On this page
-
Text (2)
-
QGTOBEB 6, 1855.] T HE _ JL B A DJB U. 9...
-
MODERN PAINTIXG AT XARLES. Jfotc3 on Mod...
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Four American Books. My Bondage And Free...
tMsssinir I took one end of the cart body , and , by an extra outlay of strength , I lifted t toward the axle-tree , from which it hud been violently Hung ; and after much ruillinir and straining , I succeeded in getting the body of the cart in its place . Thia wasan important step out of the difficulty , and its performance increased my courage forthe work which remained to be done . The cart was provided with an axe , a torn ith which I had become pretty well acquainted in the ship-yard at Baltimore . With thia I cut down the saplings by which my oxen were entangled , and again pursued mv ' iourney with my heart in my mouth , lest the oxen should again take it into their senseless heads to cut up a caper ! My fears were groundless . Their spree was over for the present , and the rascals now moved oil' « s soberly as though their behaviour had been natural and exemplary . On reaching the part of the forest where 1 had been the day before , chopping wood , 1 tilled the cart with a heavy load , as a security against another running away . Hut , the- neck of an ox is equal in strength to iron . It defies all ordinary burdens when excited .
Pictures of Europe , Framed in Ideas , is : i title requiring a little explanation . Much as it looks like a meaningless conceit , there is in it , when we begin to find out the plan of the book , some faint glimpse of a meaning . The title , in fact , comes ns near a thought as any one sentence in the work , which is throughout a painful struggle to look liko something wonderfully imaginative and profound . The " pictures'' are represented by a series of essays generalising in turn the " Mountains , " the . " Kivers , " the " Lakes , " and the "Seas "—not of Europe especially , but of Nature at large , and very much at large , too . The ideal frames are verses which have a mystic
reference to the subject of each essay . We have not named all the subjects , or the titles rather , of the unpictorial p ictures which Mr . Bartol has , in his own manner , framed and—he might have said—glazed . There is " Superiority of Art to Nature ; " there is " Testimony of Art to Religion" ( a perfectly unreadable chapter ) ; there is " The Enduring Kingdom ; " and there are "The Church , " " Society , " " Country , " " Mankind , " History , " " Destiny , " and one or two more . " Superiority of Art to Xature" shall allurd us a specimen of the ideas with which Mr . Bartol can afford to frame hisother kind of work : —
In ecsta-y the human creaturo stands Before the world built wondrous by God ' s hands ; The while God ' s spirit , through the creature ' s will , liuildeth another world more wondrous stilL Art is man ' s nature , ere the earth he trod : 3 Ian ' s nature is transcendent , art of God . This , the reader will understand , is the idea . Now for the platitude : — The whole intent of the present essay may move only to doubt and surprise . To most persons , probably no proposition could be a more decided paradox than that of the superiority of art to nature . Nay , not a few may consider the ^ statement impious . * ' What man has added to the world , is liner than the world itself ! " they may
es-< claim . '" The thought is blasphemy . " But why blasphemy ? What is added is added by the soul , —is it not i And what is the soul , but the most admirable part of God's own creation ? How , then , does it contradict the spirit of reverence , if it please him to make the soul his tool of further results nobler than the rudeness of the racks and the clods of the valley ? Besides , it is among the Creator ' s first recorded commands to his children , to subdue the earth , —a direction implying some excess or departure in nature which lie would have them overrule . In substance he says to them , " 1 have made the world for you : but 1 have m . ule it in the rough , and left it ibr you to tlnish . 1 have but hewn " out the model , and left it for you to polish . I did not wish to give it to you unimprovable , but so that your own faculties would be unfolded in vour labours to perfect it . "
This confusion of meanings—the indifferent use of the word art tor beautiful , but otherwise unnecessary production , and for useful production or improvement—would be marvellous did we not recollect the blunder of the Royal Academy in taking as the motto of its catalogue that passage from the Wintrr ' s Tide in which "art" simply means the gardener ' s art of grafting . It is curious to follow Mr . Bartol * as he works away on this fallacy , imports other fallacies foreign to ihe quc .-lion , darts oil to seize a distant idea , does not seize it , gets back to his fallacies , begins to show signs of distress , revives , flag . * , revives again , and finally sinks into the state of utter prostration in which we find him near the end of the chapter : —
The hopeless feeling with which one undertakes to describe Nature , or rend * hid Own description , is only Aggravated in regard l <> any account he may give of the trophies of Art . He finds ho cannot tell what is in her llrst chamber and on her lowest shelf . How I am afflicted by tho poverty of what I have said , a . « , at the mo-Jment of tracing these characters , there rush hack upon me—nt first in n splendid ¦ confusion , in the halls of fancy , which I have m > timo to analyse , and which it would take folios to record—tho contents of a hundred museums , displaying those victories over matter , so much nobler than of man over lain brother man ! I try to single out , as withiu tho range of my present aim , tho meanest department in this register of apirituul conquests ; and I am at once overwhelmed with a multitude of shining ohjecta that come upon the mind , as upon the conspiring woman came the soldiers ' shields in the Koman story . Let us hope that Mr . Uartol will find time to analyse the halls of fancy , before he publishes a second edition of his book . The Letters of Airs . Catherine E . Boeoner are introduced to the public in these words : —
There aro certain portions of thin work which tho author was unwilling to bring before tho public on her otfn responsibility . With reference to this , proof copies of the work were sent to a largo nmnbur of cultivated and judicious Indies of influence and position in vnrloua sections of tho country , in order to secure their opinion as to irhat should be said and what l > c omitted . Tho result is , thoro is not a sentence in this work which has not been sanctioned by the approval of those , whom < j // will concede to be . the proper and ino . st highly-quuliliod Judges of propriety on such subjects . Thoro must bo a constitutional coolness about a lady who thus assumes , on account . of her own book , uu unasrmilublu position for a friendly and -anonymous jury of matrons . Whether so much anatomical knowledge as Mra . Beocher puta into words ig or is not good family reading—whether the veiuoua diagrams which occur so frequently in her book aro or are not all ftr » ctly > " proper "—ia surely mutter of opinion , be tho iniluonoe , cultivation , jud gment , and numerical strength of her adherents what they may . Our opinion , if Mrs . Beechor will allow us to have any , is that her book contains ¦ W * ny valuable innta , and cannot do harm to young or old readers . But wo
boldly tell her that we are not awed into this opinion by the names of the Ladies she has not mentioned in her "Introductory Notice . " The book called The Unholy Alliance , and further described as an American view of the war in the East , is by a Mr . William Giles Dix , who in the December of 18 j 3 put forth a pamphlet ( he says } " condemning the threatened course of Western Europe in upholding by force the Ottoman Empire , and remonstrating against the predilections in behalf of Turkey which then prevailed much more extensively than now in' the United States . " Mr . Dix , who places the motto t ; Ckristo et Cruel" on his titlepage , and relies mainly on the abstract reli gious argument against supporting " the historic enemy of Christianity , " is clearly animated " by a hatred , not of Turkey but of England . We have left ourselves no space to deal with Mr . Dix . Very few , we think , even among those Americans who share his anti-English feeling , will rate highly his religion , his polity , or his powers of argument . From the line or two we have quoted , our English readers may form an opinion ( which a nearer acquaintance with , the book will uot mend } of his grammatical proficiency .
Qgtobeb 6, 1855.] T He _ Jl B A Djb U. 9...
QGTOBEB 6 , 1855 . ] T HE _ JL B A DJB U . 967
Modern Paintixg At Xarles. Jfotc3 On Mod...
MODERN PAINTIXG AT XARLES . Jfotc 3 on Modern Paintin' j at Nuple * . By Lord Xapier . J . W . Parker . In the intervals of cold and elegant criticism applied to special painters , . Lord Napier discusses the history of modern Italian art- lie traces a parallel between its fluctuations and the political vicissitudes of the peninsula . When Naples reposed under the sway of Church and throne , with wealthy nobles and wealthier priests , its painters were true to the traditions of their country ' s genius . When conflicting powers arose , and the revenues of the hierarchy were partially restored to the nation , the fine arts decayed -with , tlie patronage that encouraged them . From tins retrospect the moral of the picture is derived : —
Should the monarchical party maintain its present ascendancy , there will undoubtedly be a rapid increase in the wealth of the religious orders : a greater refinement of taste , an aspiration for the loftier exponents of devotional feeling , a desire to multiply all the appliances and instruments of ceremonial exhibition -will revive with the improvement in their social and financial position , and the Church , enriched and elevated , may again become for a time the nursing mother of the arts . We are inclined to question the identity here suggested between the advancement of the beautiful arts and the prosperity of the religious orders . The artist ' s inspiring sentiment , no doubt , is often connected with his religion . It was so in Greece . It was so in mediaeval Italy . It was so in Gothic England . It is so still , wherever art has life . But never , anywhere , have great ecclesiastical corporations , such as have lately been
dissolved in Piedmont and aggrandised in Tuscany , proved the highest teachers or the truest friends of art . In the Athenian annals it is not found that the priesthood fostered that genius which irradiated the age of Pericles . It was from the prodigious emulation of the cities — a free political as well as a devotional spirit- —that the multitude of temples arose before the Persian war , which enhanced for centuries the natural beauty of Greece . It was to satisfy the public ideal that pictures were hung in the portico no less than on sacred walls . Nor is it certain that the archaic style—which contented the votaries , and ornamented the inferior temples—was not coarse and meretricious compared with that which sprung from a popular piety , distinct from the inlluence of the sacerdotal class . The practice of colouring and gilding statuary was probably carried to its theatrical excess by artists workiniAbr patroiis equivalent to the monastic dilettanti of our times
—the decorators of Roman and Russian chapels . Lord -Napier ddates on the neglect of art which supervened ou the partial destruction of the order of priests in the last eeutury . We are not sure that the Church , revival produced any new and pure Renaissance in France , Spain , or Italy . The «» rossly-coloured pictures and ignoble carvings—triumphal altar-pieces anl crosses which were then multiplied in the South , were vile enough to deprave the population , and it has not been through the influence of the clergy that nobler forms of art have flourished in any of those countries . Indian art attained its finest—perhaps final—development during the turbulent period of the Republics , and was not indebted for its best encouragement to the inspirations of the ecclesiastical body . It was in the age of political activity , of municipal independence , of free thought and bold ambition , that the Italians was most cultured , and Italy most richly udornod- From a flourishing commerce rose the palaces of Genoa ; by a
civic pride which spurned the Church was kindled the half-Saracenic genius of the Venetians . There is an era , no tloubt , in the history of nations , when art , like learning , is reared to mature proportions in the shade of cells and cloisters . But " in those retirements philosophy also was nursed—that philosophy , among the rest , which produced the Reformation , and led to the dispersion of the relig ious orders . Science emerged from monastic recesses ; literature took refuse in them . If Lord Napier ' s historical theory be sound , letters , science , philosophy , should withdraw into conventual twilight , and prosper in the shade . The answer , perhaps , would be that in these elements all human interests lloat , while art is the vehicle of religion . We arc fatigued by the prevailing doctrines concerning '' Christian art . " The that have
artist ' s olliee is not alone to idealise the mystic scenes passed between heaven and earth , the beatitudes of saints , tho devotion ot martyrs . There arc other grand heads to paint than those of prophets ami apostle * . They look down on us in tho Italian galleries . There are all the variations of human joy and sorrow , reaching as far as poetry can range , and some most exquisite idealisations which tho Church would exclude . Low Napier regrets that the moderns have dedicated epochs of their art to the illustration of pagan legends , which have no place iu our sympathies oi allections . But the remark applies with as much foive to a ™ ri " ° ,. Christian subjects-the quaint and fantastic allegories of tho lie-Ju P » " J ^ ago . There is the taste of the cardina ' , and the taste of the me J anpu co -of Leo and of Lorenzo . Indeed , tho ocvlesinst . cn ^ rJ ^^ h S t never beon distinguished by purity . Who wore t ^^ iVMidSwl crowns the Madonnas of Raphael ? WLo ** W ^ T £ T ^< x ~ L a Angclo ? Loo the Tenth was not , as a ohuichuuin , a fa » « i
-
-
Citation
-
Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 6, 1855, page 19, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_06101855/page/19/
-