the more energetically upwards, because of their

transcendent beauty; for through them alone can we see how won-

derfully and divinely God wrought—how majestic, powerful, and

vigorous he made man—how lovely, soft, and winning, he made

woman: and in beholding these things, we are thankful to him that

we are permitted to see them—not as Pagans, but altogether as

Christians. Whether Christian or Pagan, the highest beauty is

still the highest beauty; and the highest beauty alone, to the total

exclusion of gods and their myths, compels our admiration.

Kosmon. Another thing we ought to remember, when judging

Hellenic Art, is, but for its existence, all other kinds—pre-Raffaelle

as well—could not have had being. The Greeks were, by far, more

inclined to worship nature as contained in themselves, than the

gods,—if the gods are not reflexes of themselves, which is most

likely. And, thus impelled, they broke through the monstrous

symbolism of Egypt, and made them gods after their own hearts;

that is, fashioned them out of themselves. And herein, I think we

may discern something of providence; for, suppose their natures

had not been so powerfully antagonistic to the traditions and con-

ventions of their religion, what other people in the world could or

would have done their work? Cast about a brief while in your

memories, and endeavor to find whether there has ever existed a

people who in their nature, nationality, and religion, have been so

eminently fitted to perform such a task as the Hellenic? You will

then feel that we have reason to be thankful that they were allowed

to do what else had never been done; and, which not done, all

posterity would have suffered to the last throe of time. And, if

they have not made a thorough perfection—a spiritual as well as

a physical one—forget not that, at least, they have made this physical

representation a finished one. They took it from the Egyptians,

rude, clumsy, and seated; its head stony—pinned to its chest; its

hands tied to its side, and its legs joined; they shaped it, beautiful,

majestic, and erect; elevated its head; breathed into it animal fire;

gave movement and action to its arms and hands; opened its legs

and made it walk—made it human at all points—the radical impersonation of physical and sensuous beauty. And, if the god has

receded into the past and become a “pale, shadowy, and shapeless

vision of lust, revenge, and impotence,” the human lives on graceful,

vigorous, and deathless, as at first, and excites in us admiration as

unbounded as ever followed it of old in Greece or Italy.

Christian. Yes, Kosmon, yes! they are flourished all over with

the rhetoric of the body; but nowhere is to be seen in them that

diviner poetry, the oratory of the soul! Truly they are a splendid

casket enclosing nothing—at least nothing now of importance to

us; for what they once contained, the world, when stirred with

nobler matter, disregarded, and left to perish. But, Kosmon, we

cannot discuss probabilities. Our question is—not whether the

Greeks only could have made such masterpieces of nature and art;

but whether their works are of that kind the most fitted to carry

forward to a more ultimate perfection that idea which is peculiarly

our's. All art, more or less, is a species of symbolism; and the

Hellenic, notwithstanding its more universal method of typification,

was fully as symbolic as the Egyptian; and hence its language is not

only dead, but forgotten, and is now past recovery: and, if it were

not, what purpose would be served by its republication? For, for

whom does the artist work? The inevitable answer is, “For his