long series of events and influences. Every man and every hour that contribute to a sublime end, for the most part look only to some immediate, trivial object. None but an Allwise Power brings forth the surpassing grandeurs of civilization. - How is the conclusion, in its most definite applications, hindered by the fact that a created intelligence intervenes ? Many things which we regard as operations of nature are ascribed by revelation to angelic instrumentality. It is a charming thought of poetry, that spirits superintend the growth of flowers. And who shall say that unseen beings are not employed in many processes of creation, so that all which we esteem purely natural may not be so strictly? But we already consider some things as quite other than artificial, where mediate intelligence-a degree of reason, in fact is present visibly. The animal often exhibits wisdom, power of various adaptation, as well as uniform instinct; yet we recognize the honey-comb, spider's web, beaver's structure, as natural, although some difficulty, so rare as to transcend the limits of ordinary instinct, has been overcome in their construction. And because a human, a higher intelligence is added, in any case, because God has thus exerted more creative power, is more manifestly present, in securing the result, — shall we therefore see less of him? Flowers have been called thoughts of God; so are the good utensil, vehicle, structure, and artificial symbol. There is danger of running to an extreme on this subject, as on all others. It needs a wary eye not to step off into the slough of modern German and New England pagans, who sink God and nature in man, or God and man in nature, who have found out that "everything is everything, and everything else is everything, and everything is everything else." Nevertheless, within the limits now drawn, or implied, we may sink art in nature, may at least bathe it in nature. A temple is another form of vegetation or cavern. The white houses on distant hills- their angles sharp in the sunlight are scattered crystals, left by the onward wave of improvement. The engine is a new beast of draught; proverbially, it is an iron horse. The optical instrument is a new eye; the gar mer letters of an "Howadji" speak of Lake George as a diamond in the rough; it needs to have, like Lake Como, the human impress of art," the gleam of marble palaces, or of summer retreats of any genuine beauty, even a margin of grain-goldened shore, or ranges of whispering rushes beneath stately terraces, indeed, any improvements which Nature has there suggested." And a critic of the "Howadji" is wrong when he thinks that the ideas of confinement and costly exclusiveness are necessarily connected with the artificial, and that we therefore need to escape into the ruggedness and freedom of solitudes. When the present economy of society shall approximate more nearly to an equalization of benefits, we shall not need to flee from suggestions of care and expense. When an innocent freedom shall be realized in speech and intercourse, a childlike individuality in manners, costume, and custom, we will not seek the liberty of rural life. When cities are expanded, instead of condensed, we shall not have to go far to find green trees and grass. When all wheels and pavements are made of gutta-percha, we shall not so much long for rustic quiet. Above all, when we bring the God of nature, of the mountains and the sea, into our cities and dwellings, by recognizing the divinity of art, we shall have less desire to commune with the genius loci of rock and woodland. The time may come when men will somewhat reverse their present habit,—will go to the picture and machine to meditate on the Infinite, and seek out solitary places to learn the lessons of art. There will be enough of the virgin earth left. The Atlantic will not be filled up, nor Mount Washington cultivated to the summit. The Genesee Falls still roar; the mist has not been wholly changed to meal, nor all the foam to flour, nor every bubble to a barrel. Until time is no more, the sun will shine, the lakes sparkle, and the deep glens remain, with their diamond-dripping cascades, the rippled gold in the depth of transparent pools, the gray walls tufted with soft moss, the towering hemlocks, threads of blue light, twilight shadows, and masses of richly fringed evergreens. There will still be mountain summits, where the eye may lose man and his works in dim distance and universal creation. Flowers will should be spared; his children will learn better things, and will plant other trees. Railroads have their unsightly features, but they open tracts of scenery before inaccessible; all the world can now see Westmoreland as well as could its hermit bard. And railroads themselves begin to appear as natural, right, and beautiful, as if beavers had heaped the embankments, spiders spun the bridges, tornadoes levelled the woods, geologic fires left the veins of iron track, and as if the locomotive were a very behemoth, devouring rivers of distance at a breath, and followed by the many-jointed monster of a train. The small stone tower at Niagara humanizes the shaggy, foaming creature; the bridge to Iris Island is a collar on the lion's neck, attesting the empire of man. All the artificial surroundings help the vastness of the cataract, by needed comparison; and it matters not what are the accessories of such a wonder; it is an immense revolving emerald set in the universe, not merely in its own narrow shores and cliffs. Wherever a tenement is desired, let it be built. Sooner may we upbraid the wasps for hanging their paper nests upon any tree, or denounce the African ants for building their tall mounds, with no eye to the effect of scenery, with no respect to its proprieties. Man has a claim to, and is a creature of, the earth, no less than birds and insects. We are placed here, not in the moon; are workers, not simply spectators of land and sea; are not all eye, but hands also. What if the Old World parks be sold for pence and given to the poor; their beauty will live in song and painting. What though every American solitude be overrun; its glory will remain in the lines of poets, the pages of novelists, the canvas of landscape artists. A missionary, whose writings evince no tendency to mere speculative refinements, recorded these words concerning the strangely picturesque wildernesses of Oregon, before they had begun to be peopled by the recent immigrations: "The wild scenery of nature for a while delights, but it is the scenes of civilized culture which give permanent interest. These are the objects which, with their progressive changes, lend additional charms to stereotyped nature." With this simple utterance of feeling, the most delicate criticism agrees. The sum mer letters of an "Howadji" speak of Lake George as a diamond in the rough; it needs to have, like Lake Como, the human impress of art,-"the gleam of marble palaces, or of summer retreats of any genuine beauty, even a margin of grain-goldened shore, or ranges of whispering rushes beneath stately terraces, - indeed, any improvements which Nature has there suggested." And a critic of the "Howadji" is wrong when he thinks that the ideas of confinement and costly exclusiveness are necessarily connected with the artificial, and that we therefore need to escape into the ruggedness and freedom of solitudes. When the present economy of society shall approximate more nearly to an equalization of benefits, we shall not need to flee from suggestions of care and expense. When an innocent freedom shall be realized in speech and intercourse, a childlike individuality in manners, costume, and custom, we will not seek the liberty of rural life. When cities are expanded, instead of condensed, we shall not have to go far to find green trees and grass. When all wheels and pavements are made of gutta-percha, we shall not so much long for rustic quiet. Above all, when we bring the God of nature, of the mountains and the sea, into our cities and dwellings, by recognizing the divinity of art, we shall have less desire to commune with the genius loci of rock and woodland. The time may come when men will somewhat reverse their present habit,- will go to the picture and machine to meditate on the Infinite, and seek out solitary places to learn the lessons of art. There will be enough of the virgin earth left. The Atlantic will not be filled up, nor Mount Washington cultivated to the summit. The Genesee Falls still roar; the mist has not been wholly changed to meal, nor all the foam to flour, nor every bubble to a barrel. Until time is no more, the sun will shine, the lakes sparkle, and the deep glens remain, with their diamond-dripping cascades, the rippled gold in the depth of transparent pools, the gray walls tufted with soft moss, the towering hemlocks, threads of blue light, twilight shadows, and masses of richly fringed evergreens. There will still be mountain summits, where the eye may lose man and his works in dim distance and universal creation. Flowers will retain their pattern and color, and the clouds remember their own favorite forms. Let the hills, like those of ancient Judæa, be terraced to their tops, and wave with the vine and corn; let the rich build and adorn to their heart's content, inventing new comforts and luxuries which the poor shall yet profit by. Let the deluge of human life rush into all nooks and recesses, and prevail exceedingly, until the high hills under the whole heaven are covered. A poor Canute is he who would roll back the tide of activity and change which is sweeping over the earth. The reverent spirit of the ancients of the Orient ascribed all invention and skill to Him whose inspiration gives understanding. "Then," it is recorded, "wrought every wisehearted man in whom the Lord put wisdom and understanding, to know how to work all manner of work for the service of the sanctuary." And not wisdom only, but all strength, is from His inflowing power; the hand that slays is nerved, though not guided, by Omnipotence, - much more the hand that builds and adorns. The speculative dreamer would add to this, that all we truly know of matter is some kind of motion in the organs of sense; that these organs, and the body in which they inhere, have no stronger proof of their objective reality; and that therefore the First Cause may be so intimately present in art, as in nature, that, if the movements of ultimate substance were to cease, the artist and his work would instantly vanish, and spirit alone remain in the void realm of existence. Throughout these remarks, the mechanical and the fine arts have not been distinguished; and perhaps it is well. One book tells us that the plastic arts are "the game of a rude and youthful people, and not the manly labor of a wise and spiritual nation," that the instinct of genius now is, "to find beauty and holiness in new and necessary facts, in the field and roadside, in the shop and mill." Another book admits "that it is fit surely to recognize with admiring joy any glimpse of the beautiful and eternal that is hung out for us, in color, in form, or tone, in canvas, stone, or atmospheric air, and made accessible by any sense in this world"; yet this book demands whether all talk about the polite arts be not "in good part a temporary dilettante cloud-land of our poor century." |