Fee-Alexandra Haase An Anthology of Modern Literature on Art, the Theory & History of Art, and Esthetics 2 Index - 1 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Lectures on Fine Arts 7 2 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich The Phenomenology of Mind 36 3 Emerson, Ralph Waldo Essays 46 4 Fiske, John The Unseen World and Other Essays 53 5 Gregory, Eliot The Ways of Men 64 6 Snelling, Henry H. The History and Practice of the Art of Photography 68 7 Hartley, Marsden Adventures in the Arts 258 8 Jameson, Anna Legends of the Madonna as Represented in the Fine Arts 313 9 De Wolf Addison, Julia Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages 331 10 Noyes, Carleton Eldredge The Gate of Appreciation 351 11 Benjamin, Walter The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction 434 3 12 Klingender, Francis Donald Marxism and Modern Art: An Approach to Social Realism 450 13 Benson, Arthur Christopher From a College Window 458 14 Puffer, Ethel D. The Psychology of Beauty 464 15 Wilde, Oscar Essays & Lectures 474 16 Addington Symonds, John Renaissance in Italy 548 17 Trotzky, Leon The Social Roots and the Social Function of Literature 565 18 Trotzky, Leon Communist Policy Towards Art 577 19 Malraux, Andre The Work of Art: Speech to the International Association of Writers for the Defense of Culture 577 4 1. Index of Literature Addington Symonds, John. Renaissance in Italy. Vol. 3. Project Gutenberg. November, 23, 2010. <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11559/11559-h/11559-h.htm>. Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Marxist Literary Criticism. Philosophy Archive. Marxist Archive. June 23, 2010. <http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm>. Benson, Arthur Christopher. From a College Window. Project Gutenberg. June 23, 2010. <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4614/4614-h/4614-h.htm#chap07> Clement, Clara Erskine. A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture: Painting. Project Gutenberg. June 23, 2010. <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/168/168-h/168-h.htm>. Cobden-Sanderson, Thomas James. The Arts and Crafts Movement. Project Gutenberg. November, 23, 2010. <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33350/33350-h/33350-h.htm>. De Wolf Addison, Julia. Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages. Project Gutenberg. November, 23, 2010. <http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18212>. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Essays, First Series. Project Gutenberg. June 23, 2010. <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2944/2944-h/2944-h.htm#2H_4_0012>. Fiske, John. The Unseen World and Other Essays. Project Gutenberg. June 23, 2010. <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1486/1486-h/1486-h.htm#2H_4_0016>. Gregory, Eliot. The Ways of Men. Project Gutenberg. June 23, 2010. <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/319/319-h/319-h.htm>. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Lectures on Fine Arts. The Marxist Archive. June 23, 2010. <http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ae/introduction.htm#s4>. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. The Phenomenology of Mind. Marxist Archive. June 23, 2010. <http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ph/phc3bc.htm>. Hartley, Marsden. Adventures in the Arts. Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets. Project Gutenberg. June 23, 2010. <http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/20921>. 5 Klingender, Francis Donald. Marxism and Modern Art: An Approach to Social Realism. Marxist Literary Criticism. Philosophy Archive. Marxist Archive. June 23, 2010. <http://www.marxists.org/subject/art/lit_crit/klingender/ch07.htm>. Malraux, Andre. The Work of Art: Speech to the International Association of Writers for the Defense of Culture. Marxist Archive. June 23, 2010. <http://www.marxists.org/subject/art/lit_crit/works/malraux/art.htm>. Noyes, Carleton Eldredge. The Gate of Appreciation. Project Gutenberg. June 23, 2010. <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18212/18212-h/18212-h.htm> Puffer, Ethel D. The Psychology of Beauty.Alex Catalogue of Online Books. June 23, 2010. <http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/etext03/psbty10.htm>. Snelling, Henry H.. The History and Practice of the Art of Photography. Project Gutenberg. November, 23, 2010. <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/168/168-h/168-h.htm>. Trotzky, Leon. The Social Roots and the Social Function of Literature. The Marxist Archive. June 23, 2010. <http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1923/art/tia23.htm>. Trotzky, Leon. Communist Policy Towards Art. The Marxist Archive. June 23, 2010. <http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1923/art/tia23.htm>. Wilde, Oscar. Essays & Lectures. Project Gutenberg. November, 23, 2010. <http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext97/sandl10.txt>. 6 2. Copyright Notice The here presented malerial comes from free domains. Its purpose is purely educational and free of charge and as such it should be used by any reader. 7 1 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Lectures on Fine Arts Scientific Ways of Treating Beauty and Art If we now ask about the kind of scientific treatment [of art] we meet here again two opposed ways of treating the subject; each appears to exclude the other and not to let us reach any true result. On the one hand we see the science of art only busying itself with actual works of art from the outside, arranging them into a history of art, setting up discussions about existing works or outlining theories which are to yield general considerations for both criticizing and producing works of art. On the other hand, we see science abandoning itself on its own account to reflections on the beautiful and producing only something universal, irrelevant to the work of art in its peculiarity, in short, an abstract philosophy of the beautiful. As for the first mode of treatment, which has the empirical for its starting-point, it is the indispensable route for anyone who thinks of becoming a scholar in the field of art. And just as, at the present day, everyone, even if not a devotee of physics, still likes to be equipped with the most essential physical facts, so it has been more or less necessary for a cultured man to have some acquaintance with art, and the pretension of proving oneself a dilettante and a connoisseur of art is almost universal. But if acquaintance of this sort with art is to be recognized as real scholarship, it must be of many kinds and of wide range. For the first requirement is a precise acquaintance with the immeasurable realm of individual works of art, ancient and modern, some of which (a) have already perished in reality, or (b) belong to distant lands or continents and which the unkindness of fate has withdrawn from our own inspection. Further, every work of art belongs to its own time, its own people, its own environment, and depends on particular historical and other ideas and purposes; consequently, scholarship in the field of art demands a vast wealth of historical, and indeed very detailed, facts, since the individual nature of the work of art is related to something individual and necessarily requires detailed knowledge for its understanding and explanation. Finally, scholarship demands here not only, as in other fields, a memory of the facts, but also a keen imagination to retain pictures of artistic forms in all their varied details, and especially to have them present to the mind for comparison with other works of art. Within this primarily historical treatment there arise at once different considerations which must not be lost sight of if we are to derive judgements from them. Now these considerations, as in other sciences which have an empirical basis, form, when extracted 8 and assembled, general criteria and propositions, and, by still further generalization, theories of the arts. This is not the place to go through the literature of this kind, and it must therefore be enough to cite just a few works in the most general way. Thus, for example (a) Aristotle Poetics - its theory of tragedy is even now of interest, and (b) more particularly, Horace Ars Poetica and Longinus On the Sublime provide, among the classics, a general idea of the manner in which this theorizing has been handled. The general characteristics abstracted by these authors were supposed to count in particular as prescriptions and rules in accordance with which works of art had to be produced, especially in times when poetry and art had deteriorated. Yet the prescriptions which these art-doctors wrote to cure art were even less reliable than those of ordinary doctors for restoring human health. On these theories of art I will only mention that, although in single instances they contain much that is instructive, still their remarks were drawn from a very restricted range of works of art which happened to be accounted genuinely beautiful [at the time] yet which always constituted only a small extent of the sphere of art. On the other hand, such characteristics are in part very trivial reflections which in their universality make no advance towards establishing the particular, which is principally what is at issue; for example, the Horatian Epistle that I have mentioned is full of such reflections and therefore is a book for everybody, but for that reason contains much that is vapid: omne tulit puncture, etc. This is just like so many proverbial instructions:  Dwell in the land and thou shalt be fed', which are right enough thus generally expressed, but which lack the concrete specifications necessary for action. Another kind of interest consisted not in the express aim of producing genuine works of art directly but in the intention of developing through such theories a judgement on works of art, in short, of developing taste. As examples, Home Elements of Critism, the works of Batteux, and Ramler Einleitung in die schönen Wissenschaften were books much read in their day. Taste in this sense concerns the arrangement and treatment, the aptness and perfection of what belongs to the external appearance of a work of art. Moreover they drew into the principles of taste views which were taken from the old psychology and had been derived from empirical observations of mental capacities and activities, passions and their probable intensification, sequence, etc. But it remains ever the case that every man apprehends works of art or characters, actions, and events according to the measure of his insight and his feelings; and since the development of taste only touched on what was external and meagre, and besides took its prescriptions likewise from only a narrow range of works of art and a limited training of the intellect and the feelings, its scope was unsatisfactory and incapable of grasping the inner [meaning] and truth [of art] and sharpening the eye for detecting these things. In general, such theories proceed in the same kind of way as the other non-philosophical sciences. What they take as their subject matter is derived from our perception as something really there; [but] now a further question arises about the character of this perception, since we need closer specifications which are likewise found in our perception and, drawn thence, are settled in definitions. But thus we find ourselves at once on uncertain and disputed ground. For at first it might seem that the beautiful was a 9 quite simple idea. But it is soon obvious that several sides may be found in it, and so one author emphasizes one and another author another, or, if the same considerations are kept in view, a dispute arises about the question which side is now to be treated as the essential one. In this regard it is a part of scientific completeness to cite and criticize the different definitions of the beautiful. We will not do this either in historical completeness in order to get to know all the various subtleties of definition, or for the sake of historical interest; we will only pick out as an example some of the more recent and more interesting ways of looking at beauty which are aimed more precisely at what is in fact implied in the Idea of the beautiful. To this end we must give pride of place to Goethe's account of the beautiful which [J. H.] Meyer [17601832] has embodied in his Geschichte der bildenden Künste in Griechenland where without naming Hirt he quotes his view too. [A. L.] Hirt, one of the greatest genuine connoisseurs in our time, wrote an essay on the beauty of art in Die Horen, 1797, pt. 7, in which, after writing about the beautiful in the different arts, he sums up in conclusion that the basis for a just criticism of beauty in art and for the formation of taste is the concept of the characteristic; i.e. he lays it down that the beautiful is  the perfect which is or can be an object of eye, ear, or imagination'. He then further defines the perfect as  what corresponds with its aim, what nature or art intended to produce in the formation of the object within its genus and species'. It follows then that, in order to form our judgement of beauty, we must direct our observation so far as possible to the individual marks which constitute the essence of a thing [ein Wesen], since it is just these marks which constitute its characteristic. By  character' as a law of art Hirt understands  that specific individuality whereby forms, movement and gesture, mien and expression, local colour, light and shade, chiaroscuro, and bearing are distinguished, and indeed, as the previously envisaged object demands'. This formulation is already more significant than other definitions, for if we go on to ask what  the characteristic' is, we see at once that it involves (i) a content, as, for example, a specific feeling, situation, occurrence, action, individual, and (ii) the mode and manner in which this content is presented. It is on this manner of presentation that the artistic law of  the characteristic' depends, since it demands that everything particular in the mode of expression shall serve towards the specific designation of its content and be a link in the expression of that content. The abstract category of  the characteristic' thus refers to the degree of appropriateness with which the particular detail of the artistic form sets in relief the content it is meant to present. If we wish to explain this conception in a quite popular way, the following is the limitation which it involves. In a dramatic work, for example, an action constitutes the content; the drama is to display how this action happens. Now people do all sorts of things; they join in talk, eat occasionally, sleep, put on their clothes, say this and that, and so on. But whatever of all this does not stand immediately in relation to that specific action (which is the content proper) should be excluded, so that, in that content, nothing remains without significance. In the same way, in a picture, which seizes on only one phase of 10 that action, there could be included-such are the wide ramifications of the external world - a mass of circumstances, persons, situations, and other incidents which have no relation to the specific action in that phase and contribute nothing to its distinctive character. But according to the principle of  the characteristic', nothing is to enter the work of art except what belongs to the appearance and essentially to the expression of this content alone; nothing is to be otiose or superfluous. This is a very important principle which may be justified in certain respects. Yet Meyer in the book mentioned above thinks that this view has been superseded without trace and, as he maintains, to the benefit of art, on the ground that this idea would probably have led to something like caricature. This judgement immediately implies the perversity of supposing that such a definition of the beautiful would have to do with leading to something. The philosophy of art has no concern with prescriptions for artists; on the contrary, it has to determine what the beautiful is as such, and how it has displayed itself in reality, in works of art, without wishing to provide rules for their production. Now, apart from this, in respect to this criticism, it is of course true that Hirt's definition does cover caricature and the like too, for after all what is caricatured may be a characteristic; only one must say at once on the other side that in caricature the specific character is exaggerated and is, as it were, a superfluity of the characteristic. But the superfluity is no longer what is strictly required for the characteristic, but a troublesome repetition whereby the  characteristic' itself may be made unnatural. Moreover, caricature and the like may also be the characterizing of the ugly, which is certainly a distortion. Ugliness for its part is closely related to the subjectmatter, so that it may be said that the principle of the characteristic involves as a fundamental feature an acceptance of the ugly and its presentation. On what is to be  characterized' in the beauty of art, and what is not, on the content of the beautiful, Hirt's definition of course gives us no more precise information. In this respect he provides only a purely formal prescription which yet contains something true, even if in an abstract way. But now the further question arises of what Meyer opposes to Hirt's artistic principle. What does he prefer? In the first place he deals only with the principle in the works of art of antiquity, which must however contain the definition of the beautiful as such. In this connection he comes to speak of Mengs' and Winckelmann's definition of [beauty as] the ideal and says that he neither rejects this law of beauty nor wholly accepts it; on the other hand he has no hesitation in agreeing with the opinion of an enlightened judge of art (Goethe) since it is definitive and seems to be nearer solving the riddle. Goethe says:  The supreme principle of antiquity was the significant, but the supreme result of a successful treatment was the beautiful.' If we look more closely at what this expression implies, we again find in it two things: (i) the content, the thing, and (ii) the manner and mode of presentation. In a work of art we begin with what is immediately presented to us and only then ask what its meaning or content is. The former, the external appearance, has no immediate value for us; we assume behind it something inward, a meaning whereby the external appearance is endowed with the 11 spirit. It is to this, its soul, that the external points. For an appearance that means something does not present itself to our minds, or what it is as external, but something else. Consider, for example, a symbol, and, still more obviously, a fable the meaning of which is constituted by its moral and message. Indeed any word hints at a meaning and counts for nothing in itself. Similarly the spirit and the soul shine through the human eye, through a man's face, flesh, skin, through his whole figure [Gestalt], and here the meaning is always something wider than what shows itself in the immediate appearance. It is in this way that the work of art is to be significant and not appear exhausted by these lines, curves, surfaces, carvings, hollowings in the stone, these colours, notes, word-sounds, or whatever other material is used; on the contrary, it should disclose an inner life, feeling, soul, a content and spirit, which is just what we call the significance of a work of art. With this demand for meaningfulness in a work of art, therefore, little is said that goes beyond or is different from Hirt's principle of the  characteristic'. According to this view, to sum up, we have characterized as the elements of the beautiful something inward, a content, and something outward which signifies that content; the inner shines in the outer and makes itself known through the outer, since the outer points away from itself to the inner. But we cannot go further into detail. This earlier manner of theorizing has after all been already violently cast aside in Germany, along with those practical rules, principally owing to the appearance of genuinely living poetry. The right of genius, its works and their effects, have been made to prevail against the presumptions of those legalisms and the watery wastes of theories. From this foundation of a genuine spiritual art, and the sympathy it has received and its widespread influence, there has sprung a receptivity for and freedom to enjoy and recognize great works of art which have long been available, whether those of the modern world or the Middle Ages, or even of wholly foreign peoples in the past, e.g. the Indian. These works, because of their age or foreign nationality, have of course something strange about them for us, but they have a content which outsoars their foreignness and is common to all mankind, and only by the prejudice of theory could they be stamped as products of a barbarous bad taste. This general recognition of works of art which lie outside the circle and forms which were the principal basis for the abstractions of theory has in the first place led to the recognition of a special kind of art - Romantic Art, and it has become necessary to grasp the Concept and nature of the beautiful in a deeper way than was possible for those theories. Bound up with this at the same time is the fact that the Concept, aware of itself as the thinking spirit, has now recognized itself on its side, more deeply, in philosophy, and this has thereby immediately provided an inducement for taking up the essence of art too in a profounder way. Thus then, simply following the phases of this more general development, the mode of reflecting on art, the theorizing we have been considering, has become out of date, alike in its principles and its achievements. Only the scholarship of the history of art has retained its abiding value, and must do so all the more, the more the growth of spiritual 12 receptivity, which I mentioned, has extended people's intellectual horizons in every direction. Its task and vocation consists in the aesthetic appreciation of individual works of art and in a knowledge of the historical circumstances which condition the work of art externally; it is only an appreciation, made with sense and spirit, and supported by the historical facts, which can penetrate into the entire individuality of a work of art. Goethe, for example, has written a great deal in this way about art and works of art. This mode of treating the subject does not aim at theorizing in the strict sense, although it may indeed often concern itself with abstract principles and categories, and may fall into them unintentionally, but if anyone does not let this hinder him but keeps before his eyes only those concrete presentations, it does provide a philosophy of art with tangible examples and authentications, into the historical particular details of which philosophy cannot enter. This is then the first mode of treating art, the one that starts from particular and existent [works]. From this it is essential to distinguish the opposite side, namely the purely theoretical reflection which labours at understanding the beautiful as such out of itself and fathoming its Idea. We all know that Plato, in a deeper way, began to demand of philosophical inquiry that its objects should be understood not in their particularity, but in their universality, in their genus, in their essential reality, because he maintained that it was not single good actions, true opinions, beautiful human beings or works of art, that were the truth, but goodness, beauty, and truth themselves. Now if in fact the beautiful is to be understood in its essence and its Concept, this is possible only through the conceptual thinking whereby the logico-metaphysical nature of the Idea in general, as well as of the particular Idea of the beautiful, enters conscious reflection. But this treatment of the beautiful by itself in its Idea may itself turn again into an abstract metaphysics. Even if Plato in this connection be taken as foundation and guide, still the Platonic abstraction, even for the logical Idea of the beautiful, can satisfy us no longer. We must grasp this Idea more concretely, more profoundly, since the emptiness, which clings to the Platonic Idea, no longer satisfies the richer philosophical needs of our spirit today. It is indeed the case that we too must begin, in the philosophy of art, with the Idea of the beautiful, but we ought not to be in the position of clinging simply to Platonic Ideas, to that abstract mode with which philosophizing about art first began. The philosophical Concept of the beautiful, to indicate its true nature at least in a preliminary way, must contain, reconciled within itself, both the extremes which have been mentioned, because it unites metaphysical universality with the precision of real particularity. Only so is it grasped absolutely in its truth: for, on the one hand, over against the sterility of one-sided reflection, it is in that case fertile, since, in accordance with its own Concept, it has to develop into a totality of specifications, and it itself, like its exposition, contains the necessity of its particularizations and of their progress and transition one into another; on the other hand, the particularizations, to which a transition has been made, carry in themselves the universality and essentiality of the Concept, as the 13 proper particularizations whereof they appear. The previously mentioned modes of treating the subject lack both these characteristics, and for this reason it is only this full Concept which leads to substantial, necessary, and complete principles. 5 Concept of the Beauty of Art After these preliminary remarks, we now come closer to our proper subject, the philosophy of the beauty of art, and, since we are undertaking to treat it scientifically, we have to make a beginning with its Concept. Only when we have established this Concept can we lay down the division, and therefore the plan, of the whole of this science. For a division, if not undertaken in a purely external manner, as it is in a non-philosophical inquiry, must find its principle in the Concept of the subject-matter itself. Confronted with such a requirement, we are at once met with the question  whence do we derive this Concept?' If we start with the Concept itself of the beauty of art, it at once becomes a presupposition and a mere assumption; mere assumptions, however, philosophical method does not allow; on the contrary, what is to pass muster has to have its truth proved, i.e. has to be shown to be necessary. About this difficulty, which affects the introduction to every philosophical discipline considered independently and by itself, we will come to an understanding in a short space. In the case of the object of every science, two things come at once into consideration: (i) that there is such an object, and (ii) what it is. On the first point little difficulty usually arises in the ordinary [i.e. physical] sciences. Why, it would at once be ridiculous to require astronomy and physics to prove that there are a sun, stars, magnetic phenomena, etc.! In these sciences which have to do with what is present to sensation, the objects are taken from experience of the external world, and instead of proving them, it is thought sufficient to point to them. Yet even within the nonphilosophical disciplines, doubts may arise about the existence of their objects, as, for example, in psychology, the science of mind, there may be a doubt whether there is a soul, a spirit, i.e. an explicitly independent subjective entity distinct from what is material; or in theology, a doubt whether there is a God. If, moreover, the objects are of a subjective sort, i.e. present only in the mind and not as things externally perceptible, we know that in mind there is only what its own activity has produced. Hence there arises at once the chance that men may or may not have produced this inner idea or intuition in themselves, and, even if the former is really the case, that they have not made such an idea vanish again, or at least degraded it to a purely subjective idea whose content has no independent reality of its own. Thus, for example, the beautiful has often been regarded as not being absolutely necessary in our ideas but as a purely subjective pleasure, or a merely accidental sense. Our intuitions, observations, and perceptions of the external world are often deceptive and erroneous, but this is even more true of our inner ideas, even if they have in themselves the greatest vividness and could carry us away into passion irresistibly. 14 Now the doubt whether an object of our inner ideas and general outlook is or is not, like the question whether subjective consciousness has generated it in itself and whether the manner and mode in which it has brought it before itself was also in correspondence with the object in its essential nature, is precisely what arouses in men the higher scientific need which demands that, even if we have a notion that an object is or that there is such an object, nevertheless the object must be exhibited or proved in accordance with its necessity. With this proof, provided it be developed really scientifically, the other question of what an object is, is sufficiently answered at the same time. However, to expound this fully would take us too far afield at this point, and only the following indications can be given. If the necessity of our subject, the beauty of art, is to be exhibited, we would have to prove that art or the beautiful was a result of an antecedent which, considered according to its true Concept, was such as to lead on with scientific necessity to the Concept of fine art. But since we begin with art and wish to treat of its Concept and the realization thereof, not of its antecedent in its essential character (the antecedent pursuant to its own Concept), art has for us, as a particular scientific subject-matter, a presupposition which lies outside our consideration and, handled scientifically as a different subject-matter, belongs to a different philosophical discipline. Thus the only course left to us is to take up the Concept of art lemmatically, so to say, and this is the case with all particular philosophical sciences if they are to be treated seriatim. For it is only the whole of philosophy which is knowledge of the universe as in itself that one organic totality which develops itself out of its own Concept and which, in its self-relating necessity, withdrawing into itself to form a whole, closes with itself to form one world of truth. In the circlet of this scientific necessity each single part is on the one hand a circle returning into itself, while on the other hand it has at the same time a necessary connection with other parts. It has a backward whence it is itself derived, and a forward to which it ever presses itself on, in so far as it is fertile, engendering an  other' out of itself once more, and issuing it for scientific knowledge. Thus it is not our present aim, but the task of an encyclopedic development of the whole of philosophy and its particular disciplines, to prove the Idea of the beautiful with which we began, i.e. to derive it necessarily from the presuppositions which antecede it in philosophy and out of the womb of which it is born. For us the Concept of the beautiful and art is a presupposition given by the system of philosophy. But since we cannot here expound this system and the connection of art with it, we have not yet got the Concept of the beautiful before us scientifically. What is before us is only elements and aspects of it as they occur already in the different ideas of the beautiful and art held by ordinary people, or have formerly been accepted by them. From this point we intend to pass on to a deeper consideration of these views in order to gain the advantage, in the first place, of acquiring a general idea of our subject, as well as, by a brief critique, a preliminary acquaintance with the higher determinations with which we will have to do in the sequel. In this way our final introductory treatment of the subject will present, as it were, an overture to the lectures on the matter at issue and will tend [to provide] a general collection and direction [of our thoughts] to our proper subject. 15 6 Common Ideas of Art What we are acquainted with at the start, as a familiar idea of the work of art, falls under the three following heads: The work of art is no natural product; it is brought about by human activity; it is essentially made for man's apprehension, and in particular is drawn more or less from the sensuous field for apprehension by the senses; it has an end and aim in itself. (i) The Work of Art as a Product of Human Activity As for the first point, that a work of art is a product of human activity, this view has given rise to the thought that this activity, being the conscious production of an external object, can also be known and expounded, and learnt and pursued by others. For what one man makes, another, it may seem, could make or imitate too, if only he were first acquainted with the manner of proceeding; so that, granted universal acquaintance with the rules of artistic production, it would only be a matter of everyone's pleasure to carry out the procedure in the same manner and produce works of art. It is in this way that the ruleproviding theories, mentioned above [p. 15], with their prescriptions calculated for practical application, have arisen. But what can be carried out on such directions can only be something formally regular and mechanical. For the mechanical alone is of so external a kind that only a purely empty exercise of will and dexterity is required for receiving it into our ideas and activating it; this exercise does not require to be supplemented by anything concrete, or by anything not prescribed in universal rules. This comes out most vividly when such prescriptions do not limit themselves to the purely external and mechanical, but extend to the significant and spiritual activity of the artist. In this sphere the rules contain only vague generalities, for example that  the theme should be interesting, every character should speak according to his standing, age, sex, and situation'. But if rules are to satisfy here, then their prescriptions should have been drawn up at the same time with such precision that they could be observed just as they are expressed, without any further spiritual activity of the artist's. Being abstract in content, however, such rules reveal themselves, in their pretence of adequacy to fill the consciousness of the artist, as wholly inadequate, since artistic production is not a formal activity in accordance with given specifications. On the contrary, as spiritual activity it is bound to work from its own resources and bring before the mind's eye a quite other and richer content and more comprehensive individual creations [than formulae can provide]. Therefore, in so far as such rules do actually contain something specific and therefore of practical utility, they may apply in case of need, but still can afford no more than specifications for purely external circumstances. Thus, as it turns out, the tendency just indicated has been altogether abandoned, and instead of it the opposite one has been adopted to the same extent. For the work of art was no longer regarded as a product of general human activity, but as a work of an entirely specially gifted spirit which now, however, is supposed to give free play simply and only to its own particular gift, as if to a specific natural force; it is to cut itself altogether loose from attention to universally valid laws and from a conscious reflection interfering with its own instinctive-like productive activity. Indeed it is supposed to be 16 protected from such reflection, since its productions could only be contaminated and spoiled by such awareness. From this point of view the work of art has been claimed as a product of talent and genius, and the natural element in talent and genius has been especially emphasized. In a way, rightly, since talent is specific and genius universal capability, which man has not the power to give to himself purely and simply through his own self-conscious activity. On this topic we shall speak at greater length later [in Part I, ch. III, c]. Here we have only to mention the false aspect of this view, namely that in artistic production all consciousness of the artist's own activity is regarded as not merely superfluous but even deleterious. In that case production by talent and genius appears as only a state and, in particular, a state of inspiration. To such a state, it is said, genius is excited in part by an object, and in part can transpose itself into it by its own caprice, a process in which, after all, the good services of the champagne bottle are not forgotten. In Germany this notion became prominent at the time of the so-called Period of Genius which was introduced by Goethe's first poetical productions and then sustained by Schiller's. In their earliest works these poets began afresh, setting aside all the rules then fabricated; they worked deliberately against these rules and thereby surpassed all other writers. However, I will not go further into the confusions which have been prevalent about the concept of inspiration and genius, and which prevail even today about the omnicompetence of inspiration as such. All that is essential is to state the view that, even if the talent and genius of the artist has in it a natural element, yet this element essentially requires development by thought, reflection on the mode of its productivity, and practice and skill in producing. For, apart from anything else, a main feature of artistic production is external workmanship, since the work of art has a purely technical side which extends into handicraft, especially in architecture and sculpture, less so in painting and music, least of all in poetry. Skill in technique is not helped by any inspiration, but only by reflection, industry, and practice. But such skill the artist is compelled to have in order to master his external material and not be thwarted by its intractability. Now further, the higher the standing of the artist, the more profoundly should he display the depths of the heart and the spirit; these are not known directly but are to be fathomed only by the direction of the artist's own spirit on the inner and outer world. So, once again, it is study whereby the artist brings this content into his consciousness and wins the stuff and content of his conceptions. Of course, in this respect, one art needs more than another the consciousness and knowledge of such content. Music, for example, which is concerned only with the completely indeterminate movement of the inner spirit and with sounds as if they were feeling without thought, needs to have little or no spiritual material present in consciousness. Therefore musical talent announces itself in most cases very early in youth, when the head is empty and the heart little moved, and it may sometimes attain a very considerable height before spirit and life have experience of themselves. Often enough, after all, we have seen very great virtuosity in musical composition and performance accompanied by remarkable barrenness of spirit and character. 17 In poetry, on the other hand, it is quite different. In it all depends on the presentation, full of content and thought, of man, of his deeper interests, and of the powers that move him; and therefore the spirit and heart must be richly and deeply educated by life, experience, and reflection before genius can bring into being anything mature, of sterling worth, and complete in itself. The first productions of Goethe and Schiller are of an immaturity, yes even of a crudity and barbarity, that can be terrifying. It is this phenomenon, that in most of these attempts there is an overwhelming mass of elements through and through prosaic, partly cold and flat, which principally tells against the common opinion that inspiration is bound up with the fire and time of youth. It was only in their manhood that these two geniuses, our national poets, the first, we may say, to give poetical works to our country, endowed us with works deep, substantial, the product of true inspiration, and no less perfectly finished in form; just as it was only in old age that Homer was inspired and produced his ever undying songs. A third view concerning the idea of the work of art as a product of human activity refers to the placing of the work of art in relation to the external phenomena of nature. Here the ordinary way of looking at things took easily to the notion that the human art-product ranked below the product of nature; for the work of art has no feeling in itself and is not through and through enlivened, but, regarded as an external object, is dead; but we are accustomed to value the living higher than the dead. That the work of art has no life and movement in itself is readily granted. What is alive in nature is, within and without, an organism purposefully elaborated into all its tiniest parts, while the work of art attains the appearance of life only on its surface; inside it is ordinary stone, or wood and canvas, or, as in poetry, an idea expressed in speech and letters. But this aspect - external existence - is not what makes a work into a product of fine art; a work of art is such only because, originating from the spirit, it now belongs to the territory of the spirit; it has received the baptism of the spiritual and sets forth only what has been formed in harmony with the spirit. Human interest, the spiritual value possessed by an event, an individual character, an action in its complexity and outcome, is grasped in the work of art and blazoned more purely and more transparently than is possible on the ground of other non-artistic things. Therefore the work of art stands higher than any natural product which has not made this journey through the spirit. For example, owing to the feeling and insight whereby a landscape has been represented in a painting, this work of the spirit acquires a higher rank than the mere natural landscape. For everything spiritual is better than any product of nature. Besides, no natural being is able, as art is, to present the divine Ideal. Now on what the spirit draws from its own inner resources in works of art it confers permanence in their external existence too; on the other hand, the individual living thing in nature is transient, vanishing, changeable in outward appearance, while the work of art persists, even if it is not mere permanence which constitutes its genuine pre-eminence over natural reality, but its having made spiritual inspiration conspicuous. But nevertheless this higher standing of the work of art is questioned by another idea commonly entertained. For nature and its products, it is said, are a work of God, created by his goodness and wisdom, whereas the art-product is a purely human work, made by human hands according to human insight. In this contrast between natural production as a 18 divine creation and human activity as something merely finite there lies directly the misunderstanding that God does not work in and through men at all, but restricts the sphere of his activity to nature alone. This false opinion must be completely rejected if we are to penetrate to the true nature of art. Indeed, over against this view we must cling to the opposite one, namely that God is more honoured by what the spirit makes than by the productions and formations of nature. For not only is there something divine in man, but it is active in him in a form appropriate to the being of God in a totally different and higher manner than it is in nature. God is spirit, and in man alone does the medium, through which the Divine passes, have the form of conscious and actively self-productive spirit; but in nature this medium is the unconscious, the sensuous, and the external, which stands far below consciousness in worth. Now in art-production God is just as operative as he is in the phenomena of nature; but the Divine, as it discloses itself in the work of art, has been generated out of the spirit, and thus has won a suitable thoroughfare for its existence, whereas just being there in the unconscious sensuousness of nature is not a mode of appearance appropriate to the Divine. Now granted that the work of art is made by man as the creation of his spirit, a final question arises, in order to derive a deeper result from the foregoing [discussion], namely, what is man's need to produce works of art? On the one hand, this production may be regarded as a mere play of chance and fancies which might just as well be left alone as pursued; for it might be held that there are other and even better means of achieving what art aims at and that man has still higher and more important interests than art has the ability to satisfy. On the other hand, however, art seems to proceed from a higher impulse and to satisfy higher needs, - at times the highest and absolute needs since it is bound up with the most universal views of life and the religious interests of whole epochs and peoples. - This question about the non-contingent but absolute need for art, we cannot yet answer completely, because it is more concrete than an answer could turn out to be at this stage. Therefore we must content ourselves in the meantime with making only the following points. The universal and absolute need from which art (on its formal side) springs has its origin in the fact that man is a thinking consciousness, i.e. that man draws out of himself and puts before himself what he is and whatever else is. Things in nature are only immediate and single, while man as spirit duplicates himself, in that (i) he is as things in nature are, but (ii) he is just as much for himself; he sees himself, represents himself to himself, thinks, and only on the strength of this active placing himself before himself is he spirit. This consciousness of himself man acquires in a twofold way: first, theoretically, in so far as inwardly he must bring himself into his own consciousness, along with whatever moves, stirs, and presses in the human breast; and in general he must see himself, represent himself to himself, fix before himself what thinking finds as his essence, and recognize himself alone alike in what is summoned out of himself and in what is accepted from without. Secondly, man brings himself before himself by practical activity, since he has the impulse, in whatever is directly given to him, in what is present to him externally, to produce himself and therein equally to recognize himself. This aim he achieves by altering external things whereon he impresses the seal of his inner being and in which he now finds again his own characteristics. Man does this in order, as a free subject, to strip 19 the external world of its inflexible foreignness and to enjoy in the shape of things only an external realization of himself. Even a child's first impulse involves this practical alteration of external things; a boy throws stones into the river and now marvels at the circles drawn in the water as an effect in which he gains an intuition of something that is his own doing. This need runs through the most diversiform phenomena up to that mode of self-production in external things which is present in the work of art. And it is not only with external things that man proceeds in this way, but no less with himself, with his own natural figure which he does not leave as he finds it but deliberately alters. This is the cause of all dressing up and adornment, even if it be barbaric, tasteless, completely disfiguring, or even pernicious like crushing the feet of Chinese ladies, or slitting the ears and lips. For it is only among civilized people that alteration of figure, behaviour, and every sort and mode of external expression proceeds from spiritual development. The universal need for art, that is to say, is man's rational need to lift the inner and outer world into his spiritual consciousness as an object in which he recognizes again his own self. The need for this spiritual freedom he satisfies, on the one hand, within by making what is within him explicit to himself, but correspondingly by giving outward reality to this his explicit self, and thus in this duplication of himself by bringing what is in him into sight and knowledge for himself and others. This is the free rationality of man in which all acting and knowing, as well as art too, have their basis and necessary origin. The specific need of art, however, in distinction from other action, political and moral, from religious portrayal and scientific knowledge, we shall see later [in the Introduction to Part I]. (ii) The Work of Art, as being for Apprehension by Man's Senses, is drawn from the Sensuous Sphere So far we have considered in the work of art the aspect in which it is made by man. We have now to pass on to its second characteristic, namely that it is produced for apprehension by man's senses and therefore is more or less derived from the sensuous sphere. This reflection has given rise to the consideration that fine art is meant to arouse feeling, in particular the feeling that suits us, pleasant feeling. In this regard, the investigation of fine art has been made into an investigation of the feelings, and the question has been raised,  what feelings should be aroused by art, fear, for example, and pity? But how can these be agreeable, how can the treatment of misfortune afford satisfaction?' Reflection on these lines dates especially from Moses Mendelssohn's times and many such discussions can be found in his writings. Yet such investigation did not get far, because feeling is the indefinite dull region of the spirit; what is felt remains enveloped in the form of the most abstract individual subjectivity, and therefore differences between feelings are also completely abstract, not differences in the thing itself. For example, fear, anxiety, alarm, terror are of course further modifications of one and the same sort of feeling, but in part they are only quantitative intensifications, in part just forms not affecting their content, but indifferent to it. In the case of fear, for example, something is present in which the subject has an interest, but at the same time he sees the approach of the negative which threatens to destroy what he is interested in, and now he finds directly 20 in himself the interest and the negative, both as contradictory affections of his subjectivity. But such fear cannot by itself condition any content; on the contrary, it is capable of receiving into itself the most varied and opposite contents. Feeling as such is an entirely empty form of subjective affection. Of course this form may be manifold in itself, as hope, grief, joy, pleasure; and, again, in this variety it may encompass different contents, as there is a feeling for justice, moral feeling, sublime religious feeling, and so on. But the fact that such content [e.g. justice] is present in different forms of feeling [e.g. hope or grief] is not enough to bring to light its essential and specific nature. Feeling remains a purely subjective emotional state of mind in which the concrete thing vanishes, contracted into a circle of the greatest abstraction. Consequently the investigation of the feelings which art evokes, or is supposed to evoke, does not get beyond vagueness; it is a study which precisely abstracts from the content proper and its concrete essence and concept. For reflection on feeling is satisfied with observing subjective emotional reaction in its particular character, instead of immersing itself in the thing at issue i.e. in the work of art, plumbing its depths, and in addition relinquishing mere subjectivity and its states. But in the case of feeling it is precisely this empty subjectivity which is not only retained but is the chief thing, and this is why men are so fond of having feelings. But this too is why a study of this kind becomes wearisome on account of its indefiniteness and emptiness, and disagreeable by its concentration on tiny subjective peculiarities. But since the work of art is not, as may be supposed, meant merely in general to arouse feelings (for in that case it would have this aim in common, without any specific difference, with oratory, historical writing, religious edification, etc.), but to do so only in so far as it is beautiful, reflection on the beautiful hit upon the idea of looking for a peculiar feeling of the beautiful, and finding a specific sense of beauty. In this quest it soon appeared that such a sense is no blind instinct, made firmly definite by nature, capable from the start in and by itself of distinguishing beauty. Hence education was demanded for this sense, and the educated sense of beauty was called taste which, although an educated appreciation and discovery of beauty, was supposed to remain still in the guise of immediate feeling. We have already touched on how abstract theories undertook to educate such a sense of taste and how it itself remained external and onesided. Criticism at the time of these views was on the one hand deficient in universal principles; on the other hand, as the particular criticism of individual works of art, it aimed less at grounding a more definite judgement - the implements for making one being not yet available - than at advancing rather the education of taste in general. Thus this education likewise got no further than what was rather vague, and it laboured only, by reflection, so to equip feeling, as a sense of beauty, that now it could find beauty wherever and however it existed. Yet the depths of the thing remained a sealed book to taste, since these depths require not only sensing and abstract reflections, but the entirety of reason and the solidity of the spirit, while taste was directed only to the external surface on which feelings play and where one-sided principles may pass as valid. Consequently, however, so-called  good taste' takes fright at all the deeper effects [of art] and is silent when the thing at issue comes in question and externalities and incidentals vanish. For when great passions and the movements of a profound soul are revealed, there is no longer any question of the finer distinctions of taste and its pedantic 21 preoccupation with individual details. It feels genius striding over such ground, and, retreating before its power, finds the place too hot for itself and knows not what to do with itself. For this reason the study of works of art has given up keeping in view merely the education of taste and proposing only to exhibit taste. The connoisseur has taken the place of the man of taste or the judge of artistic taste. The positive side of connoisseurship, in so far as it concerns a thorough acquaintance with the whole sweep of the individual character of a work of art, we have already described as necessary for the study of art. For, on account of its nature, at once material and individual, the work of art issues essentially from particular conditions of the most varied sort, amongst them especially the time and place of its origin, then the specific individuality of the artist, and above all the technical development of his art. Attention to all these aspects is indispensable for a distinct and thorough insight into, and acquaintance with, a work of art, and indeed for the enjoyment of it; with them connoisseurship is principally preoccupied, and what it achieves in its way is to be accepted with gratitude. Now while such scholarship is justly counted as something essential, it still may not be taken as the single and supreme element in the relation which the spirit adopts to a work of art and to art in general. For connoisseurship, and this is its defective side, may stick at acquaintance with purely external aspects, the technical, historical, etc., and perhaps have little notion of the true nature of the work of art, or even know nothing of it at all; indeed it can even disesteem the value of deeper studies in comparison with purely positive, technical, and historical information. Yet connoisseurship, if it be of a genuine kind, does itself strive at least for specific grounds and information, and for an intelligent judgement with which after all is bound up a more precise discrimination of the different, even if partly external, aspects of a work of art and the evaluation of these. After these remarks on the modes of study occasioned by that aspect of the work of art which, as itself a sensuous object, gave it an essential relation to men as sensuous beings, we propose now to treat this aspect in its more essential bearing on art itself, namely (a) in regard to the work of art as an object, and (b) in regard to the subjectivity of the artist, his genius, talent, etc., yet without our entering upon what in this connection can proceed only from the knowledge of art in its universal essence. For here we are not yet really on scientific ground and territory; we are still only in the province of external reflections. Of course the work of art presents itself to sensuous apprehension. It is there for sensuous feeling, external or internal, for sensuous intuition and ideas, just as nature is, whether the external nature that surrounds us, or our own sensitive nature within. After all, a speech, for example, may be addressed to sensuous ideas and feelings. But nevertheless the work of art, as a sensuous object, is not merely for sensuous apprehension; its standing is of such a kind that, though sensuous, it is essentially at the same time for spiritual apprehension; the spirit is meant to be affected by it and to find some satisfaction in it. Now the fact that this is what the work of art is meant to be explains at once how it can in no way be a natural product or have in its natural aspect a natural vitality, whether a 22 natural product is supposed to have a higher or a lower value than a mere work of art, as a work of art is often called in a depreciatory sense. For the sensuous element in a work of art should be there only in so far as it exists for the human spirit, regardless of its existing independently as a sensuous object. If we examine more closely in what way the sensuous is there for man, we find that what is sensuous can be related in various ways to the spirit. The poorest mode of apprehension, the least adequate to spirit, is purely sensuous apprehension. It consists, in the first place, of merely looking on, hearing, feeling, etc., just as in hours of spiritual fatigue (indeed for many people at any time) it may be an amusement to wander about without thinking, just to listen here and look round there, and so on. Spirit does not stop at the mere apprehension of the external world by sight and hearing; it makes it into an object for its inner being which then is itself driven, once again in the form of sensuousness, to realize itself in things, and relates itself to them as desire. In this appetitive relation to the external world, man, as a sensuous individual, confronts things as being individuals; likewise he does not turn his mind to them as a thinker with universal categories; instead, in accord with individual impulses and interests, he relates himself to the objects, individuals themselves, and maintains himself in them by using and consuming them, and by sacrificing them works his own selfsatisfaction. In this negative relation, desire requires for itself not merely the superficial appearance of external things, but the things themselves in their concrete physical existence. With mere pictures of the wood that it might use, or of the animals it might want to eat, desire is not served. Neither can desire let the object persist in its freedom, for its impulse drives it just to cancel this independence and freedom of external things, and to show that they are only there to be destroyed and consumed. But at the same time the person too, caught up in the individual, restricted, and nugatory interests of his desire, is neither free in himself, since he is not determined by the essential universality and rationality of his will, nor free in respect of the external world, for desire remains essentially determined by external things and related to them. Now this relation of desire is not the one in which man stands to the work of art. He leaves it free as an object to exist on its own account; he relates himself to it without desire, as to an object which is for the contemplative side of spirit alone. Consequently the work of art, though it has sensuous existence, does not require in this respect a sensuously concrete being and a natural life; indeed it ought not to remain on this level, seeing that it is meant to satisfy purely spiritual interests and exclude all desire from itself. Hence it is true that practical desire rates organic and inorganic individual things in nature, which can serve its purpose, higher than works of art which show themselves useless to serve it and are enjoyable only by other forms of the spirit. A second way in which what is externally present can be for the spirit is, in contrast to individual sense-perception and practical desire, the purely theoretical relation to intelligence. The theoretical study of things is not interested in consuming them in their individuality and satisfying itself and maintaining itself sensuously by means of them, but 23 in coming to know them in their universality, finding their inner essence and law, and conceiving them in accordance with their Concept. Therefore theoretical interest lets individual things alone and retreats from them as sensuous individualities, since this sensuous individualism is not what intelligence tries to study. For the rational intelligence does not belong to the individual person as such in the way that desires do, but to him as at the same time inherently universal. Inasmuch as man relates himself to things in accordance with his universality, it is his universal reason which strives to find itself in nature and thereby to re-establish that inner essence of things which sensuous existence, though that essence is its basis, cannot immediately display. This theoretical interest, the satisfaction of which is the work of science, art does not share, however, in this scientific form, nor does it make common cause with the impulses of purely practical desires. Of course science can start from the sensuous in its individuality and possess an idea of how this individual thing comes to be there in its individual colour, shape, size, etc. Yet in that case this isolated sensuous thing has as such no further bearing on the spirit, inasmuch as intelligence goes straight for the universal, the law, the thought and concept of the object; on this account not only does it turn its back on the object in its immediate individuality, but transforms it within; out of something sensuously concrete it makes an abstraction, something thought, and so something essentially other than what that same object was in its sensuous appearance. This the artistic interest, in distinction from science, does not do. Just as the work of art proclaims itself qua external object in its sensuous individuality and immediate determinateness in respect of colour, shape, sound, or qua a single insight, etc., so the consideration of art accepts it like this too, without going so far beyond the immediate object confronting it as to endeavour to grasp, as science does, the concept of this object as a universal concept. From the practical interest of desire, the interest of art is distinguished by the fact that it lets its object persist freely and on its own account, while desire converts it to its own use by destroying it. On the other hand, the consideration of art differs in an opposite way from theoretical consideration by scientific intelligence, since it cherishes an interest in the object in its individual existence and does not struggle to change it into its universal thought and concept. Now it follows from this that the sensuous must indeed be present in the work of art, but should appear only as the surface and as a pure appearance of the sensuous. For in the sensuous aspect of a work of art the spirit seeks neither the concrete material stuff, the empirical inner completeness and development of the organism which desire demands, nor the universal and purely ideal thought. What it wants is sensuous presence which indeed should remain sensuous, but liberated from the scaffolding of its purely material nature. Thereby the sensuous aspect of a work of art, in comparison with the immediate existence of things in nature, is elevated to a pure appearance, and the work of art stands in the middle between immediate sensuousness and ideal thought. It is not yet pure thought, but, despite its sensuousness, is no longer a purely material existent either, like stones, plants, and organic life; on the contrary, the sensuous in the work of art is itself something ideal, but which, not being ideal as thought is ideal, is still at the same time there externally as a thing. If spirit leaves the objects free yet without descending into their essential inner being (for if it did so they would altogether cease to exist for it 24 externally as individuals), then this pure appearance of the sensuous presents itself to spirit from without as the shape, the appearance, or the sonority of things. Consequently the sensuous aspect of art is related only to the two theoretical senses of sight and hearing, while smell, taste, and touch remain excluded from the enjoyment of art. For smell, taste, and touch have to do with matter as such and its immediately sensible qualities - smell with material volatility in air, taste with the material liquefaction of objects, touch with warmth, cold, smoothness, etc. For this reason these senses cannot have to do with artistic objects, which are meant to maintain themselves in their real independence and allow of no purely sensuous relationship. What is agreeable for these senses is not the beauty of art. Thus art on its sensuous side deliberately produces only a shadow-world of shapes, sounds, and sights; and it is quite out of the question to maintain that, in calling works of art into existence, it is from mere impotence and because of his limitations that man produces no more than a surface of the sensuous, mere schemata. These sensuous shapes and sounds appear in art not merely for the sake of themselves and their immediate shape, but with the aim, in this shape, of affording satisfaction to higher spiritual interests, since they have the power to call forth from all the depths of consciousness a sound and an echo in the spirit. In this way the sensuous aspect of art is spiritualized, since the spirit appears in art as made sensuous. (b) But precisely for this reason an art-product is only there in so far as it has taken its passage through the spirit and has arisen from spiritual productive activity. This leads on to the other question which we have to answer, namely in what way the necessary sensuous side of art is operative in the artist as his subjective productive activity. - This sort and manner of production contains in itself, as subjective activity, just the same characteristics which we found objectively present in the work of art; it must be a spiritual activity which yet contains at the same time the element of sensuousness and immediacy. Still, it is neither, on the one hand, purely mechanical work, a purely unconscious skill in sensuous manipulation or a formal activity according to fixed rules to be learnt by heart, nor, on the other hand, is it a scientific production which passes over from the sensuous to abstract ideas and thoughts or is active entirely in the element of pure thinking. In artistic production the spiritual and the sensuous aspects must be as one. For example, someone might propose to proceed in poetic composition by first apprehending the proposed theme as a prosaic thought and then putting it into poetical images, rhyme, and so forth, so that now the image would simply be hung on to the abstract reflections as an ornament and decoration. But such a procedure could only produce bad poetry, because in it there would be operative as separate activities what in artistic production has validity only as an undivided unity. This genuine mode of production constitutes the activity of artistic imagination. This activity is the rational element which exists as spirit only in so far as it actively drives itself forth into consciousness, yet what it bears within itself it places before itself only in sensuous form. Thus this activity has a spiritual content which yet it configurates sensuously because only in this sensuous guise can it gain knowledge of the content. This can be compared with the characteristic mentality of a man experienced in life, or even of a man of quick wit and ingenuity, who, although he knows perfectly well what matters in life, what in substance holds men together, what moves them, what power dominates 25 them, nevertheless has neither himself grasped this knowledge in general rules nor expounded it to others in general reflections. What fills his mind he just makes clear to himself and others in particular cases always, real or invented, in adequate examples, and so forth; for in his ideas anything and everything is shaped into concrete pictures, determined in time and space, to which there may not be wanting names and all sorts of other external circumstances. Yet such a kind of imagination rests rather on the recollection of situations lived through, of experiences enjoyed, instead of being creative itself. Recollection preserves and renews the individuality and the external fashion of the occurrence of such experiences, with all their accompanying circumstances, but does not allow the universal to emerge on its own account. But the productive fancy of an artist is the fancy of a great spirit and heart, the apprehension and creation of ideas and shapes, and indeed the exhibition of the profoundest and most universal human interests in pictorial and completely definite sensuous form. Now from this it follows at once that, on one side, imagination rests of course on natural gifts and talent in general, because its productive activity requires sensuousness [as a medium]. We do indeed speak of  scientific' talent too, but the sciences presuppose only the universal capacity for thinking, and thinking, instead of proceeding in a natural way, like imagination, precisely abstracts from all natural activity, and so we are righter to say that there is no specifically scientific talent, in the sense of a merely natural gift. On the other hand, imagination has at the same time a sort of instinct-like productiveness, in that the essential figurativeness and sensuousness of the work of art must be present in the artist as a natural gift and natural impulse, and, as an unconscious operation, must belong to the natural side of man too. Of course natural capacity is not the whole of talent and genius, since the production of art is also of a spiritual, self-conscious kind, yet its spirituality must somehow have in itself an element of natural picturing and shaping. Consequently almost anyone can get up to a certain point in an art, but to get beyond this point, where art proper only now begins, an inborn, higher talent for art is indispensable. As a natural gift, this talent declares itself after all in most cases in early youth, [28] and it shows itself in the driving restlessness to shape a specific sensuous material at once in a lively and active way and to seize this mode of expression and communication as the only one, or as the most important and appropriate one. And after all an early technical facility, which up to a certain point is effortless, is a sign of inborn talent. For a sculptor everything turns into shapes, and from early years he lays hold of clay in order to model it. In short, whatever ideas such talented men have, whatever rouses and moves them inwardly, turns at once into figure, drawing, melody, or poem. Thirdly, and lastly, the subject-matter of art is in a certain respect also drawn from the sensuous, from nature; or, in any case, even if the subject is of a spiritual kind, it can still only be grasped by displaying spiritual things, like human relationships, in the shape of phenomena possessed of external reality. The Aim of Art Now the question arises of what interest or end man sets before himself when he produces such subject-matter in the form of works of art. This was the third point which 26 we adduced [p. 25] with regard to the work of art, and its closer discussion will lead us on at last to the true concept of art itself. If in this matter we cast a glance at what is commonly thought, one of the most prevalent ideas which may occur to us is the principle of the imitation of nature. According to this view, imitation, as facility in copying natural forms just as they are, in a way that corresponds to them completely, is supposed to constitute the essential end and aim of art, and the success of this portrayal in correspondence with nature is supposed to afford complete satisfaction. This definition contains, prima facie, only the purely formal aim that whatever exists already in the external world, and the manner in which it exists there, is now to be made over again as a copy, as well as a man can do with the means at his disposal. But this repetition can be seen at once to be a superfluous labour, since what pictures, theatrical productions, etc., display imitatively - animals, natural scenes, human affairs - we already possess otherwise in our gardens or in our own houses or in matters within our narrower or wider circle of acquaintance. And, looked at more closely, this superfluous labour may even be regarded as a presumptuous game which falls far short of nature. For art is restricted in its means of portrayal, and can only produce one-sided deceptions, for example a pure appearance of reality for one sense only, and, in fact, if it abides by the formal aim of mere imitation, it provides not the reality of life but only a pretence of life. After all, the Turks, as Mahommedans, do not, as is well known, tolerate any pictures or copies of men, etc. James Bruce in his journey to Abyssinia showed paintings of a fish to a Turk; at first the Turk was astonished, but quickly enough he found an answer:  If this fish shall rise up against you on the last day and say: ―You have indeed given me a body but no living soul,‖ how will you then justify yourself against this accusation?' The prophet too, as is recorded in the Sunna, said to the two women, Ommi Habiba and Ommi Selma, who had told him about pictures in Ethiopian churches:  These pictures will accuse their authors on the day of judgment.' Even so, there are doubtless examples of completely deceptive copying. The grapes painted by Zeuxis have from antiquity onward been styled a triumph of art and also of the principle of the imitation of nature, because living doves are supposed to have pecked at them. To this ancient example we could add the modern one of Büttner's monkey [30] which ate away a painting of a cock chafer in Rösel's Insektbelustigungen [Amusements of Insects] and was pardoned by his master because it had proved the excellence of the pictures in this book, although it had thus destroyed the most beautiful copy of this expensive work. But in such examples and others it must at least occur to us at once that, instead of praising works of art because they have deceived even doves and monkeys, we should just precisely censure those who think of exalting a work of art by predicating so miserable an effect as this as its highest and supreme quality. In sum, however, it must be said that, by mere imitation, art cannot stand in competition with nature, and, if it tries, it looks like a worm trying to crawl after an elephant. 27 If we have regard to the continual, though comparative, failure of the copy compared with the original in nature, then there remains over as an aim nothing but taking pleasure in the conjuring trick of producing something like nature. And of course a man may enjoy himself in now producing over again by his own work, skill, and assiduity what otherwise is there already. But this enjoyment and admiration become in themselves the more frigid and cold, the more the copy is like the natural original, or they may even by perverted into tedium and repugnance. There are portraits which, as has been wittily said, are  disgustingly like', and Kant, in relation to this pleasure in imitation as such, cites another example, namely that we soon get tired of a man who can imitate to perfection the warbling of the nightingale (and there are such men); as soon as it is discovered that it is a man who is producing the notes, we are at once weary of the song. We then recognize in it nothing but a trick, neither the free production of nature, nor a work of art, since from the free productive power of man we expect something quite different from such music which interests us only when, as is the case with the nightingale's warbling, it gushes forth purposeless from the bird's own life, like the voice of human feeling. In general this delight in imitative skill can always be but restricted, and it befits man better to take delight in what he produces out of himself. In this sense the discovery of any insignificant technical product has higher value, and man can be prouder of having invented the hammer, the nail, etc., than of manufacturing tricks of imitation. For this enthusiasm for copying merely as copying is to be respected as little as the trick of the man who had learnt to throw lentils through a small opening without missing. He displayed this dexterity before Alexander, but Alexander gave him a bushel of lentils as a reward for this useless and worthless art. Now further, since the principle of imitation is purely formal, objective beauty itself disappears when this principle is made the end of art. For if it is, then there is no longer a question of the character of what is supposed to be imitated, but only of the correctness of the imitation. The object and content of the beautiful is regarded as a matter of complete indifference. Even if, apart from this, we speak of a difference between beauty and ugliness in relation to animals, men, localities, actions, or characters, yet according to that principle this remains a difference which does not properly belong to art, to which we have left nothing but imitation pure and simple. So that the above-mentioned lack of a criterion for the endless forms of nature leaves us, so far as the choice of objects and their beauty and ugliness are concerned, with mere subjective taste as the last word, and such taste will not be bound by rules, and is not open to dispute. And indeed if, in choosing objects for representation, we start from what people find beautiful or ugly and therefore worthy of artistic representation, i.e. from their taste, then all spheres of natural objects stand open to us, and none of them is likely to lack an admirer. For among us, e.g., it may not be every husband who finds his wife beautiful but he did before they were married, to the exclusion of all others too, and the fact that the subjective taste for this beauty has no fixed rule may be considered a good thing for both parties. If finally we look beyond single individuals and their capricious taste to the taste of nations, this too is of the greatest variety and contrariety. How often do we hear it said that a European beauty would not please a Chinese, or a Hottentot either, since the Chinese has inherently a totally different conception of beauty from the negro's, and his again from a European's, 28 and so on. Indeed, if we examine the works of art of these non-European peoples, their images of the gods, for example, which have sprung from their fancy as sublime and worthy of veneration, they may present themselves to us as the most hideous idols; and while their music may sound in our ears as the most detestable noise, they on their side will regard our sculptures, pictures, and music, as meaningless or ugly. But even if we abstract from an objective principle for art, and if beauty is to be based on subjective and individual taste, we soon nevertheless find on the side of art itself that the imitation of nature, which indeed appeared to be a universal principle and one confirmed by high authority, is not to be adopted, at least in this general and wholly abstract form. For if we look at the different arts, it will be granted at once that, even if painting and sculpture portray objects that appear to be like natural ones or whose type is essentially drawn from nature, on the other hand works of architecture, which is also one of the fine arts, can as little be called imitations of nature as poetical works can, in so far as the latter are not confined, e.g., to mere description. In any case, if we still wanted to uphold this principle in relation to these latter arts, we would at least find ourselves compelled to take a long circuitous route, because we would have to attach various conditions to the proposition and reduce the so-called  truth' of imitation to probability at least. But with probability we would again encounter a great difficulty, namely in settling what is probable and what is not, and, apart from this, we would not wish or be able to exclude from poetry all purely arbitrary and completely fanciful inventions. The aim of art must therefore lie in something still other than the purely mechanical imitation of what is there, which in every case can bring to birth only technical tricks, not works, of art. It is true that it is an essential element in a work of art to have a natural shape as its basis because what it portrays it displays in the form of an external and therefore also natural phenomenon. In painting, e.g., it is an important study to get to know and copy with precision the colours in their relation to one another, the effects of light, reflections, etc., as well as the forms and shapes of objects down to the last detail. It is in this respect, after all, that chiefly in recent times the principle of the imitation of nature, and of naturalism generally, has raised its head again in order to bring back to the vigour and distinctness of nature an art which had relapsed into feebleness and nebulosity; or, on the other hand, to assert the regular, immediate, and explicitly fixed sequences of nature against the manufactured and purely arbitrary conventionalism, really just as inartistic as unnatural, into which art had strayed. But whatever is right enough from one point of view in this endeavour, still the naturalism demanded is as such not the substantial and primary basis of art, and, even if external appearance in its naturalness constitutes one essential characteristic of art, still neither is the given natural world the rule nor is the mere imitation of external phenomena, as external, the aim of art. Therefore the further question arises: what, then, is the content of art, and why is this content to be portrayed? In this matter our consciousness confronts us with the common opinion that the task and aim of art is to bring home to our sense, our feeling, and our inspiration everything which has a place in the human spirit. That familiar saying  nihil humani a me alienum puto' art is supposed to make real in us. 29 Its aim therefore is supposed to consist in awakening and vivifying our slumbering feelings, inclinations, and passions of every kind, in filling the heart, in forcing the human being, educated or not, to go through the whole gamut of feelings which the human heart in its inmost and secret recesses can bear, experience, and produce, through what can move and stir the human breast in its depths and manifold possibilities and aspects, and to deliver to feeling and contemplation for its enjoyment whatever the spirit possesses of the essential and lofty in its thinking and in the Idea - the splendour of the noble, eternal, and true: moreover to make misfortune and misery, evil and guilt intelligible, to make men intimately acquainted with all that is horrible and shocking, as well as with all that is pleasurable and felicitous; and, finally, to let fancy loose in the idle plays of imagination and plunge it into the seductive magic of sensuously bewitching visions and feelings. According to this view, this universal wealth of subject-matter art is, on the one hand, to embrace in order to complete the natural experience of our external existence, and, on the other hand, to arouse those passions in general so that the experiences of life do not leave us unmoved and so that we might now acquire a receptivity for all phenomena. But [on this view] such a stimulus is not given in this field by actual experience itself, but only through the pure appearance of it, since art deceptively substitutes its productions for reality. The possibility of this deception through the pure appearance of art rests on the fact that, for man, all reality must come through the medium of perception and ideas, and only through this medium does it penetrate the heart and the will. Now here it is a matter of indifference whether a man's attention is claimed by immediate external reality or whether this happens in another way, namely through pictures, symbols, and ideas containing in themselves and portraying the material of reality. We can envisage things which are not real as if they were real. Therefore it remains all the same for our feelings whether it is external reality, or only the appearance of it, whereby a situation, a relation, or, in general, a circumstance of life, is brought home to us, in order to make us respond appropriately to the essence of such a matter, whether by grief or rejoicing, whether by being touched or agitated, or whether by making us go through the gamut of the feelings and passions of wrath, hatred, pity, anxiety, fear, love, reverence and admiration, honour and fame. This arousing of all feelings in us, this drawing of the heart through all the circumstances of life, this actualizing of all these inner movements by means of a purely deceptive externally presented object is above all what is regarded, on the view we have been considering, as the proper and supreme power of art. But now since, on this view, art is supposed to have the vocation of imposing on the heart and the imagination good and bad alike, strengthening man to the noblest ideals and yet enervating him to the most sensuous and selfish feelings of pleasure, art is given a purely formal task; and without any explicitly fixed aim would thus provide only the empty form for every possible kind of content and worth. In fact art does have also this formal side, namely its ability to adorn and bring before perception and feeling every possible material, just as the thinking of ratiocination can work on every possible object and mode of action and equip them with reasons and 30 justifications. But confronted by such a multiple variety of content, we are at once forced to notice that the different feelings and ideas, which art is supposed to arouse or confirm, counteract one another, contradict and reciprocally cancel one another. Indeed, in this respect, the more art inspires to contradictory [emotions] the more it increases the contradictory character of feelings and passions and makes us stagger about like Bacchantes or even goes on, like ratiocination, to sophistry and scepticism. This variety of material itself compels us, therefore, not to stop at so formal a definition [of the aim of art], since rationality penetrates this jumbled diversity and demands to see, and know to be attained, even out of elements so contradictory, a higher and inherently more universal end. It is claimed indeed similarly that the final end of the state and the social life of men is that all human capacities and all individual powers be developed and given expression in every way and in every direction. But against so formal a view the question arises soon enough: into what unity are these manifold formations to be brought together, what single aim must they have as their fundamental concept and final end? As with the Concept of the state, so too with the Concept of art there arises the need (a) for a common end for its particular aspects, but (b) also for a higher substantial end. As such a substantial end, the first thing that occurs to reflection is the view that art has the capacity and the vocation to mitigate the ferocity of desires. (a) In respect of this first idea, we have only to discover in what feature peculiar to art there lies the capacity to cancel rudeness and to bridle and educate impulses, inclinations, and passions. Rudeness in general is grounded in a direct selfishness of the impulses which make straight away precisely and exclusively for the satisfaction of their concupiscence. But desire is all the ruder and imperious the more, as single and restricted, it engrosses the whole man, so that he loses the power to tear himself free, as a universal being, from this determinateness and become aware of himself as universal. And if the man says in such a case, as may be supposed,  The passion is stronger than I', then for consciousness the abstract  I' is separated from the particular passion, but only in a purely formal way, since all that is pronounced with this cleavage is that, in face of the power of the passion, the  I' as a universal is of no account whatever. Thus the ferocity of passion consists in the unity of the  I' as universal with the restricted object of his desire, so that the man has no longer any will beyond this single passion. Now such rudeness and untamed force of passion is prima facie mitigated by art, in that it gives a man an idea of what he feels and achieves in such a situation. And even if art restricts itself to setting up pictures of passions for contemplation, even if indeed it were to flatter them, still there is here already a power of mitigation, since thereby a man is at least made aware of what otherwise he only immediately is. For then the man contemplates his impulses and inclinations, and while previously they carried him reflectionless away, he now sees them outside himself and already begins to be free from them because they confront him as something objective. For this reason it may often be the case with an artist that, overtaken by grief, he mitigates and weakens for himself the intensity of his own feeling by representing it in art. Tears, even, provide some comfort; at first entirely sunk and concentrated in grief, a man may then in this direct way utter this purely inward feeling. But still more of an alleviation is the expression of one's inner state in words, pictures, sounds, and shapes. 31 For this reason it was a good old custom at deaths and funerals to appoint wailing women in order that by its expression grief might be contemplated. Even by expressions of condolence the burden of a man's misfortune is brought before his mind; if it is much spoken about he has to reflect on it, and this alleviates his grief. And so to cry one's eyes out and to speak out has ever been regarded as a means of freeing oneself from the oppressive burden of care or at least of relieving the heart. The mitigation of the power of passions therefore has its universal ground in the fact that man is released from his immediate imprisonment in a feeling and becomes conscious of it as something external to him, to which he must now relate himself in an ideal way. Art by means of its representations, while remaining within the sensuous sphere, liberates man at the same time from the power of sensuousness. Of course we may often hear favourite phraseology about man's duty to remain in immediate unity with nature; but such unity, in its abstraction, is purely and simply rudeness and ferocity, and by dissolving this unity for man, art lifts him with gentle hands out of and above imprisonment in nature. For man's preoccupation with artistic objects remains purely contemplative, and thereby it educates, even if at first only an attention to artistic portrayals in general, later on an attention to their meaning and to a comparison with other subjects, and it opens the mind to a general consideration of them and the points of view therein involved. (b) Now on this there follows quite logically the second characteristic that has been attributed to art as its essential aim, namely the purification of the passions, instruction, and moral improvement. For the theory that art was to curb rudeness and educate the passions, remained quite formal and general, so that it has become again a matter of what specific sort of education this is and what is its essential aim. It is true that the doctrine of the purification of passion still suffers the same deficiency as the previous doctrine of the mitigation of desires, yet it does at least emphasize more closely the fact that artistic representations needed a criterion for assessing their worth or unworthiness. This criterion [on this view] is just their effectiveness in separating pure from impure in the passions. This effectiveness therefore requires a content which can exercise this purifying force, and, in so far as producing such an effect is supposed to constitute the substantial aim of art, the purifying content will have to be brought into consciousness in accordance with its universality and essentiality. From this latter point of view, the aim of art has been pronounced to be that it should instruct. On this view, on the one hand, the special character of art consists in the movement of feelings and in the satisfaction lying in this movement, lying even in fear, in pity, in grievous emotion and agitation, i.e. in the satisfying enlistment of feelings and passions, and to that extent in a gusto, a pleasure, and delight in artistic subjects, in their representation and effect. But, on the other hand, this aim of art is supposed to have its higher criterion only in its instructiveness, in fabula docet, and so in the useful influence which the work of art may exert on the individual. In this respect the Horatian aphorism Et prodesse volunt et delectare poetae contains, concentrated in a few words, what later has been elaborated in an infinite degree, diluted, and made into a view of art reduced to the uttermost extreme of shallowness. - Now in connection with such instruction we must ask at once whether it is supposed to be contained in the work of art directly or 32 indirectly, explicitly or implicitly. If, in general, what is at issue is a universal and noncontingent aim, then this end and aim, in view of the essentially spiritual nature of art, can itself only be a spiritual one, and moreover one which is not contingent but absolute. This aim in relation to teaching could only consist in bringing into consciousness, by means of the work of art, an absolutely essential spiritual content. From this point of view we must assert that the more highly art is ranked the more it has to adopt such a content into itself and find only in the essence of that content the criterion of whether what is expressed is appropriate or not. Art has in fact been the first instructress of peoples. If, however, the aim of instruction is treated as an aim in such a way that the universal nature of the content represented is supposed to emerge and be explained directly and explicitly as an abstract proposition, prosaic reflection, or general doctrine, and not to be contained implicitly and only indirectly in the concrete form of a work of art, then by this separation the sensuous pictorial form, which is precisely what alone makes a work of art a work of art, becomes a useless appendage, a veil and a pure appearance, expressly pronounced to be a mere veil and a mere pure appearance. But thereby the nature of the work of art itself is distorted. For the work of art should put before our eyes a content, not in its universality as such, but one whose universality has been absolutely individualized and sensuously particularized. If the work of art does not proceed from this principle but emphasizes the universality with the aim of [providing] abstract instruction, then the pictorial and sensuous element is only an external and superfluous adornment, and the work of art is broken up internally, form and content no longer appear as coalesced. In that event the sensuously individual and the spiritually universal have become external to one another. Now, further, if the aim of art is restricted to this usefulness for instruction, the other side, pleasure, entertainment, and delight, is pronounced explicitly to be inessential, and ought to have its substance only in the utility of the doctrine on which it is attendant. But what is implied here at the same time is that art does not carry its vocation, end, and aim in itself, but that its essence lies in something else to which it serves as a means. In that event art is only one amongst several means which are proved useful for and applied to the end of instruction. But this brings us to the boundary at which art is supposed to cease to be an end in itself, because it is reduced either to a mere entertaining game or a mere means of instruction. This boundary is most sharply marked if in turn a question is raised about a supreme aim and end for the sake of which passions are to be purified and men instructed. As this aim, moral betterment has often been adduced in recent times, and the end of art has been placed in the function of preparing inclinations and impulses for moral perfection and of leading them to this final end. This idea unites instruction with purification, inasmuch as art, by affording an insight into genuinely moral goodness and so by instruction, at the same time incites to purification and only so is to accomplish the betterment of mankind as its utility and its highest aim. Now as regards art in relation to moral betterment, the same must be said, in the first place, about the aim of art as instruction. It is readily granted that art may not take 33 immorality and the intention of promoting it as its principle. But it is one thing to make immorality the express aim of the presentation, and another not to take morality as that aim. From every genuine work of art a good moral may be drawn, yet of course all depends on interpretation and on who draws the moral. We can hear the most immoral presentations defended on the ground that one must be acquainted with evil and sins in order to act morally; conversely, it has been said that the portrayal of Mary Magdalene, the beautiful sinner who afterwards repented, has seduced many into sin, because art makes repentance look so beautiful, and sinning must come before repentance. But the doctrine of moral betterment, carried through logically, is not content with holding that a moral may be pointed from a work of art; on the contrary, it would want the moral instruction to shine forth clearly as the substantial aim of the work of art, and indeed would expressly permit the presentation of none but moral subjects, moral characters, actions, and events. For art can choose its subjects, and is thus distinct from history or the sciences, which have their material given to them. In order, in this aspect of the matter, to be able to form a thorough estimate of the view that the aim of art is moral, we must first ask what specific standpoint of morality this view professes. If we keep more clearly in view the standpoint of the  moral' as we have to take it in the best sense of the word today, it is soon obvious that its concept does not immediately coincide with what apart from it we generally call virtue, conventional life, respectability, etc. From this point of view a conventionally virtuous man is not ipso facto moral, because to be moral needs reflection, the specific consciousness of what accords with duty, and action on this preceding consciousness. Duty itself is the law of the will, a law which man nevertheless freely lays down out of himself, and then he ough to determine himself to this duty for the sake of duty and its fulfilment, by doing good solely from the conviction he has won that it is the good. But this law, the duty chosen for duty's sake as a guide out of free conviction and inner conscience, and then carried out, is by itself the abstract universal of the will and this has its direct opposite in nature, in sensuous impulses, selfish interests, passions, and everything grouped together under the name of feeling and emotion. In this opposition one side is regarded as cancelling the other, and since both are present in the subject as opposites, he has a choice, since his decision is made from within, between following either the one or the other. But such a decision is a moral one, from the standpoint we are considering, and so is the action carried out in accordance with it, but only if it is done, on the one hand, from a free conviction of duty, and, on the other hand, by the conquest not only of the particular will, natural impulses, inclinations, passions, etc., but also of noble feelings and higher impulses. For the modern moralistic view starts from the fixed opposition between the will in its spiritual universality and the will in its sensuous natural particularity; and it consists not in the complete reconciliation of these opposed sides, but in their reciprocal battle against one another, which involves the demand that impulses in their conflict with duty must give way to it. Now this opposition does not arise for consciousness in the restricted sphere of moral action alone; it emerges in a thoroughgoing cleavage and opposition between what is absolute and what is external reality and existence. Taken quite abstractly, it is the opposition of universal and particular, when each is fixed over against the other on its 34 own account in the same way; more concretely, it appears in nature as the opposition of the abstract law to the abundance of individual phenomena, each explicitly with its own character; in the spirit it appears as the contrast between the sensuous and the spiritual in man, as the battle of spirit against flesh, of duty for duty's sake, of the cold command against particular interest, warmth of heart, sensuous inclinations and impulses, against the individual disposition in general; as the harsh opposition between inner freedom and the necessity of external nature, further as the contradiction between the dead inherently empty concept, and the full concreteness of life, between theory or subjective thinking, and objective existence and experience. These are oppositions which have not been invented at all by the subtlety of reflection or the pedantry of philosophy; in numerous forms they have always preoccupied and troubled the human consciousness, even if it is modern culture that has first worked them out most sharply and driven them up to the peak of harshest contradiction. Spiritual culture, the modern intellect, produces this opposition in man which makes him an amphibious animal, because he now has to live in two worlds which contradict one another. The result is that now consciousness wanders about in this contradiction, and, driven from one side to the other, cannot find satisfaction for itself in either the one or the other. For on the one side we see man imprisoned in the common world of reality and earthly temporality, borne down by need and poverty, hard pressed by nature, enmeshed in matter, sensuous ends and their enjoyment, mastered and carried away by natural impulses and passions. On the other side, he lifts himself to eternal ideas, to a realm of thought and freedom, gives to himself, as will, universal laws and prescriptions, strips the world of its enlivened and flowering reality and dissolves it into abstractions, since the spirit now upholds its right and dignity only by mishandling nature and denying its right, and so retaliates on nature the distress and violence which it has suffered from it itself. But for modern culture and its intellect this discordance in life and consciousness involves the demand that such a contradiction be resolved. Yet the intellect cannot cut itself free from the rigidity of these oppositions; therefore the solution remains for consciousness a mere ought, and the present and reality move only in the unrest of a hither and thither which seeks a reconciliation without finding one. Thus the question then arises whether such a universal and thoroughgoing opposition, which cannot get beyond a mere ought and a postulated solution, is in general the absolute truth and supreme end. If general culture has run into such a contradiction, it becomes the task of philosophy to supersede the oppositions, i.e. to show that neither the one alternative in its abstraction, nor the other in the like one-sidedness, possesses truth, but that they are both self-dissolving; that truth lies only in the reconciliation and mediation of both, and that this mediation is no mere demand, but what is absolutely accomplished and is ever selfaccomplishing. This insight coincides immediately with the ingenuous faith and will which does have precisely this dissolved opposition steadily present to its view, and in action makes it its end and achieves it. Philosophy affords a reflective insight into the essence of the opposition only in so far as it shows how truth is just the dissolving of opposition and, at that, not in the sense, as may be supposed, that the opposition and its two sides do not exist at all, but that they exist reconciled. 35 Now since the ultimate end, moral betterment, has pointed to a higher standpoint, we will have to vindicate this higher standpoint for art too. Thereby the false position, already noticed, is at once abandoned, the position, namely, that art has to serve as a means to moral purposes, and the moral end of the world in general, by instructing and improving, and thus has its substantial aim, not in itself, but in something else. If on this account we now continue to speak of a final end and aim, we must in the first place get rid of the perverse idea which, in the question about an end, clings to the accessory meaning of the question, namely that it is one about utility. The perversity lies here in this, that in that case the work of art is supposed to have a bearing on something else which is set before our minds as the essential thing or as what ought to be, so that then the work of art would have validity only as a useful tool for realizing this end which is independently valid on its own account outside the sphere of art. Against this we must maintain that art's vocation is to unveil the truth in the form of sensuous artistic configuration, to set forth the reconciled opposition just mentioned, and so to have its end and aim in itself, in this very setting forth and unveiling. For other ends, like instruction, purification, bettering, financial gain, struggling for fame and honour, have nothing to do with the work of art as such, and do not determine its nature. 36 2 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel The Phenomenology of Mind Φ 727. THE national spirits, which become conscious of their being in the shape of some particular animal, coalesce into one single spirit. Thus it is that the separate artistically beautiful national spirits combine to form a Pantheon, the element and habitation of which is Language. Pure intuition of self in the sense of universal human nature takes, when the national spirit is actualized, this form: the national spirit combines with the others (which with it constitute, through nature and natural conditions, one people), in a common undertaking, and for this task builds up a collective nation, and, with that, a collective heaven. This universality, to which spirit attains in its existence, is, nevertheless, merely this first universality, which, to begin with, starts from the individuality of ethical life, has not yet overcome its immediacy, has not yet built up a single state out of these separate national elements. The ethical life of an actual national spirit rests partly on the immediate confiding trust of the individuals in the whole of their nation, partly in the direct share which all, in spite of differences of class, take in the decisions and acts of its government. In the union, not in the first instance to secure a permanent order but merely for a common act, that freedom of participation on the part of each and all is for the nonce set aside. This first community of life is, therefore, an assemblage of individualities rather than the dominion and control of abstract thought, which would rob the individuals of their self-conscious share in the will and act of the whole. Φ 728. The assembly of national spirits constitutes a circle of forms and shapes, which now embraces the whole of nature, as well as the whole ethical world. They too are under the supreme command rather than the supreme dominion of the One. By themselves, they are the universal substances embodying what the self-conscious essential reality inherently is and does. This, however, constitutes the moving force, and, in the first instance, at least the centre, with which those universal entities are concerned, and which, to begin with, seems to unite in a merely accidental way all that they variously accomplish. But it is the return of the divine Being to self-consciousness which already contains the reason that self-consciousness forms the centre for those divine forces, and conceals their essential unity in the first instance under the guise of a friendly external relation between both worlds. Φ 729. The same universality, which belongs to this content, attaches necessarily also to that form of consciousness in which the content appears. It is no longer the concrete acts of the cult; it is an action which is not indeed raised as yet to the level of the notion, but only to that of ideas, the synthetic connexion of self-conscious and external existence. The element in which these presented ideas exist, language, is the earliest language, the Epic as such, which contains the universal content, at any rate universal in the sense of completeness of the world presented, though not in the sense of universality of thought. 37 The Minstrel is the individual and actual spirit from whom, as a subject of this world, it is produced, and by whom it is borne. His ―pathos‖ is not the deafening power of nature, but Mnemosyne, Recollection, a gradually evolved inwardness, the memory of an essential mode of being once directly present. He is the organ and instrument whose content is passing away; it is not his own self which is of any account, but his muse, his universal song. What, however, is present in fact, has the form of an inferential process, where the one extreme of universality, the world of gods, is connected with individuality, the minstrel, through the middle term of particularity. The middle term is the nation in its heroes, who are individual men like the minstrel, but only ideally presented, and thereby at the same time universal like the free extreme of universality, the gods. Φ 730. In this Epic, then, what is inherently established in the cult, the relation of the divine to the human, is set forth and displayed as a whole to consciousness. The content is an ―act"(2) of the essential Being conscious of itself. Acting disturbs the peace of the substance, and awakens the essential Being; and by so doing its simple unity is divided into parts, and opened up into the manifold world of natural powers and ethical forces. The act is the violation of the peaceful earth; it is the trench which, vivified by the blood of the living, calls forth the spirits of the departed, who are thirsting for life, and who receive it in the action of self-consciousness.There are two sides to the business the universal activity is concerned to accomplish: the side of the self-in virtue of which it is brought about by a collection of actual nations with the prominent individualities at the head of them; and the side of the universal - in virtue of which it is brought about by their substantial forces. The relation of the two, however, took, as we saw just now, the character of being the synthetic connexion of universal and individual, i.e. of being a process of ideal presentation. On this specific character depends the judgment regarding this world. The relation of the two is, by this means, a commingling of both, which illogically divides the unity of the action, and in a needless fashion throws the act from one side over to the other. The universal powers have the form of individual beings, and thus have in them the principle from which action comes; when they effect anything, therefore, this seems to proceed as entirely from them and to be as free as in the case of men. Hence both gods and men have done one and the same thing. The seriousness with which those divine powers go to work is ridiculously unnecessary, since they are in point of fact the moving force of the individualities engaged in the acts; while the strain and toil of the latter again is an equally useless effort, since the former direct and manage everything. Overzealous mortal creatures, who are as nothing, are at the same time the mighty self that brings into subjection the universal beings, offends the gods, and procures for them actual reality and an interest in acting. Just as, conversely, these powerless gods, these impotent universal beings, who procure their sustenance from the gifts of men and through men first get something to do, are the natural inner principle and the substance of all events, as also the ethical material, and the ―pathos‖ of action. If their cosmic natures first get reality and a sphere of effectual operation through the free self of individuality, it is also the case that they are the universal, which withdraws from and avoids this connexion, remains unrestricted and unconstrained in its own character, and, by the unconquerable elasticity of its unity, extinguishes the atomic singleness of the individual 38 acting and his various features, preserves itself in its purity, and dissolves all that is individual in the current of its own continuity. Φ 731. Just as the gods fall into this contradictory relation with the antithetic nature having the form of self, in the same way their universality comes into conflict with their own specific character and the relation in which it stands to others. They are the eternal and resplendent individuals, who exist in their own calm, and are removed from the changes of time and the influence of alien forces. But they are at the same time determinate elements, particular gods, and thus stand in relation to others. But that relation to others, which, in virtue of the opposition it involves, is one of strife, is a comic self-forgetfulness of their eternal nature. The determinateness they possess is rooted in the divine subsistence, and in its specific limitation has the independence of the whole individuality; owing to this whole, their characters at once lose the sharpness of their distinctive peculiarity, and in their ambiguity blend together. One purpose of their activity and their activity itself, being directed against an ―other‖ and so against an invincible divine force, are a contingent and futile piece of bravado, which passes away at once, and transforms the pretence of seriousness in the act into a harmless, self-confident piece of sport with no result and no issue. If, however, in the nature of their divinity, the negative element, the specific determinateness of that nature, appears merely as the inconsistency of their activity, and as the contradiction between the purpose and result, and if that independent self-confidence outweighs and overbalances the element of determinateness, then, by that very fact, the pure force of negativity confronts and opposes their nature, and moreover with a power to which it must finally submit, and over which it can in no way prevail. They are the universal, and the positive, as against the individual self of mortals, which cannot hold out against their power and might. But the universal self, for that reason, hovers over them [the gods in Homer] and over this whole world of imagination to which the entire content belongs; and is for them the unintelligible void of Necessity, - a mere happening to which they stand related selfless and sorrowing, for these determinate natures do not find themselves in this purely formal necessity. Φ 732. This necessity, however, is the unity of the notion, a unity dominating and controlling the contradictory independent subsistence of the individual moments a unity in which the inconsistency and fortuitousness of their action is coherently regulated, and the sportive character of their acts receives its serious value in those acts themselves. The content of the world of imagination carries on its process in the middle element [term] detached by itself, gathering round the individuality of some hero, who, however feels the strength and splendour of his life broken, and mourns the early death he sees ahead of him. For individuality, firmly established and real in itself, is isolated and excluded to the utmost extreme, and severed into its moments, which have not yet found each other and united. The one individual element, the abstract unreal moment, is necessity which shares in the life of the mediating term just as little as does the other, the concrete real individual element, the minstrel, who keeps himself outside it, and disappears in what he imaginatively presents. Both extremes must get nearer the content; the one, necessity, has to get filled with it, the other, the language of the minstrel, must have a share in it. And 39 the content formerly left to itself must acquire in itself the certainty and the fixed character of the negative. Φ 733. This higher language, that of Tragedy, gathers and keeps more closely together the dispersed and scattered moments of the inner essential world and the world of action. The substance of the divine falls apart, in accordance with the nature of the notion, into its shapes and forms, and their movement is likewise in conformity with that notion. In regard to form, the language here ceases to be narrative, in virtue of the fact that it enters into the content, just as the content ceases to be merely one that is ideally imagined. The hero is himself the spokesman, and the representation given brings before the audience - who are also spectators - self-conscious human beings, who know their own rights and purposes, the power and the will belonging to their specific nature, and who know how to state them. They are artists who do not express with unconscious naïveté and naturalness the merely external aspect of what they begin and what they decide upon, as is the case in the language accompanying ordinary action in actual life; they make the very inner being external, they prove the righteousness of their action, and the ―pathos‖ controlling them is soberly asserted and definitely expressed in its universal individuality, free from all accident of circumstance and the particular peculiarities of personalities. Lastly, it is in actual human beings that these characters get existence, human beings who impersonate the heroes, and represent them in actual speech, not in the form of a narrative, but speaking in their own person. Just as it is essential for a statue to be made by human hands, so is the actor essential to his mask - not as an external condition, from which, artistically considered, we have to abstract; or so far as abstraction must certainly be made, we thereby state just that art does not yet contain in it the true and proper self. Φ 734. The general ground, on which the movement of these shapes produced from the notion takes place, is the consciousness expressed in the imaginative language of the Epic, where the detail of the content is loosely spread out with no unifying self. It is the commonalty in general, whose wisdom finds utterance in the Chorus of the Elders; in the powerlessness of this chorus the generality finds its representative, because the common people itself compose merely the positive and passive material for the individuality of the government confronting it. Lacking the power to negate and oppose, it is unable to hold together and keep within bounds the riches and varied fullness of divine life; it allows each individual moment to go off its own way, and in its hymns of honour and reverence praises each individual moment as an independent god, now this god and now again another. Where, however, it detects the seriousness of the notion, and perceives how the notion marches onward shattering these forms as it goes along; and where it comes to see how badly its praised and honoured gods come off when they venture on the ground where the notion holds sway; - there it is not itself the negative power interfering by action, but keeps itself within the abstract selfless thought of such power, confines itself to the consciousness of alien and external destiny, and produces the empty wish to tranquillize, and feeble ineffective talk intended to appease. In its terror before the higher powers, which are the immediate arms of the substance; in its terror before their struggle with one another, and before the simple self of that necessity, which crushes them as well as the living beings bound up with them; in its compassion for these living beings, whom it knows at once to be the same with itself - it is conscious of nothing but ineffective 40 horror of this whole process, conscious of equally helpless pity, and, as the end of all, the mere empty peace of resignation to necessity, whose work is apprehended neither as the necessary act of the character, nor as the action of the absolute Being within itself. Φ 735. Spirit does not appear in its dissociated multiplicity on the plane of this onlooking consciousness [the chorus], the indifferent ground, as it were, on which the presentation takes place; it comes on the scene in the simple diremption of the notion. Its substance manifests itself, therefore, merely torn asunder into its two extreme powers. These elementary universal beings are, at the same time, self-conscious individualities - heroes who put their conscious life into one of these powers, find therein determinateness of character, and constitute the effective activity and reality of these powers. This universal individualization descends again, as will be remembered, to the immediate reality of existence proper, and is presented before a crowd of spectators, who find in the chorus their image and counterpart, or rather their own thought giving itself expression. Φ 736. The content and movement of the spirit, which is, object to itself here, have been already considered as the nature and realization of the substance of ethical life. In its form of religion spirit attains to consciousness about itself, or reveals itself to its consciousness in its purer form and its simpler mode of embodiment. If, then, the ethical substance by its very principle broke up, as regards its content, into two powers - which were defined as divine and human law, law of the nether world and law of the upper world, the one the family, the other state sovereignty, the first bearing the impress and character of woman, the other that of man - in the same way, the previously multiform circle of gods, with its wavering and unsteady characteristics, confines itself to these powers, which owing to this feature are brought closer to individuality proper. For the previous dispersion of the whole into manifold abstract forces, which appear hypostatized, is the dissolution of the subject which comprehends them merely as moments in its self; and individuality is therefore only the superficial form of these entities. Conversely, a further distinction of characters than that just named is to be reckoned as contingent and inherently external personality. Φ 737. At the same time, the essential nature [in the case of ethical substance] gets divided in its form, i.e. with respect to knowledge. Spirit when acting, appears, qua consciousness, over against the object on which its activity is directed, and which, in consequence, is determined as the negative of the knowing agent. The agent finds himself thereby in the opposition of knowing and not knowing. He takes his purpose from his own character, and knows it to be essential ethical fact; but owing to the determinateness of his character, he knows merely the one power of substance; the other remains for him concealed and out of sight. The present reality, therefore, is one thing in itself, and another for consciousness. The higher and lower right come to signify in this connexion the power that knows and reveals itself to consciousness, and the power concealing itself and lurking in the background. The one is the aspect of light, the god of the Oracle, who as regards its natural aspect [Light] has sprung from the all-illuminating Sun, knows all and reveals all, Phoebus and Zeus, who is his Father. But the commands of this truthspeaking god, and his proclamations of what is, are really deceptive and fallacious. For this knowledge is, in its very principle, directly not knowledge, because consciousness in 41 acting is inherently this opposition. He, who had the power to unlock the riddle of the sphinx, and he too who trusted with childlike confidence, are, therefore, both sent to destruction through what the god reveals to them. The priestess, through whose mouth the beautiful god speaks, is in nothing different from the equivocal sisters of fate, who drive their victim to crime by their promises, and who, by the double-tongued, equivocal character of what they gave out as a certainty, deceive the King when he relies upon the manifest and obvious meaning of what they say. There is a type of consciousness that is purer than the latter which believes in witches, and more sober, more thorough, and more solid than the former which puts its trust in the priestess and the beautiful god. This type of consciousness, therefore, lets his revenge tarry for the revelation which the spirit of his father makes regarding the crime that did him to death, and institutes other proofs in addition - for the reason that the spirit giving the revelation might possibly be the devil. Φ 738. This mistrust has good grounds, because the knowing consciousness takes its stand on the opposition between certainty of itself on the one hand, and the objective essential reality on the other. Ethical rightness, which insists that actuality is nothing per se in opposition to absolute law, finds out that its knowledge is onesided, its law merely a law of its own character, and that it has laid hold of merely one of the powers of the substance. The act itself is this inversion of what is known into its opposite, into objective existence, turns round what is right from the point of view of character and knowledge into the right of the very opposite with which the former is bound up in the essential nature of the substance - turns it into the ―Furies‖ who embody the right of the other power and character awakened into hostility. The lower right sits with Zeus enthroned, and enjoys equal respect and homage with the god revealed and knowing. Φ 739. To these three supernatural Beings the world of the gods of the chorus is limited and restricted by the acting individuality. The one is the substance, the power presiding over the hearth and home and the spirit worshipped by the family, as well as the universal power pervading state and government. Since this distinction belongs to the substance as such, it is, when dramatically presented, not individualized in two distinct shapes [of the substance], but has in actual reality the two persons of its characters. On the other hand, the distinction between knowing and not knowing falls within each of the actual selfconsciousnesses; and only in abstraction, in the element of universality, does it get divided into two individual shapes. For the self of the hero only exists as a whole consciousness, and hence includes essentially the whole of the distinction belonging to the form; but its substance is determinate, and only one side of the content distinguished belongs to him. Hence the two sides of consciousness, which have m concrete reality no separate individuality peculiarly their own, receive, when ideally represented, each its own particular form: the one that of the god revealed, the other that of the Furies keeping themselves concealed. In part both enjoy equal honour, while again, the form assumed by the substance, Zeus, is the necessity of the relation of the two to one another. The substance is the relation that knowledge is for itself, but finds its truth in what is simple; that the distinction, through and in which actual consciousness exists, has its basis in that inner being which destroys it; that the clear conscious assurance of certainty has its confirmation in forgetfulness. 42 Φ 740. Consciousness disclosed this opposition by action, through doing something. Acting in accordance with the knowledge revealed, it, finds out the deceptiveness of that knowledge, and being committed, as regards its inner nature, to one of the attributes of substance, it did violence to the other and thereby gave the latter right as against itself. When following that god who knows and reveals himself, it really seized hold of what is not revealed, and pays the penalty for having trusted the knowledge, whose equivocal character (since this is its very nature) it also had to discover, and an admonition thereanent to be given. The frenzy of the priestess, the inhuman shape of the witches, the voices of trees and birds, dreams, and so on, are not ways in which truth appears; they are admonitory signs of deception, of want of judgment, of the individual and accidental character of knowledge. Or, what comes to the same thing, the opposite power, which consciousness has violated, is present as express law and authentic right, whether law of the family or law of the state; while consciousness, on the other hand, pursued its own proper knowledge, and hid from itself what was revealed. The truth, however, of the opposing powers of content and consciousness is the final result, that both are equally right, and, hence, in their opposition (which comes about through action) are equally wrong. The process of action proves their unity in the mutual overthrow of both powers and both self-conscious characters. The reconciliation of the opposition with itself is the Lethe of the nether world in the form of Death-or the Lethe of the upper world in the form of absolution, not from guilt (for consciousness cannot deny its guilt, because the act was done), but from the crime, and in the form of the peace of soul which atones for the crime. Both are forgetfulness, the disappearance of the reality and action of the powers of the substance, of their component individualities, and of the powers of the abstract thought of good and evil. For none of them by itself is the real essence: this consists in the undisturbed calm of the whole within itself, the immovable unity of Fate, the quiescent existence (and hence want of activity and vitality) of the family and government, and the equal honour and consequent indifferent unreality of Apollo and the Furies, and the return of their spiritual life and activity into Zeus solely and simply. Φ 741. This destiny completes the depopulation of Heaven-of that unthinking blending of individuality and. ultimate Being - a blending whereby the action of this absolute Being appears as something incoherent, contingent, unworthy of itself; for individuality, when attaching in a merely superficial way to absolute Being, is unessential. The expulsion of such unreal insubstantial ideas, which was demanded by the philosophers of antiquity, thus already has its beginning in tragedy in general, through the fact that the division of the substance is controlled by the notion, and hence individuality is the essential individuality, and the specific determinations are absolute characters. The selfconsciousness represented in tragedy knows and acknowledges on that account only one highest power, Zeus. This Zeus is known and acknowledged only as the power of the state or of the hearth and home, and, in the opposition belonging to knowledge, merely as the Father of the knowledge of the particular, - a knowledge assuming a figure in the drama: - and again as the Zeus of the oath and of the Furies, the Zeus of what is universal, of the inner being dwelling in concealment. The further moments taken from the notion (Begriff) and dispersed in the form of ideal presentation (Vorstellung), 43 moments which the chorus permits to hold good one after the other, are, on the other hand, not the ―pathos‖ of the hero; they sink to the level of passions in the hero - to the level of accidental, insubstantial moments, which the impersonal chorus no doubt praises, but which are not capable of constituting the character of heroes, nor of being expressed and revered by them as their real nature. Φ 742. But, further, the persons of the divine Being itself, as well as the characters of its substance, coalesce into the simplicity of what is devoid of consciousness. This necessity has, in contrast to self-consciousness, the characteristic of being the negative power of all the shapes that appear, a power in which they do not recognize themselves, but perish therein. The self appears as merely allotted amongst the different characters, and not as the mediating factor of the process. But self-consciousness, the simple certainty of self, is in point of fact the negative power, the unity of Zeus, the unity of the substantial essence and abstract necessity; it is the spiritual unity into which everything returns. Because actual self-consciousness is still distinguished from the substance and fate, it is partly the chorus, or rather the crowd looking on, whom this movement of the divine life fills with fear as being something alien and strange, or in whom this movement, as something closely touching themselves, produces merely the emotion of passive pity. Partly again, so far as consciousness co-operates and belongs to the various characters, this alliance is of an external kind, is a hypocrisy - because the true union, that of self, fate, and substance, is not yet present. The hero, who appears bef ore the onlookers, breaks up into his mask and the actor, into the person of the play and the actual self. Φ 743. The self-consciousness of the heroes must step forth from its mask and be represented as knowing itself to be the fate both of the gods of the chorus and of the absolute powers themselves, and as being no longer separated from the chorus, the universal consciousness. Φ 744. Comedy has, then, first of all, the aspect that actual self-consciousness represents itself as the fate of the gods. These elemental Beings are, qua universal moments, no definite self, and are not actual. They are, indeed, endowed with the form of individuality, but this is in their case merely put on, and does not really and truly belong to them. The actual self has no such abstract moment as its substance and content. The subject, therefore, is raised above such a moment, as it would be above a particular quality, and when clothed with this mask gives utterance to the irony of such a property trying to be something on its own account. The pretentious claims of the universal abstract nature are shown up and discovered in the actual self; it is seen to be caught and held in a concrete reality, and lets the mask drop, just when it wants to be something genuine. The self, appearing here in its significance as something actual, plays with the mask which it once puts on, in order to be its own person; but it breaks away from this seeming and pretence just as quickly again, and comes out in its own nakedness and commonness, which it shows not to be distinct from the proper self, the actor, nor again from the onlooker. Φ 745. This general dissolution, which the formally embodied essential nature as a whole undergoes when it assumes individuality, becomes in its content more serious, and hence 44 more petulant and bitter, in so far as the content possesses its more serious and necessary meaning. The divine substance combines the meaning of natural and ethical essentiality. As regards the natural element, actual self-consciousness shows in the very fact of applying elements of nature for its adornment, for its abode and so on, and again in feasting on its own offering, that itself is the Fate to which the secret is betrayed, no matter what may be the truth as regards the independent substantialitv of nature. In the mystery of the bread and wine it makes its very owm this self-subsistence of nature together with the significance of the inner reality; and in Comedy it is conscious of the irony lurking in this meaning. So far, again, as this meaning contains the essence of ethical reality, it is partly the nation in its two aspects of the state, or Demos proper, and individual family life; partly, however, it is self-conscious pure knowledge, or rational thought of the universal. Demos, the general mass, which knows itself as master and governor, and is also aware of being the insight and intelligence which demand respect, exerts compulsion and is befooled through the particularity of its actual life, and exhibits the ludicrous contrast between its own opinion of itself and its immediate existence, between its necessity and contingency, its universality and its vulgarity. If the principle of its individual existence, cut off from the universal, breaks out in the proper figure of an actual man and openly usurps and administers the commonwealth, to which it is a secret harm and detriment, then there is more immediately disclosed the contrast between the universal in the sense of a theory, and that with which practice is concerned; there stand exposed the entire emancipation of the ends and aims of the mere individual from the universal order, and the scorn the mere individual shows for such order. Φ 746. Rational thinking removes contingency of form and shape from the divine Being; and, in opposition to the uncritical wisdom of the chorus - a wisdom, giving utterance to all sorts of ethical maxims and stamping with validity and authority a multitude of laws and specific conceptions of duty and of right - rational thought lifts these into the simple Ideas of the Beautiful and the Good. The process of this abstraction is the consciousness of the dialectic involved in these maxims and laws themselves, and hence the consciousness of the disappearance of that absolute validity with which they previously appeared. Since the contingent character and superficial individuality which imagination lent to the divine Beings, vanish, they are left, as regards their natural aspect, with merely the nakedness of their immediate existence; they are Clouds, a passing vapour, like those imaginative ideas. Having passed in accordance with their essential character, as deterned by thought, into the simple thoughts of the Beautiful and the Good, these latter submit to being filled with every kind of content. The force of dialectic knowledge puts determinate laws and maxims of action at the mercy of the pleasure and levity of youth, led astray therewith, and gives weapons of deception into the hands of solicitous and apprehensive old age, restricted in its interests to the individual details of life. The pure thoughts of the Beautiful and the Good thus display a comic spectacle: - through their being set free from the opinion, which contains both their determinateness in the sense of content and also their absolute determinateness, the firm hold of 45 consciousness upon them, they become empty, and, on that very account, the sport of the private opinion and caprice of any chance individuality. Φ 747. Here, then, the Fate, formerly without consciousness, consisting in empty rest and forgetfulness, and separated from self-consciousness, is united with self-consciousness. The individual self is the negative force through which and in which the gods, as also their moments, (nature as existent fact and the thoughts of their determinate characters), pass away and disappear. At the same time, the individual self is not the mere vacuity of disappearance, but preserves itself in this very nothingness, holds to itself and is the sole and only reality. The religion of art is fulfilled and consummated in it, and is come full circle. Through the fact that it is the individual consciousness in its certainty of self which manifests itself as this absolute power, this latter has lost the form of something ideally presented (vorgestellt), separated from and alien to consciousness in general - as were the statue and also the living embodiment of beauty or the content of the Epic and the powers and persons of Tragedy. Nor again is the unity the unconscious unity of the cult and the mysteries; rather the self proper of the actor coincides with the part he impersonates, just as the onlooker is perfectly at home in what is represented before him, and sees himself playing in the drama before him. What this self-consciousness beholds, is that whatever assumes the form of essentiality as against self-consciousness, is instead dissolved within it - within its thought, its existence and action, - and is quite at its mercy. It is the return of everything universal into certainty of self, a certainty which, in consequence, is this complete loss of fear of everything strange and alien, and complete loss of substantial reality on the part of what is alien and external. Such certainty is a state of spiritual good health and of self-abandonment thereto, on the part of consciousness, in a way that, outside this kind of comedy, is not to be found anywhere.(14) 46 Ralph Waldo Emerson Essays, First Series XII. ART. Because the soul is progressive, it never quite repeats itself, but in every act attempts the production of a new and fairer whole. This appears in works both of the useful and the fine arts, if we employ the popular distinction of works according to their aim either at use or beauty. Thus in our fine arts, not imitation but creation is the aim. In landscapes the painter should give the suggestion of a fairer creation than we know. The details, the prose of nature he should omit and give us only the spirit and splendor. He should know that the landscape has beauty for his eye because it expresses a thought which is to him good; and this because the same power which sees through his eyes is seen in that spectacle; and he will come to value the expression of nature and not nature itself, and so exalt in his copy the features that please him. He will give the gloom of gloom and the sunshine of sunshine. In a portrait he must inscribe the character and not the features, and must esteem the man who sits to him as himself only an imperfect picture or likeness of the aspiring original within. What is that abridgment and selection we observe in all spiritual activity, but itself the creative impulse? for it is the inlet of that higher illumination which teaches to convey a larger sense by simpler symbols. What is a man but nature's finer success in selfexplication? What is a man but a finer and compacter landscape than the horizon figures,-nature's eclecticism? and what is his speech, his love of painting, love of nature, but a still finer success,-all the weary miles and tons of space and bulk left out, and the spirit or moral of it contracted into a musical word, or the most cunning stroke of the pencil? But the artist must employ the symbols in use in his day and nation to convey his enlarged sense to his fellow-men. Thus the new in art is always formed out of the old. The Genius of the Hour sets his ineffaceable seal on the work and gives it an inexpressible charm for the imagination. As far as the spiritual character of the period overpowers the artist and finds expression in his work, so far it will retain a certain grandeur, and will represent to future beholders the Unknown, the Inevitable, the Divine. No man can quite exclude this element of Necessity from his labor. No man can quite emancipate himself from his age and country, or produce a model in which the education, the religion, the politics, usages and arts of his times shall have no share. Though he were never so original, never so wilful and fantastic, he cannot wipe out of his work every trace of the thoughts amidst which it grew. The very avoidance betrays the usage he avoids. Above his will and out of his sight he is necessitated by the air he breathes and the idea on which he and his contemporaries live and toil, to share the manner of his times, without knowing what that manner is. Now that which is inevitable in the work has a higher charm than individual talent can ever give, inasmuch as the artist's pen or chisel seems to have been held and guided by a gigantic hand to inscribe a line in the history of 47 the human race. This circumstance gives a value to the Egyptian hieroglyphics, to the Indian, Chinese and Mexican idols, however gross and shapeless. They denote the height of the human soul in that hour, and were not fantastic, but sprung from a necessity as deep as the world. Shall I now add that the whole extant product of the plastic arts has herein its highest value, as history; as a stroke drawn in the portrait of that fate, perfect and beautiful, according to whose ordinations all beings advance to their beatitude? Thus, historically viewed, it has been the office of art to educate the perception of beauty. We are immersed in beauty, but our eyes have no clear vision. It needs, by the exhibition of single traits, to assist and lead the dormant taste. We carve and paint, or we behold what is carved and painted, as students of the mystery of Form. The virtue of art lies in detachment, in sequestering one object from the embarrassing variety. Until one thing comes out from the connection of things, there can be enjoyment, contemplation, but no thought. Our happiness and unhappiness are unproductive. The infant lies in a pleasing trance, but his individual character and his practical power depend on his daily progress in the separation of things, and dealing with one at a time. Love and all the passions concentrate all existence around a single form. It is the habit of certain minds to give an all-excluding fulness to the object, the thought, the word, they alight upon, and to make that for the time the deputy of the world. These are the artists, the orators, the leaders of society. The power to detach and to magnify by detaching is the essence of rhetoric in the hands of the orator and the poet. This rhetoric, or power to fix the momentary eminency of an object,-so remarkable in Burke, in Byron, in Carlyle,-the painter and sculptor exhibit in color and in stone. The power depends on the depth of the artist's insight of that object he contemplates. For every object has its roots in central nature, and may of course be so exhibited to us as to represent the world. Therefore each work of genius is the tyrant of the hour And concentrates attention on itself. For the time, it is the only thing worth naming to do that,-be it a sonnet, an opera, a landscape, a statue, an oration, the plan of a temple, of a campaign, or of a voyage of discovery. Presently we pass to some other object, which rounds itself into a whole as did the first; for example a well-laid garden; and nothing seems worth doing but the laying out of gardens. I should think fire the best thing in the world, if I were not acquainted with air, and water, and earth. For it is the right and property of all natural objects, of all genuine talents, of all native properties whatsoever, to be for their moment the top of the world. A squirrel leaping from bough to bough and making the Wood but one wide tree for his pleasure, fills the eye not less than a lion,-is beautiful, self-sufficing, and stands then and there for nature. A good ballad draws my ear and heart whilst I listen, as much as an epic has done before. A dog, drawn by a master, or a litter of pigs, satisfies and is a reality not less than the frescoes of Angelo. From this succession of excellent objects we learn at last the immensity of the world, the opulence of human nature, which can run out to infinitude in any direction. But I also learn that what astonished and fascinated me in the first work astonished me in the second work also; that excellence of all things is one. The office of painting and sculpture seems to be merely initial. The best pictures can easily tell us their last secret. The best pictures are rude draughts of a few of the miraculous dots and lines and dyes which make up the ever-changing "landscape with figures" amidst which we dwell. Painting seems to be to the eye what dancing is to the 48 limbs. When that has educated the frame to self-possession, to nimbleness, to grace, the steps of the dancing-master are better forgotten; so painting teaches me the splendor of color and the expression of form, and as I see many pictures and higher genius in the art, I see the boundless opulence of the pencil, the indifferency in which the artist stands free to choose out of the possible forms. If he can draw every thing, why draw any thing? and then is my eye opened to the eternal picture which nature paints in the street, with moving men and children, beggars and fine ladies, draped in red and green and blue and gray; long-haired, grizzled, white-faced, black-faced, wrinkled, giant, dwarf, expanded, elfish,-capped and based by heaven, earth and sea. A gallery of sculpture teaches more austerely the same lesson. As picture teaches the coloring, so sculpture the anatomy of form. When I have seen fine statues and afterwards enter a public assembly, I understand well what he meant who said, "When I have been reading Homer, all men look like giants." I too see that painting and sculpture are gymnastics of the eye, its training to the niceties and curiosities of its function. There is no statue like this living man, with his infinite advantage over all ideal sculpture, of perpetual variety. What a gallery of art have I here! No mannerist made these varied groups and diverse original single figures. Here is the artist himself improvising, grim and glad, at his block. Now one thought strikes him, now another, and with each moment he alters the whole air, attitude and expression of his clay. Away with your nonsense of oil and easels, of marble and chisels; except to open your eyes to the masteries of eternal art, they are hypocritical rubbish. The reference of all production at last to an aboriginal Power explains the traits common to all works of the highest art,-that they are universally intelligible; that they restore to us the simplest states of mind, and are religious. Since what skill is therein shown is the reappearance of the original soul, a jet of pure light, it should produce a similar impression to that made by natural objects. In happy hours, nature appears to us one with art; art perfected,-the work of genius. And the individual, in whom simple tastes and susceptibility to all the great human influences overpower the accidents of a local and special culture, is the best critic of art. Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not. The best of beauty is a finer charm than skill in surfaces, in outlines, or rules of art can ever teach, namely a radiation from the work of art of human character,-a wonderful expression through stone, or canvas, or musical sound, of the deepest and simplest attributes of our nature, and therefore most intelligible at last to those souls which have these attributes. In the sculptures of the Greeks, in the masonry of the Romans, and in the pictures of the Tuscan and Venetian masters, the highest charm is the universal language they speak. A confession of moral nature, of purity, love, and hope, breathes from them all. That which we carry to them, the same we bring back more fairly illustrated in the memory. The traveller who visits the Vatican, and passes from chamber to chamber through galleries of statues, vases, sarcophagi and candelabra, through all forms of beauty cut in the richest materials, is in danger of forgetting the simplicity of the principles out of which they all sprung, and that they had their origin from thoughts and laws in his own breast. He studies the technical rules on these wonderful remains, but forgets that these works were not always thus constellated; that they are the contributions of many ages and many countries; that each 49 came out of the solitary workshop of one artist, who toiled perhaps in ignorance of the existence of other sculpture, created his work without other model save life, household life, and the sweet and smart of personal relations, of beating hearts, and meeting eyes; of poverty and necessity and hope and fear. These were his inspirations, and these are the effects he carries home to your heart and mind. In proportion to his force, the artist will find in his work an outlet for his proper character. He must not be in any manner pinched or hindered by his material, but through his necessity of imparting himself the adamant will be wax in his hands, and will allow an adequate communication of himself, in his full stature and proportion. He need not cumber himself with a conventional nature and culture, nor ask what is the mode in Rome or in Paris, but that house and weather and manner of living which poverty and the fate of birth have made at once so odious and so dear, in the gray unpainted wood cabin, on the corner of a New Hampshire farm, or in the log-hut of the backwoods, or in the narrow lodging where he has endured the constraints and seeming of a city poverty, will serve as well as any other condition as the symbol of a thought which pours itself indifferently through all. I remember when in my younger days I had heard of the wonders of Italian painting, I fancied the great pictures would be great strangers; some surprising combination of color and form; a foreign wonder, barbaric pearl and gold, like the spontoons and standards of the militia, which play such pranks in the eyes and imaginations of school-boys. I was to see and acquire I knew not what. When I came at last to Rome and saw with eyes the pictures, I found that genius left to novices the gay and fantastic and ostentatious, and itself pierced directly to the simple and true; that it was familiar and sincere; that it was the old, eternal fact I had met already in so many forms,-unto which I lived; that it was the plain you and me I knew so well,-had left at home in so many conversations. I had the same experience already in a church at Naples. There I saw that nothing was changed with me but the place, and said to myself-'Thou foolish child, hast thou come out hither, over four thousand miles of salt water, to find that which was perfect to thee there at home?' That fact I saw again in the Academmia at Naples, in the chambers of sculpture, and yet again when I came to Rome and to the paintings of Raphael, Angelo, Sacchi, Titian, and Leonardo da Vinci. "What, old mole! workest thou in the earth so fast?" It had travelled by my side; that which I fancied I had left in Boston was here in the Vatican, and again at Milan and at Paris, and made all travelling ridiculous as a treadmill. I now require this of all pictures, that they domesticate me, not that they dazzle me. Pictures must not be too picturesque. Nothing astonishes men so much as common-sense and plain dealing. All great actions have been simple, and all great pictures are. The Transfiguration, by Raphael, is an eminent example of this peculiar merit. A calm benignant beauty shines over all this picture, and goes directly to the heart. It seems almost to call you by name. The sweet and sublime face of Jesus is beyond praise, yet how it disappoints all florid expectations! This familiar, simple, home-speaking countenance is as if one should meet a friend. The knowledge of picture-dealers has its value, but listen not to their criticism when your heart is touched by genius. It was not painted for them, it was painted for you; for such as had eyes capable of being touched by simplicity and lofty emotions. 50 Yet when we have said all our fine things about the arts, we must end with a frank confession, that the arts, as we know them, are but initial. Our best praise is given to what they aimed and promised, not to the actual result. He has conceived meanly of the resources of man, who believes that the best age of production is past. The real value of the Iliad or the Transfiguration is as signs of power; billows or ripples they are of the stream of tendency; tokens of the everlasting effort to produce, which even in its worst estate the soul betrays. Art has not yet come to its maturity if it do not put itself abreast with the most potent influences of the world, if it is not practical and moral, if it do not stand in connection with the conscience, if it do not make the poor and uncultivated feel that it addresses them with a voice of lofty cheer. There is higher work for Art than the arts. They are abortive births of an imperfect or vitiated instinct. Art is the need to create; but in its essence, immense and universal, it is impatient of working with lame or tied hands, and of making cripples and monsters, such as all pictures and statues are. Nothing less than the creation of man and nature is its end. A man should find in it an outlet for his whole energy. He may paint and carve only as long as he can do that. Art should exhilarate, and throw down the walls of circumstance on every side, awakening in the beholder the same sense of universal relation and power which the work evinced in the artist, and its highest effect is to make new artists. Already History is old enough to witness the old age and disappearance of particular arts. The art of sculpture is long ago perished to any real effect. It was originally a useful art, a mode of writing, a savage's record of gratitude or devotion, and among a people possessed of a wonderful perception of form this childish carving was refined to the utmost splendor of effect. But it is the game of a rude and youthful people, and not the manly labor of a wise and spiritual nation. Under an oak-tree loaded with leaves and nuts, under a sky full of eternal eyes, I stand in a thoroughfare; but in the works of our plastic arts and especially of sculpture, creation is driven into a corner. I cannot hide from myself that there is a certain appearance of paltriness, as of toys and the trumpery of a theatre, in sculpture. Nature transcends all our moods of thought, and its secret we do not yet find. But the gallery stands at the mercy of our moods, and there is a moment when it becomes frivolous. I do not wonder that Newton, with an attention habitually engaged on the paths of planets and suns, should have wondered what the Earl of Pembroke found to admire in "stone dolls." Sculpture may serve to teach the pupil how deep is the secret of form, how purely the spirit can translate its meanings into that eloquent dialect. But the statue will look cold and false before that new activity which needs to roll through all things, and is impatient of counterfeits and things not alive. Picture and sculpture are the celebrations and festivities of form. But true art is never fixed, but always flowing. The sweetest music is not in the oratorio, but in the human voice when it speaks from its instant life tones of tenderness, truth, or courage. The oratorio has already lost its relation to the morning, to the sun, and the earth, but that persuading voice is in tune with these. All works of art should not be detached, but extempore performances. A great man is a new statue in every attitude and action. A beautiful woman is a picture which drives all beholders nobly mad. Life may be lyric or epic, as well as a poem or a romance. A true announcement of the law of creation, if a man were found worthy to declare it, would carry art up into the kingdom of nature, and destroy its separate and contrasted 51 existence. The fountains of invention and beauty in modern society are all but dried up. A popular novel, a theatre, or a ball-room makes us feel that we are all paupers in the almshouse of this world, without dignity, without skill or industry. Art is as poor and low. The old tragic Necessity, which lowers on the brows even of the Venuses and the Cupids of the antique, and furnishes the sole apology for the intrusion of such anomalous figures into nature,-namely, that they were inevitable; that the artist was drunk with a passion for form which he could not resist, and which vented itself in these fine extravagances,- no longer dignifies the chisel or the pencil. But the artist and the connoisseur now seek in art the exhibition of their talent, or an asylum from the evils of life. Men are not well pleased with the figure they make in their own imaginations, and they flee to art, and convey their better sense in an oratorio, a statue, or a picture. Art makes the same effort which a sensual prosperity makes; namely to detach the beautiful from the useful, to do up the work as unavoidable, and, hating it, pass on to enjoyment. These solaces and compensations, this division of beauty from use, the laws of nature do not permit. As soon as beauty is sought, not from religion and love but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker. High beauty is no longer attainable by him in canvas or in stone, in sound, or in lyrical construction; an effeminate, prudent, sickly beauty, which is not beauty, is all that can be formed; for the hand can never execute any thing higher than the character can inspire. The art that thus separates is itself first separated. Art must not be a superficial talent, but must begin farther back in man. Now men do not see nature to be beautiful, and they go to make a statue which shall be. They abhor men as tasteless, dull, and inconvertible, and console themselves with color-bags and blocks of marble. They reject life as prosaic, and create a death which they call poetic. They despatch the day's weary chores, and fly to voluptuous reveries. They eat and drink, that they may afterwards execute the ideal. Thus is art vilified; the name conveys to the mind its secondary and bad senses; it stands in the imagination as somewhat contrary to nature, and struck with death from the first. Would it not be better to begin higher up,-to serve the ideal before they eat and drink; to serve the ideal in eating and drinking, in drawing the breath, and in the functions of life? Beauty must come back to the useful arts, and the distinction between the fine and the useful arts be forgotten. If history were truly told, if life were nobly spent, it would be no longer easy or possible to distinguish the one from the other. In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men. It is in vain that we look for genius to reiterate its miracles in the old arts; it is its instinct to find beauty and holiness in new and necessary facts, in the field and road-side, in the shop and mill. Proceeding from a religious heart it will raise to a divine use the railroad, the insurance office, the joint-stock company; our law, our primary assemblies, our commerce, the galvanic battery, the electric jar, the prism, and the chemist's retort; in which we seek now only an economical use. Is not the selfish and even cruel aspect which belongs to our great mechanical works, to mills, railways, and machinery, the effect of the mercenary impulses which these works obey? When its errands are noble and adequate, a steamboat bridging the Atlantic between Old and New England and arriving at its ports with the 52 punctuality of a planet, is a step of man into harmony with nature. The boat at St. Petersburg, which plies along the Lena by magnetism, needs little to make it sublime. When science is learned in love, and its powers are wielded by love, they will appear the supplements and continuations of the material creation. 53 4 John Fiske The Unseen World and Other Essays XIII. A PHILOSOPHY OF ART. We are glad of a chance to introduce to our readers one of the works of a great writer. Though not yet 66 widely known in this country, M. Taine has obtained a very high reputation in Europe. He is still quite a young man, but is nevertheless the author of nineteen goodly volumes, witty, acute, and learned; and already he is often ranked with Renan, Littre, and Sainte-Beuve, the greatest living French writers. Hippolyte Adolphe Taine was born at Vouziers, among the grand forests of Ardennes, in 1828, and is therefore about forty years old. His family was simple in habits and tastes, and entertained a steadfast belief in culture, along with the possession of a fair amount of it. His grandfather was sub-prefect at Rocroi, in 1814 and 1815, under the first restoration of the Bourbons. His father, a lawyer by profession, was the first instructor of his son, and taught him Latin, and from an uncle, who had been in America, he learned English, while still a mere child. Having gone to Paris with his mother in 1842, he began his studies at the College Bourbon and in 1848 was promoted to the ecole Normale. Weiss, About, and Prevost-Paradol were his contemporaries at this institution. At that time great liberty was enjoyed in regard to the order and the details of the exercises; so that Taine, with his surprising rapidity, would do in one week the work laid out for a month, and would spend the remainder of the time in private reading. In 1851 he left college, and after two or three unsatisfactory attempts at teaching, in Paris and in the provinces, he settled down at Paris as a private student. He gave himself the very best elementary preparation which a literary man can have,-a thorough course in mathematics and the physical sciences. His studies in anatomy and physiology were especially elaborate and minute. He attended the School of Medicine as regularly as if he expected to make his daily bread in the profession. In this way, when at the age of twenty-five he began to write books, M. Taine was a really educated man; and his books show it. The day is past when a man could write securely, with a knowledge of the classics alone. We doubt if a philosophical critic is perfectly educated for his task, unless he can read, for instance, Donaldson's "New Cratylus" on the one hand, and Rokitansky's "Pathological Anatomy" on the other, for the sheer pleasure of the thing. At any rate, it was an education of this sort which M. Taine, at the outset of his literary career, had secured. By this solid discipline of mathematics, chemistry, and medicine, M. Taine became that which above all things he now is,-a man possessed of a central philosophy, of an exact, categorical, well-defined system, which accompanies and supports him in his most distant literary excursions. He does not keep throwing out ideas at random, like too many literary critics, but attaches all his criticisms to a common fundamental principle; in short, he is not a dilettante, but a savant. 54 His treatise on La Fontaine, in 1853, attracted much attention, both the style and the matter being singularly fresh and original. He has since republished it, with alterations which serve to show that he can be docile toward intelligent criticisms. About the same time he prepared for the French Academy his work upon the historian Livy, which was crowned in 1855. Suffering then from overwork, he was obliged to make a short journey to the Pyrenees, which he has since described in a charming little volume, illustrated by Dore. His subsequent works are a treatise on the French philosophers of the present century, in which the vapid charlatanism of M. Cousin is satisfactorily dealt with; a history of English literature in five volumes; a humorous book on Paris; three volumes upon the general theory of art; and two volumes of travels in Italy; besides a considerable collection of historical and critical essays. We think that several of these works would be interesting to the American public, and might profitably be translated. Some three or four years ago, M. Taine was appointed Professor in the ecole des Beaux Arts, and we suppose his journey to Italy must have been undertaken partly with a view to qualify himself for his new position. He visited the four cities which may be considered the artistic centres of Italy,-Rome, Naples, Florence, and Venice,-and a large part of his account of his journey is taken up with descriptions and criticisms of pictures, statues, and buildings. This is a department of criticism which, we may as well frankly acknowledge, is far better appreciated on the continent of Europe than in England or America. Over the English race there passed, about two centuries ago, a deluge of Puritanism, which for a time almost drowned out its artistic tastes and propensities. The Puritan movement, in proportion to its success, was nearly as destructive to art in the West, as Mohammedanism had long before been in the East. In its intense and one-sided regard for morality, Puritanism not only relegated the love for beauty to an inferior place, but contemned and spat upon it, as something sinful and degrading. Hence, the utter architectural impotence which characterizes the Americans and the modern English; and hence the bewildered ignorant way in which we ordinarily contemplate pictures and statues. For two centuries we have been removed from an artistic environment, and consequently can with difficulty enter into the feelings of those who have all this time been nurtured in love for art, and belief in art for its own sake. These peculiarities, as Mr. Mill has ably pointed out, have entered deep into our ethnic character. Even in pure morals there is a radical difference between the Englishman and the inhabitant of the continent of Europe. The Englishman follows virtue from a sense of duty, the Frenchman from an emotional aspiration toward the beautiful The one admires a noble action because it is right, the other because it is attractive. And this difference underlies the moral judgments upon men and events which are to be found respectively in English and in continental literature. By keeping it constantly in view, we shall be enabled to understand many things which might otherwise surprise us in the writings of French authors. 55 We are now slowly outgrowing the extravagances of Puritanism. It has given us an earnestness and sobriety of character, to which much of our real greatness is owing, both here and in the mother country. It has made us stronger and steadier, but it has at the same time narrowed us in many respects, and rendered our lives incomplete. This incompleteness, entailed by Puritanism, we are gradually getting rid of; and we are learning to admire and respect many things upon which Puritanism set its mark of contempt. We are beginning, for instance, to recognize the transcendent merits of that great civilizing agency, the drama; we no longer think it necessary that our temples for worshipping God should be constructed like hideous barracks; we are gradually permitting our choirs to discard the droning and sentimental modern "psalm-tune" for the inspiring harmonies of Beethoven and Mozart; and we admit the classical picture and the undraped statue to a high place in our esteem. Yet with all this it will probably be some time before genuine art ceases to be an exotic among us, and becomes a plant of unhindered native growth. It will be some time before we cease to regard pictures and statues as a higher species of upholstery, and place them in the same category with poems and dramas, duly reverencing them as authentic revelations of the beauty which is to be found in nature. It will be some time before we realize that art is a thing to be studied, as well as literature, and before we can be quite reconciled to the familiar way in which a Frenchman quotes a picture as we would quote a poem or novel. Artistic genius, as M. Taine has shown, is something which will develop itself only under peculiar social circumstances; and, therefore, if we have not art, we can perhaps only wait for it, trusting that when the time comes it will arise among us. But without originating, we may at least intelligently appreciate. The nature of a work of art, and the mode in which it is produced, are subjects well worthy of careful study. Architecture and music, poetry, painting and sculpture, have in times past constituted a vast portion of human activity; and without knowing something of the philosophy of art, we need not hope to understand thoroughly the philosophy of history. In entering upon the study of art in general, one may find many suggestive hints in the little books of M. Taine, reprinted from the lectures which he has been delivering at the ecole des Beaux Arts. The first, on the Philosophy of Art, designated at the head of this paper, is already accessible to the American reader; and translations of the others are probably soon to follow. We shall for the present give a mere synopsis of M. Taine's general views. And first it must be determined what a work of art is. Leaving for a while music and architecture out of consideration, it will be admitted that poetry, painting, and sculpture have one obvious character in common: they are arts of IMITATION. This, says Taine, appears at first sight to be their essential character. It would appear that their great object is to IMITATE as closely as possible. It is obvious that a statue is intended to imitate a living man, that a picture is designed to represent real persons in real attitudes, or the interior of a house, or a landscape, such as it exists in nature. And it is no less clear that a novel or drama endeavours to represent with accuracy real characters, actions, and words, giving as precise and faithful an image of them as possible. And when the imitation is incomplete, we say to the painter, "Your people are too largely proportioned, and the 56 colour of your trees is false"; we tell the sculptor that his leg or arm is incorrectly modelled; and we say to the dramatist, "Never has a man felt or thought as your hero is supposed to have felt and thought." This truth, moreover, is seen both in the careers of individual artists, and in the general history of art. According to Taine, the life of an artist may generally be divided into two parts. In the first period, that of natural growth, he studies nature anxiously and minutely, he keeps the objects themselves before his eyes, and strives to represent them with scrupulous fidelity. But when the time for mental growth ends, as it does with every man, and the crystallization of ideas and impressions commences, then the mind of the artist is no longer so susceptible to new impressions from without. He begins to nourish himself from his own substance. He abandons the living model, and with recipes which he has gathered in the course of his experience, he proceeds to construct a drama or novel, a picture or statue. Now, the first period, says Taine, is that of genuine art; the second is that of mannerism. Our author cites the case of Michael Angelo, a man who was one of the most colossal embodiments of physical and mental energy that the world has ever seen. In Michael Angelo's case, the period of growth, of genuine art, may be said to have lasted until after his sixtieth year. But look, says Taine, at the works which he executed in his old age; consider the Conversion of St. Paul, and the Last Judgment, painted when he was nearly seventy. Even those who are not connoisseurs can see that these frescos are painted by rule, that the artist, having stocked his memory with a certain set of forms, is making use of them to fill out his tableau; that he wantonly multiplies queer attitudes and ingenious foreshortenings; that the lively invention, the grand outburst of feeling, the perfect truth, by which his earlier works are distinguished, have disappeared; and that, if he is still superior to all others, he is nevertheless inferior to himself. The careers of Scott, of Goethe, and of Voltaire will furnish parallel examples. In every school of art, too, the flourishing period is followed by one of decline; and in every case the decline is due to a failure to imitate the living models. In painting, we have the exaggerated foreshorteners and muscle-makers who copied Michael Angelo; the lovers of theatrical decorations who succeeded Titian and Giorgione and the degenerate boudoir-painters who followed Claucle and Poussin. In literature, we have the versifiers, epigrammatists, and rhetors of the Latin decadence; the sensual and declamatory dramatists who represent the last stages of old English comedy; and the makers of sonnets and madrigals, or conceited euphemists of the Gongora school, in the decline of Italian and Spanish poetry. Briefly it may be said, that the masters copy nature and the pupils copy the masters. In this way are explained the constantly recurring phenomena of decline in art, and thus, also, it is seen that art is perfect in proportion as it successfully imitates nature. But we are not to conclude that absolute imitation is the sole and entire object of art. Were this the case, the finest works would be those which most minutely correspond to their external prototypes. In sculpture, a mould taken from the living features is that which gives the most faithful representation of the model; but a well-moulded bust is far from being equal to a good statue. Photography is in many respects more accurate than painting; but no one would rank a photograph, however exquisitely executed, with an original picture. And finally, if exact imitation were the supreme object of art, the best tragedy, the best comedy, and the best drama would be a stenographic report of the 57 proceedings in a court of justice, in a family gathering, in a popular meeting, in the Rump Congress. Even the works of artists are not rated in proportion to their minute exactness. Neither in painting nor in any other art do we give the precedence to that which deceives the eye simply. Every one remembers how Zeuxis was said to have painted grapes so faithfully that the birds came and pecked at them; and how, Parrhasios, his rival, surpassed even this feat by painting a curtain so natural in its appearance that Zeuxis asked him to pull it aside and show the picture behind it. All this is not art, but mere knack and trickery. Perhaps no painter was ever so minute as Denner. It used to take him four years to make one portrait. He would omit nothing,-neither the bluish lines made by the veins under the skin, nor the little black points scattered over the nose, nor the bright spots in the eye where neighbouring objects are reflected; the head seems to start out from the canvas, it is so like flesh and blood. Yet who cares for Denner's portraits? And who would not give ten times as much for one which Van Dyck or Tintoretto might have painted in a few hours? So in the churches of Naples and Spain we find statues coloured and draped, saints clothed in real coats, with their skin yellow and bloodless, their hands bleeding, and their feet bruised; and beside them Madonnas in royal habiliments, in gala dresses of lustrous silk, adorned with diadems, precious necklaces, bright ribbons, and elegant laces, with their cheeks rosy, their eyes brilliant, their eyelashes sweeping. And by this excess of literal imitation, there is awakened a feeling, not of pleasure, but always of repugnance, often of disgust, and sometimes of horror So in literature, the ancient Greek theatre, and the best Spanish and English dramatists, alter on purpose the natural current of human speech, and make their characters talk under all the restraints of rhyme and rhythm. But we pronounce this departure from literal truth a merit and not a defect. We consider Goethe's second "Iphigenie," written in verse, far preferable to the first one written in prose; nay, it is the rhythm or metre itself which communicates to the work its incomparable beauty. In a review of Longfellow's "Dante," published last year, we argued this very point in one of its special applications; the artist must copy his original, but he must not copy it too literally. What then must he copy? He must copy, says Taine, the mutual relations and interdependences of the parts of his model. And more than this, he must render the essential characteristic of the object-that characteristic upon which all the minor qualities depend-as salient and conspicuous as possible. He must put into the background the traits which conceal it, and bring into the foreground the traits which manifest it. If he is sculpturing a group like the Laocoon, he must strike upon the supreme moment, that in which the whole tragedy reveals itself, and he must pass over those insignificant details of position and movement which serve only to distract our attention and weaken our emotions by dividing them. If he is writing a drama, he must not attempt to give us the complete biography of his character; he must depict only those situations which stand in direct subordination to the grand climax or denoument. As a final result, therefore. Taine concludes that a work of art is a concrete representation of the relations existing between the parts of an object, with the intent to bring the essential or dominating character thereof into prominence. We should overrun our limits if we were to follow out the admirable discussion in which M. Taine extends this definition to architecture and music. These closely allied arts are 58 distinguished from poetry, painting, and sculpture, by appealing far less directly to the intelligence, and far more exclusively to the emotions. Yet these arts likewise aim, by bringing into prominence certain relations of symmetry in form as perceived by the eye, or in aerial vibrations as perceived by the ear, to excite in us the states of feeling with which these species of symmetry are by subtle laws of association connected. They, too, imitate, not literally, but under the guidance of a predominating sentiment or emotion, relations which really exist among the phenomena of nature. And here, too, we estimate excellence, not in proportion to the direct, but to the indirect imitation. A Gothic cathedral is not, as has been supposed, directly imitated from the towering vegetation of Northern forests; but it may well be the expression of the dim sentiment of an unseen, allpervading Power, generated by centuries of primeval life amid such forests. So the sounds which in a symphony of Beethoven are woven into a web of such amazing complexity may exist in different combinations in nature; but when a musician steps out of his way to imitate the crowing of cocks or the roar of the tempest, we regard his achievement merely as a graceful conceit. Art is, therefore, an imitation of nature; but it is an intellectual and not a mechanical imitation; and the performances of the camera and the music-box are not to be classed with those of the violinist's bow or the sculptor's chisel. And lastly, in distinguishing art from science, Taine remarks, that in disengaging from their complexity the causes which are at work in nature, and the fundamental laws according to which they work, science describes them in abstract formulas conveyed in technical language. But art reveals these operative causes and these dominant laws, not in arid definitions, inaccessible to most people, intelligible only to specially instructed men, but in a concrete symbol, addressing itself not only to the understanding, but still more to the sentiments of the ordinary man. Art has, therefore, this peculiarity, that it is at once elevated and popular, that it manifests that which is often most recondite, and that it manifests it to all. Having determined what a work of art is, our author goes on to study the social conditions under which works of art are produced; and he concludes that the general character of a work of art is determined by the state of intellect and morals in the society in which it is executed. There is, in fact, a sort of moral temperature which acts upon mental development much as physical temperature acts upon organic development. The condition of society does not produce the artist's talent; but it assists or checks its efforts to display itself; it decides whether or not it shall be successful And it exerts a "natural selection" between different kinds of talents, stimulating some and starving others. To make this perfectly clear, we will cite at some length Taine's brilliant illustration. The case chosen for illustration is a very simple one,-that of a state of society in which one of the predominant feelings is melancholy. This is not an arbitrary supposition, for such a time has occurred more than once in human history; in Asia, in the sixth century before Christ, and especially in Europe, from the fourth to the tenth centuries of our era. To produce such a state of feeling, five or six generations of decadence, accompanied with diminution of population, foreign invasions, famines, pestilences, and increasing difficulty in procuring the necessaries of life, are amply sufficient. It then happens that 59 men lose courage and hope, and consider life an evil. Now, admitting that among the artists who live in such a time, there are likely to be the same relative numbers of melancholy, joyous, or indifferent temperaments as at other times, let us see how they will be affected by reigning circumstances. Let us first remember, says Taine, that the evils which depress the public will also depress the artist. His risks are no less than those of less gifted people. He is liable to suffer from plague or famine, to be ruined by unfair taxation or conscription, or to see his children massacred and his wife led into captivity by barbarians. And if these ills do not reach him personally, he must at least behold those around him affected by them. In this way, if he is joyous by temperament, he must inevitably become less joyous; if he is melancholy, he must become more melancholy. Secondly, having been reared among melancholy contemporaries, his education will have exerted upon him a corresponding influence. The prevailing religious doctrine, accommodated to the state of affairs, will tell him that the earth is a place of exile, life an evil, gayety a snare, and his most profitable occupation will be to get ready to die. Philosophy, constructing its system of morals in conformity to the existing phenomena of decadence, will tell him that he had better never have been born. Daily conversation will inform him of horrible events, of the devastation of a province, the sack of a town by the Goths, the oppression of the neighbouring peasants by the imperial tax-collectors, or the civil war that has just burst out between half a dozen pretenders to the throne. As he travels about, he beholds signs of mourning and despair, crowds of beggars, people dying of hunger, a broken bridge which no one is mending, an abandoned suburb which is going to ruin, fields choked with weeds, the blackened walls of burned houses. Such sights and impressions, repeated from childhood to old age (and we must remember that this has actually been the state of things in what are now the fairest parts of the globe), cannot fail to deepen whatever elements of melancholy there may be already in the artist's disposition. The operation of all these causes will be enhanced by that very peculiarity of the artist which constitutes his talent. For, according to the definitions above given, that which makes him an artist is his capacity for seizing upon the essential characteristics and the salient traits of surrounding objects and events. Other men see things in part fragmentarily; he catches the spirit of the ensemble. And in this way he will very likely exaggerate in his works the general average of contemporary feeling. Lastly, our author reminds us that a man who writes or paints does not remain alone before his easel or his writing-desk. He goes out, looks about him, receives suggestions from friends, from rivals, from books, and works of art whenever accessible, and hears the criticisms of the public upon his own productions and those of his contemporaries. In order to succeed, he must not only satisfy to some extent the popular taste, but he must feel that the public is in sympathy with him. If in this period of social decadence and gloom he endeavours to represent gay, brilliant, or triumphant ideas, he will find himself left to his own resources; and, as Taine rightly says, the power of an isolated man is always insignificant. His work will be likely to be mediocre. If he attempts to write like 60 Rabelais or paint like Rubens, he will get neither assistance nor sympathy from a public which prefers the pictures of Rembrandt, the melodies of Chopin, and the poetry of Heine. Having thus explained his position by this extreme instance, signified for the sake of clearness, Taine goes on to apply such general considerations to four historic epochs, taken in all their complexity. He discusses the aspect presented by art in ancient Greece, in the feudal and Catholic Middle Ages, in the centralized monarchies of the seventeenth century, and in the scientific, industrial democracy in which we now live. Out of these we shall select, as perhaps the simplest, the case of ancient Greece, still following our author closely, though necessarily omitting many interesting details. The ancient Greeks, observes Taine, understood life in a new and original manner. Their energies were neither absorbed by a great religious conception, as in the case of the Hindus and Egyptians, nor by a vast social organization, as in the case of the Assyrians and Persians, nor by a purely industrial and commercial regime, as in the case of the Phoenicians and Carthaginians. Instead of a theocracy or a rigid system of castes, instead of a monarchy with a hierarchy of civil officials, the men of this race invented a peculiar institution, the City, each city giving rise to others like itself, and from colony to colony reproducing itself indefinitely. A single Greek city, for instance, Miletos, produced three hundred other cities, colonizing with them the entire coast of the Black Sea. Each city was substantially self-ruling; and the idea of a coalescence of several cities into a nation was one which the Greek mind rarely conceived, and never was able to put into operation. In these cities, labour was for the most part carried on by slaves. In Athens there were four or five for each citizen, and in places like Korinth and Aigina the slave population is said to have numbered four or five hundred thousand. Besides, the Greek citizen had little need of personal service. He lived out of doors, and, like most Southern people, was comparatively abstemious in his habits. His dinners were slight, his clothing was simple, his house was scantily furnished, being intended chiefly for a den to sleep in. Serving neither king nor priest, the citizen was free and sovereign in his own city. He elected his own magistrates, and might himself serve as city-ruler, as juror, or as judge. Representation was unknown. Legislation was carried on by all the citizens assembled in mass. Therefore politics and war were the sole or chief employments of the citizen. War, indeed, came in for no slight share of his attention. For society was not so well protected as in these modern days. Most of these Greek cities, scattered over the coasts of the Aigeian, the Black Sea, and the Mediterranean, were surrounded by tribes of barbarians, Scythians, Gauls Spaniards, and Africans. The citizen must therefore keep on his guard, like the Englishman of to-day in New Zealand, or like the inhabitant of a Massachusetts town in the seventeenth century. Otherwise Gauls Samnites, or Bithynians, as savage as North American Indians, would be sure to encamp upon the blackened ruins of his town. Moreover, the Greek cities had their quarrels with each other, and their laws of war were very barbarous. A conquered city was liable to be razed to the ground, its male inhabitants put to the sword, its women sold as slaves. Under such circumstances, 61 according to Taine's happy expression, a citizen must be a politician and warrior, on pain of death. And not only fear, but ambition also tended to make him so. For each city strove to subject or to humiliate its neighbours, to acquire tribute, or to exact homage from its rivals. Thus the citizen passed his life in the public square, discussing alliances, treaties, and constitutions, hearing speeches, or speaking himself, and finally going aboard of his ship to fight his neighbour Greeks, or to sail against Egypt or Persia. War (and politics as subsidiary to it) was then the chief pursuit of life. But as there was no organized industry, so there were no machines of warfare. All fighting was done hand to hand. Therefore, the great thing in preparing for war was not to transform the soldiers into precisely-acting automata, as in a modern army, but to make each separate soldier as vigorous and active as possible. The leading object of Greek education was to make men physically perfect. In this respect, Sparta may be taken as the typical Greek community, for nowhere else was physical development so entirely made the great end of social life. In these matters Sparta was always regarded by the other cities as taking the lead,-as having attained the ideal after which all alike were striving. Now Sparta, situated in the midst of a numerous conquered population of Messenians and Helots, was partly a great gymnasium and partly a perpetual camp. Her citizens were always in training. The entire social constitution of Sparta was shaped with a view to the breeding and bringing up of a strong and beautiful race. Feeble or ill-formed infants were put to death. The age at which citizens might marry was prescribed by law; and the State paired off men and women as the modern breeder pairs off horses, with a sole view to the excellence of the off-spring. A wife was not a helpmate, but a bearer of athletes. Women boxed, wrestled, and raced; a circumstance referred to in the following passage of Aristophanes, as rendered by Mr. Felton:- LYSISTRATA. Hail! Lampito, dearest of Lakonian women. How shines thy beauty, O my sweetest friend! How fair thy colour, full of life thy frame! Why, thou couldst choke a bull. LAMPITO. Yes, by the Twain; For I do practice the gymnastic art, And, leaping, strike my backbone with my heels. LYSISTRATA. In sooth, thy bust is lovely to behold. The young men lived together, like soldiers in a camp. They ate out-of-doors, at a public table. Their fare was as simple as that of a modern university boat-crew before a race. They slept in the open air, and spent their waking hours in wrestling, boxing, running races, throwing quoits, and engaging in mock battles. This was the way in which the 62 Spartans lived; and though no other city carried this discipline to such an extent, yet in all a very large portion of the citizen's life was spent in making himself hardy and robust. The ideal man, in the eyes of a Greek, was, therefore not the contemplative or delicately susceptible thinker but the naked athlete, with firm flesh and swelling muscles. Most of their barbarian neighbours were ashamed to be seen undressed, but the Greeks seem to have felt little embarrassment in appearing naked in public. Their gymnastic habits entirely transformed their sense of shame. Their Olympic and other public games were a triumphant display of naked physical perfection. Young men of the noblest families and from the farthest Greek colonies came to them, and wrestled and ran, undraped, before countless multitudes of admiring spectators. Note, too, as significant, that the Greek era began with the Olympic games, and that time was reckoned by the intervals between them; as well as the fact that the grandest lyric poetry of antiquity was written in celebration of these gymnastic contests. The victor in the foot-race gave his name to the current Olympiad; and on reaching home, was received by his fellow-citizens as if he had been a general returning from a successful campaign. To be the most beautiful man in Greece was in the eyes of a Greek the height of human felicity; and with the Greeks, beauty necessarily included strength. So ardently did this gifted people admire corporeal perfection that they actually worshipped it. According to Herodotos, a young Sicilian was deified on account of his beauty, and after his death altars were raised to him. The vast intellectual power of Plato and Sokrates did not prevent them from sharing this universal enthusiasm. Poets like Sophokles, and statesmen like Alexander, thought it not beneath their dignity to engage publicly in gymnastic sports. Their conceptions of divinity were framed in accordance with these general habits. Though sometimes, as in the case of Hephaistos, the exigencies of the particular myth required the deity to be physically imperfect, yet ordinarily the Greek god was simply an immortal man, complete in strength and beauty. The deity was not invested with the human form as a mere symbol. They could conceive no loftier way of representing him. The grandest statue, expressing most adequately the calmness of absolutely unfettered strength, might well, in their eyes, be a veritable portrait of divinity. To a Greek, beauty of form was a consecrated thing. More than once a culprit got off with his life because it would have been thought sacrilegious to put an end to such a symmetrical creature. And for a similar reason, the Greeks, though perhaps not more humane than the Europeans of the Middle Ages, rarely allowed the human body to be mutilated or tortured. The condemned criminal must be marred as little as possible; and he was, therefore, quietly poisoned, instead of being hung, beheaded, or broken on the wheel. Is not the unapproachable excellence of Greek statuary-that art never since equalled, and most likely, from the absence of the needful social stimulus, destined never to be equalled-already sufficiently explained? Consider, says our author, the nature of the Greek sculptor's preparation. These men have observed the human body naked and in movement, in the bath and the gymnasium, in sacred dances and public games. They have noted those forms and attitudes in which are revealed vigour, health, and activity. And during three or four hundred years they have thus modified, corrected and developed their notions of corporeal beauty. There is, therefore, nothing surprising in the fact that 63 Greek sculpture finally arrived at the ideal model, the perfect type, as it was, of the human body. Our highest notions of physical beauty, down to the present day, have been bequeathed to us by the Greeks. The earliest modern sculptors who abandoned the bony, hideous, starveling figures of the monkish Middle Ages, learned their first lessons in better things from Greek bas-reliefs. And if, to-day, forgetting our half-developed bodies, inefficiently nourished, because of our excessive brain-work, and with their muscles weak and flabby from want of strenuous exercise, we wish to contemplate the human form in its grandest perfection, we must go to Hellenic art for our models. The Greeks were, in the highest sense of the word, an intellectual race; but they never allowed the mind to tyrannize over the body. Spiritual perfection, accompanied by corporeal feebleness, was the invention of asceticism; and the Greeks were never ascetics. Diogenes might scorn superfluous luxuries, but if he ever rolled and tumbled his tub about as Rabelais says he did, it is clear that the victory of spirit over body formed no part of his theory of things. Such an idea would have been incomprehensible to a Greek in Plato's time. Their consciences were not over active. They were not burdened with a sense of sinfulness. Their aspirations were decidedly finite; and they believed in securing the maximum completeness of this terrestrial life. Consequently they never set the physical below the intellectual. To return to our author, they never, in their statues, subordinated symmetry to expression, the body to the head. They were interested not only in the prominence of the brows, the width of the forehead, and the curvature of the lips, but quite as much in the massiveness of the chest, the compactness of the thighs, and the solidity of the arms and legs. Not only the face, but the whole body, had for them its physiognomy. They left picturesqueness to the painter, and dramatic fervour to the poet; and keeping strictly before their eyes the narrow but exalted problem of representing the beauty of symmetry, they filled their sanctuaries and public places with those grand motionless people of brass, gold, ivory, copper, and marble, in whom humanity recognizes its highest artistic types. Statuary was the central art of Greece. No other art was so popular, or so completely expressed the national life. The number of statues was enormous. In later days, when Rome had spoiled the Greek world of its treasures, the Imperial City possessed a population of statues almost equal in number to its population of human beings. And at the present day, after all the destructive accidents of so many intervening centuries, it is estimated that more than sixty thousand statues have been obtained from Rome and its suburbs alone. In citing this admirable exposition as a specimen of M. Taine's method of dealing with his subject, we have refrained from disturbing the pellucid current of thought by criticisms of our own. We think the foregoing explanation correct enough, so far as it goes, though it deals with the merest rudiments of the subject, and really does nothing toward elucidating the deeper mysteries of artistic production. For this there is needed a profounder psychology than M. Taine's. But whether his theory of art be adequate or not, there can be but one opinion as to the brilliant eloquence with which it is set forth. June, 1868. 64 5 Eliot Gregory The Ways of Men CHAPTER 18-What is ―Art‖? In former years, we inquiring youngsters in foreign studios were much bewildered by the repetition of a certain phrase. Discussion of almost any picture or statue was (after other forms of criticism had been exhausted) pretty sure to conclude with, ―It's all very well in its way, but it's not Art.‖ Not only foolish youths but the ―masters‖ themselves constantly advanced this opinion to crush a rival or belittle a friend. To ardent minds seeking for the light and catching at every thread that might serve as a guide out of perplexity, this vague assertion was confusing. According to one master, the eighteenthcentury ―school‖ did not exist. What had been produced at that time was pleasing enough to the eye, but ―was not Art!‖ In the opinion of another, Italian music might amuse or cheer the ignorant, but could not be recognized by serious musicians. As most of us were living far from home and friends for the purpose of acquiring the rudiments of art, this continual sweeping away of our foundations was discouraging. What was the use, we sometimes asked ourselves, of toiling, if our work was to be cast contemptuously aside by the next ―school‖ as a pleasing trifle, not for a moment to be taken seriously? How was one to find out the truth? Who was to decide when doctors disagreed? Where was the rock on which an earnest student might lay his cornerstone without the misgiving that the next wave in public opinion would sap its base and cast him and his ideals out again at sea? The eighteenth-century artists and the Italian composers had been sincere and convinced that they were producing works of art. In our own day the idol of one moment becomes the jest of the next. Was there, then, no fixed law? The short period, for instance, between 1875 and the present time has been long enough for the talent of one painter (Bastien-Lepage) to be discovered, discussed, lauded, acclaimed, then gradually forgotten and decried. During the years when we were studying in Paris, that young painter's works were pronounced by the critics and their following to be the last development of Art. Museums and amateurs vied with each other in acquiring his canvases. Yet, only this spring, while dining with two or three art critics in the French capital, I heard Lepage's name mentioned and his works recalled with the smile that is accorded to those who have hoodwinked the public and passed off spurious material as the real thing. If any one doubts the fleeting nature of a reputation, let him go to a sale of modern pictures and note the prices brought by the favorites of twenty years ago. The paintings of that arch-priest, Meissonier, no longer command the sums that eager collectors paid for them a score of years back. When a great European critic dares assert, as one has 65 recently, of the master's ―1815,‖ that ―everything in the picture appears metallic, except the cannon and the men's helmets,‖ the mighty are indeed fallen! It is much the same thing with the old masters. There have been fashions in them as in other forms of art. Fifty years ago Rembrandt's work brought but small prices, and until Henri Rochefort (during his exile) began to write up the English school, Romneys, Lawrences, and Gainsboroughs had little market value. The result is that most of us are as far away from the solution of that vexed question ―What is Art?‖ at forty as we were when boys. The majority have arranged a compromise with their consciences. We have found out what we like (in itself no mean achievement), and beyond such personal preference, are shy of asserting (as we were fond of doing formerly) that such and such works are ―Art,‖ and such others, while pleasing and popular, lack the requisite qualities. To enquiring minds, sure that an answer to this question exists, but uncertain where to look for it, the fact that one of the thinkers of the century has, in a recent ―Evangel,‖ given to the world a definition of ―Art,‖ the result of many years' meditation, will be received with joy. ―Art,‖ says Tolstoi, ―is simply a condition of life. It is any form of expression that a human being employs to communicate an emotion he has experienced to a fellow-mortal.‖ An author who, in telling his hopes and sorrows, amuses or saddens a reader, has in just so much produced a work of art. A lover who, by the sincerity of his accent, communicates the flame that is consuming him to the object of his adoration; the shopkeeper who inspires a purchaser with his own admiration for an object on sale; the baby that makes its joy known to a parent-artists! artists! Brown, Jones, or Robinson, the moment he has consciously produced on a neighbor's ear or eye the sensation that a sound or a combination of colors has effected on his own organs, is an artist! Of course much of this has been recognized through all time. The formula in which Tolstoi has presented his meditations to the world is, however, so fresh that it comes like a revelation, with the additional merit of being understood, with little or no mental effort, by either the casual reader, who, with half-attention attracted by a headline, says to himself, ― What is art?' That looks interesting!‖ and skims lightly down the lines, or the thinker who, after perusing Tolstoi's lucid words, lays down the volume with a sigh, and murmurs in his humiliation, ―Why have I been all these years seeking in the clouds for what was lying ready at my hand?‖ The wide-reaching definition of the Russian writer has the effect of a vigorous blow from a pickaxe at the foundations of a shaky and too elaborate edifice. The wordy superstructure of aphorisms and paradox falls to the ground, disclosing fair ―Truth,‖ so long a captive within the temple erected in her honor. As, however, the newly freed goddess smiles on the ignorant and the pedants alike, the result is that with one accord the aesthetes raise a howl! ―And the  beautiful,'‖ they say, ―the beautiful? Can there be any  Art' without the  Beautiful'? What! the little greengrocer at the corner is an artist because, forsooth, he has arranged some lettuce and tomatoes into a tempting pile! 66 Anathema! Art is a secret known only to the initiated few; the vulgar can neither understand nor appreciate it! We are the elect! Our mission is to explain what Art is and point out her beauty to a coarse and heedless world. Only those with a sense of the  beautiful' should be allowed to enter into her sacred presence.‖ Here the expounders of ―Art‖ plunge into a sea of words, offering a dozen definitions each more obscure than its predecessor, all of which have served in turn as watchwords of different ―schools.‖ Tolstoi's sweeping truth is too far-reaching to please these gentry. Like the priests of past religions, they would have preferred to keep such knowledge as they had to themselves and expound it, little at a time, to the ignorant. The great Russian has kicked away their altar and routed the false gods, whose acolytes will never forgive him. Those of my readers who have been intimate with painters, actors, or musicians, will recall with amusement how lightly the performances of an associate are condemned by the brotherhood as falling short of the high standard which according to these wiseacres, ―Art‖ exacts, and how sure each speaker is of understanding just where a brother carries his ―mote.‖ Voltaire once avoided giving a definition of the beautiful by saying, ―Ask a toad what his ideas of beauty are. He will indicate the particular female toad he happens to admire and praise her goggle-eyes and yellow belly as the perfection of beauty!‖ A negro from Guiana will make much the same unsatisfactory answer, so the old philosopher recommends us not to be didactic on subjects where judgments are relative, and at the same time without appeal. Tolstoi denies that an idea as subtle as a definition of Art can be classified by pedants, and proceeds to formulate the following delightful axiom: ―A principle upon which no two people can agree does not exist.‖ A truth is proved by its evidence to all. Discussion outside of that is simply beating the air. Each succeeding ―school‖ has sounded its deathknell by asserting that certain combinations alone produced beauty-the weakness of today being an inclination to see art only in the obscure and the recondite. As a result we drift each hour further from the truth. Modern intellectuality has formed itself into a scornful aristocracy whose members, esteeming themselves the élite, withdraw from the vulgar public, and live in a world of their own, looking (like the Lady of Shalott) into a mirror at distorted images of nature and declaring that what they see is art! In literature that which is difficult to understand is much admired by the simple-minded, who also decry pictures that tell their own story! A certain class of minds enjoy being mystified, and in consequence writers, painters, and musicians have appeared who are willing to juggle for their amusement. The simple definition given to us by the Russian writer comes like a breath of wholesome air to those suffocating in an atmosphere of perfumes and artificial heat. Art is our common inheritance, not the property of a favored few. The wide world we love is full of it, and each of us in his humble way is an artist when with a full heart he communicates his delight and his joy to another. Tolstoi has 67 given us back our birthright, so long withheld, and crowned with his aged hands the true artist. 68 6 Henry H. Snelling The History and Practice of the Art of Photography Photography Chapter I. A Brief History of the Art As in all cases of great and valuable inventions in science and art the English lay claim to the honor of having first discovered that of Photogenic drawing. But we shall see in the progress of this history, that like many other assumptions of their authors, priority in this is no more due them, then the invention of steamboats, or the cotton gin. This claim is founded upon the fact that in 1802 Mr. Wedgwood recorded an experiment in the Journal of the Royal Institution of the following nature. "A piece of paper, or other convenient material, was placed upon a frame and sponged over with a solution of nitrate of silver; it was then placed behind a painting on glass and the light traversing the painting produced a kind of copy upon the prepared paper, those parts in which the rays were least intercepted being of the darkest hues. Here, however, terminated the experiment; for although both Mr. Wedgwood and Sir Humphry Davey experimented carefully, for the purpose of endeavoring to fix the drawings thus obtained, yet the object could not be accomplished, and the whole ended in failure." This, by their own showing, was the earliest attempt of the English savans. But this much of the principle was known to the Alchemists at an early date--although practically produced in another way--as the following experiment, to be found in old books, amply proves. "Dissolve chalk in aquafortis to the consistence of milk, and add to it a strong solution of silver; keep this liquor in a glass bottle well stopped; then cutting out from a piece of paper the letters you would have appear, paste it on the decanter, and lay it in the sun's rays in such a manner that the rays may pass through the spaces cut out of the paper and fall on the surface of the liquor the part of the glass through which the rays pass will be turned black, while that under the paper remains white; but particular care must be observed that the bottle be not moved during the operation." Had not the alchemists been so intent upon the desire to discover the far famed philosopher's stone, as to make them unmindful of the accidental dawnings of more valuable discoveries, this little experiment in chemistry might have induced them to prosecute a more thorough search into the principle, and Photogenic art would not now, as it is, be a new one. 69 It is even asserted that the Jugglers of India were for many ages in possession of a secret by which they were enabled, in a brief space, to copy the likeness of any individual by the action of light. This fact, if fact it be, may account for the celebrated magic mirrors said to be possessed by these jugglers, and probable cause of their power over the people. However, as early as 1556 the fact was established that a combination of chloride and silver, called, from its appearance, horn silver, was blackened by the sun's rays; and in the latter part of the last century Mrs. Fulhame published an experiment by which a change of color was effected in the chloride of gold by the agency of light; and gave it as her opinion that words might be written in this way. These incidents are considered as the first steps towards the discovery of the Photogenic art. Mr. Wedgwood's experiments can scarcely be said to be any improvement on them since he failed to bring them to practical usefulness, and his countrymen will have to be satisfied with awarding the honor of its complete adaptation to practical purposes, to MM. Niepce and Daguerre of France, and to Professors Draper, and Morse of New-York. These gentlemen--MM. Niepce and Daguerre--pursued the subject simultaneously, without either, however being aware of the experiments of his colleague in science. For several years, each pursued his researches individually until chance made them acquainted, when they entered into co-partnership, and conjointly brought the art almost to perfection. M. Niepce presented his first paper on the subject to the Royal Society in 1827, naming his discovery Heliography. What led him to the study of the principles of the art I have no means, at present, of knowing, but it was probably owing to the facts recorded by the Alchemists, Mrs. Fulhame and others, already mentioned. But M. Daguerre, who is a celebrated dioramic painter, being desirous of employing some of the singularly changeable salts of silver to produce a peculiar class of effects in his paintings, was led to pursue an investigation which resulted in the discovery of the Daguerreotype, or Photogenic drawing on plates of copper coated with silver. To this gentleman--to his liberality--are we Americans indebted for the free use of his invention; and the large and increasing class of Daguerrean artists of this country should hold him in the most profound respect for it. He was not willing that it should be confined to a few individuals who might monopolise the benefits to be derived from its practice, and shut out all chance of improvement. Like a true, noble hearted French gentleman he desired that his invention should spread freely throughout the whole world. With these views he opened negociations with the French government which were concluded most favorably to both the inventors, and France has the "glory of endowing the whole world of science and art with one of the most surprising discoveries that honor the land." Notwithstanding this, it has been patented in England and the result is what might have been expected: English pictures are far below the standard of excellence of those taken by American artists. I have seen some medium portraits, for which a guinea each had been 70 paid, and taken too, by a celebrated artist, that our poorest Daguerreotypists would be ashamed to show to a second person, much less suffer to leave their rooms. CALOTYPE, the name given to one of the methods of Photogenic drawing on paper, discovered, and perfected by Mr. Fox Talbot of England, is precisely in the same predicament, not only in that country but in the United States, Mr. Talbot being patentee in both. He is a man of some wealth, I believe, but he demands so high a price for a single right in this country, that none can be found who have the temerity to purchase. The execution of his pictures is also inferior to those taken by the German artists, and I would remark en passant, that the Messrs. Mead exhibited at the last fair of the American Institute, (of 1848,) four Calotypes, which one of the firm brought from Germany last Spring, that for beauty, depth of tone and excellence of execution surpass the finest steel engraving. When Mr. Talbot's patent for the United States expires and our ingenious Yankee boys have the opportunity, I have not the slightest doubt of the Calotype, in their hands, entirely superceding the Daguerreotype. Let them, therefore, study the principles of the art as laid down in this little work, experiment, practice and perfect themselves in it, and when that time does arrive be prepared to produce that degree of excellence in Calotype they have already obtained in Daguerreotype. It is to Professor Samuel F. B. Morse, the distinguished inventor of the Magnetic Telegraph, of New York, that we are indebted for the application of Photography, to portrait taking. He was in Paris, for the purpose of presenting to the scientific world his Electro-Magnetic Telegraph, at the time, (1838,) M. Daguerre announced his splendid discovery, and its astounding results having an important bearing on the arts of design arrested his attention. In his letter to me on the subject, the Professor gives the following interesting facts. "The process was a secret, and negociations were then in progress, for the disclosure of it to the public between the French government and the distinguished discoverer. M. Daguerre had shown his results to the king, and to a few only of the distinguished savans, and by the advice of M. Arago, had determined to wait the action of the French Chambers, before showing them to any other persons. I was exceedingly desirous of seeing them, but knew not how to approach M. Daguerre who was a stranger to me. On mentioning my desire to Robert Walsh, Esq., our worthy Consul, he said to me; 'state that you are an American, the inventor of the Telegraph, request to see them, and invite him in turn to see the Telegraph, and I know enough of the urbanity and liberal feelings of the French, to insure you an invitation.' I was successfull in my application, and with a young friend, since deceased, the promising son of Edward Delevan, Esq., I passed a most delightful hour with M. Daguerre, and his enchanting sun-pictures. My letter containing an account of this visit, and these pictures, was the first announcement in this country of this splendid discovery." 71 "I may here add the singular sequel to this visit. On the succeeding day M. Daguerre paid me a visit to see the Telegraph and witness its operations. He seemed much gratified and remained with me perhaps two hours; two melancholy hours to him, as they afterwards proved; or while he was with me, his buildings, including his diorama, his studio, his laboratory, with all the beautiful pictures I had seen the day before, were consumed by fire. Fortunately for mankind, matter only was consumed, the soul and mind of the genius, and the process were still in existence." On his return home, Professor Morse waited with impatience for the revelation of M. Daguerre's process, and no sooner was it published than he procured a copy of the work containing it, and at once commenced taking Daguerreotype pictures. At first his object was solely to furnish his studio with studies from nature; but his experiments led him into a belief of the practicability of procuring portraits by the process, and he was undoubtedly the first whose attempts were attended with success. Thinking, at that time, that it was necessary to place the sitters in a very strong light, they were all taken with their eyes closed. Others were experimenting at the same time, among them Mr. Wolcott and Prof. Draper, and Mr. Morse, with his accustomed modesty, thinks that it would be difficult to say to whom is due the credit of the first Daguerreotype portrait. At all events, so far as my knowledge serves me, Professor Morse deserves the laurel wreath, as from him originated the first of our inumerable class of Daguerreotypists; and many of his pupils have carried the manipulation to very great perfection. In connection with this matter I will give the concluding paragraph of a private letter from the Professor to me; He says. "If mine were the first, other experimenters soon made better results, and if there are any who dispute that I was first, I shall have no argument with them; for I was not so anxious to be the first to produce the result, as to produce it in any way. I esteem it but the natural carrying out of the wonderful discovery, and that the credit was after all due to Daguerre. I lay no claim to any improvements." Since I commenced the compilation of this work, I have had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of an American gentleman--James M. Wattles Esq.--who as early as 1828-and it will be seen, by what I have already stated, that this is about the same date of M. Niepce's discovery--had his attention attracted to the subject of Photography, or as he termed it "Solar picture drawing," while taking landscape views by means of the cameraobscura. When we reflect upon all the circumstances connected with his experiments, the great disadvantages under which he labored, and his extreme youthfullness, we cannot but feel a national pride--yet wonder--that a mere yankee boy, surrounded by the deepest forests, hundred of miles from the populous portion of our country, without the necessary materials, or resources for procuring them, should by the force of his natural genius make a discovery, and put it in practical use, to accomplish which, the most learned philosophers of Europe, with every requisite apparatus, and a profound knowledge of chemistry--spent years of toil to accomplish. How much more latent talent may now be 72 slumbering from the very same cause which kept Mr. Wattles from publicly revealing his discoveries, viz; want of encouragement--ridicule! At the time when the idea of taking pictures permanently on paper by means of the camera-obscura first occurred to him, he was but sixteen years of age, and under the instructions of Mr. Charles Le Seuer, (a talented artist from Paris) at the New Harmony school, Indiana. Drawing and painting being the natural bent of his mind, he was frequently employed by the professors to make landscape sketches in the manner mentioned. The beauty of the image of these landscapes produced on the paper in the camera-obscura, caused him to pause and admire them with all the ardor of a young artist, and wish that by some means, he could fix them there in all their beauty. From wishing he brought himself to think that it was not only possible but actually capable of accomplishment and from thinking it could, he resolved it should be done. He was, however, wholly ignorant of even the first principles of chemistry, and natural philosophy, and all the knowledge he was enabled to obtain from his teachers was of very little service to him. To add to this, whenever he mentioned his hopes to his parents, they laughed at him, and bade him attend to his studies and let such moonshine thoughts alone--still he persevered, though secretly, and he met with the success his perseverance deserved. For the truth of his statement, Mr. Wattles refers to some of our most respectable citizens residing at the west, and I am in hopes that I shall be enabled to receive in time for this publication, a confirmation from one or more of these gentlemen. Be that as it may, I feel confident in the integrity of Mr. Wattles, and can give his statement to the world without a doubt of its truth. The following sketch of his experiments and their results will, undoubtedly, be interesting to every American reader and although some of the profound philosophers of Europe may smile at his method of proceeding, it will in some measure show the innate genius of American minds, and prove that we are not far behind our trans-atlantic brethren in the arts and sciences. Mr. Wattles says: "In my first efforts to effect the desired object, they were feeble indeed, and owing to my limited knowledge of chemistry--wholly acquired by questioning my teachers--I met with repeated failures but following them up with a determined spirit, I at last produced, what I thought very fair samples--but to proceed to my experiments." "I first dipped a quarter sheet of thin white writing paper in a weak solution of caustic (as I then called it) and dried it in an empty box, to keep it in the dark; when dry, I placed it in the camera and watched it with great patience for nearly half an hour, without producing any visible result; evidently from the solution being to weak. I then soaked the same piece of paper in a solution of common potash, and then again in caustic water a little stronger than the first, and when dry placed it in the camera. In about forty-five minutes I plainly percieved the effect, in the gradual darkening of various parts of the view, which was the old stone fort in the rear of the school garden, with the trees, fence, 73 &c. I then became convinced of the practicability of producing beautiful solar pictures in this way; but, alas! my picture vanished and with it, all--no not all--my hopes. With renewed determination I began again by studying the nature of the preparation, and came to the conclusion, that if I could destroy the part not acted upon by the light without injuring that which was so acted upon, I could save my pictures. I then made a strong solution of sal. soda I had in the house, and soaked my paper in it, and then washed it off in hot water, which perfectly fixed the view upon the paper. This paper was very poor with thick spots, more absorbent than other parts, and consequently made dark shades in the picture where they should not have been; but it was enough to convince me that I had succeeded, and that at some future time, when I had the means and a more extensive knowledge of chemistry, I could apply myself to it again. I have done so since, at various times, with perfect success; but in every instance laboring under adverse circumstances." I have very recently learned, that, under the present patent laws of the United States, every foreign patentee is required to put his invention, or discovery, into practical use within eighteen months after taking out his papers, or otherwise forfeit his patent. With regard to Mr. Talbot's Calotype patent, this time has nearly, if not quite expired, and my countrymen are now at perfect liberty to appropriate the art if they feel disposed. From the statement of Mr. Wattles, it will be perceived that this can be done without dishonor, as in the first instance Mr. Talbot had no positive right to his patent. Photography; or sun-painting is divided, according to the methods adopted for producing pictures, into DAGUERREOTYPE, CHROMATYPE, CALOTYPE, ENERGIATYPE, CHRYSOTYPE, ANTHOTYPE and CYANOTYPE, AMPHITYPE. 74 Clara Erskine Clement A History of Art for Beginners and Students Painting – Sculpure –Architecture with complete Indexes and Numerous Illustrations CHAPTER I. ANCIENT PAINTING, FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE CHRISTIAN ERA. In speaking of art we often contrast the useful or mechanical arts with the Fine Arts; by these terms we denote the difference between the arts which are used in making such things as are necessary and useful in civilized life, and the arts by which ornamental and beautiful things are made. The fine arts are Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Poetry, and Music, and though we could live if none of these existed, yet life would be far from the pleasant experience that it is often made to be through the enjoyment of these arts. In speaking of Painting, just here I wish to include the more general idea of pictures of various sorts, and it seems to me that while picture-making belongs to the fine or beautiful arts, it is now made a very useful art in many ways. For example, when a school-book is illustrated, how much more easily we understand the subject we are studying through the help we get from pictures of objects or places that we have not seen, and yet wish to know about. Pictures of natural scenery bring all countries before our eyes in such a way that by looking at them, while reading books of travel, we may know a great deal more about lands we have never seen, and may never be able to visit. Who does not love pictures? and what a pleasure it is to open a magazine or book filled with fine illustrations. St. Augustine, who wrote in the fourth century after Christ, said that ―pictures are the books of the simple or unlearned;‖ this is just as true now as then, and we should regard pictures as one of the most agreeable means of education. Thus one of the uses of pictures is that they give us a clear idea of what we have not seen; a second use is that they excite our imaginations, and often help us to forget disagreeable circumstances and unpleasant surroundings. The cultivation of the imagination is very important, because in this way we can add much to our individual happiness. Through this power, if we are in a dark, narrow street, in a house which is not to our liking, or in the midst of any unpleasant happenings, we are able to fix our thoughts upon a photograph or picture that may be there, and by studying it we are able to imagine ourselves far, far away, in some spot where nature makes everything pleasant and soothes us into forgetfulness of all that can disturb our happiness. Many an invalid-many an 75 unfortunate one is thus made content by pictures during hours that would otherwise be wretched. This is the result of cultivating the perceptive and imaginative faculties, and when once this is done, we have a source of pleasure within ourselves and not dependent on others which can never be taken from us. Fig. 1.-Harp-player. From an Egyptian painting. It often happens that we see two persons who do the same work and are situated in the same way in the world who are very different in their manner; one is light-hearted [Pg 4]and happy, the other heavy and sad. If you can find out the truth, it will result that the sad one is matter-of-fact, and has no imagination-he can only think of his work and what concerns him personally; but the merry one would surprise you if you could read his thoughts-if you could know the distances they have passed over, and what a vast difference there is between his thought and his work. So while it is natural for almost every one to exclaim joyfully at the beauty of pictures, and to enjoy looking at them simply, I wish my readers to think of their uses also, and understand the benefits that may be derived from them. I have only hinted at a few of these uses, but many others will occur to you. When pictures are composed of beautiful colors, such as we usually think of when we speak of the art of painting, the greatest charm of pictures is reached, and all civilized people have admired and encouraged this art. It is true that the remains of ancient art now existing are principally those of architecture or sculpture, yet there are a sufficient number of pictures in color to prove how old the art of painting is. EGYPT. Egyptian painting is principally found on the walls of temples and tombs, upon columns and cornices, and on small articles found in burial places. There is no doubt that it was used as a decoration; but it was also intended to be useful, and was so employed as to tell the history of the country;-its wars, with their conquests and triumphs, and the lives of the kings, and many other stories, are just as distinctly told by pictures as by the hieroglyphics or Egyptian writings. We can scarcely say that Egyptian painting is beautiful; but it certainly is very interesting. Fig. 2.-King Ramesses II. and his Sons Storming a Fortress. From Abousimbel. The Egyptians had three kinds of painting: one on flat surfaces, a second on bas-reliefs, or designs a little raised and then colored, and a third on designs in intaglio, or hollowed out from the flat surface and the colors applied to the figures thus cut out. They had no knowledge of what we call perspective, that is, the art of representing a variety of objects on one flat surface, and making them appear to be at different distances from us-and you will see from the illustrations given here that their drawing and their manner of expressing the meaning of what they painted were very crude. As far as the pictorial effect is concerned, there is very little difference between the three modes of Egyptian painting; their general appearance is very nearly the same. The Egyptian artist sacrificed everything to the one consideration of telling his story clearly; the way in which he did this was sometimes very amusing, such as the making 76 one man twice as tall as another in order to signify that he was of high position, such as a king or an officer of high rank. When figures are represented as following each other, those that are behind are frequently taller than those in front, and sometimes those that are farthest back are ranged in rows, with the feet of one row entirely above the heads of the others. This illustration of the storming of a fort by a king and his sons will show you what I mean. The sons are intended to be represented as following the father, and are in a row, one above the other (Fig. 2). For the representation of water, a strip of blue filled in with perpendicular zigzag black lines was used. From these few facts you can understand how unformed and awkward Egyptian pictures seem if we compare them with the existing idea of what is beautiful. There appear to have been certain fixed rules for the use of colors, and certain objects were always painted in the colors prescribed for them. The background of a picture was always of a single, solid color; Egyptian men were painted in a reddish brown, and horses were of the same shade; women were generally yellow, sometimes a lighter brown than the men; negroes were black, the Asiatic races yellow, and but one instance is known of a white skin, blue eyes, and yellow hair. The draperies about the figures were painted in pleasing colors, and were sometimes transparent, so that the figures could be seen through them. The execution of Egyptian paintings was very mechanical. One set of workmen prepared the plaster on the wall for the reception of the colors; another set drew all the outlines in red; then, if chiselling was to be done, another class performed this labor; and, finally, still others put on the colors. Of course nothing could be more matter-of-fact than such painting as this, and under such rules an artist of the most lofty genius and imagination would find it impossible to express his conceptions in his work. We know all this because some of these pictures exist in an unfinished condition, and are left in the various stages of execution; then, too, there are other pictures of the painters at their work, and all these different processes are shown in them. The outline drawing is the best part of Egyptian painting, and this is frequently very cleverly done. As I have intimated, the greatest value of Egyptian painting is that it gives us a clear record of the habits and customs of a very ancient people-of a civilization which has long since passed away, and of which we should have a comparatively vague and unsatisfactory notion but for this picture-history of it. The religion, the political history, and the domestic life of the ancient Egyptians are all placed before us in these paintings. Through a study of them we know just how they hunted and fished, gathered their fruits, tilled the soil, and cooked the food, played games, danced, and practised gymnastics, conducted their scenes of festivity and mourning-in short, how they lived under all circumstances. Thus you see that Egyptian painting is a very important example of the way in which pictures can teach us; you will also notice that it is not even necessary that they should be pretty in order that we may learn from them. Another use made of Egyptian painting was the illustration of the papyrus rolls upon which historical and other documents were written. These rolls, found in the tombs, are now placed in museums and collections of curious things; the paintings upon them may 77 be called the oldest book illustrations in the world. Sometimes a single color is used, such as red or black; but others are in a variety of colors which have been put on with a brush. Indeed, some rolls exist which have pictures only, and are entirely without hieroglyphics or writing characters; one such is more than twenty yards long, and contains nothing but pictures of funeral ceremonies. The ancient Egyptians were so serious a people that it is a pleasant surprise to find that some of these pictures are intended for jokes and satires, somewhat like those of the comic papers of to-day; for example, there is one in the British Museum, London, representing cats and rats fighting, which is intended to ridicule the soldiers and heroes of the Egyptian army. One cannot study Egyptian painting without feeling sorry for the painters; for in all the enormous amount of work done by them no one man was recognized-no one is now remembered. We know some of the names of great Egyptian architects which are written in the historical rolls; but no painter's name has been thus preserved. The fact that no greater progress was made is a proof of the discouraging influences that must have been around these artists, for it is not possible that none of them had imagination or originality: there must have been some whose souls were filled with poetic visions, for some of the Egyptian writings show that poetry existed in ancient Egypt. But of what use could imagination be to artists who were governed by the laws of a narrow priesthood, and hedged about by a superstitious religion which even laid down rules for art? For these reasons we know something of Egyptian art and nothing of Egyptian artists, and from all these influences it follows that Egyptian painting is little more than an illuminated alphabet or a child's picture-history. In the hieroglyphics, or writing characters of Egypt, it often occurs that small pictures of certain animals or other objects stand for whole words, and it appears that this idea was carried into Egyptian painting, which by this means became simply a picture chronicle, and never reached a point where it could be called truly artistic or a high art. ASSYRIA. The remains of Assyrian painting are so few that they scarcely serve any other purpose than to prove that the Assyrians were accustomed to decorate their walls with pictures. Sometimes the walls were prepared with plaster, and the designs were painted on that; in other cases the painting was done upon the brick itself. The paintings on plaster were usually on the inner walls, and many of these which have been discovered during the excavations have disappeared when exposed to the air after their long burial from the sight and knowledge of the world. Speaking of these pictures, the writer on art, J. Oppert, says that some paintings were found in the Palace of Sargon; they represented gods, lions, rosettes, and various other designs; but when he reached Nineveh, one year after these discoveries, the pictures had all disappeared-the colors which had been buried twenty-five hundred years lasted but a few days after they were uncovered. 78 Fig. 3.-Fragment of an Assyrian Tile-painting. Assyrian tile-painting was more durable than the wall-painting; but in all the excavations that have been made these have been found only in fragments, and from these fragments no complete picture has been put together. The largest one was found at Nimrud, and our illustration is taken from it. It represents a king, as we know by the tiara he wears, and two servants who follow him. The pictures to which the existing fragments belong could not have been large: the figures in our picture are but nine inches high. A few pieces have been found which must have belonged to larger pictures, and there is one which shows a part of a face belonging to a figure at least three feet high; but this is very unusual. The Assyrian paintings have a broad outline which is of a lighter color than the rest of the picture; it is generally white or yellow. There are very few colors used in them. This does not accord with our notions of the dresses and stuffs of the Assyrians, for we suppose that they were rich and varied in color-probably they had so few pigments that they could not represent in their paintings all the colors they knew. No one can give a very satisfactory account of Assyrian painting; but, judging from the little of it which remains, and from the immense number of Assyrian sculptures which exist, we may conclude that the chief aim of Assyrian artists was to represent each object they saw with absolute realism. The Dutch painters were remarkable for this trait and for the patient attention which they gave to the details of their work, and for this reason Oppert has called the Assyrians the Dutchmen of antiquity. BABYLON. In Babylon, in the sixth century b.c., under the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, the art of tilepainting reached a high state of perfection. The Babylonians had no such splendid alabaster as had the Assyrians, neither had they lime-stone; so they could not make fine sculptured slabs, such as are found at Nineveh and in other Assyrian ruins. But the Babylonians had a fine clay, and they learned how to use it to the best advantage. The city of Babylon shone with richly colored tiles, and one traveller writes: ―By the side of Assyria, her colder and severer sister of the North, Babylon showed herself a true child of the South,-rich, glowing, careless of the rules of taste, only desiring to awaken admiration by the dazzling brilliance of her appearance.‖ Many of the Babylonish tiles are in regular, set patterns in rich tints; some are simply in solid colors. These last are found in the famous terrace-temple of Borsippê, near Babylon. We know from ancient writings that there were decorative paintings in Babylon which represented hunting scenes and like subjects, and, according to the prophet Ezekiel, chap. xxiii., verse 14, there were ―men portrayed upon the wall, the images of the Chaldeans portrayed with vermilion, girded with girdles upon their loins, exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads, all of them princes to look to, after the manner of the Babylonians of Chaldea, the land of their nativity.‖ Some writers assume that this must have been a 79 description of tapestries; but most authorities believe them to have been glazed tilepaintings. A whole cargo of fragments of Babylonish tile-paintings was once collected for the gallery of the Louvre at Paris, and, when on board a ship and ready to be sent away, by some accident the whole was sunk. From the descriptions of them which were written, we find that there were portions of pictures of human faces and other parts of the body, of animals, mountains, and forests, of water, walls, and trees. Judging from what still remains, the art of painting was far less important and much less advanced among the Eastern or Oriental nations than were those of architecture and sculpture. It is very strange that these peoples, who seem to have observed nature closely, and to have mastered the mathematical sciences, made no steps toward the discovery of the laws of perspective; neither did they know how to give any expression of thought or feeling to the human face. In truth, their pictures were a mere repetition of set figures, and were only valuable as pieces of colored decorations for walls, adding a pleasing richness and variety by their different tints, but almost worthless as works of art. ANCIENT GREECE AND ITALY. The painting of Greece and that of ancient Italy are so much the same that it is almost impossible to speak of them separately; the art of painting was carried from Greece to Italy by the Etruscans, and the art of ancient Rome was simply that of Greece transplanted. If Greek artists were employed by Romans, certainly their works were Greek; and if Romans painted they aimed to imitate the Greeks exactly, so that Italian painting before the time of the Christian era must be considered together with that of Greece. In architecture and sculpture the ancient Greeks accepted what had been done by the Egyptians and Assyrians as a foundation, and went on to perfect the work of the older nations through the aid of poetic and artistic imaginations. But in painting the Greeks followed nothing that had preceded them. They were the first to make pictures which were a life-like reproduction of what they saw about them: they were the first to separate painting from sculpture, and to give it such importance as would permit it to have its own place, quite free from the influence of any other art, and in its own way as grand and as beautiful as its sister arts. There are writers who trace the origin and progress of Greek painting from the very earliest times; but I shall begin with Apollodorus, who is spoken of as the first Greek [Pg 14] painter worthy of fame, because he was the first one who knew how to make his pictures appear to be real, and to follow the rules of perspective so as to have a background from which his figures stood out, and to shade his colors and soften his outlines. He was very famous, and was called skiagraphos, which means shadow painter. 80 Apollodorus was an Athenian, and lived at about the close of the fifth century b.c. Although he was a remarkable artist then, we must not fancy that his pictures would have satisfied our idea of the beautiful-in fact, Pliny, the historian, who saw his pictures six hundred years later, at Pergamos, says that Apollodorus was but the gatekeeper who threw open the gates of painting to the famous artists who lived after him. Zeuxis was a pupil of Apollodorus, and a great artist also. He was born at Heraclea, probably in Lower Italy. When young he led a wandering life; he studied at Athens under Apollodorus, and settled in Ephesus. He was in the habit of putting his pictures on exhibition, and charging an admittance fee, just as artists do now: he called himself ―the unsurpassable,‖ and said and did many vain and foolish things. Near the end of his life he considered his pictures as beyond any price, and so gave them away. Upon one of his works he wrote, ―Easier to carp at than to copy.‖ It is said that he actually laughed himself to death from amusement at one of his own pictures, which represented an old woman. Zeuxis had a rival in the painter Parrhasius, and their names are often associated. On one occasion they made trial of their artistic skill. Zeuxis painted a bunch of grapes so naturally that the birds came to peck at them. Then Parrhasius painted a hanging curtain, and when his picture was exposed to the public Zeuxis asked him to draw aside his curtain, fully believing it to be of cloth and concealing a picture behind it. Thus it was judged that Parrhasius was the best artist, for he had deceived Zeuxis, while the latter had only deceived the birds. From these stories it appears that these artists tried to imitate objects with great exactness. Parrhasius, too, was a vain man, and went about in a purple robe with a gold wreath about his head and gold clasps on his sandals; he painted his own portrait, and called it the god Hermes, or Mercury; he wrote praises of himself in which he called himself by many high-sounding names, for all of which he was much ridiculed by others. However, both these artists were surpassed by Timanthes, according to the ancient writers, who relate that he engaged in a trial of skill with Parrhasius, and came off the victor in it. The fame of his picture of the ―Sacrifice of Iphigenia‖ was very great, and its one excellence seems to have been in the varied expression of its faces. The descriptions of this great work lead to the belief that this Pompeian wall-painting, from which we give a cut, closely resembles that of Timanthes, which no longer exists. The story of Iphigenia says that when her father, King Agamemnon, killed a hart which was sacred to Diana, or Artemis, that goddess becalmed his fleet so that he could not sail to Troy. Then the seer, Calchas, advised the king to sacrifice his daughter in order to appease the wrath of Diana. Agamemnon consented; but it is said that the goddess was so sorry for the maiden that she bore her away to Tauris, and made her a priestess, and left a hart to be sacrificed instead of Iphigenia. In our cut you see Calchas on the right; two men are bearing the maiden to her doom, while her father stands on the left with his head veiled from sight (Fig. 4). 81 Fig. 4.-Sacrifice of Iphigenia. From a Pompeian wall-painting. Zeuxis, Parrhasius, and Timanthes belonged to the Ionian school of painting, which flourished during the Peloponnesian war. This school was excelled by that of Sikyon, which reached its highest prosperity between the end of the Peloponnesian war and the death of Alexander the Great. The chief reason why this Dorian school at Sikyon was so fine was that here, for the first time, the pupils followed a regular course of study, and were trained in drawing and mathematics, and taught to observe nature with the strictest attention. The most famous master of this school was Pausias; some of his works were carried to Rome, where they were much admired. His picture of the garland-weaver, Glykera, gained him a great name, and by it he earned the earliest reputation as a flower-painter that is known in the history of art. Nikomachos, who lived at Thebes about 360 b.c., was famous for the rapidity with which he painted pictures that were excellent in their completeness and beauty. Aristides, the son or brother of Nikomachos, was so good an artist that Attalus, king of Pergamos, offered more than twenty thousand pounds, or about one hundred thousand dollars, for his picture of Dionysus, or Bacchus. This wonderful picture was carried to Rome, and preserved in the temple of Ceres; but it no longer exists. Euphranor was another great painter, and was distinguished for his power to give great expression to the faces and a manly force to the figures which he painted. Nikias, the Athenian, is said to have been so devoted to his art that he could think of nothing else: he would ask his servants if he had bathed or eaten, not being able to remember for himself. He was very rich, and when King Ptolemy of Egypt offered him more than sixty thousand dollars for his picture of Ulysses in the under-world, he refused this great sum, and gave the painting to his native city. Nikias seems to have greatly exalted and respected his art, for he contended that painters should not fritter away time and talent on insignificant subjects, but ought rather to choose some grand event, such as a battle or a sea-fight. His figures of women and his pictures of animals, especially those of dogs, were much praised. Some of his paintings were encaustic, that is to say, the colors were burned in; thus they must have been made on plaster or pottery of some sort. Nikias outlived Alexander the Great, and saw the beginning of the school of painters to which the great Apelles belonged-that which is called the Hellenic school, in which Greek art reached its highest point. Apelles was the greatest of all Greek painters. He was born at Kolophon; but as he made his first studies at Ephesus he has been called an Ephesian: later he studied in the school of Sikyon, but even when a pupil there he was said to be the equal of all his instructors. Philip of Macedon heard of his fame, and persuaded Apelles to remove to his capital city, which was called Pella. While there Apelles became the friend of the young Alexander, and when the latter came to the throne he made Apelles his court-painter, and is said to have issued an edict forbidding all other artists from painting his portrait. Later on Apelles removed to Ephesus. 82 During the early part of his artistic life Apelles did little else than paint such pictures as exalted the fame of Philip, and afterward that of Alexander. He painted many portraits of both these great men; for one of Alexander he received nearly twenty-five thousand dollars; in it the monarch was represented as grasping the thunderbolt, as Jupiter might have done, and the hand appeared to be stretched out from the picture. This portrait was in the splendid temple of Diana, or Artemis, at Ephesus. Alexander was accustomed to say of it, ―There are two Alexanders, one invincible, the living son of Philip-the other immutable, the picture of Apelles.‖ Later in his life Apelles painted many pictures of mythological subjects. He visited Alexandria, in Egypt; he did not win the favor of King Ptolemy, and his enemies in the Egyptian court played cruel practical jokes upon him. On one occasion he received an invitation to a feast at which the king had not desired his presence. The monarch was angry; but Apelles told him the truth, and appeased his wrath by sketching on the wall the exact likeness of the servant who had carried the invitation to him. However, Ptolemy remained unfavorable to him, and Apelles painted a great picture, called Calumny, in which he represented those who had been his enemies, and thus held them up to the scorn of the world. Apelles visited Rhodes and Athens, but is thought to have died in the island of Kos, where he had painted two very beautiful pictures of the goddess Venus. One of these is called the Venus Anadyomene, or Venus rising from the sea. The emperor Augustus carried this picture to Rome, and placed so high a value on it that he lessened the tribute-money of the people of Kos a hundred talents on account of it. This sum was about equal to one hundred thousand dollars of our money. The art of Apelles was full of grace and sweetness, and the finish of his pictures was exquisite. The saying, ―leave off in time,‖ originated in his criticism of Protogenes, of whom he said that he was his superior except that he did not know when to leave off, and by too much finishing lessened the effect of his work. Apelles was modest and generous: he was the first to praise Protogenes, and conferred a great benefit upon the latter by buying up his pictures, and giving out word that he was going to sell them as his own. Apelles was never afraid to correct those who were ignorant, and was equally ready to learn from any one who could teach him anything. It is said that on one occasion, when Alexander was in his studio, and talked of art, Apelles advised him to be silent lest his color-grinder should laugh at him. Again, when he had painted a picture, and exposed it to public view, a cobbler pointed out a defect in the shoe-latchet; Apelles changed it, but when the man next proceeded to criticise the leg of the figure, Apelles replied, ―Cobbler, stick to your last.‖ These sayings have descended to our own day, and have become classical. All these anecdotes from so remote a time are in a sense doubtful; but they are very interesting-young people ought to be familiar with them, but it is also right to say that they are not known to be positively true. Protogenes of Rhodes, to whom Apelles was so friendly, came to be thought a great painter. It is said that when Demetrius made war against Rhodes the artist did not trouble himself to leave his house, which was in the very midst of the enemy's camp. When questioned as to his fearlessness he replied, ―Demetrius makes war against the Rhodians, and not against the Arts.‖ It is also said that after hearing of this reply Demetrius 83 refrained from burning the town, in order to preserve the pictures of Protogenes. The ancient writers mention many other Greek painters, but none as important as those of whom we have spoken. Greek painting never reached a higher point than it had gained at the beginning of the Hellenistic age. Every kind of painting except landscape-painting had been practised by Greek artists; but that received no attention until figure-painting had declined. Vitruvius mentions that the ancients had some very important wallpaintings consisting of simple landscapes, and that others had landscape backgrounds with figures illustrating scenes from the poems of Homer. But we have no reason to believe that Greek landscape-painting was ever more than scenic or decorative work, and thus fell far short of what is now the standard for such painting. The painting of the early Romans was principally derived from or through the early Etruscans, and the Etruscans are believed to have first learned their art from Greek artists, who introduced plastic art into Italy as early as b.c. 655, when Demaratus was expelled from Corinth-and later, Etruscan art was influenced by the Greek colonies of Magna Graecia. So it is fair to say that Etruscan art and early Roman art were essentially Greek art. The earliest artists who are known to have painted in Rome had Greek names, such as Ekphantos, Damophilos, and Gargasos. Later on in history there are painters mentioned with Latin names, but there is little of interest related concerning them; in truth, Ludius (who is also called by various authors Tadius and Studius) is the only really interesting ancient Roman painter of whom we know. He lived in the time of Augustus, and Pliny said of him: ―Ludius, too, who lived in the age of the divine Augustus, must not be cheated of his fame. He was the first to bring in a singularly delightful fashion of wallpainting-villas, colonnades, examples of landscape-gardening, woods and sacred groves, reservoirs, straits, rivers, coasts, all according to the heart's desire-and amidst them passengers of all kinds on foot, in boats, driving in carriages, or riding on asses to visit their country properties; furthermore fishermen, bird-catchers, hunters, vintagers; or, again, he exhibits stately villas, to which the approach is through a swamp, with men staggering under the weight of the frightened women whom they have bargained to carry on their shoulders; and many another excellent and entertaining device of the same kind. The same artist also set the fashion of painting views-and that wonderfully cheap-of seaside towns in broad daylight.‖ We cannot think that Ludius was the first painter, though he may have been the first Roman painter, who made this sort of pictures, and he probably is the only one of whose work any part remains. Brunn and other good authorities believe that the wall-painting of Prima Porta, in Rome, was executed by Ludius. It represents a garden, and covers the four walls of a room. It is of the decorative order of painting, as Pliny well understood, for he speaks of the difference between the work of Ludius and that of the true artists who painted panel pictures and not wall-paintings. After the time of Ludius we can give no trustworthy account of any fine, Roman painter. Fig. 5.-Etruscan Wall-painting. The works of the ancient painters which still remain in various countries are wall-paintings, paintings on vases, mosaics, paintings on stone, and certain so-called miniatures; and besides these principal works there are many small 84 articles, such as mirrors, toilet-cases, and other useful objects, which are decorated in colors. We will first speak of the mural, or wall-paintings, as they are the most important and interesting remains of ancient painting. We shall only consider such as have been found in Italy, as those of other countries are few and unimportant. The Etruscan tombs which have been opened contain many beautiful objects of various kinds, and were frequently decorated with mural pictures. They often consist of several rooms, and have the appearance of being prepared as a home for the living rather than for the dead. I shall give you no long or wordy description of them; because if what I tell you leads you to wish to know more about them, there are many excellent books describing them which you can read. So I will simply give you two cuts from these Etruscan paintings, and tell you about them. Fig. 5 is in a tomb known as the Grotta della Querciola. The upper part represents a feast, and the lower portion a boar-hunt in a wood, which is indicated by the few trees and the little twigs which are intended to represent the underbrush of the forest. If we compare these pictures with the works of the best Italian masters, they seem very crude and almost childish in their simplicity; but, if we contrast them with the paintings of the Egyptians and Assyrians, we see that a great advance has been made since the earliest paintings of which we know were done.[Pg 25] The pose and action of the figures and their grace of movement, as well as the folding of the draperies, are far better than anything earlier than the Greek painting of which there is any knowledge; for, as we have said, these Etruscan works are essentially Greek. Fig. 6.-Human Sacrifice Offered by Achilles to the Shade of Patroklos. From an Etruscan wall-painting. Fig. 6 belongs to a later period than the other, and is taken from a tomb at Vulci which was opened in 1857 by François. This tomb has seven different chambers, several of which are decorated with wall-paintings of mythological subjects. A square chamber at the end of the tomb has the most important pictures. On one side the human sacrifices which were customary at Etruscan funerals are represented: the pictures are very painful, and the terror and agony of the poor victims who are being put to death make them really repulsive to see. On an opposite wall is the painting from which our cut is taken. This represents the sacrifices made before Troy by Achilles, on account of the death of his dear friend Patroklos. The figure with the hammer is Charon, who stands ready to receive the sacrifice which is intended to win his favor. Your mythology will tell you the story, which is too long to be given here. The realism of this picture is shocking in its effect, and yet there is something about the manner of the drawing and the arrangement of the whole design that fixes our attention even while it makes us shudder. The ancient wall-paintings which have been found in Rome are far more varied than are those of Etruria; for, while some of the Roman pictures are found in tombs, others are taken from baths, palaces, and villas. They generally belong to one period, and that is about the close of the Republic and the beginning of the Empire. Modern excavations have revealed many of these ancient paintings; but so many of them crumble and fade 85 away so soon after they are exposed to the air, that few remain in a condition to afford any satisfaction in seeing them. But fortunately drawings have been made of nearly all these pictures before they fell into decay. Fig. 7.-The Aldobrandini Marriage. From a wall-painting in the Vatican. Some of the ancient paintings have been carefully removed from the walls where they were found, and placed in museums and other collections. One of the finest of these is in the Vatican, and is called the Aldobrandini Marriage. It received this name from the fact that Cardinal Aldobrandini was its first possessor after its discovery, near the Arch of Gallienus, in 1606. As you will see from Fig. 7, from it, there are three distinct groups represented. In the centre the bride veiled, with her head modestly bowed down, is seated on a couch with a woman beside her who seems to be arranging some part of her toilet, while another stands near holding ointment and a bowl. At the head of the couch the bridegroom is seated on a threshold. The upper part of his figure is bare, and he has a garland upon his head. On the right of the picture an ante-room is represented in which are three women with musical instruments, singing sacrificial songs. To the left, in another apartment, three other women are preparing a bath. This is charming on account of the sweet, serious way in which the whole story is placed before us; but as a painting it is an inferior work of art-not in the least above the style which we should call house decoration. Although ancient writers had spoken of landscape paintings, it was not until 1848-1850, when a series of them was discovered on the Esquiline in Rome, that any very satisfactory specimens could be shown. These pictures number eight: six are complete, of the seventh but half remains, and the eighth is in a very imperfect state. They may be called historical landscapes, because each one has a complete landscape as well as figures which tell a story. They illustrate certain passages from the Odyssey of Homer. The one from which our cut is taken shows the visit of Ulysses to the lower world. When on the wall the pictures were divided by pilasters, and finished at the top by a border or frieze. The pilasters are bright red, and the chief colors in the picture are a yellowish brown and a greenish blue. In this scene the way in which the light streams through the entrance to the lower world is very striking, and shows the many figures there with the best possible effect. Even those in the far distance on the right are distinctly seen. This collection of Esquiline wall-paintings is now in the Vatican Library. Fig. 8.-Landscape Illustration to the Odyssey. From a wall-painting discovered on the Esquiline at Rome. Besides the ancient mural paintings which have been placed in the museums of Rome, there are others which still remain where they were painted, in palaces, villas, and tombs. Perhaps those in the house of Livia are the most interesting; they represent mythological stories, and one frieze has different scenes of street life in an ancient town. Though these decorations are done in a mechanical sort of painting, such as is practised by the ordinary fresco painters of our own time, yet there was sufficient artistic feeling in their authors to prevent their repeating any one design. 86 One circumstance proves that this class of picture was not thought very important when it was made, which is that the name of the artist is rarely found upon his work: in but one instance either in Rome or Pompeii has this occurred, namely, in a chamber which was excavated in the gardens of the Farnesina Palace at Rome, and the name is Seleucus. We have not space to speak of all the Italian cities in which these remains are discovered, and, as Pompeii is the one most frequently visited and that in which a very large proportion of the ancient pictures have been found, I will give a few illustrations from them, and leave the subject of ancient, mural paintings there. Many of the Pompeian pictures have been removed to the Museum of Naples, though many still remain where they were first painted. The variety of subjects at Pompeii is large: there are landscapes, hunting scenes, mythological subjects, numerous kinds of single figures, such as dancing girls, the hours, or seasons, graces, satyrs, and many others; devotional pictures, such as representations of the ancient divinities, lares, penates, and genii; pictures of tavern scenes, of mechanics at their work; rope-dancers and representations of various games, gladiatorial contests, genre scenes from the lives of children, youths, and women, festival ceremonies, actors, poets, and stage scenes, and last, but not least, many caricatures, of which I here give you an example (Fig. 9). Fig. 9.-The Flight of AEneas. From a wall-painting. The largest dog is AEneas, who leads the little Ascanius by the hand and carries his father, Anchises, on his shoulder. Frequently in the ancient caricatures monkeys are made to take the part of historical and imaginary heroes. Fig. 10.-Demeter Enthroned. From a Pompeian wall-painting. Fig. 11.-Pompeian Wall-painting. Fig. 11 shows you how these painted walls were sometimes divided; the principal subjects were surrounded by ornamental borders, and the spaces between filled in with all sorts of little compartments. The small spaces in this picture are quite regular in form; but frequently they are of varied shapes, and give a very decorative effect to the whole work. The colors used upon these different panels, as they may be called, were usually red, yellow, black, and white-more rarely blue and green. Sometimes the entire decoration consisted of these small, variously colored spaces, divided by some graceful little border, with a very small figure, plant, or other object in the centre of each space. Fig. 12.-Nest of Cupids. From a Pompeian wall-painting. 87 Fig. 10, of Demeter, or Ceres, enthroned is an example of such devotional paintings as were placed above the altars and shrines for private worship in the houses of Pompeii, or at the street corners, just as we now see pictures and sacred figures in street shrines in Roman Catholic countries. In ancient days, as now, these pictures were often done in a coarse and careless manner, as if religious use, and not art, was the object in the mind of the artist. Fig. 12, of a Nest of Cupids is a very interesting example of Pompeian painting, and to my mind it more nearly resembles pictures of later times than does any other ancient painting of which I know. MOSAICS. The pictures known as mosaics are made by fitting together bits of marble, stone, or glass of different colors and so arranging them as to represent figures and objects of various kinds, so that at a distance they have much the same effect as that of pictures painted with brush and colors. The art of making mosaics is very ancient, and was probably invented in the East, where it was used for borders and other decorations in regular set patterns. It was not until after the time of Alexander the Great that the Greeks used this process for making pictures. At first, too, mosaics were used for floors or pavements only, and the designs in them were somewhat like those of the tile pavements of our own time. This picture of doves will give you a good idea of a mosaic; this subject is a very interesting one, because it is said to have been first made by Sosos in Pergamos. It was often repeated in later days, and that from which our cut is taken was found in the ruins of Hadrian's villa at Tivoli, near Rome; it is known as the Capitoline Doves, from the fact that it is now in the Capitoline Museum in Rome. Few works of ancient art are more admired and as frequently copied as this mosaic: it is not unusual to see ladies wear brooches with this design in fine mosaic work. Fig. 13.-Doves Seated on a Bowl. From a mosaic picture in the Capitol, Rome. A few examples of ancient mosaics which were used for wall decorations have been found; they may almost be said not to exceed a dozen; but pavement mosaics are very numerous, and are still seen in the places for which they were designed and where they have been during many centuries, as well as in museums to which they have been removed. They are so hard in outline and so mechanical in every way that they are not very attractive if we think of them as pictures, and their chief interest is in the skill and patience with which mosaic workers combine the numberless particles of one substance and another which go to make up the whole. Mosaic pictures, as a rule, are not large; but one found at Palestrina, which is called the Nile mosaic, is six by five metres inside. Its subject is the inundation of a village on the river Nile. There are an immense number of figures and a variety of scenes in it; there are Egyptians hunting the Nile horse, a party of revellers in a bower draped with vines, bands of warriors and other groups of men occupied in different pursuits, and all represented at 88 the season when the Nile overflows its banks. This is a very remarkable work, and it has been proved that a portion of the original is in the Berlin Museum, and has been replaced by a copy at Palestrina. PAINTINGS ON STONE. It is well known that much of the decoration of Greek edifices was in colors. Of course these paintings were put upon the marble and stone of which the structures were made. The Greeks also made small pictures and painted them on stone, just as canvas and panels of wood are now used. Such painted slabs have been found in Herculaneum, in Corneto, and in different Etruscan tombs; but the most important and satisfactory one was found at Pompeii in 1872. Since then the colors have almost vanished; but Fig. 14, from it, will show you how it appeared when found. It represents the mythological story of the punishment of Niobe, and is very beautiful in its design. VASE-PAINTING. Vase-painting was another art very much practised by the ancients. So much can be said of it that it would require more space than we can give for its history even in outline. So I shall only say that it fills an important place[Pg 38] in historic art, because from the thousands of ancient vases that have been found in one country and another, much has been learned concerning the history of these lands and the manners and customs of their people; occasionally inscriptions are found upon decorated vases which are of great value to scholars who study the history of the past. Fig. 14.-Niobe. From a picture on a slab of granite at Pompeii. Fig. 15.-The Dodwell Vase. At Munich. The Dodwell vase shows you the more simple style of decoration which was used in the earlier times. Gradually the designs came to be more and more elaborate, until whole stories were as distinctly told by the pictures on vases as if they had been written out in books. The next cut, which is made from a vasepainting, will show what I mean. The subject of Fig. 16 is connected with the service of the dead, and shows a scene in the under world, such as accorded with ancient religious notions. In the upper portion the friends of the deceased are grouped around a little temple. Scholars trace the manufacture of these vases back to very ancient days, and down to its decline, about two centuries before Christ. I do not mean that vase-painting ceased then, for its latest traces come down to 65 b.c.; but like all other ancient arts, it was then in a state of [Pg 40]decadence. Though vase-painting was one of the lesser arts, its importance can scarcely be overestimated, and it fully merits the devoted study and admiration which it receives from those who are learned in its history. Fig. 16.-Scene in the Lower World. 89 From a vase of the style of Lower Italy. From what we know of ancient Greek painting we may believe that this art first reached perfection in Greece. If we could see the best works of Apelles, who reached the highest excellence of any Greek painter, we might find some lack of the truest science of the art when judged by more modern standards; but the Greeks must still be credited with having been the first to create a true art of painting. After the decline of Greek art fifteen centuries elapsed before painting was again raised to the rank which the Greeks had given it, and if, according to our ideas, the later Italian painting is in any sense superior to the Greek, we must at least admit that the study of the works of antiquity which still remained in Italy, excited the great masters of the Renaissance to the splendid achievements which they attained. CHAPTER II. MEDIAEVAL PAINTING, FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA TO THE RENAISSANCE. The Middle Ages extend from the latter part of the fifth century to the time of the Renaissance, or about the fifteenth century. The painting of this period has little to attract attention if regarded only from an artistic stand-point, for we may truly say that, comparing it with the Greek art which had preceded it, or with the Italian art which followed it, that of the Middle Ages had no claim to the beautiful. On the other hand, it is full of interest to students, because it has its part in the history of art; therefore I shall give a mere outline of it, so that this link in the chain which unites ancient and modern painting may not be entirely wanting in our book. Early mediaeval painting, down to about a.d. 950, consists principally of paintings in burial-places, mosaics (usually in churches), and of miniatures, or the illustration and illumination of MSS., which were the books of that time, and were almost without exception religious writings. This period is called the Early Period of the Middle Ages, and the pictures are often called the works of Early Christian Art. About 1050 a revival of intellectual pursuits began in some parts of Europe, and from that time it may be said that the Renaissance, or new birth of art and letters, was in its A B Cs, or very smallest beginnings. The period between 950 and 1250 is often called the Central or Romanesque Period of the Middle Ages, and it was during this time that glass-painting originated; it is one of the most interesting features of art in mediaeval times. From 1250 to 1400 comes the Final or Gothic Period of the Middle Ages, and this has some very interesting features which foretell the coming glory of the great Renaissance. THE EARLY PERIOD. The paintings of the catacombs date from the third and fourth centuries after Christ. The catacombs, or burial-places of the early Christians, consist of long, narrow, subterranean passages, cut with regularity, and crossing each other like streets in a city. The graves are in the sides of these passages, and there are some larger rooms or chambers into which 90 the narrow passages run. There are about sixty of the catacombs in and near Rome; they are generally called by the name of some saint who is buried in them. The paintings are in the chambers, of which there are sometimes several quite near each other. The reason for their being in these underground places was that Christians were so persecuted under the Romans, that they were obliged to do secretly all that they did as Christians, so that no attention should be attracted to them. The principal characteristics of these pictures are a simple majesty and earnestness of effect; perhaps spirituality is the word to use, for by these paintings the early Christians desired to express their belief in the religion of Christ, and especially in the immortality of the soul, which was a very precious doctrine to them. The catacombs of Rome were more numerous and important than those of any other city. Many of the paintings in the catacombs had a symbolic meaning, beyond the plainer intention which appeared at the first sight of them: you will know what I mean when I say that not only was this picture of Moses striking the rock intended to represent an historical fact in the life of Moses, but the flowing water was also regarded as a type of the blessing of Christian baptism. Fig. 17.-Moses. From a painting in the Catacomb of S. Agnes. Fig. 18.-decoration of a Roof. Catacomb of S. Domitilla. The walls of the chambers of the catacombs are laid out in such a manner as to have the effect of decorated apartments, just as was done in the pagan tombs, and sometimes the pictures were a strange union of pagan and Christian devices. The above cut, from the Catacomb of S. Domitilla, has in the centre the pagan god Orpheus playing his lyre, while in the alternate compartments of the border are the following Christian subjects: 1, David with the Sling; 2, Moses Striking the Rock; 3, Daniel in the Lion's Den; 4, The Raising of Lazarus. The other small divisions have pictures of sacrificial animals. These two cuts will give you an idea of the catacomb wallpaintings. The mosaics of the Middle Ages were of a purely ornamental character down to the time of Constantine. Then, when the protection of a Christian emperor enabled the Christians to express themselves without fear, the doctrines of the church and the stories of the life of Christ and the histories of the saints, as well as many other instructive religious subjects, were made in mosaics, and placed in prominent places in churches and basilicas. Mosaics are very durable, and many belonging to the early Christian era still remain. The mosaics at Ravenna form the most connected series, and are the best preserved of those that still exist. While it is true in a certain sense that Rome was always the art centre of Italy, it is also true that at Ravenna the works of art have not suffered from devastation and restoration as have those of Rome. After the invasion of the Visigoths in 91 A.D. 404, Honorius transferred the imperial court to Ravenna, and that city then became distinguished for its learning and art. The Ravenna mosaics are so numerous that I shall only speak of one series, from which I give an illustration (Fig. 19). This mosaic is in the church of S. Vitalis, which was built between a.d. 526 and 547. In the dome of the church there is a grand representation of Christ enthroned; below Him are the sacred rivers of Paradise; near Him are two angels and S. Vitalis, to whom the Saviour is presenting a crown; Bishop Ecclesius, the founder of the church, is also represented near by with a model of the church in his hand. On a lower wall there are two pictures in which the Emperor Justinian and the Empress Theodosia are represented: our cut is from one of these, and shows the emperor and empress in magnificent costumes, each followed by a train of attendants. This emperor never visited Ravenna; but he sent such rich gifts to this church that he and his wife are represented as its donors. Fig. 19.-Justinian, Theodora, and Attendants. From a mosaic picture at S. Vitalis, Ravenna. After the time of Justinian (a.d. 527-565) mosaics began to be less artistic, and those of the later time degenerated, as did everything else during the Middle or Dark Ages, and at last all works of art show less and less of the Greek or Classic influence. When we use the word miniature as an art term, it does not mean simply a small picture as it does in ordinary conversation; it means the pictures executed by the hand of an illuminator or miniator of manuscripts, and he is so called from the minium or cinnabar which he used in making colors. In the days of antiquity, as I have told you in speaking of Egypt, it was customary to illustrate manuscripts, and during the Middle Ages this art was very extensively practised. Many monks spent their whole lives in illuminating religious books, and in Constantinople and other eastern cities this art reached a high degree of perfection. Some manuscripts have simple borders and colored initial letters only; sometimes but a single color is used, and is generally red, from which comes our word rubric, which means any writing or printing in red ink, and is derived from the Latin rubrum, or red. This was the origin of illumination or miniature-painting, which went on from one step to another until, at its highest state, most beautiful pictures were painted in manuscripts in which rich colors were used on gold or silver backgrounds, and the effect of the whole was as rich and ornamental as it is possible to imagine. Many of these old manuscripts are seen in museums, libraries, and various collections; they are very precious and costly, as well as interesting; their study is fascinating, for almost every one of the numberless designs that are used in them has its own symbolic meaning. The most ancient, artistic miniatures of which we know are those on a manuscript of a part of the book of Genesis; it is in the Imperial Library at Vienna, and was made at the end of the fifth century. In the same collection there is a very extraordinary manuscript, from which I give an illustration. 92 This manuscript is a treatise on botany, and was written by Dioskorides for his pupil, the Princess Juliana Anicia, a granddaughter of the Emperor Valentine III. As this princess died at Constantinople a.d. 527, this manuscript dates from the beginning of the sixth century. This picture from it represents Dioskorides dressed in white robes and seated in a chair of gold; before him stands a woman in a gold tunic and scarlet mantle, who represents the genius of discovery; she presents the legendary mandrake root, or [Pg 48]mandragora, to the learned man, while between them is the dog that has pulled the root, and falls dead, according to the fabulous story. This manuscript was painted by a masterly hand, and is curious and interesting; the plants, snakes, birds, and insects must have been painted from nature, and the whole is most skilfully done. Fig. 20.-The Discovery of the Herb Mandragora. From a MS. of Dioskorides, at Vienna. During the Middle Ages the arts as practised in Rome were carried into all the different countries in which the Romans made conquests or sent their monks and missionaries to establish churches, convents, and schools. Thus the mediaeval arts were practised in Gaul, Spain, Germany, and Great Britain. No wall-paintings or mosaics remain from the early German or Celtic peoples; but their illuminated manuscripts are very numerous: miniature-painting was extensively done in Ireland, and many Irish manuscripts remain in the collections of Great Britain. When Charlemagne became the king of the Franks in 768, there was little knowledge of any art among his northern subjects; in 800 he made himself emperor of the Romans, also, and when the Franks saw all the splendor of Rome and other parts of Italy, it was not difficult for the great emperor to introduce the arts into the Frankish portion of his empire. All sorts of beautiful objects were carried from Italy by the Franks, and great workshops were established at Aix-la-Chapelle, the capital, and were placed under the care of Eginhard, who was skilled in bronze-casting, modelling, and other arts; he was called Bezaleel, after the builder of the Tabernacle. We have many accounts of the wallpaintings and mosaics of the Franks; but there are no remains of them that can be identified with positive accuracy. Miniature-painting flourished under the rule of Charlemagne and his family, and reached a point of great magnificence in effect, though it was never as artistic as the work of the Italian miniators; and, indeed, gradually everything connected with art was declining in all parts of the world; and as we study its history, we can understand why the terms Dark Ages and Middle Ages are used to denote the same epoch, remarkable as it is for the decay and extinction of so many beautiful things. THE CENTRAL, OR ROMANESQUE PERIOD. During the Romanesque Period (950-1250) architecture was pursued according to laws which had grown out of the achievements and experiences of earlier ages, and had reached such a perfection as entitled it to the rank of a noble art. But this was not true of painting, which was then but little more than the painting of the Egyptians had been, that 93 is, a sort of picture-writing, which was principally used to illustrate the doctrines of religion, and by this means to teach them to peoples who had no books, and could not have read them had they existed. During all this time the art of painting was largely under the control of the priests. Some artists were priests themselves, and those who were not were under the direction of some church dignitary. Popes, bishops, abbots, and so on, were the principal patrons of art, and they suggested to the artists the subjects to be painted, and then the pictures were used for the decoration of churches and other buildings used by the religious orders. The monks were largely occupied in miniature-painting; artists frequented the monasteries, and, indeed, when they were engaged upon religious subjects, they were frequently under the same discipline as that of the monks themselves. Next to the influence of the church came that of the court; but in a way it was much the same, for the clergy had great influence at court, and, although painting was used to serve the luxury of sovereigns and nobles, it was also true that these high personages often employed artists to decorate chapels and to paint altar-pieces for churches at their expense, for during the Romanesque period there was some painting on panels. At first these panel-pictures were placed on the front of the altar where draperies had formerly been used: later they were raised above the altar,[Pg 51] and also put in various parts of the church. The painting of the Romanesque period was merely a decline, and there can be little more said of it than is told by that one word. Fig. 21.-King David. From a window in Augsburg Cathedral. Glass-painting dates from this time. The very earliest specimens of which we know are from the eleventh century. Before that time there had been transparent mosaics made by putting together bits of colored glass, and arranging them in simple, set and ornamental patterns. Such mosaics date from the earliest days of Christianity, and were in use as soon as glass was used for windows. From ancient writings we know that some windows were made with pictures upon them as long ago as a.d. 989; but nothing now remains from that remote date. There is a doubt as to whether glass-painting originated in France or Germany. Some French authors ascribe its invention to Germany, while some German writers accord the same honor to France. Remains of glass-painting of the eleventh century have been found in both these countries; but it is probable that five windows in the Cathedral of Augsburg date from 1065, and are a little older than any others of which we know. This picture of David is from one of them, and is probably as old as any painted window in existence. Fig. 22.-Window. From the Cathedral of St. Denis. The oldest glass-painting in France is probably a single fragment in the Cathedral of Le Mans. This cathedral was completed in 1093, but was badly burned in 1136, so that but a single piece of its windows remains; this has[Pg 53] been inserted in a new window in the choir, and is thus preserved. With the beginning of the twelfth century, glass-painting became more frequent in Europe, and near the end of this century it was introduced into England, together with the Gothic style of architecture. Very soon a highly decorative effect was given to glass-painting, and the 94 designs upon many windows were very much like those used in the miniatures of the same time. The stained glass in the Cathedral of St. Denis, near Paris, is very important. It dates from about 1140-1151, and was executed under the care of the famous Abbot Suger. He employed both French and German workmen, and decorated the entire length of the walls with painted windows. St. Denis was the first French cathedral in the full Gothic style of architecture. The present windows in St. Denis can scarcely be said to be the original ones, as the cathedral has suffered much from revolutions; but some of them have been restored as nearly as possible, and our illustration (Fig. 22) will give you a good idea of what its windows were. The stripes which run across the ground in this window are red and blue, and the leaf border is in a light tone of color. There are nine medallions; the three upper ones have simply ornamental designs upon them, and the six lower ones have pictures of sacred subjects. The one given here is an Annunciation, in which the Abbot Suger kneels at the feet of the Virgin Mary. His figure interferes with the border of the medallion in a very unusual manner. Perhaps the most important ancient glass-painting remaining in France is that of the west front of the Cathedral of Chartres. It dates from about 1125, when this front was begun; there are three windows, and their color is far superior to the glass of a later period, which is in the same cathedral. The earliest painted glass in England dates from about 1180. Some of the windows in Canterbury Cathedral correspond to those in the Cathedral of St. Denis. In the Strasbourg Cathedral there are some splendid remains of painted glass of the Romanesque period, although they were much injured by the bombardment of 1870. Fig. 23 is from one of the west windows, and represents King Henry I. This is an unusually fine example of the style of the period before the more elaborate Gothic manner had arisen; the quiet regularity of the drapery and the dignified air of the whole figure is very impressive. An entirely different sort of colored windows was used in the churches and edifices which belonged to the Cistercian order of monks. The rule of this order was severe, and while they wished to soften the light within their churches, they believed it to be wrong to use anything which denoted pomp or splendor in the decoration of the house of God. For these reasons they invented what is called the grisaille glass: it is painted in regular patterns in gray tones of color. Sometimes these windows are varied by a leaf pattern in shades of green and brown, with occasional touches of bright color; but this is used very sparingly. Some of these grisaille windows are seen in France; but the finest are in Germany in the Cathedral of Heiligenkreuz: they date from the first half of the thirteenth century. THE FINAL, OR GOTHIC PERIOD. 95 The Gothic order of architecture, which was perfected during this period, had a decided influence upon the painting and sculpture of the time; but this influence was not felt until Gothic architecture had reached a high point in its development. France was now the leading country of the world, and Paris came to be the most important of all cities: it was the centre from which went forth edicts as to the customs of society, the laws of dress and conduct, and even of the art of love. From France came the codes of chivalry, and the crusades, which spread to other lands, originated there. Thus, for the time, Paris overshadowed Rome and the older centres of art, industry, and science, with a worldwide influence. Fig. 23.-Figure of Henry I. in West Window of Strasbourg Cathedral. Although the painting of this period had largely the same characteristics as that of the Romanesque period, it had a different spirit, and it was no longer under the control of the clergy. Before this time, too, painters had frequently been skilled in other arts; now it became the custom for them to be painters only, and besides this they were divided into certain classes of painters, and were then associated with other craftsmen who were engaged in the trade which was connected with their art. That is, the glass-painters painted glass only, and were associated with the glass-blowers; those who decorated shields, with the shield or scutcheon makers, and so on; while the painters, pure and simple, worked at wall-painting, and a little later at panel-painting also. From this association of artists and tradesmen there grew up brotherhoods which supported their members in all difficulties, and stood by each other like friends. Each brotherhood had its altar in some church; they had their funerals and festivals in common, and from these brotherhoods grew up the more powerful societies which were called guilds. These guilds became powerful organizations; they had definite rights and duties, and even judicial authority as to such matters as belonged to their special trades. All this led to much greater individuality among artists than had ever existed before: it came to be understood that a painter could, and had a right to, paint a picture as he wished, and was not governed by any priestly law. Religious subjects were still painted more frequently than others, and the decoration of religious edifices was the chief employment of the artists; but they worked with more independence of thought and spirit. The painters studied more from nature, and though the change was very slow, it is still true that a certain softness of effect, an easy flow of drapery, and a new grace of pose did appear, and about a.d. 1350 a new idea of the uses and aims of painting influenced artists everywhere. Fig. 24.-Birth of the Virgin. From the Grandes Heures of the Duc de Berri. About that time they attempted to represent distances, and to create different planes in their works; to reproduce such things as they represented far more exactly than they had done before, and to put them in just relations to surrounding places and objects; in a word, they seemed to awake to an appreciation of the true office of painting and to its infinite possibilities. 96 During this Gothic period some of the most exquisite manuscripts were made in France and Germany, and they are now the choicest treasures of their kind in various European collections. Fig. 24, of the birth of the Virgin Mary, is from one of the most splendid books of the time which was painted for the Duke de Berry and called the Great Book of the Hours. The wealth of ornament in the border is a characteristic of the French miniatures of the time. The Germans used a simpler style, as you will see by Fig. 25, of the Annunciation. The influence of the Gothic order of architecture upon glass-painting was very pronounced. Under this order the windows became much more important than they had been, and it was not unusual to see a series of windows painted in such pictures as illustrated the whole teaching of the doctrines of the church. It was at this time that the custom arose of donating memorial windows to religious edifices. Sometimes they were the gift of a person or a family, and the portraits of the donors were painted in the lower part of the window, and usually in a kneeling posture; at other times windows were given by guilds, and it is very odd to see craftsmen of various sorts at work in a cathedral window: such pictures exist at Chartres, Bourges, Amiens, and other places. Fig. 25.-The Annunciation. From the Mariale of Archbishop Arnestus of Prague. About a.d. 1300 it began to be the custom to represent architectural effects upon colored windows. Our cut is from a window at Konigsfelden, and will show exactly what I mean (Fig. 26). This style of decoration was not as effective as the earlier ones had been, and, indeed, from about this time glass-painting became less satisfactory than before, from the fact that it had more resemblance to panel-painting, and so lost a part of the individuality which had belonged to it. Fig. 26.-Painted Window at Konigsfelden. Wall-paintings were rare in the Gothic period, for its architecture left no good spaces where the pictures could be placed, and so the interior painting of the churches was almost entirely confined to borders and decorative patterns scattered here and there and used with great effect. In Germany and England wall-painting was more used for the decoration of castles, halls, chambers, and chapels; but as a whole mural painting was of little importance at this time in comparison with its earlier days. About a.d. 1350 panel pictures began to be more numerous, and from this time there are vague accounts of schools of painting at Prague and Cologne, and a few remnants exist which prove that such works were executed in France and Flanders; but I shall pass over what is often called the Transitional Period, by which we mean the time in which new influences were beginning to act, and hereafter I will tell our story by giving accounts of the lives of separate painters; for from about the middle of the thirteenth century it is possible to trace the history of painting through the study of individual artists. 97 Fig. 27.-Portrait of Cimabue. Giovanni Cimabue, the first painter of whom I shall tell you, was born in Florence in 1240. He is sometimes called the ―Father of Modern Painting,‖ because he was the first who restored that art to any degree of the beauty to which it had attained before the Dark Ages. The Cimabui were a noble family, and Giovanni was allowed to follow his own taste, and became a painter; he was also skilled in mosaic work, and during the last years of his life held the office of master of the mosaic workers in the Cathedral of Pisa, where some of his own mosaics still remain. Of his wall-paintings I shall say nothing except to tell you that the finest are in the Upper Church at Assisi, where one sees the first step in the development of the art of Tuscany. But I wish to tell the story of one of his panel pictures, which is very interesting. It is now in the Rucellai Chapel of the Church of Santa Maria Novella, in Florence, and it is only just in me to say that if one of my readers walked through that church and did not know about this picture, it is doubtful if he would stop to look at it-certainly he would not admire it. The story is that when Cimabue was about thirty years old he was busy in painting this picture of the Madonna Enthroned, and he would not allow any one to see what he was doing. It happened, however, that Charles of Anjou, being on his way to Naples, stopped in Florence, where the nobles did everything in their power for his entertainment. Among other places they took him to the studio of Cimabue, who uncovered his picture for the first time. Many persons then flocked to see it, and were so loud in their joyful expressions of admiration for it that the part of the city in which the studio was has since been called the Borgo Allegri, or the ―joyous quarter.‖ When the picture was completed the day was celebrated as a festival; a procession was formed; bands of music played joyful airs; the magistrates of Florence honored the occasion with their presence; and the picture was borne in triumph to the church. Cimabue must have been very happy at this great appreciation of his art, and from that time he was famous in all Italy. Fig. 28.-The Madonna of the Church of Santa Maria Novella. Another madonna by this master is in the Academy of Florence, and one attributed to him is in the Louvre, in Paris. Cimabue died about 1302, and was buried in the Church of Santa Maria del Fiore, or the Cathedral of Florence. Above his tomb these words were inscribed: ―Cimabue thought himself master of the field of painting. While living, he was so. Now he holds his place among the stars of heaven.‖ Other artists who were important in this early time of the revival of painting were Andrea Tafi, a mosaist of Florence, Margaritone of Arezzo, Guido of Siena, and of the same city Duccio, the son of Buoninsegna. This last painter flourished from 1282 to 1320; his altarpiece for the Cathedral of Siena was also carried to its place in solemn procession, with the sound of trumpet, drum, and bell. 98 Giotto di Bondone was the next artist in whom we have an unusual interest. He was born at Del Colle, in the commune of Vespignano, probably about 1266, though the date is usually given ten years later. One of the best reasons for calling Cimabue the ―Father of Painting‖ is that he acted the part of a father to Giotto, who proved to be so great an artist that from his time painting made a rapid advance. The story is that one day when Cimabue rode in the valley of Vespignano he saw a shepherd-boy who was drawing a portrait of one of his sheep on a flat rock, by means of a pointed bit of slate for a pencil. The sketch was so good that Cimabue offered to take the boy to Florence, and teach him to paint. The boy's father consented, and henceforth the little Giotto lived with Cimabue, who instructed him in painting, and put him to study letters under Brunetto Latini, who was also the teacher of the great poet, Dante. Fig. 29.-Portrait of Dante, painted by Giotto. The picture which we give here is from the earliest work by Giotto of which we have any knowledge. In it were the portraits of Dante, Latini, and several others. This picture was painted on a wall of the Podestà at Florence, and when Dante was exiled from that city his portrait was covered with whitewash; in 1841 it was restored to the light, having been hidden for centuries. It is a precious memento of the friendship between the great artist and the divine poet, who expressed his admiration of Giotto in these lines:- ―In painting Cimabue fain had thought To lord the field; now Giotto has the cry, So that the other's fame in shade is brought.‖ Giotto did much work in Florence; he also, about 1300, executed frescoes in the Lower Church at Assisi; from 1303-1306 he painted his beautiful pictures in the Cappella dell' Arena, at Padua, by which the genius of Giotto is now most fully shown. He worked at Rimini also, and about 1330 was employed by King Robert of Naples, who conferred many honors upon him, and made him a member of his own household. In 1334 Giotto was made the chief master of the cathedral works in Florence, as well as of the city fortifications and all architectural undertakings by the city authorities. He held this high position but three years, as he died on January 8, 1337. Giotto was also a great architect, as is well known from his tower in Florence, for which he made all the designs and a part of the working models, while some of the sculptures and reliefs upon it prove that he was skilled in modelling and carving. He worked in mosaics also, and the famous ―Navicella,‖ in the vestibule of St. Peter's at Rome, was originally made by him, but has now been so much restored that it is doubtful if any part of what remains was done by Giotto's hands. Fig. 30.-Giotto's Campanile and the Duomo. Florence. The works of Giotto are too numerous to be mentioned here, and his merits as an artist too important to be discussed in our limits; but his advance in painting was so great that he deserved the great compliment of Cennino, who said that Giotto ―had done or translated the art of painting from Greek into Latin.‖ 99 I shall, however, tell you of one excellent thing that he did, which was to make the representation of the crucifix far more refined and Christ-like than it had ever been. Before his time every effort had been made to picture physical agony alone. Giotto gave a gentle face, full of suffering, it is true, but also expressive of tenderness and resignation, and it would not be easy to paint a better crucifix than those of this master. In person Giotto was so ugly that his admirers made jokes about it; but he was witty and attractive in conversation, and so modest that his friends were always glad to praise him while he lived, and since his death his fame has been cherished by all who have written of him. There are many anecdotes told of Giotto. One is that on a very hot day in Naples, King Robert said to the painter, ―Giotto, if I were you, I would leave work, and rest.‖ Giotto quickly replied, ―So would I, sire, if I were you.‖ When the same king asked him to paint a picture which would represent his kingdom, Giotto drew an ass bearing a saddle on which were a crown and sceptre, while at the feet of the ass there was a new saddle with a shining new crown and sceptre, at which the ass was eagerly smelling. By this he intended to show that the Neapolitans were so fickle that they were always looking for a new king. There is a story which has been often repeated which says, that in order to paint his crucifixes so well, he persuaded a man to be bound to a cross for an hour as a model; and when he had him there he stabbed him, in order to see such agony as he wished to paint. When the Pope saw the picture he was so pleased with it that he wished to have it for his own chapel; then Giotto confessed what he had done, and showed the body of the dead man. The Pope was so angry that he threatened the painter with the same death, upon which Giotto brushed the picture over so that it seemed to be destroyed. Then the Pope so regretted the loss of the crucifix that he promised to pardon Giotto if he would paint him another as good. Giotto exacted the promise in writing, and then, with a wet sponge, removed the wash he had used, and the picture was as good as before. According to tradition all famous crucifixes were drawn from this picture ever after. When Boniface VIII. sent a messenger to invite Giotto to Rome, the messenger asked Giotto to show him something of the art which had made him so famous. Giotto, with a pencil, by a single motion drew so perfect a circle that it was thought to be a miracle, and this gave rise to a proverb still much used in Italy:-Piu tondo che l'O di Giotto, or, ―Rounder than the O of Giotto.‖ Giotto had a wife and eight children, of whom nothing is known but that his son Francesco became a painter. Giotto died in 1337, and was buried with great honors in the Church of Santa Maria del Fiore. Lorenzo de Medici erected a monument to his memory. The pupils and followers of Giotto were very numerous, and were called Giotteschi; among these Taddeo Gaddi, and his son Agnolo, are most famous: others were Maso and Bernardo di Daddo; but I shall not speak in detail of these artists. 100 While Giotto was making the art of Florence famous, there was an artist in Siena who raised the school of that city to a place of great honor. This was Simone Martini, who lived from 1283 to 1344, and is often called Simone Memmi because he married a sister of another painter, Lippo Memmi. The most important works of Simone which remain are at Siena in the Palazzo Pubblico and in the Lower Church at Assisi. There is one beautiful work of his in the Royal Institution, at Liverpool, which illustrates the text, ―Behold, thy father and I have sought Thee, sorrowing.‖ While the Papal court was at Avignon, in 1338, Simone removed to that city. Here he became the friend of Petrarch and of Laura, and has been praised by this poet as Giotto was by Dante. Another eminent Florentine artist was Andrea Orcagna, as he is called, though his real name was Andrea Arcagnuolo di Cione. He was born about 1329, and died about 1368. It has long been the custom to attribute to Orcagna some of the most important frescoes in the Campo Santo at Pisa; but it is so doubtful whether he worked there that I shall not speak of them. His father was a goldsmith, and Orcagna first studied his father's craft; he was also an architect, sculptor, mosaist, and poet, as well as a painter. He made an advance in color and in the painting of atmosphere that gives him high rank as a painter; as a sculptor, his tabernacle in the Church of Or San Michele speaks his praise. Mr. C. C. Perkins thus describes it: ―Built of white marble in the Gothic style, enriched with every kind of ornament, and storied with bas-reliefs illustrative of the Madonna's history from her birth to her death, it rises in stately beauty toward the roof of the church, and, whether considered from an architectural, sculptural, or symbolic point of view, must excite the warmest admiration in all who can appreciate the perfect unity of conception through which its bas-reliefs, statuettes, busts, intaglios, mosaics, and incrustations of pietre dure, gilded glass, and enamels are welded into a unique whole.‖ But perhaps it is as an architect that Orcagna is most interesting to us, for he it was who made the designs for the Loggia de Lanzi in Florence. This was built as a place for public assembly, and the discussion of the topics of the day in rainy weather; it received its name on account of its nearness to the German guard-house which was called that of the Landsknechts (in German), or Lanzi, as it was given in Italian. Orcagna probably died before the Loggia was completed, and his brother Bernardo succeeded him as architect of the commune. This Loggia is one of the most interesting places in Florence, fully in sight of the Palazzo Signoria, near the gallery of the Uffizi, and itself the storehouse of precious works of sculpture. There were also in these early days of the fourteenth century schools of art at Bologna and Modena; but we know so little of them in detail that I shall not attempt to give any account of them here, but will pass to the early artists who may be said to belong to the true Renaissance in Italy. CHAPTER III. PAINTING IN ITALY, FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE RENAISSANCE 101 TO THE PRESENT CENTURY. The reawakening of Art in Italy which followed the darkness of the Middle Ages, dates from about the beginning of the fifteenth century and is called the Renaissance. The Italians have a method of reckoning the centuries which differs from ours. Thus we call 1800 the first year of the nineteenth century, but they call it the first of the eighteenth; so the painters of what was to us the fifteenth century are called by Italians the ―quattrocentisti,‖ or men of the fourteenth century, and while to us the term ―cinquecento‖ means the style of the sixteenth century, to the Italians the same century, which begins with 1500, is the fifteenth century. I shall use our own method of reckoning in my writing; but this fact should be known to all who read or study art. The first painter of whom I shall now speak is known to us as Fra Angelico. His name was Guido, the son of Pietro, and he was born at Vicchio in the province of Mugello, in the year 1387. We know that his family was in such circumstances that the young Guido could have led a life of ease; but he early determined to become a preaching friar. Meantime, even as a boy, he showed his taste for art, and there are six years in his life, from the age of fourteen to twenty, of which no one can tell the story. However, from what followed it is plain that during this time he must somewhere have devoted himself to the study of painting and to preparation for his life as a monk. Before he was fully twenty years old, he entered the convent at Fiesole, and took the name of Fra, or Brother Giovanni; soon after, his elder brother joined him there, and became Fra Benedetto. Later on our artist was called Fra Angelico, and again Il Beato Angelico, and then, according to Italian custom, the name of the town from which he came was added, so that he was at last called Il Beato Giovanni, detto Angelico, da Fiesole, which means, ―The Blessed John, called the Angelic, of Fiesole.‖ The title Il Beato is usually conferred by the church, but it was given to Fra Angelico by the people, because of his saintly character and works. It was in 1407 that Fra Angelico was admitted to the convent in Fiesole, and after seven years of peaceful life there he was obliged to flee with his companions to Foligno. It was at the time when three different popes claimed the authority over the Church of Rome, and the city of Florence declared itself in favor of Alexander V.; but the monks of Fiesole adhered to Gregory XII., and for this reason were driven from their convent. Six years they dwelt at Foligno; then the plague broke out in the country about them, and again they fled to Cortona. Pictures painted by Fra Angelico at this time still remain in the churches of Cortona. After an absence of ten years the monks returned to Fiesole, where our artist passed the next eighteen years. This was the richest period of his life: his energy was untiring, and his zeal both as an artist and as a priest burned with a steady fire. His works were sought for far and wide, and most of his easel-pictures were painted during this time. Fra Angelico would never accept the money which was paid for his work; it was given into 102 the treasury of his convent; neither did he accept any commission without the consent of the prior. Naturally, the monk-artist executed works for the adornment of his own convent. Some of these have been sold and carried to other cities and countries, and those which remain have been too much injured and too much restored to be considered important now. Fig. 31.-Fra Angelico. From the representation of him in the fresco of the ―Last Judgment,‖ by Fra Bartolommeo, in Santa Maria Nuova, Florence. He painted so many pictures during this second residence at Fiesole, not only for public places, but for private citizens, that Vasari wrote: ―This Father painted so many pictures, which are dispersed through the houses of the Florentines, that sometimes I am lost in wonder when I think how works so good and so many could, though in the course of many years, have been brought to perfection by one man alone.‖ In 1436 the great Cosimo de Medici insisted that the monks of Fiesole should again leave their convent, and remove to that of San Marco, in Florence. Most unwillingly the brethren submitted, and immediately Cosimo set architects and builders to work to erect a new convent, for the old one was in a ruinous state. The new cloisters offered a noble field to the genius of Fra Angelico, and he labored for their decoration with his whole soul; though the rule of the order was so strict that the pictures in the cells could be seen only by the monks, he put all his skill into them, and labored as devotedly as if the whole world could see and praise them, as indeed has since been done. His pictures in this convent are so numerous that we must not describe them, but will say that the Crucifixion in the chapter-room is usually called his masterpiece. It is nearly twenty-five feet square, and, besides the usual figures in this subject, the Saviour and the thieves, with the executioners, there are holy women, the founders of various orders, the patrons of the convent, and companies of saints. In the frame there are medallions with several saints and a Sibyl, each bearing an inscription from the prophecies relating to Christ's death; while below all, St. Dominic, the founder of the artist's order, bears a genealogical tree with many portraits of those who had been eminent among his followers. For this reason this picture has great historic value. At last, in 1445, Pope Eugenius IV., who had dedicated the new convent of San Marco and seen the works of Angelico, summoned him to Rome. It is said that the Pope not only wished for some of his paintings, but he also desired to honor Angelico by giving him the archbishopric of Florence; but when this high position was offered him, Fra Angelico would not accept of it: he declared himself unequal to its duties, and begged the Pope to appoint Fra Antonino in his stead. This request was granted, and Angelico went on with his work as before, in all humility fulfilling his heaven-born mission to lead men to better lives through the sweet influence of his divine art. The honor which had been tendered him was great-one which the noblest men were striving for-but if he realized this he did not regret his decision, neither was he made bold or vain by the royal tribute which the Pope had paid him. 103 From this time the most important works of Fra Angelico were done in the chapel of Pope Nicholas V., in the Vatican, and in the chapel which he decorated in the Cathedral of Orvieto. He worked there one summer, and the work was continued by Luca Signorelli. The remainder of his life was passed so quietly that little can be told of it. It is not even known with certainty whether he ever returned to Florence, and by some strange fate the key to the chapel which he painted in the Vatican was lost during two centuries, and the pictures could only be seen by entering through a window. Thus it would seem that his last years were passed in the quiet work which he best loved. Fig. 32.-An Angel. In the Uffizi, Florence. By Fra Angelico. When his final illness was upon him, the brethren of[Pg 78] Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, where he resided, gathered about him, and chanted the Salve Regina. He died on the 18th of February, 1455, when sixty-seven years old. His tombstone is in the church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, in Rome; on it lies the figure of a Dominican monk in marble. Pope Nicholas V. wrote his epitaph in Latin. The following translation is by Professor Norton: ―Not mine be the praise that I was a second Apelles, But that I gave all my gains to thine, O Christ! One work is for the earth, another for heaven. The city, the Flower of Tuscany, bore me-John.‖ In the Convent of San Marco in Florence there are twenty-five pictures by this master; in the Academy of Florence there are about sixty; there are eleven in the chapel of Nicholas V., and still others in the Vatican gallery. The Church of Santa Maria Novella, Florence, the Cathedral of Orvieto, the Church of St. Domenico in Perugia, and that of Cortona, are all rich in his works. Besides these a few exist in some of the principal European galleries; but I love best to see them in San Marco, where he painted them for his brethren, and where they seem most at home. The chief merit of the pictures of Fra Angelico is the sweet and tender expression of the faces of his angels and saints, or any beings who are holy and good; he never succeeded in painting evil and sin in such a way as to terrify one; his gentle nature did not permit him to represent that which it could not comprehend, and the very spirit of purity seems to breathe through every picture. Two other Florentine artists of the same era with Fra Angelico were Masolino, whose real name was Panicale, and Tommaso Guidi, called Masaccio on account of his want of neatness. The style of these two masters was much the same, but Masaccio became so much the greater that little is said of Masolino. The principal works of Masaccio are a series of frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel in Florence. They represent ―The Expulsion from Paradise,‖ ―The Tribute Money,‖ ―Peter Baptizing,‖ ―Peter Curing the Blind and Lame,‖ ―The Death of Ananias,‖ ―Simon Magus,‖ and the ―Resuscitation of the King's Son.‖ There is a fresco by Masolino in the same chapel; it is ―The Preaching of Peter.‖ 104 Masaccio was in fact a remarkable painter. Some one has said that he seemed to hold Giotto by one hand, and reach forward to Raphael with the other; and considering the pictures which were painted before his time, his works are as wonderful as Raphael's are beautiful. He died in 1429. Paolo Uccello (1396-1479) and Filippo Lippi (1412-1469) were also good painters, and Sandro Botticelli (1447-1515), a pupil of Filippo, was called the best Florentine painter of his time. Fillipino Lippi (1460-1505) was a pupil of Botticelli and a very important artist. Andrea Verrocchio, Lorenzo di Credi, and Antonio Pollajuolo were all good painters of the Florentine school of the last half of the fifteenth century. Of the same period was Domenico Ghirlandajo (1449-1494), who ranks very high on account of his skill in the composition of his works and as a colorist. He made his pictures very interesting also to those of his own time, and to those of later days, by introducing portraits of certain citizens of Florence into pictures which he painted in the Church of Santa Maria Novella and other public places in the city. He did not usually make them actors in the scene he represented, but placed them in detached groups as if they were looking at the picture themselves. While his scenes were laid in the streets known to us, and his architecture was familiar, he did not run into the fantastic or lose the picturesque effect which is always pleasing. Without being one of the greatest of the Italian masters Ghirlandajo was a very important painter. He was also a teacher of the great Michael Angelo. Other prominent Florentine painters of the close of the fifteenth century were Francisco Granacci (1477-1543), Luca Signorelli (1441-1521), Benozzo Gozzoli (1424-1485), and Cosimo Rosselli (1439-1506). Some good painters worked in Venice from the last half of the fourteenth century; but I shall begin to speak of the Venetian school with some account of the Bellini. The father of this family was Jacopo Bellini (1395-1470), and his sons were Gentile Bellini (14211507) and Giovanni Bellini (1426-1516). The sketch-book of the father is one of the treasures of the British Museum. It has 99 pages, 17 by 13 inches in size, and contains sketches of almost everything-still and animal life, nature, ancient sculpture, buildings and human figures, stories of the Scriptures, of mythology, and of the lives of the saints are all illustrated in its sketches, as well as hawking parties, village scenes, apes, eagles, dogs, and cats. In this book the excellence of his drawing is seen; but so few of his works remain that we cannot judge of him as a colorist. It is certain that he laid the foundation of the excellence of the Venetian school, which his son Giovanni and the great Titian carried to perfection. The elder son, Gentile, was a good artist, and gained such a reputation by his pictures in the great council-chamber of Venice, that when, in 1479, Sultan Mehemet, the conqueror of Constantinople, sent to Venice for a good painter, the Doge sent to him Gentile Bellini. With him he sent two assistants, and gave him honorable conduct in galleys belonging to the State. In Constantinople Gentile was much honored, and he painted the portraits of 105 many remarkable people. At length it happened that when he had finished a picture of the head of John the Baptist in a charger, and showed it to the Sultan, that ruler said that the neck was not well painted, and when he saw that Gentile did not agree with him he called a slave and had his head instantly struck off, to prove to the artist what would be the true action of the muscles under such circumstances. This act made Gentile unwilling to remain near the Sultan, and after a year in his service he returned home. Mehemet, at parting, gave him many gifts, and begged him to ask for whatever would best please him. Gentile asked but for a letter of praise to the Doge and Signoria of Venice. After his return to Venice he worked much in company with his brother. It is said that Titian studied with Gentile: it is certain that he was always occupied with important commissions, and worked until the day of his death, when he was more than eighty years old. Fig. 33.-Christ. By Gio. Bellini. But Giovanni Bellini was the greatest of his family, and must stand as the founder of true Venetian painting. His works may be divided into two periods, those that were done before, and those after he learned the use of oil colors. His masterpieces, which can still be seen in the Academy and the churches of Venice, were painted after he was sixty-five years old. The works of Giovanni Bellini are numerous in Venice, and are also seen in the principal galleries of Europe. He did not paint a great variety of subjects, neither was his imagination very poetical, but there was a moral beauty in his figures; he seems to have made humanity as elevated as it can be, and to have stopped just on the line which separates earthly excellence from the heavenly. He often painted the single figure of Christ, of which Lübke says: ―By grand nobleness of expression, solemn bearing, and an excellent arrangement of the drapery, he reached a dignity which has rarely been surpassed.‖ Near the close of his life he painted a few subjects which represent gay and festive scenes, and are more youthful in spirit than the works of his earlier years. The two brothers were buried side by side, in the Church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, in Venice. There were also good painters in Padua, Ferrara, and Verona in the fifteenth century. Andrea Mantegna, of Padua (1430-1506), was a very important artist. He spent the best part of his life in the service of the Duke of Mantua; but his influence was felt in all Italy, for his marriage with the daughter of Jacopo Bellini brought him into relations with many artists. His services were sought by various sovereigns, whose offers he refused until Pope Innocent VIII. summoned him to Rome to paint a chapel in the Vatican. After two years there he returned to Mantua, where he died. His pictures are in all large collections; his finest works are madonnas at the Louvre, Paris, and in the Church of St. Zeno at Verona. Mantegna was a fine engraver also, and his plates are now very valuable. In the Umbrian school Pietro Perugino (1446-1524) was a notable painter; he was important on account of his own work, and because he was the master of the great Raphael. His pictures were simple and devout in their spirit, and brilliant in color; in fact, he is considered as the founder of the style which Raphael perfected. His works are in the 106 principal galleries of Europe, and he had many followers of whom we have not space to speak. Francisco Francia (1450-1518) was the founder of the school of Bologna. His true name was Francisco di Marco Raibolini, and he was a goldsmith of repute before he was a painter. He was also master of the mint to the Bentivoglio and to Pope Julius II. at Bologna. It is not possible to say when he began to paint; but his earliest known work is dated 1490 or 1494, and is in the Gallery of Bologna. His pictures resemble those of Perugino and Raphael, and it is said that he died of sorrow because he felt himself so inferior to the great painter of Urbino. Raphael sent his St. Cecilia to Francia, and asked him to care for it and see it hung in its place; he did so, but did not live long after this. It is well known that these two masters were good friends and corresponded, but it is not certain that they ever met. Francia's pictures are numerous; his portraits are excellent. Many of his works are still in Bologna. Fig. 34.-Madonna. By Perugino. In the Pitti Gallery, Florence. We come now to one of the most celebrated masters of Italy, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), the head of the Lombard or Milanese school. He was not the equal of the great masters, Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Titian; but he stands between them and the painters who preceded him or those of his own day. In some respects, however, he was the most extraordinary man of his time. His talents were many-sided; for he was not only a great artist, but also a fine scholar in mathematics and mechanics; he wrote poetry and composed music, and was with all this so attractive personally, and so brilliant in his manner, that he was a favorite wherever he went. It is probable that this versatility prevented his being very great in any one thing, while he was remarkable in many things. When still very young Leonardo showed his artistic talent. The paper upon which he worked out his sums was frequently bordered with little pictures which he drew while thinking on his lessons, and these sketches at last attracted his father's attention, and he showed them to his friend Andrea Verrocchio, an artist of Florence, who advised that the boy should become a painter. Accordingly, in 1470, when eighteen years old, Leonardo was placed under the care of Verrocchio, who was like a kind father to his pupils: he was not only a painter, but also an architect and sculptor, a musician and a geometer, and he especially excelled in making exquisite cups of gold and silver, crucifixes and statuettes such as were in great demand for the use of the priesthood in those days. Fig. 35.-Leonardo da Vinci. From a drawing in red chalk by himself. In the Royal Library, Turin. Pietro Perugino was a fellow-pupil with Leonardo, and they two soon surpassed their master in painting, and at last, when Verrocchio was painting a picture for the monks of Vallambrosa, and desired Leonardo to execute an angel in it, the work of his pupil was so much better than his own that the old painter desired to throw his brush aside forever. The picture is now in the Academy of Florence, and represents 107 ―The Baptism of Christ.‖ With all his refinement and sweetness, Leonardo had a liking for the horrible. It once happened that a countryman brought to his father a circular piece of wood cut from a fig-tree, and desired to have it painted for a shield; it was handed over to Leonardo, who collected in his room a number of lizards, snakes, bats, hedgehogs, and other frightful creatures, and from these painted an unknown monster having certain characteristics of the horrid things he had about him. The hideous creature was surrounded by fire, and was breathing out flames. When his father saw it he ran away in a fright, and Leonardo was greatly pleased at this. The countryman received an ordinary shield, and this Rotello del Fico (or shield of fig-tree wood) was sold to a merchant for one hundred ducats, and again to the Duke of Milan for three times that sum. This shield has now been lost for more than three centuries; but another horror, the ―Medusa's Head,‖ is in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, and is a head surrounded by interlacing serpents, the eyes being glassy and deathlike and the mouth most revolting in expression. While in Florence Leonardo accomplished much, but was at times diverted from his painting by his love of science, sometimes making studies in astronomy and again in natural history and botany; he also went much into society, and lived extravagantly. He had the power to remember faces that he had seen accidentally, and could make fine portraits from memory; he was also accustomed to invite to his house people from the lower classes; he would amuse them while he sketched their faces, making good portraits at times, and again ridiculous caricatures. He even went so far, for the sake of his art, as to accompany criminals to the place of execution, in order to study their expressions. After a time Leonardo wished to secure some fixed income, and wrote to the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, called Il Moro, offering his services to that prince. This resulted in his going to Milan, where he received a generous salary, and became very popular with the Duke and all the court, both as a painter and as a gentleman. The Duke governed as the regent for his young nephew, and gathered about him talented men for the benefit of the young prince. He also led a gay life, and his court was the scene of constant festivities. Leonardo's varied talents were very useful to the Duke; he could assist him in everything-by advice at his council, by plans for adorning his city, by music and poetry in his leisure hours, and by painting the portraits of his favorites. Some of these last are now famous pictures-that of Lucrezia Crevelli is believed to be in the Louvre at Paris, where it is called ―La Belle Ferronière.‖ The Duke conferred a great honor on Leonardo by choosing him to be the founder and director of an academy which he had long wished to establish. It was called the ―Academia Leonardi Vinci,‖ and had for its purpose the bringing together of distinguished artists and men of letters. Leonardo was appointed superintendent of all the fêtes and entertainments given by the court, and in this department he did some marvellous things. He also superintended a great work in engineering which he brought to perfection, to the wonder of all Italy: it was no less an undertaking than bringing the waters of the Adda from Mortisana to Milan, a distance of nearly two hundred miles. In spite of all these occupations the artist found time to study anatomy and to write some valuable works. At length Il Moro became the established duke, and at his brilliant court 108 Leonardo led a most agreeable life; but he was so occupied with many things that he painted comparatively few pictures. Fig. 36.-The Last Supper. By Leonardo da Vinci. At length the Duke desired him to paint a picture of the Last Supper on the wall of the refectory in the Convent of the Madonna delle Grazie. This was his greatest work in Milan and a wonderful masterpiece. It was commenced about 1496, and was finished in a very short time. We must now judge of it from copies and engravings, for it has been so injured as to give no satisfaction to one who sees it. Some good copies were made before it was thus ruined, and numerous engravings make it familiar to all the world. A copy in the Royal Academy, London, was made by one of Leonardo's pupils, and is the size of the original. It is said that the prior of the convent complained to the Duke of the length of time the artist was spending upon this picture; when the Duke questioned the painter he said that he was greatly troubled to find a face which pleased him for that of Judas Iscariot; he added that he was willing to allow the prior to sit for this figure and thus hasten the work; this answer pleased the Duke and silenced the prior. After a time misfortunes overtook the Duke, and Leonardo was reduced to poverty; finally Il Moro was imprisoned; and in 1500 Leonardo returned to Florence, where he was honorably received. He was not happy here, however, for he was not the one important artist. He had been absent nineteen years, and great changes had taken place; Michael Angelo and Raphael were just becoming famous, and they with other artists welcomed Leonardo, for his fame had reached them from Milan. However, he painted some fine pictures at this time; among them were the ―Adoration of the Kings,‖ now in the Uffizi Gallery, and a portrait of Ginevra Benci, also in the same gallery. This lady must have been very beautiful; Ghirlandajo introduced her portrait into two of his frescoes. But the most remarkable portrait was that known as Mona Lisa del Giocondo, which is in the Louvre, and is called by some critics the finest work of this master. The lady was the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, a lovely woman, and some suppose that she was very dear to Leonardo. He worked upon it for four years, and still thought it unfinished: the face has a deep, thoughtful expression-the eyelids are a little weary, perhaps, and through it all there is a suggestion of something not quite understood-a mystery: the hands are graceful and of perfect form, and the rocky background gives an unusual fascination to the whole picture. Leonardo must have loved the picture himself, and it is not strange that he lavished more time upon it than he gave to the great picture of the Last Supper (Fig. 37). Leonardo sold this picture to Francis I. for nine thousand dollars, which was then an enormous sum, though now one could scarcely fix a price upon it. In 1860 the Emperor of Russia paid twelve thousand dollars for a St. Sebastian by Leonardo, and in 1865 a madonna by him was sold in Paris for about sixteen thousand dollars. Of course his pictures are rarely sold; but, when they are, great sums are given for them. 109 In 1502 Caesar Borgia appointed Leonardo his engineer and sent him to travel through Central Italy to inspect his fortresses; but this usurper soon fled to Spain, and in 1503 our painter was again in Florence. In 1504 his father died. From 1507 to 1512 Leonardo was at the summit of his greatness. Louis XII. appointed him his painter, and he labored for this monarch also to improve the water-works of Milan. For seven years he dwelt at Milan, making frequent journeys to Florence. But the political troubles of the time made Lombardy an uncongenial home for any artist, and Leonardo, with a few pupils, went to Florence and then on to Rome. Pope Leo X. received him cordially enough, and told him to ―work for the glory of God, Italy, Leo X., and Leonardo da Vinci.‖ But Leonardo was not happy in Rome, where Michael Angelo and Raphael were in great favor, and when Francis I. made his successes in Italy in 1515, Leonardo hastened to Lombardy to meet him. The new king of France restored him to the office to which Louis XII. had appointed him, and gave him an annual pension of seven hundred gold crowns. Fig. 37.-Mona Lisa.- ―La Belle Joconde.‖ When Francis returned to France he desired to cut out the wall on which the Last Supper was painted, and carry it to his own country: this proved to be impossible, and it is much to be regretted, as it is probable that if it could have been thus removed it would have been better preserved. However, not being able to take the artist's great work, the king took Leonardo himself, together with his favorite pupils and friends and his devoted servant. In France, Leonardo was treated with consideration. He resided near Amboise, where he could mingle with the court. It is said that, old though he was, he was so much admired that the courtiers imitated his dress and the cut of his beard and hair. He was given the charge of all artistic matters in France, and doubtless Francis hoped that he would found an Academy as he had done at Milan. But he seems to have left all his energy, all desire for work, on the Italian side of the Alps. He made a few plans; but he brought no great thing to pass, and soon his health failed, and he fell into a decline. He gave great attention to religious matters, received the sacrament, and then made his will, and put his worldly affairs in order. The king was accustomed to visit him frequently, and on the last day of his life, when the sovereign entered the room, Leonardo desired to be raised up as a matter of respect to the king: sitting, he conversed of his sufferings, and lamented that he had done so little for God and man. Just then he was seized with an attack of pain-the king rose to support him, and thus, in the arms of Francis, the great master breathed his last. This has sometimes been doubted; but the modern French critics agree with the ancient writers who give this account of his end. He was buried in the Church of St. Florentin at Amboise, and it is not known that any monument was erected over him. In 1808 the church was destroyed; in 1863 Arsine Houssaye, with others, made a search for the grave of Leonardo, and it is believed that his remains were found. In 1873 a noble monument was erected in Milan to the memory of Da Vinci. It is near the entrance to the Arcade of Victor Emmanuel: the statue of the master stands on a high pedestal in a thoughtful attitude, the head bowed down and the 110 arms crossed on the breast. Below are other statues and rich bas-reliefs, and one inscription speaks of him as the ―Renewer of the Arts and Sciences.‖ Many of his writings are in the libraries of Europe in manuscript form: his best known work is the ―Trattato della Pittura,‖ and has been translated into English. As an engineer his canal of Mortesana was enough to give him fame; as an artist he may be called the ―Poet of Painters,‖ and, if those who followed him surpassed him, it should be remembered that it is easier to advance in a path once opened than to discover a new path. Personally he was much beloved, and, though he lived when morals were at a low estimate, he led a proper and reputable life. His pictures were pure in their spirit, and he seemed only to desire the progress of art and science, and it is a pleasure to read and learn of him, as it is to see his works. Other good artists of the Lombard school in the fifteenth century were Bernardino Luini (about 1460-1530), who was the best pupil of Leonardo, Giovanni Antonio Beltraffio (1467-1516), Gaudenzio Farrari (1484-1549), Ambrogio Borgognone (works dated about 1500), and Andrea Solario, whose age is not known. We return now to the Florentine school at a time when the most remarkable period of its existence was about to begin. We shall speak first of Fra Bartolommeo or Baccio della Porta, also called Il Frate (1469-1517). He was born at Savignano, and studied at Florence under Cosimo Rosselli, but was much influenced by the works of Leonardo da Vinci. This painter became famous for the beauty of his pictures of the Madonna, and at the time when the great Savonarola went to Florence Bartolommeo was employed in the Convent of San Marco, where the preacher lived. The artist became the devoted friend of the preacher, and, when the latter was seized, tortured, and burned, Bartolommeo became a friar, and left his pictures to be finished by his pupil Albertinelli. For four years he lived the most austere life, and did not touch his brush: then his superior commanded him to resume his art; but the painter had no interest in it. About this time Raphael sought him out, and became his friend; he also instructed the monk in perspective, and in turn Raphael learned from him, for Fra Bartolommeo was the first artist who used lay figures in arranging his draperies; he also told Raphael some secrets of colors. About 1513 Bartolommeo went to Rome, and after his return to his convent he began what promised to be a wonderful artistic career; but he only lived four years more, and the amount of his work was so small that his pictures are now rare. His madonnas, saints, and angels are holy in their effect; his representations of architecture are grand, and while his works are not strong or powerful, they give much pleasure to those who see them. Michael Angelo Buonarroti was born at the Castle of Caprese in 1475. His father, who was of a noble family of Florence, was then governor of Caprese and Chiusi, and, when the Buonarroti household returned to Florence, the little Angelo was left with his nurse on one of his father's estates at Settignano. The father and husband of his nurse were stone-masons, and thus in infancy the future artist was in the midst of blocks of stone and marble and the implements which he later used with so much skill. For many years rude 111 sketches were shown upon the walls of the nurse's house made by her baby charge, and he afterward said that he imbibed a love for marble with his earliest food. Fig. 38.-Portrait of Michael Angelo Buonarroti. At the proper age Angelo was taken to Florence and placed in school; but he spent his time mostly in drawing, and having made the acquaintance of Francesco Granacci, at that time a pupil with Ghirlandajo, he borrowed from him designs and materials by which to carry on his beloved pursuits. Michael Angelo's desire to become an artist was violently opposed by his father and his uncles, for they desired him to be a silk and woollen merchant, and sustain the commercial reputation of the family. But so determined was he that finally his father yielded, and in 1488 placed him in the studio of Ghirlandajo. Here the boy of thirteen worked with great diligence; he learned how to prepare colors and to lay the groundwork of frescoes, and he was set to copy drawings. Very soon he wearied of this, and began to make original designs after his own ideas. At one time he corrected a drawing of his master's: when he saw this, sixty years later, he said, ―I almost think that I knew more of art in my youth than I do in my old age.‖ When Michael Angelo went to Ghirlandajo, that master was employed on the restoration of the choir of Santa Maria Novella, so that the boy came at once into the midst of important work. One day he drew a picture of the scaffolding and all that belonged to it, with the painters at work thereon: when his master saw it he exclaimed, ―He already understands more than I do myself.‖ This excellence in the scholar roused the jealousy of the master, as well as of his other pupils, and it was a relief to Michael Angelo when, in answer to a request from Lorenzo de Medici, he and Francesco Granacci were named by Ghirlandajo as his two most promising scholars, and were then sent to the Academy which the duke had established. The art treasures which Lorenzo gave for the use of the students were arranged in the gardens of San Marco, and here, under the instruction of the old Bertoldo, Angelo forgot painting in his enthusiasm for sculpture. He first copied the face of a faun; but he changed it somewhat, and opened the mouth so that the teeth could be seen. When Lorenzo visited the garden he praised the work, but said, ―You have made your faun so old, and yet you have left him all his teeth; you should have known that at such an advanced age there are generally some wanting.‖ The next time he came there was a gap in the teeth, and so well done that he was delighted. This work is now in the Uffizi Gallery. Lorenzo now sent for the father of Angelo, and asked that the son might live in the Medici palace under his own care. Somewhat reluctantly the father consented, and the duke gave him an office in the custom-house. From this time for three years, Angelo sat daily at the duke's table, and was treated as one of his own family; he was properly clothed, and had an allowance of five ducats a month for pocket-money. It was the custom with Lorenzo to give an entertainment every day; he took the head of the table, and whoever came first had a seat next him. It often happened that Michael Angelo had this place. Lorenzo was the head of Florence, and Florence was the head of art, poetry, and all scholarly thought. Thus, in the home of the Medici, the young artist heard learned talk upon all subjects of interest; he saw there all the celebrated men who lived in the city 112 or visited it, and his life so near Lorenzo, for a thoughtful youth, as he was, amounted to an education. The society of Florence at this time was not of a high moral tone, and in the year in which Michael Angelo entered the palace, a monk called Savonarola came to Florence to preach against the customs and the crimes of the city. Michael Angelo was much affected by this, and throughout his long life remembered Savonarola with true respect and affection, and his brother, Leonardo Buonarroti, was so far influenced that he withdrew from the world and became a Dominican monk. Michael Angelo's diligence was great; he not only studied sculpture, but he found time to copy some of the fine old frescoes in the Church of the Carmine. He gave great attention to the study of anatomy, and he was known throughout the city for his talents, and for his pride and bad temper. He held himself aloof from his fellow-pupils, and one day, in a quarrel with Piètro Torrigiano, the latter gave Angelo a blow and crushed his nose so badly that he was disfigured for life. Torrigiano was banished for this offence and went to England; he ended his life in a Spanish prison. In the spring of 1492 Lorenzo de Medici died. Michael Angelo was deeply grieved at the loss of his best friend; he left the Medici palace, and opened a studio in his father's house, where he worked diligently for two years, making a statue of Hercules and two madonnas. After two years there came a great snow-storm, and Piero de Medici sent for the artist to make a snow statue in his court-yard. He also invited Michael Angelo to live again in the palace, and the invitation was accepted; but all was so changed there that he embraced the first opportunity to leave, and during a political disturbance fled from the city with two friends, and made his way to Venice. There he met the noble Aldovrandi of Bologna, who invited the sculptor to his home, where he remained about a year, and then returned to his studio in Florence. Soon after this he made a beautiful, sleeping Cupid, and when the young Lorenzo de Medici saw it he advised Michael Angelo to bury it in the ground for a season, and thus make it look like an antique marble; after this was done, Lorenzo sent it to Rome and sold it to the Cardinal Riario, and gave the sculptor thirty ducats. In some way the truth of the matter reached the ears of the Cardinal, who sent his agent to Florence to find the artist. When Michael Angelo heard that two hundred ducats had been paid for his Cupid, he knew that he had been deceived. The Cardinal's agent invited him to go to Rome, and he gladly went. The oldest existing writing from the hand of Michael Angelo is the letter which he wrote to Lorenzo to inform him of his arrival in Rome. He was then twenty-one years old, and spoke with joy of all the beautiful things he had seen. Not long after he reached Rome he made the statue of the ―Drunken Bacchus,‖ now in the Uffizi Gallery, and then the Virgin Mary sitting near the place of the cross and holding the body of the dead Christ. The art-term for this subject is ―La Pietà.‖ From the time that Michael Angelo made this beautiful work he was the first sculptor of the world, though he was but twenty-four years old. The Pietà was placed in St. Peter's Church, where it still remains. The next year he returned to Florence. He was occupied with both 113 painting and sculpture, and was soon employed on his ―David,‖ one of his greatest works. This statue weighed eighteen thousand pounds, and its removal from the studio in which it was made to the place where it was to stand, next the gate of the Palazzo Vecchio, was a difficult undertaking. It was at last put in place on May 18, 1504; there it remained until a few years ago, when, on account of its crumbling from the effect of the weather, it was removed to the Academy of Fine Arts by means of a railroad built for the purpose. About this time a rivalry sprang up between Michael Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci. They were very unlike in their characters and mode of life. Michael Angelo was bitter, ironical, and liked to be alone; Leonardo loved to be gay and to see the world; Michael Angelo lived so that when he was old he said, ―Rich as I am, I have always lived like a poor man;‖ Leonardo enjoyed luxury, and kept a fine house, with horses and servants. They had entered into a competition which was likely to result in serious trouble, when Pope Julius II. summoned Michael Angelo to Rome. The Pope gave him an order to build him a splendid tomb; but the enemies of the sculptor made trouble for him, and[Pg 100] one morning he was refused admission to the Pope's palace. He then left Rome, sending this letter to the Pope: ―Most Holy Father, I was this morning driven from the palace by the order of your Holiness. If you require me in future you can seek me elsewhere than at Rome.‖ Then he went to Florence, and the Pope sent for him again and again; but he did not go. Meantime he finished his design, and received the commission that he and Leonardo had striven for, which was to decorate the hall of the Grand Council with pictures. At last, in 1506, the Pope was in Bologna, and again sent for Michael Angelo. He went, and was forgiven for his offence, and received an order for a colossal statue of the Pope in bronze. When this was finished in 1508, and put before the Church of St. Petronio, Michael Angelo returned to Florence. He had not made friends in Bologna; his forbidding manner did not encourage others to associate with him; but we now know from his letters that he had great trials. His family was poor, and all relied on him; indeed, his life was full of care and sadness. In 1508 he was again summoned to Rome by the Pope, who insisted that he should paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, in the Vatican. Michael Angelo did not wish to do this, as he had done no great painting. It proved to be one of his most famous works; but he had a great deal of trouble in it. On one occasion the Pope threatened to throw the artist from the scaffolding. The Pope complained also that the pictures looked poor; to this the artist replied: ―They are only poor people whom I have painted there, and did not wear gold on their garments.‖ His subjects were from the Bible. When the artist would have a leave of absence to go to Florence, the Pope got so angry that he struck him; but, in spite of all, this great painting was finished in 1512. Grimm, in his life of Michael Angelo, says: ―It needed the meeting of these two men; in the one such perseverance in requiring, and in the other such power of fulfilling, to produce this monument of human art.‖ Fig. 39.-The Prophet Jeremiah. By M. Angelo. From the Sistine Chapel. It is impossible here to follow, step by step, the life and works of this master. Among the other great things which he did are the tomb of Julius II. in the 114 Church of S. Pietro in Vincoli, in Rome, of which the famous statue of Moses makes a part (Fig. 40). Fig. 40.-Statue of Moses. By M. Angelo. He made the statues in the Medici Chapel in the Church of San Lorenzo, in Florence, the painting of the Last Judgment on a wall of the Sistine Chapel, and many works as an architect; for he was called upon to attend to fortifications both in Florence and Rome, and at last, as his greatest work of this sort, he was the architect of St. Peter's at Rome. Many different artists had had a share in this work; but as it now is Michael Angelo may be counted as its real architect. His works are numerous and only a small part of them is here mentioned; but I have spoken of those by which he is most remembered. His life, too, was a stormy one for many reasons that we have not space to tell. While he lived there were wars and great changes in Italy; he served also under nine popes, and during his life thirteen men occupied the papal chair. Besides being great as a painter, an architect, and a sculptor, he was a poet, and wrote sonnets well worthy of such a genius as his. His whole life was so serious and sad that it gives one joy to know that in his old age he formed an intimate friendship with Vittoria Colonna, a wonderful woman, who made a sweet return to him for all the tender devotion which he lavished upon her. Italians associate the name of Michael Angelo with those of the divine poet Dante and the painter Raphael, and these three are spoken of as the three greatest men of their country in what are called the modern days. Michael Angelo died at Rome in 1564, when eightynine years old. He desired to be buried in Florence; but his friends feared to let this be known lest the Pope should forbid his removal. He was therefore buried in the Church of the Holy Apostles; but his nephew, Leonardo Buonarroti, conveyed his remains to Florence secretly, disguised as a bale of merchandise. At Florence, on a Sunday night, his body was borne to Santa Croce, in a torchlight procession, and followed by many thousands of citizens. There his friends once more gazed upon the face which had not been seen in Florence for thirty years; he looked as if quietly sleeping. Some days later a splendid memorial service was held in San Lorenzo, attended by all the court, the artists, scholars, and eminent men of the city. An oration was pronounced; rare statues and paintings were collected in the church; all the shops of the city were closed; and the squares were filled with people. Above his grave in Santa Croce, where he lies near Dante, Machiavelli, Galileo, and many other great men, the Duke and Leonardo Buonarroti erected a monument. It has statues of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, and a bust of the great man who sleeps beneath. In the court of the Uffizi his statue stands together with those of other great Florentines. His house in the Ghibelline Street now belongs to the city of Florence, and contains many treasured mementoes of his life and works; it is open to all who wish to visit it. In 1875 a grand festival was held in Florence to celebrate the four hundredth anniversary of his birth. The ceremonies were very impressive, and at that time some documents which related to his life, and had never been opened, were, by command of Victor Emmanuel, given to proper persons to be examined. 115 Thus it is that the great deeds of great men live on and on, through all time, and it is a joy to know that though the fourscore and nine years of the life of this artist had much of care and sorrow in them, his name and memory are still cherished, and must continue to be, while from his life many lessons may be drawn to benefit and encourage others-lessons which we cannot here write out; but they teach patience, industry, and faithfulness to duty, while they also warn us to avoid the bitterness and roughness which are blemishes on the memory of this great, good man. Daniele de Volterra (1509-1566) was the best scholar of Michael Angelo. His principal pictures are the ―Descent from the Cross,‖ in the Church of Trinità di Monti, in Rome, and the ―Massacre of the Innocents,‖ in the Uffizi Gallery; both are celebrated works. The next important Florentine painter was Andrea del Sarto (1488-1530). His family name was Vannucchi; but because his father was a tailor, the Italian term for one of his trade, un sarto, came to be used for the son. Early in life Andrea was a goldsmith, as were so many artists; but, when he was able to study painting under Pietro di Cosimo, he became devoted to it, and soon developed his own style, which was very soft and pleasing. His pictures cannot be called great works of art, but they are favorites with a large number of people. He succeeded in fresco-painting, and decorated several buildings in Florence, among them the Scalzo, which was a place where the Barefooted Friars held their meetings, and was named from them, as they are called Scalzi. These frescoes are now much injured; but they are thought his best works of this kind. Probably Andrea del Sarto would have come to be a better painter if he had been a happier man. His wife, of whom he was very fond, was a mean, selfish woman who wished only to make a great show, and did not value her husband's talents except for the money which they brought him. She even influenced him to desert his parents, to whom he had ever been a dutiful son. About 1518 Francis I., king of France, invited Andrea to Paris to execute some works for him. The painter went, and was well established there and very popular, when his wife insisted that he should return to Florence. Francis I. was very unwilling to spare him, but Andrea dared not refuse to go to his wife; so he solemnly took an oath to return to Paris and bring his wife, so that he could remain as long as pleased the king, and then that sovereign consented. Francis also gave the artist a large sum of money to buy for him all sorts of beautiful objects. When Andrea reached Florence his wife refused to go to France, and persuaded him to give her the king's money. She soon spent it, and Andrea, who lived ten years more, was very unhappy, while the king never forgave him, and to this day this wretched story must be told, and continues the remembrance of his dishonesty. After all he had sacrificed for his wife, when he became very ill, in 1530, of some contagious disease, she deserted him. He died alone, and with no prayer or funeral was buried in the Convent of the Nunziata, where he had painted some of his frescoes. Fig. 41.-The Madonna del Sacco. By Andrea del Sarto. His pictures are very numerous; they are correct in drawing, very softly finished, and have a peculiar gray tone of color. 116 He painted a great number of Holy Families, one of which is called the ―Madonna del Sacco,‖ because St. Joseph is leaning on a sack (Fig. 41). This is in the convent where he is buried. His best work is called the ―Madonna di San Francesco‖ and hangs in the tribune of the Uffizi Gallery. This is a most honorable place, for near it are pictures by Michael Angelo, Raphael, Titian, and other great painters, as well as some very celebrated statues, such as the ―Venus de Medici‖ and the ―Dancing Faun.‖ Andrea del Sarto's pictures of the Madonna and Child are almost numberless; they are sweet, attractive works, as are also his St. Barbara, St. Agnes, and others of his single figures. We will now leave the Florentine school of the sixteenth century, and speak of the great master of the Roman school, Raphael Sanzio, or Santi (1483-1520), who was born at Urbino on Good Friday. His father was a painter, and Raphael showed his taste for art very early in life. Both his parents died while he was still a child, and though he must have learned something from seeing his father and other painters at their work, we say that Perugino was his first master, for he was but twelve years old when he entered the studio of that painter in Perugia. Here he remained more than eight years, and about the time of leaving painted the very celebrated picture called ―Lo Sposalizio,‖ or the Marriage of the Virgin, now in the Brera at Milan. This picture is famous the world over, and is very important in the life of the painter, because it shows the highest point he reached under Perugino, or during what is called his first manner in painting. Before this he had executed a large number of beautiful pictures, among which was the so-called ―Staffa Madonna.‖ This is a circular picture and represents the Virgin walking in a springtime landscape. It remained in the Staffa Palace in Perugia three hundred and sixty-eight years, and in 1871 was sold to the Emperor of Russia for seventy thousand dollars. In 1504 Raphael returned to Urbino, where he became the favorite of the court, and was much employed by the ducal family. To this time belong the ―St. George Slaying the Dragon‖ and the ―St. Michael Attacking Satan,‖ now in the gallery of the Louvre. But the young artist soon grew weary of the narrowness of his life, and went to Florence, where, amid the treasures of art with which that city was crowded, he felt as if he was in an enchanted land. It is worth while to recount the wonderful things he saw; they were the cathedral with the dome of Brunelleschi, the tower of Giotto, the marbles and bronzes of Donatello, the baptistery gates of Ghiberti, the pictures of Masaccio, Ghirlandajo, Fra Angelico, and many other older masters, while Michael Angelo and Leonardo were surprising themselves and all others with their beautiful works. At this time the second manner of Raphael begun. During his first winter here he painted the so-called ―Madonna della Gran Duca,‖ now in the Pitti Gallery, and thus named because the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand III., carried it with him on all his journeys, and said his prayers before it at morning and evening. He made a visit to Urbino in 1505, and wherever he was he worked continually, and finished a great number of pictures, which as yet were of religious subjects with few and unimportant exceptions. Fig. 42.-Portrait of Raphael. 117 Painted by Himself. When he returned to Florence in 1506, the cartoon of Leonardo da Vinci's ―Battle of the Standard‖ and Michael Angelo's ―Bathing Soldiers‖ revealed a new world of art[Pg 110] to Raphael. He saw that heroic, exciting scenes could be represented by painting, and that vigor and passion could speak from the canvas as powerfully as Christian love and resignation. Still he did not attempt any new thing immediately. In Florence he moved in the best circles. He received orders for some portraits of nobles and wealthy men, as well as for madonnas and Holy Families. Before long he visited Bologna, and went again to Urbino, which had become a very important city under the reign of Duke Guidobaldo. The king of England, Henry VIII., had sent to this duke the decoration of the Order of the Garter. In return for this honor, the duke sent the king rich gifts, among which was a picture of St. George and the Dragon by Raphael. While at Urbino, at this time, he painted his first classic subject, the ―Three Graces.‖ Soon after, he returned the third time to Florence, and now held much intercourse with Fra Bartolommeo, who gave the younger artist valuable instruction as to his color and drapery. In 1508, among a great number of pictures he painted the madonna which is called ―La Belle Jardinière,‖ and is now one of the treasures of the Louvre. The Virgin is pictured in the midst of a flowery landscape, and it has been said that a beautiful flowergirl to whom Raphael was attached was his model for the picture. This picture is also a landmark in the history of Raphael, for it shows the perfection of his second manner, and the change that had come over him from his Florentine experience and associations. His earlier pictures had been full of a sweet, unearthly feeling, and a color which could be called spiritual was spread over them; now his madonnas were like beautiful, earthly mothers, his colors were deep and rich, and his landscapes were often replaced by architectural backgrounds which gave a stately air where all before had been simplicity. His skill in grouping, in color, and in drapery was now marvellous, and when[in 1508 the Pope, who had seen some of his works, summoned him to Rome, he went, fully prepared for the great future which was before him, and now began his third, or Roman manner of painting. This pope was Julius II., who held a magnificent court and was ambitious for glory in every department of life-as a temporal as well as a spiritual ruler, and as a patron of art and letters as well as in his office of the Protector of the Holy Church. He had vast designs for the adornment of Rome, and immediately employed Raphael in the decoration of the first of the Stanze, or halls of the Vatican, four of which he ornamented with magnificent frescoes before his death. He also executed wall-paintings in the Chigi Palace, and in a chapel of the Church of Santa Maria della Pace. With the exception of a short visit to Florence, Raphael passed the remainder of his life in Rome. The amount of work which he did as an architect, sculptor, and painter was marvellous, and would require the space of a volume to follow it, and name all his achievements, step by step, so I shall only tell you of some of his best-known works and those which are most often mentioned. While he was working upon the halls of the Vatican Julius II. died. He was succeeded by Leo X., who also was a generous patron to Raphael, who thus suffered no loss of 118 occupation from the change of popes. The artist became very popular and rich; he had many pupils, and was assisted by them in his great frescoes, not only in the Vatican, but also in the Farnesina Villa or Chigi Palace. Raphael had the power to attach men to him with devoted affection, and his pupils gave him personal service gladly; he was often seen in the street with numbers of them in attendance, just as the nobles were followed by their squires and pages. He built himself a house in a quarter of the city called the Borgo, not far from the Church of St. Peter's,[Pg 112] and during the remainder of his life was attended by prosperity and success. One of the important works which he did for Leo X. was the making of cartoons, or designs to be executed in tapestry for the decoration of the Sistine Chapel, where Michael Angelo had painted his great frescoes. The Pope ordered these tapestries to be woven in the looms of Flanders, from the richest materials, and a quantity of gold thread was used in them. They were completed and sent to Rome in 1519, and were exhibited to the people the day after Christmas, when all the city flocked to see them. In 1527, when the Constable de Bourbon allowed the French soldiers to sack Rome, these tapestries were carried away. In 1553 they were restored; but one was missing, and it is believed that it had been destroyed for the sake of the gold thread which was in it. Again, in 1798, the French carried them away and sold them to a Jew in Leghorn, who burned one of the pieces; but his gain in gold was so little that he preserved the others, and Pius VII. bought them and restored them to the Vatican. The cartoons, however, are far more important than the tapestries, because they are the work of Raphael himself. The weavers at Arras tossed them aside after using them, and some were torn; but a century later the artist Rubens learned that they existed, and advised King Charles I. of England to buy them. This he did, and thus the cartoons met with as many ups and downs as the tapestries had had. When they reached England they were in strips; the workmen had cut them for their convenience. After the king was executed Cromwell bought the cartoons for three hundred pounds. When Charles II. was king and in great need of money he was sorely tempted to sell them to Louis XIV., who coveted them, and wished to add them to the treasures of France; but Lord Danby persuaded Charles to keep them. In 1698 they were barely saved from fire at Whitehall, and finally, by command of William III., they were properly repaired and a room was built at Hampton Court to receive them, by the architect, Sir Christopher Wren. At present they are in the South Kensington Museum, London. Of the original eleven only seven remain. Fig. 43.-The Sistine Madonna. Both Henry VIII. and Francis I. had received presents of pictures by Raphael: we have told of the occasion when the St. George was sent to England. The ―Archangel Michael‖ and the ―Large Holy Family of the Louvre‖ were given to Francis I. by Lorenzo de Medici, who sent them overland on mules to the Palace of Fontainebleau. Francis was so charmed with these works that he presented Raphael so large a sum that he was unwilling to accept it without sending the king still other pictures; so he sent the sovereign another painting, and to the king's sister, Queen Margaret of Navarre, he gave a picture of St. Margaret overcoming the dragon. Then Francis gave Raphael many thanks and another rich gift of money. Besides this he invited Raphael to come to his court, as did also the king of England; but the artist preferred to remain where he was already so prosperous and happy. 119 About 1520 Raphael painted the famous Sistine Madonna, now the pride of the Dresden Gallery. It is named from St. Sixtus, for whose convent, at Piacenza, it was painted: the picture of this saint, too, is in the lower part of the picture, with that of St. Barbara. No sketch or drawing of this work was ever found, and it is believed that the great artist, working as if inspired, sketched it and finished it on the canvas where it is. It was originally intended for a drappellone, or procession standard, but the monks used it for an altar-piece (Fig. 43). While Raphael accomplished so much as a painter, he by no means gave all his time or thought to a single art. He was made superintendent of the building of St. Peter's in 1514, and made many architectural drawings for that[Pg 115] church; he was also much interested in the excavations of ancient Rome, and made immense numbers of drawings of various sorts. As a sculptor he made models and designs, and there is in the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo, in Rome, a statue of Jonah sitting on a whale, said to have been modelled by Raphael and put into marble by Lorenzetto Latti. Raphael was also interested in what was happening outside the world of art; he corresponded with scholars of different countries, and sent men to make drawings of places and objects which he could not go to see. He was also generous to those less fortunate than himself, and gave encouragement and occupation to many needy men. At one time he expected to marry Maria de Bibiena, a niece of Cardinal Bibiena; but she died before the time for the marriage came. While Raphael was making his great successes in Rome, other famous artists also were there, and there came to be much discussion as to their merits, and especially as to the comparative worth of Michael Angelo and Raphael. At last, when this feeling of rivalry was at its height, the Cardinal Giulio de Medici, afterward Pope Clement VII., gave orders to Raphael and Sebastian del Piombo to paint two large pictures for the Cathedral of Narbonne. The subject of Sebastian's picture was the ―Raising of Lazarus,‖ and it has always been said that Michael Angelo made the drawing for it. Raphael's picture was the ―Transfiguration,‖ and proved to be his last work, for before it was finished he was attacked by fever, and died on Good Friday, 1620, which was the thirty-seventh anniversary of his birth. All Rome mourned for him; his body was laid in state, and the Transfiguration was placed near it. Those who had known him went to weep while they gazed upon his face for the last time. He had chosen his grave in the Pantheon, near to that of Maria Bibiena, his betrothed bride. The ceremonies of his burial were magnificent, and his body was followed by an immense throng dressed in mourning. Above his tomb was placed an inscription in Latin, written by Pietro Bembo, which has for its last sentence these words: ―This is that Raphael by whom Nature feared to be conquered while he lived, and to die when he died.‖ Raphael had also requested Lorenzo Lorenzetti to make a statue of the Virgin to be placed above his resting-place. He left a large estate, and gave his works of art to his pupils Giulio Romano and Francesco Penni; his house to Cardinal Bibiena; a sum to buy another house, the rent of which should pay for twelve masses to be said monthly, for the repose of his soul, from 120 the altar near his grave; this was observed until 1705, when the income from the house was not enough to support these services. For many years there was a skull at the Academy of St. Luke, in Rome, which was called that of Raphael; but there was no proof of this, and in 1833 some antiquarians received the consent of the Pope to their searching for the bones of Raphael in his grave in the Pantheon. After five days of careful work, and removing the pavement in several places, the skeleton of the great master was found, and with it such proofs of its being his as left no room for doubt. Then a second great funeral service was held; the Pope, Gregory XVI., gave a marble sarcophagus in which the bones were placed, and reverently restored to their first resting-place. More than three thousand persons were present at the service, including artists of all nations, as well as Romans of the highest rank. They moved in procession about the church, bearing torches in their hands, and keeping time to beautiful chants from an invisible choir. Fig. 44.-Saint Cecilia Listening to the Singing of Angels. By Raphael. Raphael left two hundred and eighty-seven pictures and five hundred and seventy-six studies and drawings, and all[Pg 118] done in so short a life. In considering him and the story of his life, we find that it was not any one trait or talent that made his greatness; but it was the rare union of gifts of genius with a personal charm that won all hearts to him. His famous picture of ―St. Cecilia,‖ with its sweetness of expression and lovely color-its union of earthly beauty with spiritual feeling, is a symbol of the harmonious and varied qualities of this prince of painters (Fig. 44). Giulio Romano (1492-1556) was the favorite pupil of Raphael, and the heir of a part of his estate; but his remaining works would not repay us for a study of them. Of course, the influence of so great a master as Raphael was felt outside of his own school, and, in a sense, all Italian art of his time was modified by him. His effect was very noticeable upon a Sienese painter, Bazzi, or Razzi, called Il Sodoma (1477-1549), who went to Rome and was under the immediate influence of Raphael's works. He was almost unrivalled in his power to represent beautiful female heads. His important works were frescoes, many of which are in the churches of Siena. Doubtless Bazzi was lost in the shadow of the great Raphael, and had he existed at a time a little more distant from that great man, he would have been more famous in his life. During the sixteenth century the Venetian school reached its highest excellence. The great difference between it and the school of Florence was, that the latter made beauty of form the one object of its art, while the Venetian painters combined with grace and ease the added charm of rich, brilliant color. Giorgio Barbarelli, called Giorgione (1477-1511), was the first great artist of Venice who cast off the rigid manner of the Bellini school, and used his brush and colors freely, guided only by his own ideas, and inspired by his own genius. 121 He was born at Castelfranco, and was early distinguished for his personal beauty. Giorgione means George the Great, and this title was given him on account of his noble figure. He was fond of music, played the lute well, and composed many of the songs he sang; he had also an intense love of beauty-in short, his whole nature was full of sentiment and harmony, and with all these gifts he was a man of pure life. Mrs. Jameson says of him: ―If Raphael be the Shakspeare, then Giorgione may be styled the Byron of painting.‖ There is little that can be told of his life. He was devoted to his art, and passionately in love with a young girl, of whom he told one of his artist friends, Morto da Feltri. This last proved a traitor to Giorgione, for he too admired the same girl, and induced her to forsake Giorgione, and go away with him. The double treachery of his beloved and his friend caused the painter such grief that he could not overcome his sadness, and when the plague visited Venice in 1511, he fell a victim to it in the very flower of his age. Much of the work of Giorgione has disappeared, for he executed frescoes which the damp atmosphere of Venice has destroyed or so injured that they are of no value. His smaller pictures were not numerous, and there is much dispute as to the genuineness of those that are called by his name. He painted very few historical subjects; his works are principally portraits, sibyls, and religious pictures. Among the last, the altar-piece at Castelfranco holds the first place; it represents the Virgin and Child between Sts. Francis and Liberale, and was painted before 1504. Giorgione gave an elevated tone to his heads and figures; it seemed as if he painted only the beings of a superior race, and as if they must all be fitted to do great deeds. His fancy was very fruitful, and in some of his works he pictured demons, sea-monsters, dogs, apes, and such creatures with great effect. In clearness and warmth of color Giorgione is at the head of the Venetian painters; in truth, it seems as if the color was within them and showed itself without in a deep, luminous glow. The most important of Giorgione's scholars was called Fra Sebastiano del Piombo; his real name was Luciani, and he was a native of Venice (1485-1547). This artist excelled in his coloring and in the effect he gave to the atmosphere of his work, making it a broad chiaro-scuro, or clear-obscure, as it really means. This is an art term which is frequently used, and denotes a sort of mistiness which has some light in it, and is gradually shaded off, either into a full light or a deep shadow. But from the earliest efforts of this artist, it was plain that he had no gift of composition, neither could he give his pictures an elevated tone or effect. For this reason his portraits were his best works, and these were very fine. A portrait of his in the National Gallery, London, and another in the Städel Gallery at Frankfort, are both said to be of Giulia Gonzaga, the most beautiful woman of her day in Italy. In 1553, Ippolito de Medici, who was madly in love with her, sent Sebastian with an armed force to Fondi to paint her portrait; it was finished in a month, and was said to 122 be the best ever painted by Sebastian. It was sent to France as a gift to Francis I., and its present abiding-place is not known. While Raphael was at the height of his fame in Rome, the banker Chigi invited Sebastian to that city, and in the Farnesina he painted works which were very inferior beside Raphael's. Then Sebastian tried to improve by study under Michael Angelo. This last great master would not compete with Raphael himself, but he was very jealous of the fame of the younger man, and it is said that he aided Sebastian, and even made his designs for him, in the hopes that thus he might eclipse Raphael. We have spoken of one large picture of the ―Raising of Lazarus‖ said to have been made from Michael Angelo's design, which Sebastian colored; it was painted in competition with Raphael's Transfiguration, and even beside that most splendid work the Lazarus was much admired. This is now in the National Gallery, London. After Raphael's death Sebastian was called the first painter in Rome, and was made a piombatore. It was necessary to be an ecclesiastic to hold this office, and it is on account of this that he gave up his real name, and became a friar. He wrote to Michael Angelo: ―If you were to see me as an honorable lord, you would laugh at me. I am the finest ecclesiastic in all Rome. Such a thing had never come into my mind. But God be praised in eternity! He seemed especially to have thus decreed it. And, therefore, so be it.‖ It is not strange that he should have been so resigned to a high office and a salary of eight hundred scudi a year! Another Venetian, of the same time with Giorgione, was Jacopo Palma, called Il Vecchio, or the elder (about 1480-1528). He was born near Bergamo, but as an artist he was a Venetian. We do not know with whom he studied, and he was not a very great man, nor was he employed by the state-but he dwelt much in the palaces of noble families and did much work for them. When he died he left forty-four unfinished paintings. His female figures are his best works, and one of his fine pictures at Dresden, called the ―Three Graces,‖ is said to represent his daughters. The work which is usually called his masterpiece is an altar-piece in the Church of Santa Maria Formosa, in Venice; the St. Barbara in the centre is very beautiful, and is said to have been painted from his daughter Violante. Fig. 45.-Portrait of Titian. From the etching by Agostino Caracci. The greatest master of the Venetian school is called Titian, though his real name was Tiziano Vecelli, and sometimes Cadore is added to this, because of his having been born in that village (1477-1576). His family was noble and their castle was called Lodore, and was in the midst of a large estate surrounded by small houses; in one of these last, which is still preserved, the painter was born. As a child he was fond of drawing, and so anxious to color his pictures that he squeezed the juices from certain flowers, and used them as paints. When but nine years old he was 123 taken to Venice to study, and from this time was called a Venetian; he is said by some writers to be the first portrait-painter of the world. He first studied under Sebastian Zuccato, and then under the Bellini, where he was a fellow-pupil with Giorgione, and the two became devoted friends, at the time when they were just coming to be men and were filled with glad hopes of future greatness. After a time, when Titian was about thirty years old, the two were employed on the ―Fondaco dei Tedeschi,‖ or the exchange for German merchants in Venice. Here the frescoes of Titian were more admired than those of Giorgione, and the latter became so jealous that they ceased to live together, as they had done, and there is cause for believing that they were never good friends again. But after the early death of Giorgione, Titian completed the works he had left unfinished, and, no doubt, sincerely mourned for him. One of the most celebrated pictures by Titian is the Presentation in the Temple, which was painted for the Church of the Brotherhood of Charity, called in Italian ―La Scuola della Carità;‖ this church is now the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, where the picture still remains. It represents the Virgin Mary when three years old entering the temple and the high priest receiving her at the entrance. All around below the steps is a company of friends who have been invited by her father and mother to attend them on this important occasion. The picture is full of life and action, and is gorgeous in its coloring. Several of the figures are said to be portraits, one being that of Titian himself. Among his female portraits, that of Caterina Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus, is celebrated; also one called ―Flora;‖ both of these are in the Uffizi Gallery, in Florence, while near by, in the Pitti, is ―La Bella,‖ or the beautiful lady of Titian. He also made many portraits of his daughter Lavinia, who was very beautiful; sometimes he represented her as a fruit or flower-girl, again as Herodias and in various characters (Fig. 46). One of the finest of these is at Berlin, where she is in a very rich dress, and holds up a plate of fruit; it is one of his best works. Titian's fame extended throughout Italy, and even all over Europe, and the Duke of Ferrara invited him to his court. The artist went, and there painted two very famous mythological pictures, besides portraits and other works. One of these important subjects was ―Bacchus and Ariadne,‖ and it is now in the National Gallery, London; the second was a Venus, surrounded by more than sixty children and cupids; some are climbing trees, others shoot arrows in the air, while still others twine their arms around each other; this is now in Madrid. While at Ferrara the Pope, Leo X., asked Titian to go to Rome; but he longed for his home-he wished for his yearly visit to Cadore, and he declined the honorable invitation, and returned to Venice. In 1530 Titian's wife died, leaving him with two sons, Pomponio and Orazio, and his daughter, Lavinia. In this same sad year the Emperor Charles V. and Pope Clement VII. met at Bologna. All the most brilliant men of Germany and Italy were also there, and Titian was summoned to paint portraits of the two great heads of Church and State, and of many of the notable men among their followers. 124 Fig. 46.-Portrait of Lavinia. By Titian. When the painter returned to Venice he was loaded with honors and riches. He bought a new house at Berigrande, opposite the island of Murano; it commanded fine views and its garden was beautiful. The landscapes of his pictures soon grew better than they had been, and no wonder, when he could always see the Friuli Alps in the distance with their snow-capped peaks rising to the clouds; nearer him was the Murano, like another city with its towers and domes, and then the canals, which at night were gay with lighted gondolas bearing fair ladies hither and thither. Here Titian entertained many people, and some of them were exalted in station. The house was called ―Casa Grande,‖ and on one occasion, when a cardinal and others invited themselves to dine with him, Titian flung a purse to his steward, saying, ―Now prepare a feast, since all the world dines with me.‖ While living at ―Casa Grande,‖ the artist saw the most glorious years of his life. It seemed that every person of note in all Europe, both men and women, desired their portraits at his hand. One only, Cosmo I., Grand Duke of Florence, refused to sit to him. If these pictures could be collected together, most of the famous persons of his time would be represented in them. After he was sixty years old Titian made a second journey to Ferrara, Urbino, and Bologna. This time he painted a portrait of Charles V., with a favorite dog by his side. After this, in 1545, at an invitation from Pope Paul III., the great master went to Rome; while there he painted many wonderful pictures-among them, one of the pope with his two grandsons was very remarkable; it is now in the Museum of Naples. He left Rome when he was sixty-nine years old. In 1548 Charles V. summoned Titian to Augsburg, and while there made him a count, and gave him a yearly pension of two hundred gold ducats. The emperor was very fond of Titian, and spent a good deal of time with him. On one occasion the painter dropped his brush; the emperor picked it up, and returned it to him. The etiquette of courts forbade any one to receive such a service from the sovereign, and Titian was much embarrassed, when Charles said, ―Titian is worthy to be served by Caesar,‖ this being one of the great ruler's titles. Charles continued his favors to Titian through life, and when he resigned his crown, and retired to the monastery of Yuste, he took nine pictures by this master into his solitude. One of these, a portrait of the Empress Isabella, was so hung that the emperor gazed upon it when dying; this is now in the museum at Madrid, where are also many fine works by Titian, for Philip II. was his patron as his father had been. When eighty-five years old he finished his wonderful picture of the ―Martyrdom of St. Lawrence‖ for the Church of the Jesuits in Venice, and his old age was one of strength and mental clearness. Though he had seen great prosperity and received many honors, he had not escaped sorrow. After the death of his wife, his sister Orsa, who was very dear to him, had kept his house; she too sickened and died; his son Pomponio was a worthless fellow, and caused him much grief; Lavinia had married, and the old man was left with Orazio alone, who was a dutiful son. He also was an artist, but painted so frequently on the same canvas with his father that his works cannot be spoken of separately. 125 At length Titian's work began to show his years, and some one told him that his ―Annunciation‖ did not resemble his usual pictures. He was very angry, and, seizing a pencil, wrote upon it, ―Tizianus fecit fecit‖-meaning to say by this, ―Truly, Titian did this!‖ When he was ninety-six years old he was visited by Henry III. of France, attended by a train of princes and nobles. The aged painter appeared with such grace and dignity as to excite the admiration of all, and when the king asked the price of some pictures, Titian presented them to him as one sovereign might make a gift to another who was his equal, and no more. In 1576 the plague broke out in Venice, and both Titian and Orazio fell victims to it. Naturally the man of ninety-eight years could not recover, and, though Orazio was borne off to the hospital and cared for as well as possible, he also died. After Titian was left alone robbers entered his house while he still lived, and carried away jewels, money, and pictures. He died August 27th, and all Venice mourned for him. There was a law that no person who died of the plague in Venice should be buried within the city; but Titian was so much honored and beloved that exception was made, and he was buried in the Church of Santa Maria Gloriosa de Frari; or as it is usually called, ―the Frari.‖ He had painted a great picture of the Assumption for this church, which has since been removed to the Academy of Venice; but another work of his, called the Pesaro altarpiece, still remains near his grave. His burial-place is marked by a simple tablet, inscribed thus: ―Here lies the great Tiziano di Vecelli, rival of Zeuxis and Apelles.‖ A little more than two centuries after his death the citizens of Venice determined to erect a monument to Titian, and Canova made a design for it; but political troubles interfered, and prevented the execution of the plan. In 1852 the Emperor of Austria, Ferdinand I., placed a costly monument near his grave; it consists of a Corinthian canopy beneath which is a sitting statue of the painter, while several other allegorical figures are added to increase its magnificence. This monument was dedicated with imposing ceremonies, and it is curious to note that not far away from it the sculptor Canova is buried, and his own monument is made from the design which he made for that of Titian. Some writers consider the ―Entombment of Christ,‖ in the Manfrini Palace, as the greatest work of Titian. At all events, it is the best existing representation of this subject, and is a picture which has had a great effect upon art; its chief feature is the general expression of sorrow which pervades the whole work. Titian gave a new importance to landscape-painting by making backgrounds to his pictures from natural scenery, and that not as if it was merely for the sake of a background, but in a manner which showed his love for Nature, and, in fact, he often rendered it with poetical significance. The works of Titian are very seldom sold. One subject which he oftentimes repeated was that of ―Danäe‖ with the shower of gold falling about her; one of these was purchased by the Emperor of Russia for six hundred thousand francs. One of the most important of his religious pictures was that of ―St. Peter Martyr;‖ this was burned in the Church of SS. 126 Giovanni e Paolo in Venice in 1868. An excellent copy of it had been for a long time in the Museum of Florence, and this was presented to the Venetians in order to repair their loss as far as possible. Victor Amadeus of Sardinia presented nine pictures by Titian to the Duke of Marlborough, and these were all destroyed in 1861 when the château of Blenheim was burned. Kugler says: ―In the multifariousness of his powers Titian takes precedence of all other painters of his school; indeed, there is scarcely a line of art which in his long and very active life he did not enrich.‖ His last work was not quite completed by himself, and is now in the Academy of Venice. It is a Pietà, and although the hand of ninety-eight years guided the brush uncertainly, yet it has the wonderful light this master threw around his figures, and the whole is conceived with his accustomed animation. The pupils and followers of Titian were too numerous to be spoken of one by one, and none of them were so great as to require their mention in detail here; yet they were so good that, while the other schools of Italy were decreasing in importance during the sixteenth century, that of Venice was flourishing, and some great masters still existed there. Among these was Jacopo Robusti (1512-1594), who was called, and is best known as Tintoretto, which name was given him because his father was a dyer. He studied under Titian for a time, and then he attempted to follow Michael Angelo, and it is said that his motto was, ―The coloring of Titian, the drawing of Michael Angelo.‖ His best pictures are slightly treated, and others are coarse and unfinished in the manner of painting. His portraits seem to be his best works, probably because they are more carefully finished. Several works of his are simply enormous; one is seventy-four by thirty feet; the school of St. Roch has fifty-seven large pictures by him, in many of which the figures are of life size. His two most famous works are the ―Miracle of St. Mark,‖ in the Academy of Venice, and the ―Crucifixion,‖ in the school of St. Roch. The last is, for every reason, his best work; there are crowds of people in it, on foot and on horseback, while their faces show every possible kind of expression, and their movements are infinitely varied. The immense painting mentioned above is in the Doge's Palace, and is called ―Paradise.‖ His daughter, Marietta Robusti (1560-1590), was a pupil of her father's, and became so good a portrait-painter that she was invited to the Court of Spain by Philip II., but her father could not consent to a separation from her. Some excellent pictures of hers still exist, and her portraits of Marco dei Vescovi and the antiquarian Strada were celebrated pictures. When the Emperor Maximilian and the Archduke Ferdinand, each in turn, desired her presence at their courts, her father hastened to marry her to Mario Augusti, a wealthy German jeweller, upon the condition that she should remain in her father's house. She was celebrated for her beauty, had fine musical talents, and was sprightly and enthusiastic; her father was so fond of having her with him that he sometimes allowed her to dress as a boy, and go with him to study where young girls were not admitted. When but thirty years old Marietta Robusti died; she was buried in the Church of Santa Maria dell Orto, where are several works by her father. Both he and her husband mourned for her all their remaining days. Many pictures of Tintoretto painting his daughter's portrait after her death have been made by later artists. 127 Paoli Cagliari, or Caliari, called Paul Veronese (1528-1588), was born at Verona, but as he lived mostly at Venice, he belongs to the school of that city. He was an imitator of Titian, whom he did not equal; still he was a fine painter. His excellences were in his harmonious color, his good arrangement of his figures in the foreground, and his fine architectural backgrounds. He tried to make his works magnificent, and to do this he painted festive scenes, with many figures in splendid costumes. He is buried in the Church of St. Sebastian, where there are many of his works. In the gallery of the Louvre is his ―Marriage at Cana.‖ It is thirty by twenty feet in size, and many of its figures are portraits. His pictures are numerous and are seen in the European galleries. The ―Family of Darius,‖ in the National Gallery, London, cost that institution the enormous sum of thirteen thousand six hundred and fifty pounds; it was formerly in the Pisani Palace, Venice, and was said to have been left there by Veronese as payment for his entertainment during a visit he had made in the palace. In 1868, at the Demidoff sale, a portrait of his daughter sold for two thousand five hundred and twentyfour pounds. At the close of the sixteenth century a family of a father and four sons were busy painting what may rightfully be termed the earliest genre pictures of Italy. This term is used to denote pictures that stand between historical and utterly imaginary subjects; that is to say, the representation of something that seems real to us because it is so familiar to our imagination, or because it is something that we know might have happened, that it has all the naturalness of an actual reproduction of a fact. There may be interior or landscape genre pictures. The first represent familiar in-door scenes-the latter are landscapes with animals or figures to give a life element and to tell a story. The name of the family of which I speak was Da Ponte, but it was called Bassano, from the birth-place of Jacopo da Ponte Bassano (1510-1592), the father, who was the most important of the family. He studied in Venice, but returned to his native town. His portraits are fine; among them are those of the Doge of Venice, Ariosto, and Tasso. His works are very numerous and are seen in all galleries. He introduced landscapes and animals into most of his pictures, sometimes with great impropriety. We come now to Antonio Allegri, called Correggio (1493-1534), who was born at the end of the fifteenth, but did his work in the beginning of the sixteenth century. His name of Correggio is that of his birth-place, and as he was not born at any of the great art centres, and did not adopt the precise manner of any school, he, with his followers, stand by themselves, and yet, because his principal works were done at Parma, he is sometimes said to be of the school of Parma. When Correggio was thirteen years old he had learned to draw well. He studied under Andrea Mantegna and his son Francesco Mantegna. From these masters he learned to be very skilful in drawing, especially in foreshortening, or in representing objects seen aslant. But though he learned much of the science of art from his teachers, his grace and movement and his exquisite light and shade are all his own, for they did not possess these qualities. 128 Fig. 47.-Portrait of Correggio. Foreshortening is so important that I must try to explain it; and, as Correggio is said to be the greatest master in this art since the days of the Greeks, it is quite proper for me to speak of it in connection with him. The art of foreshortening is that which makes different objects painted on a plane or flat surface appear as if they were at different distances from the eye of the person who is looking at the picture, or as scenes in nature appear, where one part is much farther off than another. To produce this effect it is often necessary to make an object-let us say, for example, an arm or a leg, look as if it was stretched forward, out of the canvas, directly toward the person who is looking at it. Now, the truth is that in order to produce this effect the object is often thrown backward in the drawing; sometimes also it is doubled up in an unnatural manner, and occupies a small space on the canvas, while it appears to be of life size when one looks at it. A ―Christ in Glory‖ painted by Correggio in the cupola of the Church of San Giovanni Evangelista, in Parma, is a fine piece of foreshortening. The head is so thrown back, and the knees are so thrown forward, that the whole figure seems to be of life size; yet if the space from the top of the head to the soles of the feet were measured, it would be found to be much less than the height of the same figure would be if it were drawn in an erect position. I have already explained the meaning of chiaro-scuro, and this delicate manner of passing from light to shade was another quality in the works of Correggio. It is even seen in his early works, as, for instance, in the beautiful Madonna di San Francesco, now at Dresden, which he painted when he was but eighteen years old. When this master was twenty-six years old he married Girolama Nurlini, and about the same time he was summoned to Mantua by the Duke Federigo Gonzaga. During eleven years after his marriage he was occupied with works in Mantua, and with his great frescoes at Parma. In 1530 he returned to Correggio, and there passed the remainder of his life. That he held a high position is proved by certain records of his life, among which is the fact that in 1533 he was invited to be one of the witnesses of the marriage of the Lord of Correggio. It is said that when this painter saw one of the great works of Raphael, he exclaimed, enthusiastically and thankfully, ―I, too, am a painter!‖ and no doubt he then felt himself moved to attempt such works as should make his name known to all the world through future centuries. When Titian saw Correggio's frescoes at Parma, he said: ―Were I not Titian, I should wish to be Correggio.‖ Annibale Caracci, also a great artist, said of Correggio, more than a hundred years after his death, ―He was the only painter!‖ and declared that the children he painted seemed to breathe and smile with such grace that one was forced to smile and be happy with them. In 1534 Correggio died of a fever, and was buried in his family tomb in the Franciscan Convent of his native city. His grave is simply marked with his name and the date of his death. Some of his oil-paintings are very famous. One at Dresden, representing the ―Nativity of the Saviour,‖ is called the ―Notte,‖ or night, because the only light on the picture comes from the halo of glory around the head of the Holy Child. Correggio's 129 ―Reading Magdalen‖ is in the same gallery; probably no one picture exists which has been more universally admired than this. Fig. 48.-Upper Part of a Fresco by Correggio. There was a large work of his representing ―The Shepherds Adoring the Infant Saviour,‖ at Seville, in Spain. During the Peninsular War (1808-14) the people of that city sent many valuable things to Cadiz for safety, and this picture, on account of its size, was cut in two. By some accident the two parts were separated; but both were sold, and the purchaser of each was promised that the other portion should be given him. From this much trouble arose, because both purchasers determined to keep what they had, and each claimed that the whole belonged to him, and as they were equally obstinate, the two parts of the same work have never been reunited. Fortunately, each half makes a picture by itself. The frescoes at Parma are the greatest works of this master, and it is very interesting to visit that quaint old city; his works are in the Cathedral, the Church of St. John the Evangelist, and in the parlor of the Convent of the Benedictine Nuns. This last is a wonderful room. The ceiling is arched and high, and painted to represent an arbor of vines with sixteen oval openings, out of which frolicsome children are peeping, as if, in passing around behind the vines, they had stopped to look down into the room. The pictures here will make you understand the effect (Figs. 48 and 49). Beneath each of these openings or lunettes is a half-circular picture of some mythological story or personage. Upon the wall of the parlor, above the mantel, there is a picture of Diana, the goddess of the moon and the protector of young animals, which is a beautiful picture. When Correggio worked on the frescoes at the Church of St. John, he lived much in the monastery connected with it. The monks became very fond of him, and made him a member of the Congregation Cassinensi; the poet Tasso also was a member of this fraternity. This membership gave him the right to share in the masses, prayers, and alms of the community, and after his death the same offices for the repose of his soul would be performed as if he had been a true monk. Fig. 49.-Lower Part of a Fresco by Correggio. The works of Correggio are very rarely sold. The madonna in the National Gallery, London, known as ―La Vierge au Panier,‖ was formerly in the Royal Gallery at Madrid. During the French invasion of Spain, Mr. Wallace, an English artist, obtained it. It is painted on a panel, and is 131⁄2 inches high by 10 inches wide. In 1813 it was offered for sale in London at twelve hundred pounds. In 1825 it was sold in Paris for eighty thousand francs, and soon after sold to the National Gallery for thirty-eight hundred pounds, or nearly nineteen thousand dollars. A copy of the ―Reading Magdalen‖ was sold to Earl Dudley for sixteen hundred pounds, or more than seven thousand dollars. Correggio had but few pupils, but he had many imitators. The one most worthy of mention was Francesco Mazzuoli (1503-1540), called Il Parmigiano, or Parmigianino. He was not a great painter. The ―Vision of St. Jerome,‖ in the National Gallery, London, is 130 one of his best works. It is said that during the sack of Rome, in 1527, he was painting the figures of the Virgin and Child in this picture, and was so engrossed by his work that the invaders entered his studio, and surrounded him before he was aware of their approach. And they, for their part, were so moved by what they saw that they went away, and left him undisturbed. Art writers often use the term ―early masters.‖ This denotes Michael Angelo, Raphael, and other men so great that they were very prominent in the history of art, and were imitated by so many followers that they had an unusual effect upon the world. Titian may be called the last of these great masters of the early school, and his life was so long that he lived to see a great decline in art. The painters of the close of the sixteenth century are called ―Mannerists,‖ which means that they adopted or imitated the manner or style of some great master who had preceded them-and this was done in so cold and spiritless a way that it may be said that true artistic inspiration was dead in Italy. No one lived who, out of his own imagination, could fix upon the wall or the canvas such scenes as would befit a poet's dream or serve to arouse the enthusiasm of those who saw the painted story born in the artist's brain. About 1600, the beginning of the seventeenth century, there arose a new movement in Italian art, which resulted in forming two schools between which there came to be much bitterness of feeling, and even deadly hatred. On one side there were those who wished to continue the study and imitation of the works of the old masters, but with this they united a study of nature. These men were called ―Eclectics,‖ because they elected or chose certain parts of different systems of painting, and from these formed a new manner of their own. Opposed to the Eclectics were the ―Naturalists,‖ who insisted that nature only should be studied, and that everything should be represented in the most realistic way, and made to appear in the picture exactly as it did in reality, not being beautified or adorned by any play of fancy or imagination. The chief school of the Eclectics, of whom I will first speak, was at Bologna, and is known also as the ―school of the Caracci,‖ because Ludovico Caracci (1555-1619) was at the head of a large academy there, and was assisted by his nephews, Agostino Caracci (1558-1601) and Annibale Caracci (1560-1609), the latter being the greatest artist of the three. The lives of the Caracci are not of such interest as to require an account of them here, neither are their works so interesting that we may not leave these artists by saying that they have great consideration as the heads of the Eclectic Academy, and for the work they did in it at an important era in the history of Italian art; but the fruits of their work are shown in that of their scholars rather than in their own paintings, and in this view their influence can scarcely be overvalued. The greatest of their scholars was Domenico Zampieri (1581-1641), called Domenichino, who was born at Bologna, and was instructed by Denis Calvert, who forbade his drawing after the works of Annibale Caracci. Domenico disobeyed this command, and was so severely treated by Calvert that he persuaded his father to take him from that master, and place him in the school of the Caracci. When he entered the Academy he was so dull that 131 his fellow-pupils nicknamed him ―The Ox;‖ but Annibale Caracci said: ―Take care: this ox will surpass you all by and by, and will be an honor to his art.‖ Domenichino soon began to win many prizes in the school, and left it well trained and prepared for a brilliant career. He gave much thought to his art, shunned private society, and if he went out at all he frequented public places where large numbers of people were gathered, thus affording him an opportunity to study their varying expressions. He also tried to feel in himself the emotions of the person he was painting. For instance, it is said that when he was painting the ―Scourging of St. Andrew,‖ he threw himself into a passion, and used threatening gestures and high words. In the midst of this his master, Annibale Caracci, surprised him, and was so impressed with his method that he threw his arms about his pupil's neck, exclaiming, ―To-day, my Domenichino, thou art teaching me!‖ The most celebrated work by Domenichino is the ―Communion of St. Jerome,‖ in the Vatican. It is universally considered the second picture in Rome, the ―Transfiguration,‖ by Raphael, being the only one that is placed before it. The scene it represents is just before the death of the saint, when he was borne into the chapel to receive the sacrament of the communion for the last time (Fig. 50). Fig. 50.-Communion of St. Jerome. Domenichino was made very unhappy in Rome, on account of the jealousy of other artists, and he returned to Bologna. However, his fame had reached the court at Naples, and the viceroy of that city invited the artist to decorate the Chapel of St. Januarius. There was in Naples at that time an association of artists who had determined that no strange artist should be allowed to do work of any account in their city. As soon as Domenichino began his work, therefore, he received letters threatening his life. His colors were spoiled by having ruinous chemicals mixed with them, his sketches were stolen from his studio, and all sorts of insults and indignities were heaped upon him. After a time, the painter was so disheartened that he fled to Rome; but the viceroy sent for him and took every precaution possible to protect him and enable him to work in peace. But just as all seemed to be going well he sickened and died, and it has always been said that he was poisoned. Be this as it may, there is no doubt that the fear, vexation, and anxiety of his life caused his death, and on this account his tormentors were his murderers. The works of Domenichino are not numerous, and are not seen in as many galleries as are those of some Italian painters; but there are a considerable number scattered over Europe and very beautiful ones in several galleries in Rome. The next painter of importance in the Eclectic school was Guido Reni (1575-1642), born at Bologna, and the son of a professor of music. His father intended that Guido also should be a musician, and the poor boy was much persecuted on account of his love for drawing. But after many struggles the boy came into the Caracci school, and was soon a favorite pupil there. 132 When still young he listened with great attention to a lecture from Annibale, in which he laid down the rules which should govern a true painter. Guido resolved to follow these rules closely, and soon he painted so well that he was accused of trying to establish a new system of painting. At last Ludovico Caracci turned against him and dismissed him from his school. Fig. 51.-Aurora. By Guido Reni. [Pg 145] The young artist went to Rome; but his persecutions did not cease, and it seemed to be his fate to excite the jealousy of other painters. Now, when so much time has elapsed, we know that Guido was not a very great master, and had he painted in the days of Michael Angelo he would not have been thought so. But art had lowered its standard, and Guido's works were suited to the taste of his time; he had a high conception of beauty, and he tried to reach it in his pictures. In the course of his career Guido really painted in three styles. His earliest pictures are the strongest; those of his middle period are weaker, because he seemed only to strive to represent grace and sweetness; his latest pictures are careless and unequal in execution, for he grew indifferent to fame, and became so fond of gaming that he only painted in order to get money to spend in this sinful folly. His masterpiece in Rome was the ―Aurora,‖ on a ceiling of the Rospigliosi Palace; it represents the goddess of the dawn as floating before the chariot of Apollo, or Phoebus, the god of the sun. She scatters flowers upon the earth, he holds the reins over four piebald and white horses, while Cupid, with his lighted torch, floats just above them. Around the chariot dance seven graceful female figures which represent the Hours, or Horae. I have been asked why seven was the number; the ancients had no fixed number for the Hours; sometimes they were spoken of as two, again three, and even in some cases as ten. It has always seemed to me that ten was the number chosen by Guido, for in that case there would naturally be three out of sight, on the side of the chariot which is not seen (Fig. 51). Fig. 52.-Beatrice Cenci. The portrait of Beatrice Cenci is another very celebrated picture by Guido; it is in the gallery of the Barberini Palace, in Rome (Fig. 52). The interest in the portrait of this unhappy girl is world-wide. She was the daughter of a wealthy Roman noble, who after the death of her mother married a second time, and treated the children of his first marriage in a brutal way. It is even said that he hired assassins to murder two of his sons on their return from a journey to Spain. The story also relates that his cruelty to Beatrice was such that, with the aid of her step-mother and her brother, she killed him. At all events, these three were accused of this crime and were executed for it in 1599. Other accounts say that he was murdered by robbers, and his wife and children were made to appear as if guilty. Clement VII. was the pope at that time, and in spite of his knowledge of the cruelty of the father he would not pardon them, though mercy was implored of him for this lovely girl. The reason given for this action of the pope's is that he wished to confiscate the Cenci estates, which he could do if the family suffered the death penalty. So many reproductions of this sad face have been made that it 133 is very familiar to us, and almost seems to have been the face of some one whom we have known. Guido did not paint his St. Michael for the Cappucini in Rome until after he returned to his native city. When he sent the picture to the monks, he wrote: ―I wish I had the wings of an angel to have ascended into Paradise, and there to have beholden the forms of those beautified spirits from which I might have copied my archangel; but not being able to mount so high, it was in vain for me to search for his resemblance here below, so that I was forced to make an introspection into my own mind, and into that idea of beauty which I have formed in my own imagination.‖ We are told that he always tried to paint his ideal of beauty rather than to reproduce any human beauty that he had seen. He would pose his color-grinder, and draw his outlines from him, and then fill in with his own conceptions of what the head he was painting should be; this accounts for the sameness in his heads and faces. His passion for gaming degraded the close of his life. It led him into great distresses, and for the sake of money he painted many pictures which are not worthy of his name. He had always received generous prices for his pictures, but he left many debts as a blot upon his memory. His works are seen in the galleries of Europe, and are always admired for their feeling, beauty, and grace. Francesco Albani (1578-1660), born at Bologna, was another scholar of the Caracci school, and a friend of Guido Reni. There are many works of his in Rome. His pictures of landscapes with figures were his best works, and beauty was his characteristic. His own home had all the advantages for painting such works as he best succeeded in, such as Venus and the Loves, maids and boys, children and Cupids in unending variety. His villa was surrounded by charming views. His wife was very handsome, and they had twelve lovely children, so lovely that it is said that other artists besides himself made use of them for models. There were several other Eclectics of some importance of whom we shall not speak, but shall leave them with an account of Elisabetta Sirani (1640-1665), who also was born at Bologna, and is worthy of attention on account of her talents, while the story of her life adds another interest than that which she has as an artist. She was an imitator of the attractive manner of Guido Reni. The heads of her madonnas and magdalens are charming, and, indeed, all her work speaks of the innate refinement of her nature. Her industry was marvellous, since she made one hundred and fifty pictures and etchings in a period of about ten years. Much has been said of the rapidity with which she worked, and one story relates that on a certain day the Duchess of Brunswick, the Duchess of Mirandola, and the Duke Cosimo de Medici, with other persons, met in her studio, and she sketched and shaded drawings of subjects which they named to her, with a skill and celerity which astonished and delighted her guests. 134 Her masterpiece is a picture of ―St. Anthony Adoring the Virgin and Child,‖ which is in the Pinacoteca of Bologna. There are pictures by her in the Belvedere and Lichtenstein Galleries at Vienna, in the Hermitage at St. Petersburg, and in the Sciarra Palace, Rome. In person Elisabetta Sirani was beautiful, and her character commanded the affection of all who knew her. She was a sweet singer, and her biographers increase her virtues by praising her taste in dress, and even her moderation in eating! She was skilful in domestic affairs, and was in the habit of rising early to perform her share in the household duties, never allowing her art to displace any occupation which properly made a part of her life. Her name has come down through more than two centuries as one whose ―devoted filial affection, feminine grace, and artless benignity of manner added a lustre to her great talents, and completed a personality which her friends regarded as an ideal of perfection.‖ She died very suddenly, and the cause of her death has never been known; but the theory that she was poisoned has been generally accepted. Several reasons for the crime have been given; one is that she was the victim of jealous artists, as Domenichino had been; another, that a princely lover whom she had scorned thus revenged himself. A servantgirl in her family was suspected of the crime, tried, and banished; but after a time she was recalled to Bologna at the request of the father of Elisabetta, for he saw no proof of the girl's guilt. Thus the mystery was never solved, but the whole city of Bologna was saddened by her death. The day of her burial was one of public mourning; her funeral was attended with great pomp, and she was buried beside Guido Reni in the splendid church of the Dominicans. Poems and orations in her praise were numerous,[Pg 150] and a book was published, called ―Il Penello Lagrimate,‖ which contained these, with odes, anagrams, and epitaphs, in both Latin and Italian, all setting forth her charms and virtues. Her portrait in the Ercolani Gallery at Bologna represents her when occupied in painting her father's portrait; according to this picture she had a tall, elegant figure, and a very pretty face. She had two sisters, Barbara and Anna Maria, who also were artists, but her fame was so much greater than theirs that she quite overshadowed them. The earliest master of the Naturalists was Michael Angelo Amerigi, called Caravaggio, from the name of his birth-place (1569-1609). His life and character was not such as to make him an attractive study. His subjects and his manner of representing them combined in producing what has been called ―the poetry of the repulsive.‖ He was wild in his nature and lived a wild life. His religious subjects, even, were coarse, though his color was vivid and his figures arranged with good effect. His ―False Players‖ is one of his best works; it represents two men playing cards, while a third looks over the shoulder of one as if advising him what to play. Naturally, his manner of painting was best suited to scenes from common life, though he made those coarse and sometimes painful; but when he attempted subjects of a higher order his works are positively offensive. Some of his sacred pictures were removed from the altars for which they were painted on account of their coarseness. His most celebrated work is the ―Entombment of Christ,‖ at the Vatican; in the Gallery of the Capitol in Rome there is a ―Fortune Teller,‖ which is also a fine work. 135 Next to Caravaggio came Giuseppe Ribera, called Il Spagnoletto (1588-1656). He was a native of Valencia, and when very young made his way to Rome, so that, although his education as an artist was wholly Italian, his familiar name arose from his Spanish origin. While living in miserable poverty in Rome, and industriously copying such frescoes as he could gain access to, he attracted the attention of a cardinal, who took him to his home, and made him comfortable. But the young painter soon ran away, and returned to his street life. The cardinal sought him out, and called him an ―ungrateful little Spaniard;‖ but Ribera excused his conduct by saying that as soon as he was made comfortable and was well fed he lost all ambition to work, adding that it would require the spur of poverty to make him a good painter. The cardinal respected his courage, and the story being repeated to other artists, much interest was attracted to him. Later he went to Naples, and joined the cabal there which had agreed to persecute the strange artists who should come to work in that city. If Ribera did not actually commit many of the crimes which were done there, he was responsible for them through his influence. His works are frequently so brutal in their subjects and treatment that one feels that he who painted them must have lost all the kindliness of his nature. He married the daughter of a rich picture dealer, and became very rich himself. In 1630 he was made a member of the Academy of St. Luke, at Rome, and in 1648 Pope Innocent X. sent him the cross of the Order of Christ. Few Italian artists were better known in their own country, and many of his pictures were sent to Spain. His greatest excellence was in his knowledge of anatomy, and he painted subjects that enabled him to show this. Among his famous works are a ―Descent from the Cross;‖ ―The Flaying of St. Bartholomew;‖ ―Ixion on the Wheel;‖ and ―Cato of Utica.‖ His works are in all the famous galleries of the world. Ribera's greatest pupil was Salvator Rosa (1615-1673), the landscape painter, who was a very gifted man, being a poet and musician as well as an artist. His father[Pg 152] was an educated man, and with his other relatives encouraged his son in his taste for art. When twenty years old he went to Rome, and with the exception of some intervals remained there during his life. It is said that as a youth he associated much with bandits, and, when one considers the wildness of many of his scenes and the character of the figures in their midst, it is not difficult to believe that this may have been true. It is certain that he painted the portrait of the famous Masaniello more than once, and he is believed to have joined the Compagnia della Morte, of which Falcone, one of his masters, was the captain. Salvator made many enemies by his independence and his inclination to satire. He wrote satires on various subjects which were not published until after his death, but it was known that he had written them. He married a Florentine woman, who was the mother of his two sons. When he died he was buried in the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, where a monument is erected to his memory. 136 He painted some historical subjects and portraits in which he followed the Naturalists, but his principal works were landscapes. Jagged rocks and mountains, wild dells and lonely defiles, with here and there robbers, hermits, or soldiers, make his most effective pictures. There is a deep sense of desolation, almost of fear, in them which is very impressive. Sometimes he painted serene landscapes and poetic figures; but his best works are not of this sort. His pictures are in the principal public and in some private galleries. He also left about ninety etchings which are masterly in execution and full of expression in the heads, while the atmosphere is soft. When his works are sold they bring great prices. A large landscape with Apollo and the Sibyl in the foreground brought eight thousand five hundred dollars in England years ago, and is now worth much more than that. Early in the eighteenth century an artist named Antonio Canale (1697-1768), called Canaletto, began to make views of the city of Venice and scenes on the canals. He had two followers, Bernardo Bellotti (1720-1780), who was his nephew, and Francesco Guardi (1712-1793), and these three painters executed a large number of these pictures, which are found in many European galleries, and it is not always easy to distinguish their authorship. There is no doubt that many which were once attributed to the first master were really painted by his pupils. Before the commencement of the eighteenth century the decline of the Renaissance school in Italy had begun; in fact, the painting of the seventeenth century came to be mere mechanical realism. For this reason the portraits were the best pictures of the time, as in them it was requisite to be true to the object represented. Late in the eighteenth century a new impulse was given to Italian painting, chiefly through the influence of foreign artists such as Raphael Mengs, and the French painter David. In the beginning of our own century Lorenzo Benvenuti (1769-1844) executed some excellent frescoes in Florence, Siena, and Arezzo, which was his native city. He decorated the ceiling of the Medici Chapel in the Church of San Lorenzo in Florence, and Leopold II., Grand Duke of Tuscany, erected a tomb to this painter in the same church where he had spent so much time and talent. His portrait, painted by himself, is in the gallery of the Uffizi, at Florence. Vincenzio Cammuccini (1775-1844), too, was a celebrated master of his time. He was a Roman by birth, and became President of the Academy of St. Luke; he was also a member of the Institute of France, and received decorations from sovereigns of various countries. He made many copies from the works of the great masters. His portraits were so much admired as to be compared to those of Rubens and Tintoretto, and his ceiling frescoes in the Torlonia Palace, Rome, were among his important works, as was a ―Presentation of Christ in the Temple,‖ painted for the Church of San Giovanni in Piacenza. But there has been no true restoration of Italian art. The painting of Italy in our time has been largely a commercial enterprise rather than an outcome from artistic genius or impulse, and the few works which are exceptions to this rule are not sufficient to encourage the hope that this nation can again attain to her former rank or regain the fame of her past in the history of modern art. 137 CHAPTER IV. PAINTING IN FLANDERS, HOLLAND, AND GERMANY. Flanders formerly embraced a larger part of Belgium than is contained in the present Belgian provinces of East and West Flanders. It also covered a portion of Holland and some territory in the northwest of France. The principal Flemish towns connected with the story of Flemish art were Bruges, Tournai, Louvain, Ghent, Antwerp, Brussels, Mechlin, Liege, and Utrecht. There are some records of Flemish painting much earlier than the fifteenth century, but they are so vague and uncertain that I shall pass them over, and begin with the family of Van Eyck, in which there were four painters-three brothers and a sister. The eldest, Hubert van Eyck (1366-1426), effected a great change in the art of his time and country. Very little is known of him as a young man, or indeed of his personal history at all, except that he passed his middle life at Bruges and his later years at Ghent. The subjects of his pictures were mostly scriptural. I do not suppose that the pictures of this master would seem very beautiful to you if you saw them, but they are of great value. His greatest work was an altar-piece for Judocus Vyts and his wife Lisabetta; it was for the decoration of their funeral chapel in the Church of St. Bavon in Ghent. It was an immense work, with a centre-piece and wings that could be closed; the inside was divided into twelve different pictures, and the outside also was painted. We do not know[Pg 156] how much of this was completed when Hubert died and left it to be finished by his brother John. Philip I. of Spain wished to buy this altar-piece, and when he could not do so, he employed Michael Coxie to copy it; this artist spent two years on the work, and was paid four thousand florins. Of the original work, a large portion remains in the Church of St. Bavon; the wings, consisting of six beautiful, tall panels, are in the Berlin Museum, and two outer compartments are in the Brussels Museum. The picture of holy men who have served God is on one of the wings of this altar-piece (Fig. 53). But the principal interest attached to Hubert van Eyck comes from the fact that he made such discoveries in the use of colors as led to what we call the ―Invention of OilPainting,‖ and this invention is always attributed to the Van Eycks, for it is probable that the discoveries of Hubert were perfected by Jan van Eyck (1390-1440), who became a celebrated painter. Oil-painting had been known, it is true, a long time, but the manner of preparing the colors and the varnish used before the time of the Van Eycks was very unsatisfactory, and the improvement of these substances was the work of these masters. The pictures of Hubert van Eyck are stronger than those of Jan, who was really the founder of a school remarkable for delicacy and fine finish rather than for power. It was after the death of Hubert that the fame of the new colors spread abroad, and thus it happened that it was to Jan that other artists went to learn his secrets. Fig. 53.-The Anchorites. 138 In S. Bavon at Ghent. Jan van Eyck was something of a diplomat as well as a painter, for when he was in the service of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, he was sent on several secret missions, and in 1428 he accompanied the ambassadors of the duke to Portugal in order to paint the portrait of Isabella of Portugal, who was betrothed to the duke. There is a goodly number of works by Jan van Eyck in various galleries. The portrait of himself and wife in the National Gallery, London, is very interesting; they stand hand in hand, with a terrier dog at their feet; their dress and all the details of their surroundings are painted with great care. It is said that the Princess Mary, sister of Charles V., gave a barber who owned it a position with a handsome salary in exchange for the picture. Jan van Eyck, being twenty years younger than his brother Hubert, naturally learned all that the elder knew, and the story of his life gives him the appearance of being the more important artist, though in point of highest merit he was not the superior. Of Lambert van Eyck very little is known. It is believed that he made the copy of Hubert's great work which is in the Antwerp Museum; another work called by his name is in Louvain. Margaretha van Eyck is said to have been a skilful artist, but no one picture can be ascribed to her; she was buried beside her brother Hubert in the Cathedral of Ghent. Of course the Van Eycks had many followers. Among them were Petrus Christus (records 1444-1471), Gerard van der Meire (records 1447-1474), Hugo von der Goes (1405?1482), and Justus of Ghent (1468-?), all of whom were good artists, but I shall pass to a more important one, Rogier van der Weyden (1400-1464), who was himself the head of a school of as great importance as was that of the Van Eycks. His realism was his chief characteristic, and this was so great as to make some of his works repulsive, especially his martyrdoms, in which he detailed horrors with great exactness. He also loved to paint pictures which illustrated the myths of the Middle Ages. Our illustration is from one of these works (Fig. 54). Fig. 54.-The Sibyl and the Emperor Augustus. By Rogier van der Weyden. In the Berlin Museum. This picture is from the story that when the Roman Senate decreed divine honors to the Emperor Augustus, he consulted the Tiburtine Sibyl as to whether he ought to receive them or no. She replied to him that it was more [Pg 159]becoming for him to go away silently, and told him that a Hebrew child should be born who should reign over the gods themselves, or that a king should come from heaven whose power should never end. Another version, which is the one this picture represents, says that the heavens opened, and a vision of the Virgin with the Saviour in her arms, standing on an altar, was shown the emperor. He worshipped it, and heard a voice saying, ―Haec ara filii Dei‖ (This is the altar of the Son of God). Augustus reported this to the Senate, and erected an altar upon the spot in Rome where the Church of Santa Maria in Capitolio, or the ―Ara Coeli,‖ now stands. Many pictures by Van der Weyden are seen in European galleries. He was also a fine miniaturist. He was official painter to the city of Brussels, and was buried in its cathedral. 139 His son, Rogier van der Weyden the younger, became very rich and benevolent. He died at [Pg 160]Brussels in 1529. His works are not numerous in public galleries. The elder Van der Weyden had a pupil, Hans Memling (records 1450-1499), who became the greatest master in Belgium. I shall not give you a long account of him; but shall tell you of his greatest work, which was the Shrine of St. Ursula, at the Hospital of Bruges, and is the best example of this type of early Flemish art which still exists. It is divided into six compartments, with two ends, and other panels on top, all of which are finished with the greatest care, and give the whole story of St. Ursula and her eleven thousand virgins, which is that Ursula was a daughter of a king of Brittany who was a Christian. The young girl was educated with the greatest care, and the fame of her beauty and wisdom spread all over Europe. At length the king of England asked for her to be the wife of his son. The princess replied that she would wed him on three conditions: first, that he should give her ten virgins of noble blood for her companions, then to each of these virgins and to herself he should give a thousand maidens as attendants; second, he should allow her three years with these companions, with whom she should visit the shrines where the bodies of the saints repose; and third, the English king and his court should receive baptism. I cannot give space for all the details of this story, which is of great interest; but the result was that Ursula received all that she asked, and started on her journey to Rome, in the course of which she and the eleven thousand maidens met with many adventures. At last, having reached Cologne on their return, they encountered an army of barbarians which was besieging the city, and all were slain. The subjects of the pictures as they were painted by Memling were: 1, the first landing at Cologne in the beginning of the journey; 2, the landing at Basle; 3, the arrival in Rome; 4, the second arrival at Basle on her return toward home; 5, commencement of the martyrdom, when Ursula and her train are first seen by the barbarians; 6, death of Ursula. The works of Memling which still remain are numerous, and are seen in many public galleries. After the death of this master the purity of Flemish painting declined. Many artists visited Italy, and the manner of Flemish painters was influenced by association with Italian art and artists. I shall, therefore, pass over a period when no very important masters appeared, and speak next of a great man, Quintin Matsys (1466-1529), who began life as a blacksmith. He was born at Antwerp, and there are specimens of iron work there said to have been executed by him. It is said that he fell in love with the daughter of an artist who refused to allow him to marry her because he was not a painter; for this reason Matsys devoted himself to the study of art, and became the best Belgian master of his time. His pictures of religious subjects are full of tender earnestness and deep feeling, and his most important work was an altar-piece which is now in the Museum of Antwerp. His scenes from common life, his misers and lovers are spirited and truthful. His portrait and that of his second wife, both painted by himself, are in the gallery of the Uffizi in Florence. His works are not very numerous, but they are seen in the principal galleries. He was buried in the Cathedral of Antwerp, and a slab is inserted in the wall 140 which tells his story; one sentence is, ―Connubialis amor de mulcibre fecit Apellene‖ (True love changed the smith to an Apelles). Rubens is the next great master of whom I shall speak, but I wish to say that during the last part of the sixteenth century there were many Flemish painters of considerable note whose pictures are seen in galleries, and are well worth consideration, but whose lives had no circumstances of especial interest. Among the best of these artists were Antonio Moro, Peter Pourbus (1510-1583), and his son and grandson, both named Frans, Pieter Breughel (1530-1569), and his sons Jan and Pieter the younger, and Paul Bril, an early Flemish landscape painter. All the early Flemish pictures are very interesting, but in the beginning of the seventeenth century a new manner of painting was introduced through the genius of Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640). This master was descended from two good families: his mother was of the distinguished family Pypeling, and his father, John Rubens, was one of the two principal magistrates of Antwerp. This city was the home of Rubens, although he was born at Siegen, in the county of Nassau, during a time when his father was in exile on account of a civil war which was then raging. He was born June 29th, the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, and hence was named for those apostles. He was a bright, scholarly boy, and soon showed his love for drawing. When he began to study art under Adam van Noort he had already a good education. During the four years he passed with this teacher he learned thoroughly all the technical part of painting; then, in another four years under Otto Vaenius, he cultivated his taste and the more poetical elements of his nature, for Vaenius was a very learned and elegant man. In 1598, when twenty-one years old, Rubens was admitted to the guild of painters in Antwerp. Two years later he went to Venice, and, after studying the works of Titian and Paul Veronese there, he entered the service of the Duke of Mantua, to whom he had been recommended by the governor of the Netherlands. While in Mantua he painted some fine pictures, and the duke sent him to Rome to copy celebrated works there. Rubens also executed some other orders in Rome, from which place he was recalled by the duke, who wished to send an envoy to Spain, and had chosen the young artist for that duty. He showed great political ability in the way he conducted his embassy, and through his personal charms made many friends. Fig. 55.-Rubens and his Second Wife. After his return from Spain he went again to Rome and then to Genoa, and finally, on account of the illness of his mother, he returned to Antwerp, having been absent seven years. His mother died before he reached her. He then decided to remain in Antwerp, and built himself a fine house with a charming studio. He soon married his first wife, Isabella Brant, and during the next fifteen years led a very regular and industrious life, and executed many important works. He also received a large number of pupils into his studio, and he has been accused of allowing them to paint pictures which he called by his own name; but it is true that Rubens, with his own hand, completed pictures of almost every kind, and so proved his power as an artist. 141 He was fond of study, and could read and speak seven languages. He was in the habit of having some one read aloud to him while he painted, and preferred books of history and poetry. In 1620 he was invited to France by Marie de Medicis, for whom he executed many works. Among them the most important were scenes illustrating the life of this queen which decorate some apartments in the Louvre. In 1628 the Infanta Isabella sent him on a second mission to Spain, and while there he painted many grand and important pictures, which are fine examples of his gorgeous coloring. He proved himself so good a diplomatist that he was sent to England to try to make peace between that country and Flanders, in which he was successful. He was knighted by King Charles in 1630, and received the same honor from the king of Spain. In 1630 he married Helena Forment, a niece of his first wife, who was but sixteen years old. She became the mother of five children; he had two sons by his first marriage, to whom Gevartius was tutor. Rubens made so many portraits of both his wives and so often used them as models in painting his large pictures, that their faces are familiar to all the world (Fig. 55). Rubens made a valuable collection of all sorts of beautiful objects, and lived luxuriously. After his death a portion of his collection was sold at private sale for more than seventyfive thousand dollars. His death occurred in 1640, and he was buried in a private chapel in the Church of St. James in Antwerp; he had decorated this chapel with some works of his own. His family erected a monument to him, upon which an epitaph written by Gevartius was inscribed. In painting Rubens was almost a universal genius, for he left a great variety of works as well as a great number. About one thousand eight hundred are ascribed to him: doubtless his pupils did much work on these; but there is something of himself in all. They include historical, scriptural, and mythological subjects, portraits, animals, genre pictures, and landscapes. His style is a strange mingling of northern and southern elements. His handling and his arrangement of his subjects was like that of the Italians; but his figures, even when he represented Christ and the holiest men, were like Spanish kings or German peasants, or somebody whom he had seen. We have not space to speak in detail of the works of Rubens. Some critics insist that one class of his pictures is best, and some another. Of course this depends largely upon the taste of those who make the judgment. It is certain that he was a wonderful painter, and many of his pictures give great pleasure to those who visit the galleries where they are seen. His pictures of children were so painted that they seem to have been done from pure love of the work. His portraits are splendid, his genre scenes delightful, and his landscapes fine; in short, the amount and variety of his work is a proof of his great genius and industry, such as can scarcely be equalled in the history of painting. Yet it cannot be denied that there is much incorrect drawing, unnatural coloring, and coarse, bad taste in 142 some of his works. On the other hand, the fertility of his imagination, his bold design and effective execution, as well as his brilliant color, are all to be admired, and the name of Rubens stands high on the list of Flemish artists who are famous the world over. Fig. 56.-The Return from Egypt. By Rubens. Frans Snyders (1579-1657) was born at Antwerp and lived in the time of Rubens. He was a famous painter of animals, and it sometimes happened that they worked together, Rubens painting the landscapes and figures and Snyders the animals in the same pictures. Snyders, like Rubens, excelled in representing animals in the most exciting moment of the combat or the chase, and his pictures are full of life. They are seen in all large European galleries, and are much prized. Jan Fyt (1609-1661), also born at Antwerp, is the greatest Flemish animal painter after Snyders. His greyhounds cannot be equalled, while his live dogs are wonderful; but his best pictures represent dead game. The fur and feathers in his paintings are marvellously done, and his pictures are among the best in the world in which such subjects are treated. Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), another native of Antwerp, studied under Adam van Noort at the same time with Rubens, but later in life he became a follower and a sort of assistant of his former fellow-pupil. He married a daughter of their old master and never visited Italy. His color was fine; in truth, he sometimes excelled Rubens himself in the ―golden glow‖ which is much admired in his works. Many sacred pictures by Jordaens are seen in the churches of Flanders. A fine historical work of his represents scenes from the life of Prince Frederick Henry of Orange, and is in the House of the Wood, near the Hague; but the larger part of his pictures represent the manners and customs of the common people, and are seen in public galleries. The greatest artist among the pupils of Rubens, as well as one of the greatest of Flanders, was Anthony Vandyck (1599-1641). He was born in Antwerp, and was the son of a silk merchant, this having been the occupation of the Vandycks for several generations. The mother of the painter was extremely skilled in various kinds of embroidery, and had such artistic tastes as enabled her to make many original designs, which she worked out with her needle in delicate and elaborate tapestry work. Some people believe that to this taste and talent of his mother's Vandyck owed the instinct for drawing which he early showed; at all events, she did all she could to develop his taste, and when he was still a boy she persuaded her husband to place him under the teaching of Henry van Balen. He was still quite young when he entered the studio of Rubens, and was soon so much trusted by the master as to be allowed to make drawings from his works for the use of the engravers. This sort of drawing must be done with great care and exactness, and Vandyck must have had much skill to be fitted for it. His fellow-pupils also had great faith in him, as is shown by the story that one day, when Rubens had gone out, the young student bribed his old servant to show them the painting with which the master was then 143 occupied. While jostling each other it happened that one of them hit the fresh picture, and injured it. They were much alarmed, and begged Vandyck to repair it. After some hesitation he did so, and was so successful that at first Rubens did not detect the fact that another had worked on the picture. When he did discover it, and learned the truth about it he forgave the offence heartily. When Vandyck was nineteen years old he was admitted to the Society of Artists in Antwerp, an unusual honor to one of his age. In 1620 Vandyck went to England, having been invited there through the Earl of Arundel. Little is known of this visit, and two years later he was invited to the Hague, where he spent several months. When Vandyck was passing through Haarlem he went to the studio of Franz Hals, who was at a tavern just then. A message was sent him saying that a stranger desired to have his portrait made, and had but two hours to spare for it. Hals hastened home and dashed off the portrait within the time stated. Vandyck then said, ―Portrait-painting seems to be a simple thing; take my place, and give me the brush for awhile.‖ Hals complied with the request and Vandyck made his portrait with great celerity. Seeing this, Hals cried out, ―You are Vandyck; he alone can do such work.‖ The young artist was suddenly called to the death-bed of his father, who commanded him to paint a picture for the Dominican Sisters who had cared for his father in his illness. Seven years later Vandyck presented the Sisters with a Crucifixion. At the foot of the cross was a rock upon which was inscribed, in Latin, ―Lest the earth should be heavy upon the remains of his father, Anthony Vandyck moved this rock to the foot of the cross, and gave it to this place.‖ When the monasteries were broken up, this picture was purchased for two thousand seven hundred dollars for the Antwerp Academy, where it now is. At length Vandyck prepared to set out for Italy. When he paid his farewell visit to Rubens he presented the master with three of his pictures, and in return Rubens gave him one of his finest horses. As Vandyck was on his way from Antwerp to Brussels he halted at the village of Saventhem, where he fell in love with Anna van Ophem, and so stayed on in the lovely valley of Flanders, week after week, as if he had forgotten that Italy existed. Anna persuaded him to paint a picture for the village church, and he executed a Holy Family in which the Virgin was a portrait of Anna, and St. Joachim and St. Anna were drawn from her father and mother. This picture pleased the church authorities so much that they gave the young painter an order for another, which represented St. Martin dividing his cloak with beggars. In this work the saint was a portrait of Vandyck, and the horse on which he rode was like that which Rubens had given him. This picture has quite a history. In 1758 the priest agreed to sell it to a collector from the Hague for one thousand eight hundred dollars; but when the villagers knew of it they surrounded the church with clubs and pitchforks, and drove the purchaser away. In 1806, when the French invaders tried to carry it away, the people again prevented it, and they were forced to call more soldiers from Brussels before they succeeded in taking it. The St. Martin was placed in the Gallery of the Louvre, at Paris, but was restored to 144 Saventhem in 1815. About 1850 a rich American offered twenty thousand dollars for the picture, no matter who brought it to him. Upon this a set of rogues tried to steal it at night; but the dogs of the village gave such an alarm that the town was roused, and the robbers escaped with difficulty. Since then a guardian sleeps in the church, and the St. Martin is still there. The news that Vandyck was thus lingering on his way to Italy reached the ears of Rubens, and he sent such urgent messages to his pupil as induced him to continue his journey, and he also sent him letters of introduction to artists and to nobles whom the master had known when he made his studies beyond the Alps. Vandyck went first to Venice, where he worked hard to copy and learn to imitate the rich color and refined manner of Titian and other Venetian masters. He also painted some original pictures in Venice, and made many portraits which gave him fame in that and other cities. He was asked to go to other places for the painting of portraits; but he remained in Venice until his money was spent, and then went to Genoa, where he was well received and generously employed by the old friends of Rubens. His works are still to be seen in some of the palaces of that city, while some have been sold and carried to other countries-they were so fine that they still maintain the name which they gained for him when they were executed. The principal work done in Genoa was a picture of the Lomellini family which is now in Edinburgh; it is about nine feet square. His different visits to Genoa during his absence in Italy make up a period of about three years, and he did a vast amount of work there. When he first went to Rome Vandyck was invited to the house of Cardinal Bentivoglio, who had been papal nuncio to Flanders, and for whom our artist made a picture of the Crucifixion. The full-length portrait which Vandyck painted of the cardinal is now in Florence; a copy of it is in one of the halls of Harvard College. It is one of the finest among the many splendid portraits by this great master. Vandyck was fascinated with Rome, but he was so unpopular with the other Flemish painters there that he shortened his stay in the Eternal City in order to escape the vexations he there received. The artists disliked him for his ostentation, and he was called Il pittore cavalieresco-and he offended them by declining to associate with them at taverns or to join their coarse festivities. After leaving Rome he visited Palermo, from which place he was driven away by the appearance of the plague. He returned to Genoa, visited Florence and other cities in the north of Italy, and finally returned to Antwerp after an absence of four years. During the first years after his return he met with small success-Rubens was so great that he filled all the space about him-but at last, in 1628, Vandyck began to receive important commissions, and from this time was constantly busy with works for the churches of the Low Countries. He also painted portraits of many notable persons, and made great numbers of them in brown and white for the use of engravers. While Vandyck was thus executing great numbers of fine pictures for the embellishment of Flanders, he became so unpopular and his rivals said such hard things of him that he determined to go 145 away. One of his unfortunate experiences was in the house of the bishop, who had sent for him to paint his portrait. Vandyck had first sent his implements to the care of the porter of the palace. When he went himself he was taken into the presence of the bishop, who was reclining on a sofa, and gave little attention to the artist. At last the bishop asked if he had not come to paint his portrait. Vandyck declared himself to be quite at the service of his lordship. ―Why, then,‖ said the bishop, ―do you not go for your implements? Do you expect me to fetch them for you?‖ Vandyck calmly replied, ―Since you have not ordered your servants to bring them I supposed that you wished to do it yourself.‖ Then the bishop leaped up in anger and cried out, ―Anthony, Anthony, you are a little asp, but you have a great deal of venom!‖ Vandyck thought it safe to make his escape, and after he crossed the threshold he called back, ―My lord Van der Burch, you are a voluminous personage, but you are like the cinnamon tree. The bark is the best part of you.‖ In 1629 Vandyck went to England with the hope of being employed by King Charles I.; but he was not able even to get an introduction to the sovereign, and went to the continent filled with mortification. At length, however, Charles called him to London, whither he went in 1632, and soon became the friend of the king as well as his favorite artist. He was assigned a city and a country residence, and within three months of the time of his arrival at court the king knighted him, and gave him a gold chain with a portrait of himself set in brilliants suspended from it. Charles was in the habit of passing much time with Vandyck, and the studio of the court-painter became one of the most fashionable resorts in London for the courtiers and other distinguished people. Vandyck kept up a fine establishment, and lived luxuriously. He had a habit of asking his sitters to dinner; thus he could study their faces and retouch their portraits with the more natural expressions of their conversational hours, for it is rare that one is natural when posing before an artist who is painting one's portrait. But in the midst of his busy life as an artist and his gay life as a man of the world, Sir Anthony did not forget the needs of his brother painters. There was at that time no club or place where artists met socially to consult and aid each other in their profession. Vandyck founded the Club of St. Luke; it met at the Rose Tavern, and all painters of talent living in London joined it. One of the more personal acts of kindness which are related of him is that having seen by chance a picture which was painted by William Dobson, Vandyck sought him out, found him in a poor garret, instructed him with great care, introduced him to the king, and, in short, by his kind offices so prepared the way that Dobson was made sergeant-painter to the king after Vandyck's death, and won the title of ―the English Tintoretto.‖ The portraits which Vandyck executed in England are numbered by hundreds and are magnificent pictures. Those of the royal family are very numerous and important, and there is scarcely a man or woman belonging to this period whose name has come down to us in history or literature, whose portrait he did not paint. He also made thirteen portraits of himself which are still preserved. He was very skilful in painting horses and dogs, and frequently introduced these animals into his portrait groups. 146 There is a large collection of the pictures of Vandyck at Windsor Castle; there are many also in the private galleries of Great Britain and other countries, besides a goodly number in the public galleries of Europe. He executed at least thirty-six portraits of Charles I., as many as twenty-five of Queen Henrietta Maria, and he also painted several groups of the children of the royal pair. Prince Rupert of the Rhine and Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, were also frequently portrayed by him, and one of his most important large works was a family picture of the Earl of Pembroke and his household. It is called the Wilton Family, as it is in a salon at Wilton House; it contains eleven figures, and has been called ―the first and most magnificent historic portraiture in the world.‖ Again, it is said to be stiff, wanting in harmony, bad in color, and so on, but after all it still remains a splendid monument to the skill and genius of Vandyck. The picture is twenty feet long by twelve feet high. Vandyck painted no portraits of the Puritans nor popular leaders of his day; neither did he of the literary men who flourished at that time, with the exception of the court poets, Sir John Suckling and Thomas Carew. I shall not give a list of Vandyck's historical and religious pictures, though they are quite numerous. They are not as interesting as his portraits, and we have not space to give them. His ambition, however, was never satisfied, for he wished to do some great historical work. At one time his opportunity seemed to have come, for the great banqueting-room of Whitehall Palace, the ceiling of which Rubens had painted, still remained with plain walls. Vandyck desired to paint on them the history of the Order of the Garter. The project was laid before the king, and he desired sketches to be made for the work, and one of them, the ―Procession of the Knights of the Garter,‖ was sold after the execution of the king for five pounds. It was owned by Sir Peter Lely and Sir Joshua Reynolds, and is now at Belvoir in the collection of the Duke of Rutland. We cannot help being sorry for Vandyck's great disappointment when he knew that his work could not be done. He was weak in health and much in debt, for the king could not pay him his pension nor what he owed him for pictures. The artist grew sad and discouraged. He sought relief in the study of alchemy, and indulged the vain hope of discovering some chemical means of making gold from base metals. All this wasted his time and means, and it is to be regretted that he was less wise than his master, for when an alchemist tried to interest Rubens in the same subject, that great artist replied: ―You come too late, my good fellow; I have long since discovered the philosopher's stone. My palette and brushes are worth far more than any other secret.‖ The king and all Vandyck's friends were troubled by his state of health and mind, and a marriage was brought about for him with the hope that he would be a happier man. His wife was Maria Ruthven, a lovely Scotch girl who held a high position among the attendants of the queen. Not long after his marriage Vandyck took her to Flanders, where he enjoyed much the honorable reception which he met with in revisiting the scenes of his childhood and youth. But having learned that Louis XIII. was about to adorn a large gallery in the Louvre, Vandyck hastened to Paris hoping to obtain the commission. He was too late-the work had been given to Poussin, and Vandyck returned to London greatly disheartened. 147 While at Antwerp he had received much attention, as, indeed, had been the case before, for in 1634 he had been elected Dean of the Confraternity of St. Luke and a great feast was held in his honor. When he came now to London the social atmosphere was full of sadness. The political troubles, which were finally so terrible in England, had already become alarming. In a few months the Earl of Strafford was executed, and Vandyck saw the royal family, to whom he was so much attached, surrounded with danger and at last separated. His physical health was already delicate, and his sorrows brought on a disease from which he soon died. He continued to work until the very last days of his life. Eight days before his death his daughter was born; she was named Justiniana, and when she grew up married an English baronet, Sir John Stepney. A short time before Vandyck died the king came from the North to London, and though he was overburdened with his own cares and griefs he found time to sorrow for the condition of his friend and artist. He offered his physician three hundred pounds if he would save the life of Sir Anthony; but nothing availed to baffle his disease, and he died December 9, 1641. Two days later he was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. It is said that many nobles and artists attended his funeral, which was conducted with impressive ceremony. The fire which destroyed St. Paul's made it impossible to say exactly where Vandyck was laid, but his coffin-plate was found at the time of the burial of Benjamin West. There were no artists of importance after the time of Rubens and his followers whom we call Flemish artists. There were good painters, certainly, belonging to the schools of Flanders; but these schools had reached their highest excellence and were on the decline, and so we pass to the Dutch school, or the painters of Holland. There was doubtless a very early school of Dutch painters, dating back to the fourteenth century even; but the records of it are so imperfect, and so few pictures remain from its early days, that for our purpose it is best to pass over the fifteenth century and say that during the sixteenth century the painters of Holland gave up the painting of sacred subjects very largely, and began to take on the characteristics of what is generally known now as the Dutch School. This school is distinguished for its portraits, which form a large and important part of its painting; next for its domestic scenes, which are realistic and true to life in an astonishing degree. At the beginning of the seventeenth century Holland had obtained a position as a nation that freed its artists from the influence of the Romish Church and the fear of the Inquisition, and they soon used their freedom to establish a national art, and one which became very important to the world. Franz Hals (1584-1666) was the most noteworthy of the portrait-painters. He was born at Mechlin, but passed most of his life at Haarlem. There was a custom in Holland of painting portraits of the members of guilds and societies in groups, and some such works of his at Haarlem are very fine. I have told a story of his rapid manner in the sketch of Vandyck. He was the first master to introduce 148 that free, bold, sleight-of-hand manner which was afterward used by the Dutch masters, and is so strong in its effect. This painter led a merry, careless life. His portraits of single heads or figures are rare, and his small genre subjects still more so. In the Hôtel de Ville at Haarlem there are as many as eight of his large works, most of them having ten or a dozen portraits. The Dutch painters of still-life-flowers, dead game and poultry, and metals, glass, and other beautiful objects-were very skilful, and have never been surpassed. The names of these masters would make a long list. There is little to be told of the circumstances of their lives, though their works are seen in most European galleries, and well repay one for careful examination. Fig. 57.-Portrait of an Officer. By Franz Hals. Another form of Dutch art is the representation of scenes from peasant life, and there were some very eminent painters who devoted themselves to these subjects entirely. The interiors of inns with men smoking and drinking, playing cards or making jokes, were subjects many times repeated; dancing villagers, fêtes, and fairs were often pictured, and in all these scenes everything was given exactly to the life. It follows that these pictures of coarse, vulgar people engaged in rude amusements cannot be beautiful; but they are oftentimes wonderful. Among the most noted names in this kind of painting are those of Adrian Brauwer, the Van Ostades, the Teniers, and Jan Steen. Most of these artists executed small pictures only. I shall speak particularly of but one of these Dutch genre painters-David Teniers the younger (1610-1694), who became the greatest painter of his time of scenes from common life. This is very great praise, because there were many Dutch and several Flemish painters who were noted for such pictures. This Teniers studied with his father, but his works show that he was much influenced by Rubens. He excelled in guard-house scenes and peasant life in every aspect. In representations of the alchemist also he was unequalled, as well as in fairs and festivals of every sort. He sometimes painted sacred subjects, but they are the least praiseworthy of all his works. The pictures of Teniers are very numerous. One author describes nine hundred of his works which are known to be genuine, and it is believed that there may be one hundred more. He often represented a great number of figures on one canvas. At Schleissheim there was a large picture, thirteen and a half feet by ten feet in size, which contained one thousand one hundred and thirty-eight figures. It was not unusual for him to paint from one hundred and fifty to three hundred figures in a single picture of moderate size. He had a light, brilliant touch, his color was exquisite, and his arrangement of his subjects was very picturesque. His chief fault was a resemblance in his heads, and for this reason those pictures with the fewest figures are his best works. Teniers had several royal patrons, and earned sufficient money to live in handsome style in his home in Perck, not far from Mechlin. He chose this place in order to be near the peasant classes, whose life was his chief study. He also excelled in his ability to imitate the styles of other masters. In the Vienna Gallery there is a curious work of his which represents the walls of a room hung with fifty pictures, imitating those of various Italian 149 masters; in the foreground are portraits of Teniers and the Archduke Leopold William, who are represented as conversing with each other. Teniers reached his excellence early in life, and was but twenty-two years old when he was admitted to the Guild of Painters at Antwerp. That Rubens was his friend is[Pg 180] proved by the fact that when Teniers married the daughter of Jan Breughel, in 1637, that great master was one of the witnesses to the ceremony. In 1656 he married his second wife, the daughter of the Secretary of State for Brabant. By his artistic and personal merits Teniers gained a higher place in society than was ever held by any other genre painter of the Flemish or Dutch schools. He was eighty-four years old when he died, and was active and industrious up to the close of his life. Although Teniers had such good fortune during his life, I fancy he would have been surprised if he could have known what his fame would be now, or what prices would be paid for his pictures about two centuries after his death. The ―Flemish Kermes‖ was bought for the Brussels Museum in 1867 for twenty-five thousand dollars, and at the San Donato sale, in 1880, the ―Prodigal Son‖ sold for sixteen thousand two hundred dollars, and the ―Five Senses‖ for fifteen thousand dollars. It is difficult to distinguish the etchings of the son from those of the father, David Teniers the elder, though it is well known that the son executed such works. Gerard Honthorst (1592-1660) was also a painter of genre scenes, and many of his works had figures of life size. His chief distinction, however, was that of painting the effects of artificial lights. He was famous in England and Italy as well as in his own country, and the Italians called him ―Gherardo della Notte,‖ or Gerard of the Night, because he painted so many night-scenes lighted by candles, lamps, and torches. Then there was a class of Dutch artists who represented the interiors of fine houses- rooms with all sorts of beautiful furniture and ornaments, with ladies and gentlemen in splendid costumes. They tried to show the effects of light upon satins, glass, metals, and other shining objects. They painted with great care, and finished their pictures in the[Pg 181] most perfect manner. Gerhard Terburg (1608-1681), Gerhard Dow (1613-1675), and Gabriel Metsu (1615-after 1667) were all remarkable for works of this kind. Pieter de Hooge, who worked from 1628 to 1671, and of whose life little is known, painted similar pictures of court-yards as well as of rooms in houses. The list of the names of all these Dutch masters cannot be given here, and I hasten to tell you of one whose name and fame is so great that when we hear of Dutch art we always think first of him, because he stands out as its head. Rembrandt van Ryn (1607-1669) was born at Leyden, and was educated by his parents with the hope that he would be a scholar and a prominent man in Leyden. But his taste for drawing and painting would not be put aside, and in 1620 he entered the studio of J. J. van Swanenburg, where he learned the first lessons in his art, and was then placed under the teaching of Pieter Lastman in Amsterdam, where he remained only six months, after which he returned to his father's house, and there lived for seven years. He was not far 150 from seventeen years old when he thus left the usual course of study. From this time he gave himself up to close observation of nature in every form. He studied broad landscapes-farms, groves, gardens, rivers, canals, sunshine, clouds, and shadows, and with and above all these, the human faces that he saw, as well as the varying forms, movements, and peculiarities of the men and women about him. That nothing escaped his observation is proved by the works he did in later life. In 1630 Rembrandt settled in Amsterdam, which was called the ―Venice of the North,‖ and was the centre of northern commerce, civilization, and the activity of political and intellectual life. Rembrandt was no sooner established in his studio on one of the western quays than he was pressed with orders for pictures and applications from young men who desired his instructions. The years [Pg 182]following were crowded with work-with painting and engraving. Rembrandt is called the ―Prince of Etchers,‖ and he used the etching needle most skilfully, but he also employed the dry-point and even the graver in finishing. Thus he may be said to have established a new school of engraving of great excellence. Fig. 58.-One of Rembrandt's Portraits of Himself. It would seem that in these early years one of his amusements was to make etchings of himself. In one year, 1630-31, he made nineteen of these portraits in different costumes and positions, with as many kinds of expression on his face. He often repeated the portrait of his mother also. Fig. 59.-The Lecture on Anatomy. By Rembrandt. In 1632 he painted the ―School of Anatomy,‖ now one of the gems of the fine gallery at the Hague. It represents a lecture by Professor Tulp, who is dissecting the arm of a dead body and explaining its structure to seven other surgeons. It is a wonderful picture and one of the most famous works of this great master. In 1828 it was sold for the benefit of the fund for surgeons' widows, and the Dutch Government paid thirty-two thousand florins for it. This picture is in a certain way a portrait picture, and comes within the class of Dutch pictures of which I have spoken as portraits of guilds and societies; for Tulp was very famous, and Rembrandt probably attended his lectures, and was chosen by him to be the painter of this celebrated portrait of himself surrounded by members of his guild. Rembrandt's influence upon the art of his time was very great almost from the beginning of his career. About 1634 he introduced his manner of portrait-painting, with dark backgrounds and deep shadows on the face, with a bright light on the cheek and nose passing down to the shoulder, and immediately other artists adopted this manner. They considered it a necessity to imitate him, so much was he admired. In 1634 Rembrandt married Saskia van Ulenburg, who was very beautiful and of an aristocratic and wealthy family. She was only twenty-one years of age when she married, and Rembrandt painted many portraits of her besides making her his model for beautiful figures in his mythological and sacred subjects. She lived but eight years after her marriage, which were the happiest of the artist's life. She left but one child, a son named 151 Titus, and showed her confidence in her husband by leaving all her fortune to him, with the single stipulation that their son should be properly educated. After the death of Saskia it seems that the only thought of the master was to work without rest, and in this way to drown the remembrance of his sorrow. There is little material for a story of his life-it is told in his pictures. The house in which Saskia lived was very fine, and Rembrandt was so fond of collecting all sorts of curious and beautiful objects that he finally made himself poor, and his collection was sold. He never travelled, and some writers have said that he was ignorant of classic art; but the list of his collections proves that he had busts of Homer and Socrates and copies of ancient sculptures, such as the ―Laöcoon,‖ a ―Cupid,‖ and so on. He also had pictures of some of the best Italian masters. After the sale of his home and all his rare objects he hired a house on the Rosengracht near the West Church. This house still stands, and has a shield dated 1652, though the artist did not live there until 1658. His life here was not lonely or desolate. He had many friends in Amsterdam who did not forget him. He was near the bastions of the city, and had not far to go to sketch, as he loved to do, and he was busy with his brush until 1662, when he did nothing of which we know. In 1666 he executed four pictures. Among his works of 1667 there is a portrait of himself which is of great interest. In October, 1668, Rembrandt died after a short illness. He was buried in the West Church, and his funeral was so simple that its cost was registered as only fifteen florins. Rembrandt's pictures are so numerous and so varied in their subjects that no adequate list or account of them can be given here. And his numerous engravings are as interesting as his pictures, so that a volume would scarcely suffice to do him justice; but I will try to tell something of his style. His management of light was his most striking characteristic. He generally threw a strong, vivid light upon the central or important object, whether it was a single figure or a group, and the rest of the picture was in shadow. This is true of all his works, almost without exception-portraits, pictures both large and small, and etchings. Rembrandt loved to paint unusual things. We are apt to think that an unusual thing is not natural; but if we closely observe nature, especially the effect of light and shade, we shall find that no imagination could make pictures more wonderful than the reality we see. Rembrandt had that keen observation that helped him to seize upon the sharp features- the strong points in a scene or a person-and then he had the skill to reproduce these things on his canvas with great truth. His etchings are much prized. One of the most famous represents Christ healing the sick, and is called the ―Hundred Guilders Print,‖ because that sum was the price he fixed for it; now a good impression of it is worth ten times as much. At his death he left about six hundred pictures and four hundred engravings. His landscapes are his rarest subjects. Most of these are in private collections, but I have seen one in the Cassel Gallery; the color of it is bright and glowing-the sky magnificent. In the foreground there is a bridge, and on an eminence are the ruins of a castle. 152 Some fine works by Rembrandt are in England, and very large prices have been paid for them. In 1867 ―Christ Blessing Little Children‖ was sold for seven thousand pounds. At the San Donato sale in Florence, in 1880, ―Lucretia‖ brought twenty-nine thousand two hundred dollars, and a ―Portrait of a Young Woman‖ nearly as much. Among Rembrandt's pupils Gerbrandt van der Eeckhout holds a high rank, and his pictures are seen in many galleries. Among the landscape painters of Holland Albert Cuyp (1605-1691) is very famous. He sometimes introduced figures and animals into his pictures, but they were of secondary importance; the scenery was his chief thought. His works are in many galleries, and the increase in their value is marvellous. Sir Robert Peel bought a landscape, twelve by twenty inches in size, for which he paid three hundred and fifty guineas: it was originally sold in Holland for about one English shilling! During the first century after his death no picture by Cuyp brought more than thirty florins; now they cost almost their weight in gold. Other fine landscape painters were Jan and Andries Both, Jan van Goyen, Jan Wynants, Adrian van de Velde, and, finally, Philip Wouverman (1619-1668), who introduced much life into his works. He painted battles, hunting parties, and such subjects as allowed him to introduce white horses, for which he became noted. His works, as well as those of the other painters last mentioned, are valuable. There are so many in galleries which are attributed to Wouverman that it is doubtful if they are all genuine. He had animation and fine feeling for the picturesque. His execution was light and delicate, and there is much tenderness shown in his works. There were many excellent Dutch landscape painters whom we have not mentioned. Paul Potter (1625-1654) was born at Enkhuysen, and though he died young he made himself a great and enduring reputation by his pictures of animals. ―Paul Potter's Bull,‖ which is in the gallery at the Hague, is as well known as any one picture the world over. He left one hundred and eight pictures and eighteen etchings. He was most successful in representing cattle and sheep; his horses are not as fine. He never crowded his pictures; they have an open landscape, but few animals, and perhaps a shepherd, and that is all. Some of his pictures have been valued as high as fifty thousand dollars. Jacob Ruysdael (1625-1681) was born in the same year with Paul Potter. His birth-place was Haarlem. He came to be the very best of all Dutch landscape painters, and though most of his pictures represent the dull, uninteresting scenery of Holland, they are so skilfully drawn and painted that they are really most attractive, if not cheerful. His works number about four hundred and forty-eight pictures and seven fine, spirited etchings. He was fond of giving a broad, expansive effect to his pictures, and frequently placed church spires in the distance. He painted a few marine views with rough seas and cloudy skies. Though many of his works are gloomy, he sometimes painted sunshine with much effect. Some of his finest works are in the Dresden Gallery. 153 Mindert Hobbema was a pupil of Jacob Ruysdael, and this is almost all that is known of him personally; but his pictures show that he was a great landscape painter. They sell for enormous sums, and many of the best are in England. Most of those seen in the continental galleries are not those he should be judged by. At the San Donato sale in Florence, his picture of the ―Wind-Mills‖ sold for forty-two thousand dollars. The number of reputable Dutch painters is very large, but I shall mention no more names. After the great men whom we have spoken of there comes an army of those who are called ―little Dutch masters,‖ and their principal work was making copies from the pictures of the greater artists. In the history of what we know as German art we find a very early school at Cologne, but the records of it are so scarce and imperfect that I shall give no account of it here. At Augsburg there was an important school of art which commenced with the Holbeins. The first Hans Holbein is known as ―Old Holbein,‖ and so little is known of him that I shall merely give his name. The second Hans Holbein, called the elder (1460-1523), painted a great number of religious pictures, which are seen in various churches and galleries in Germany. Some of the best are in the Cathedral of Augsburg. In one salon of the Munich Pinakothek there are sixteen panels painted by him. But it was Hans Holbein the third, known as ―the younger,‖ who reached the perfection of his school (1495-1543). This painter was instructed by his father and by Hans Burgkmair. He was but fifteen years of age when he began to receive commissions for pictures. When he was about twenty-one years old he removed to Basle, and there he painted many pictures, though not nearly as many as have been called by his name. About a year after Holbein went to Basle he was called to Lucerne to decorate a house, and he executed other works there and at Altorf. In 1519, when he had been three years in Basle, he became a citizen of that town and a member of its guild of painters. His works at Basle were mostly decorative, and he painted few easel pictures there. Holbein married a widow with one son; her name was Elizabeth Schmid. She had a very bad temper. It is said that she made Holbein's life so miserable that he left Basle for that reason. He visited her sometimes, and always gave her money, but lived away from her. In 1526 Holbein went to England, and his friend Erasmus said that he went because he had so little to do in Basle. He carried a letter to Sir Thomas More, who received him with great kindness, and the artist made many portraits of Sir Thomas and his family. There is a story about one of these portraits of that nobleman. He had refused to be present at the marriage of Anne Boleyn to King Henry VIII., and she never forgave him. On the day that More was executed she looked at one of Holbein's portraits of the exchancellor and exclaimed, ―Ah, me! the man seems to be still alive;‖ and seizing the picture she threw it into the street. In 1530 Holbein returned to Basle to complete some unfinished frescoes, and this being done he went again to London. About this time he began to be employed by the king, and did many pictures for him from time to time. In 1538 Henry sent Holbein to Brussels to make a portrait of the Duchess of Milan, of whom the king was thinking for his fourth 154 wife. No citizen of Basle was allowed to enter the service of a foreign sovereign without the consent of the council, so in 1538 the artist went home to ask permission to serve the King of England. Great efforts were made to keep him in Basle, but at last he received permission to remain two years in England: the artist never went again to Basle. Henry VIII. became fond of Holbein, and was generous to him, even giving him a paintingroom in the palace of Whitehall. In 1539 the artist was sent to paint a portrait of Anne of Cleves, whom the king married the next year. It has been said that the picture was so flattering that when the king saw the lady he was disappointed; we know that he was soon divorced from her. In 1543 the plague raged in London, and on the 7th of October Holbein prepared his will. He died before the 29th of November, but the facts concerning his death and burial are not known. There are several interesting anecdotes of Holbein. One relates that when passing through Strasburg he visited the studio of an artist, and finding him out, painted a fly on a picture which was on an easel. When the painter saw the fly he tried to brush it away, and when he found who had painted it he searched the city for Holbein; but he had already left for England. Another story shows the regard which Henry VIII. had for him. One day a nobleman went to Holbein's studio, and insisted upon entering, though the artist told him that he was painting the portrait of a lady by his Majesty's orders. The nobleman persisting, Holbein threw him down the stairs with great violence, and then rushed to the king, and told him what he had done. Soon after the nobleman was borne to the presence of the king; he was unable to walk, and was loud in his complaints. The king ridiculed him, and the nobleman was angry, and threatened to punish the artist legally. Then Henry got angry, and said: ―Now you have no longer to deal with Holbein, but with me, your king. Do you think that this man is of so little consideration with us? I tell you, my lord, that out of seven peasants I can make seven earls in a day; but out of seven earls I could not make one such artist as Hans Holbein.‖ Fig. 60.-Burgomaster Meier Madonna. By Holbein. Dresden Gallery. At Basle one may see some of the most important of the early portraits of Holbein; these are in the gallery where are also his ten well-known scenes from the Passion of Christ. While at Basle he probably made the designs for the ―Dance of Death.‖ For a long time it was believed that he painted this subject both at Basle and at Bonn, but we now know that he only made designs for it. He also decorated the Town Hall at Basle; of this work, however, but little remains. The most celebrated work by Holbein is the ―Meyer Madonna‖ in the royal palace of Darmstadt, of which there is a copy in the Dresden Gallery. It takes its name from that of the Burgomaster Meyer, for whom it was painted. The Madonna, with the infant Jesus in her arms, stands in a niche in the centre of the picture; the burgomaster and his family kneel before her. This is what is called a votive picture, which means a picture made in the fulfilment of a vow, in gratitude for some signal blessing or to turn away some 155 danger. Many of these works commemorate an escape from accident or a recovery from sickness. The picture is very beautiful, and it seems as if the Virgin wished to share her peace with the kneeling family, so sweet is the expression of her face, while the child seems to bestow a blessing with his lifted hand. The original was probably painted for a ―Chapel of Our Lady.‖ His ―Dance of Death‖ was very curious, the idea being that Death is always near us and trying to strike down his prey. The pictures represent a skeleton clutching at his victims, who are of all ages and occupations, from the lovely young bride at the altar to the hardworking pedlar in the cut we give here, and all of them are hurried away by this frightful figure which stands for Death itself. Holbein made many wood engravings, but none so important as these. When the set is complete there are fifty-three cuts, but it is rare to find more than forty-six. Fig. 61.-From Holbein's Dance of Death. Holbein was one of the foremost of German masters. All his pictures are realistic, and many of them are fantastic; he gave graceful movement and beauty of form to many of his subjects; his drapery was well arranged; his color and manner of painting were good. He painted in fresco and oil colors, executed miniatures and engravings. His portraits were his best works, and in them he equalled the greatest masters. The most reliable portrait of this artist is in the Basle Museum. It is done in red and black chalk, and represents him as a man with regular, well-shaped features, with a cheerful expression which also shows decision of character. There were other good artists in the Augsburg school after the time of the Holbeins; but I shall pass immediately to the Franconian school, or that of Nuremburg, and to its great master, Albert Dürer (1471-1528), whose life was very interesting, and who stands, as an artist, among the greatest painters of the world. The city of Nuremburg was a grand, rich old place even in Dürer's time, and as a boy he was familiar with its scenery and architecture, which helped him to cultivate his artist tastes, and to make him the great man that he became. He was an author of books as well as an architect, sculptor, painter, and engraver. His father was a goldsmith, and Albert was apprenticed to the same trade; but he was so anxious to study painting that at length his father placed him as apprentice to the painter Michael Wohlgemuth. At this time Albert was fifteen years old, and the two years he had spent with the goldsmith had doubtless been of great advantage to him; for in that time he had been trained in the modelling of small, delicate objects, and in the accurate design necessary in making the small articles in precious metals which are the principal work of that trade. Albert Dürer had a very strong nature, and Michael Wohlgemuth was not a man who could gain much influence over such a youth. During the three years which Dürer passed under his teaching he learned all the modes of preparing and using colors, and acquired 156 much skill in handling the brush; he also learned the first lessons in wood-engraving, in which he afterward reached so high a perfection that a large part of his present fame rests upon his skill in that art. One of the earliest portraits painted by Dürer is in the Albertina at Vienna, and bears this inscription: ―This I have drawn from myself from the looking-glass, in the year 1484, when I was still a child. Albert Dürer.‖ Six years later he painted the beautiful portrait of his father which is now in the gallery at Florence; and it is a question whether this is not as finely executed as any portrait of his later years. When Dürer left Wohlgemuth he started upon the student journey which was then the custom with all German youths, and is still practised in a modified degree. These youths, after serving their apprenticeship in the occupation they were to follow, travelled, and worked at their trade or profession in the cities of other countries. Dürer was absent four years, but we know little of what he did or saw, for in his own account of his life he says only this: ―And when the three years were out my father sent me away. I remained abroad four years, when he recalled me; and, as I had left just after Easter in 1490, I returned home in 1494, just after Whitsuntide.‖ In the same year, in July, Dürer was married to Agnes Frey. He was also admitted to the guild of painters, and we may say that he was now settled for life. It is a singular fact that, although Dürer painted several portraits of his father and himself, he is not known to have made any of his wife. Some of his sketches are called by her name, but there is no good reason for this. Dürer was so industrious, and executed so many pictures, copper-plates, and wood engravings within the six years next after his return to Nuremburg, that it is not possible to give an exact account of them here. In 1500 an event occurred which added much to his happiness and to his opportunities for enlarging his influence. It was the return to Nuremburg of Willibald Pirkheimer, one of the friends of Dürer's childhood, between whom and himself there had always existed a strong affection. Pirkheimer was rich and influential, and at his house Dürer saw many eminent men, artists, scholars, reformers, and theologians, and in their society he gained much broader knowledge of the world, while he received the respect which was due to his genius and character. Fig. 62.-A Scene from Dürer's Wood Engravings of the Life of the Virgin Mary. Dürer's health was not good, and his continual work proved more than he could bear. His father died in 1502, and this loss was a deep grief to the artist. So little money was left for his mother and younger brother that their [Pg 197]support came upon him. At length, in 1505, he made a journey to Venice, partly for his health, and in order to study Venetian painting. He was well received by the painters of Venice. Giovanni Bellini and Carpaccio were the leading painters of that time. They were both quite old, but Giorgione and Titian were already coming into notice and preparing to fill the places of the older men. Bellini was especially delighted with the exquisite manner in which Dürer painted hair, and asked the German to give him the brush he used for that purpose. 157 Dürer gave him all his brushes, but Bellini insisted upon having the one for painting hair. Dürer took a common brush, and painted a long tress of fine hair: Bellini declared that had he not seen this done he could not have believed it. While in Venice Dürer received an order to paint a picture for the Fondaco de' Tedeschi, or German Exchange. It is believed that this work was the famous ―Feast of Rose Garlands,‖ now in the Monastery at Strahow, in Bohemia. The Emperor Rudolph II. bought it, and had it carried from Venice to Prague on men's shoulders. In 1782 it was purchased for the Abbey of Strahow, and was almost lost to the world for many years. It is a beautiful picture, and the praise it received was a great pleasure to Dürer, because heretofore many painters had said that he was a good engraver, but could not use colors. Dürer wrote to Pirkheimer: ―There is no better picture of the Virgin Mary in the land, because all the artists praise it, as well as the nobility. They say they have never seen a more sublime, a more charming painting.‖ The Venetian Government offered Dürer a handsome pension if he would remain in Venice, and he declined many orders for the sake of returning to Germany, which he believed to be his duty. From the time of his return, in 1507, to 1520, there is very little to tell of the personal history of this artist. Almost all that can be said is that he labored with great industry; it was the golden period of his art; he had many young men in his studio, which was the centre of art to Nuremburg. At this time he probably executed the best carvings which he ever did. During seven years he made forty-eight engravings and etchings and more than a hundred wood-cuts. The large demand for these works was a source of good income to Dürer, and gave him a position of comfort. The Reformation was at hand, and Dürer's Virgins and Saints and his pictures of the sufferings of Christ were very well suited to the religious excitement of that period. The house in which Dürer lived and worked for many years is still preserved in Nuremburg as public property, and is used as an art gallery. The street on which it stands is now called the Albrecht-Dürer Strasse. On the square before the house stands a bronze statue of the master which was erected by the Nuremburgers on the three hundredth anniversary of his death. About 1509 Dürer occupied himself considerably in writing poetry; but, although there was much earnest feeling in his verse, it was not such as to give him great fame as a poet. It was at the same period that he carved the wonderful bas-relief of the ―Birth of John the Baptist,‖ now in the British Museum. It is cut out of stone, is seven and one-half by five and one-half inches in size, and is a marvellous piece of work. Two thousand five hundred dollars were paid for it nearly a century ago. He made many exquisite little carvings in stone, ivory, and boxwood, and in these articles the result of his work as a goldsmith is best seen. In 1512 Dürer was first employed by the Emperor Maximilian, and for the next seven years there was a close relation between the sovereign and the artist; but there are few records concerning it. It is said that one day when the painter was making a sketch of the emperor the latter took a charcoal crayon, and tried to draw a picture himself: he 158 constantly broke the crayon, and made no progress toward his end. After watching him for a time Dürer took the charcoal from Maximilian, saying, ―This is my sceptre, your Majesty;‖ and he then taught the emperor how to use it. Dürer executed some very remarkable drawings and engravings. Among them was the ―Triumphal Arch of Maximilian,‖ composed of ninety-two blocks. The whole cut is ten and one-half feet high by nine feet wide. It shows all the remarkable events in the emperor's life, just as such subjects were carved upon the triumphal arches of the Romans and other nations. Hieronymus Rösch did the engraving of this great work from Dürer's blocks, and while it was in progress the emperor went often to see it. During one of these visits several cats ran into the room, from which happening arose the proverb, ―A cat may look at a king.‖ The emperor granted Dürer a pension; but it was never regularly paid, and after the emperor's death the Council of Nuremburg refused to pay it unless it was confirmed by the new sovereign, Charles V. For the purpose of obtaining this confirmation Dürer made a journey to the Netherlands in the year 1520. His wife and her maid Susanna went with him. His diary gives a quaint account of the places they visited, the people whom they met, and of the honors which were paid him. In Antwerp he was received with great kindness, and the government of the city offered him a house and a liberal pension if he would remain there; but his love for his native town would not allow him to leave it. After several months Dürer received the confirmation of his pension and also the appointment of court-painter. This last office was of very little account to him. The emperor spent little time at Nuremburg, and it was not until he was older that he was seized with the passion of having his portrait painted, and then Dürer had died, and Titian was painter to the court. Fig. 63.-The Four Apostles. By Dürer. When Dürer returned to his home there was quite an excitement over the collection of curious and rare objects which he had made while absent. Some of these he had bought, and many others were gifts to him, and he gave much pleasure to his friends by displaying them. There had been a great change in Nuremburg, for the doctrines of the Reformation were accepted by many of its people, and it was the first free city that declared itself Protestant. The change, too, was quietly made; its convents and churches were saved from violence, and the art treasures of the city were not destroyed. Among the most important Lutherans was Pirkheimer, Dürer's friend. We do not know that Dürer became a Lutheran, but he wrote of his admiration for the great reformer in his diary, and it is a meaning fact that during the last six years of his life Dürer made no more pictures of the Madonna. These last years were not as full of work as the earlier ones had been. A few portraits and engravings and the pictures of the Four Apostles were about all the works of this time. He gave much attention to the arrangement and publication of his writings upon various subjects connected with the arts. These books gave him much fame as a scholar, and some of them were translated into several languages. 159 As an architect Dürer executed but little work; but his writings upon architectural subjects prove that he was learned in its theories. During several years his health was feeble, and he exerted himself to make provision for his old age if he should live, or for his wife after his death. He was saddened by the thought that he had never been rewarded as he should have been for his hard, faithful labors, and his latest letters were sad and touching. He died in April, 1528, after a brief illness, and was buried in the cemetery of St. John, beyond the walls, where a simple epitaph was inscribed upon his monument. This cemetery is an interesting place, and contains the graves of many men noted in the chronicles of Nuremburg. On Easter Sunday in 1828, three hundred years after his death, a Dürer celebration was held in Nuremburg. Artists came from all parts of Germany. A solemn procession proceeded to his grave, where hymns were sung, and the statue by Rauch, near Dürer's house, was dedicated. I can give you no description of Dürer's many works, and although it is true that he was a very great master, yet it is also true that his pictures and engravings are not noted for their beauty so much as for their strength and power. His subjects were often ugly and repulsive rather than beautiful, and his imagination was full of weird, strange fancies that can scarcely be understood. Indeed, some of them never have been explained, and one of his most famous engravings, called ―The Knight, Death, and the Devil,‖ has never yet been satisfactorily interpreted, and many different theories have been made about it. Many of the principal galleries of Europe have Dürer's paintings, though they are not as numerous as his engravings, and, indeed, his fame rests more upon the latter than the former, and very large sums are paid by collectors for good impressions of his more important plates. Dürer had several followers. His most gifted scholar was Lucas Sunder (1472-1553), who is called Lucas Cranach, from the place of his birth. He established a school of painting in Saxony, and was appointed court-painter. Although there were a goodly number of German painters late in the sixteenth century, there were none of great eminence, and, in truth, there have been few since that time whose lives were of sufficient interest to be recounted here, so I shall tell you of but one more before passing to the artists of Spain. Angelica Kauffman (1742-1808) was a very interesting woman who gained a good reputation as an artist; but there is such a difference of opinion among judges as to her merits as a painter that it is difficult to decide what to say of her. As a person, she excited an interest in her lifetime which has never died out, and Miss Thackeray's novel, ―Miss Angel,‖ tells what is claimed to be her story, as nearly as such stories are told in novels. She was born at Coire, in the Grisons. Her father was an artist, a native of Schwarzenburg, and when Angelica was born he was occupied in executing some frescoes at Coire. When the child was a year old he settled at Morbegno, in Lombardy, 160 and ten years later, when she had shown a taste for music, her parents again removed to Como, where there were better opportunities for her instruction. Her progress in music was remarkable, and for a time she was unable to say whether she loved this art or that of painting the better. Later in life she painted a picture in which she represented herself, as a child, standing between allegorical figures of Music and Painting. The beautiful scenery about Como, the stately palaces and charming villas, the lake with its pleasure boats, and all the poetry of the life there, tended to develop her talents rapidly, and, though she remained but two years, the recollection of this time was a pleasure to her through all her life. She was next taken to Milan, where a world of art was opened to her, and she saw pictures which excelled all her imaginations. The works of Leonardo and other great Lombard masters stirred her soul to its very depths. She soon attracted attention by her pictures, and Robert d'Este became her patron, and placed her under the care of the Duchess of Carrara. She was now daily associated with people of culture and elegance, and thus early in her[Pg 204] life acquired the modest dignity and self-possession which enabled her in her future life to accept becomingly the honors and attentions which were paid her. Her mother's death occurred at Milan, and her father returned to Schwarzenburg. The people about her were so coarse and disagreeable to Angelica that she passed much of her time in the grand forests. At this time she painted frescoes of the Twelve Apostles, copied from the engravings after Piazetta. Her father was not content to remain away from Italy, and they went again to Milan, then to Florence, and at last to Rome. She was now eighteen years old, and found much profit in the friendship of the great scholar Winckelmann, who allowed her to paint his portrait. Angelica visited Naples and Bologna also, and finally Venice, where she met Lady Wentworth, who became her friend, and afterward took her to England. She had a most brilliant career in London, where her friends were in the highest rank of society. De Rossi described her appearance at this time, and said that she was not very tall, but had a slight, elegant figure. Her complexion was dark and clear, her mouth well formed, her teeth white and even, and all her features good. He speaks of her azure eyes, so placid and bright that their expression had a charm which could not be described. No one felt like criticising her. Other artists paid her many honors, and she was made a member of the Academy of Arts. It has been said that Fuseli, the learned art critic, and Sir Joshua Reynolds, the great artist, both asked her hand in marriage. Some members of the royal family became her friends, and she was at the height of honorable success and of happiness. It is painful to turn from this bright picture of her life to all the sorrow and darkness which followed it. She made an unhappy marriage, her husband proving to be an adventurer who had assumed a distinguished name. For a time she was crushed by this sorrow; but her friends remained true to her, and she found relief in absolute devotion to her art. For twelve years she supported herself and her father; then his health failed, and it was thought best for him to go to Italy. Angelica was now forty years old, and before leaving England she married Antonio Zucchi, an artist who had long been her friend. He 161 devoted himself to her and to her father with untiring affection, and when the old man died he was happy in the thought that his beloved daughter had so true a friend as Zucchi. From this time their home was in Rome, where Angelica was the centre of an artistic and literary society of a high order. Among her visitors were such men as Herder and Goethe. The latter wrote of her: ―The light and pleasing in form and color, in design and execution, distinguish the numerous works of our artist. No living painter excels her in dignity or in the delicate taste with which she handles the pencil.‖ She was very industrious, and her life seems to have been divided between two pleasures, her work and the society of her friends, until the death of her husband, which occurred in 1795. She lived twelve years longer, but they were years of great sadness. She made journeys in order to regain her spirits. She visited the scenes of her childhood, and remained some time in Venice with the family of Signor Zucchi. Even after her last return to Rome she worked as much as her strength would permit, but her life was not long. She was mourned sincerely in Rome; her funeral was attended by the members of the Academy of St. Luke; and her latest works were borne in the procession. She was buried beside her husband in the Church of St. Andrea dei Frati. Her bust was placed in the Pantheon. Various critics have praised her works in the most liberal manner; others can say nothing good of them. For myself, I cannot find the extreme of praise or blame a just estimate of her. No one can deny the grace of her design,[Pg 206] which was also creditably correct. Her portraits were good; her poetical subjects are very pleasing; her historical pictures are not strong; her color was as harmonious and mellow as that of the best Italians, excepting a few of the greatest masters, and in all her pictures there is something which wins for her a certain fondness and praise, even while her faults are plainly seen. Her pictures are to be found in galleries in Rome, Florence, Vienna, Munich, and England; many are also in private collections. She painted several portraits of herself; one in the Uffizi, at Florence, is very pleasing. She represents herself seated in a solitary landscape, with a portfolio in one hand and a pencil in the other. She has an air of perfect unconsciousness, as if she thought of her work only. Her etchings are much valued, and sell for large prices. Many of her pictures were engraved by Bartolozzi, and good prints of them are rare. On one of her pictures she wrote: ―I will not attempt to express supernatural things by human inspiration, but wait for that till I reach heaven, if there is painting done there.‖ 162 Julia De Wolf Addison Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages. A Description of Mediaeval Workmanship in Several of the Departments of Applied Art, Together with Some Account of Special Artisans in the Early Renaissance INTRODUCTION The very general and keen interest in the revival of arts and crafts in America is a sign full of promise and pleasure to those who are working among the so-called minor arts. One reads at every turn how greatly Ruskin and Morris have influenced handicraft: how much these men and their co-workers have modified the appearance of our streets and houses, our materials, textiles, utensils, and all other useful things in which it is possible to shock or to please the aesthetic taste, without otherwise affecting the value of these articles for their destined purposes. In this connection it is interesting to look into the past, particularly to those centuries known as the Middle Ages, in which the handicrafts flourished in special perfection, and to see for ourselves how these crafts were pursued, and exactly what these arts really were. Many people talk learnedly of the delightful revival of the arts and crafts without having a very definite idea of the original processes which are being restored to popular favour. William Morris himself, although a great modern spirit, and reformer, felt the necessity of a basis of historic knowledge in all workers. "I do not think," he says, "that any man but one of the highest genius could do anything in these days without much study of ancient art, and even he would be much hindered if he lacked it." It is but turning to the original sources, then, to examine the progress of mediaeval artistic crafts, and those sources are usually to be found preserved for our edification in enormous volumes of plates, inaccessible to most readers, and seldom with the kind of information which the average person would enjoy. There are very few books dealing with the arts and crafts of the olden time, which are adapted to inform those who have no intention of practising such arts, and yet who wish to understand and appreciate the examples which they see in numerous museums or exhibitions, and in travelling abroad. There are many of the arts and crafts which come under the daily observation of the tourist, which make no impression upon him and have no message for him, simply because he has never considered the subject of their origin and construction. After one has once studied the subject of historic carving, metal work, embroidery, tapestry, or illumination, one can never fail to look upon these things with intelligent interest and vastly increased pleasure. Until the middle of the nineteenth century art had been regarded as a luxury for the rich dilettante,-the people heard little of it, and thought less. The utensils and furniture of the middle class were fashioned only with a view to utility; there was a popular belief that beautiful things were expensive, and the thrifty housekeeper who had no money to put into bric-à-brac never thought of such things as an artistic lamp shade or a well-coloured sofa cushion. Decorative art is well defined by Mr. Russell Sturgis: "Fine art applied to the making beautiful or interesting that which is made for utilitarian purposes." 163 Many people have an impression that the more ornate an article is, the more work has been lavished upon it. There never was a more erroneous idea. The diligent polish in order to secure nice plain surfaces, or the neat fitting of parts together, is infinitely more difficult than adding a florid casting to conceal clumsy workmanship. Of course certain forms of elaboration involve great pains and labour; but the mere fact that a piece of work is decorated does not show that it has cost any more in time and execution than if it were plain,-frequently many hours have been saved by the device of covering up defects with cheap ornament. How often one finds that a simple chair with a plain back costs more than one which is apparently elaborately carved! The reason is, that the plain one had to be made out of a decent piece of wood, while the ornate one was turned out of a poor piece, and then stamped with a pattern in order to attract the attention from the inferior material of which it was composed. The softer and poorer the wood, the deeper it was possible to stamp it at a single blow. The same principle applies to much work in metal. Flimsy bits of silverware stamped with cheap designs of flowers or fruits are attached to surfaces badly finished, while the work involved in making such a piece of plate with a plain surface would increase its cost three or four times. A craft may easily be practised without art, and still serve its purpose; the alliance of the two is a means of giving pleasure as well as serving utility. But it is a mistake to suppose that because a design is artistic, its technical rendering is any the less important. Frequently curious articles are palmed off on us, and designated as "Arts and Crafts" ornaments, in which neither art nor craft plays its full share. Art does not consist only in original, unusual, or unfamiliar designs; craft does not mean hammering silver so that the hammer marks shall show; the best art is that which produces designs of grace and appropriateness, whether they are strikingly new or not, and the best craftsman is so skilful that he is able to go beyond the hammer marks, so to speak, and to produce with the hammer a surface as smooth as, and far more perfect than, that produced by an emery and burnisher. Some people think that "Arts and Crafts" means a combination which allows of poor work being concealed under a mask of aesthetic effect. Labour should not go forth blindly without art, and art should not proceed simply for the attainment of beauty without utility,-in other words, there should be an alliance between labour and art. One principle for which craftsmen should stand is a respect for their own tools: a frank recognition of the methods and implements employed in constructing any article. If the article in question is a chair, and is really put together by means of sockets and pegs, let these constructive necessities appear, and do not try to disguise the means by which the result is to be attained. Make the requisite feature a beauty instead of a disgrace. It is amusing to see a New England farmer build a fence. He begins with good cedar posts,-fine, thick, solid logs, which are at least genuine, and handsome so far as a cedar post is capable of being handsome. You think, "Ah, that will be a good unobjectionable fence." But, behold, as soon as the posts are in position, he carefully lays a flat plank vertically in front of each, so that the passer-by may fancy that he has performed the feat of making a fence of flat laths, thus going out of his way to conceal the one positive and 164 good-looking feature in his fence. He seems to have some furtive dread of admitting that he has used the real article! A bolt is to be affixed to a modern door. Instead of being applied with a plate of iron or brass, in itself a decorative feature on a blank space like that of the surface of a door, the carpenter cuts a piece of wood out of the edge of the door, sinks the bolt out of sight, so that nothing shall appear to view but a tiny meaningless brass handle, and considers that he has performed a very neat job. Compare this method with that of a mediaeval locksmith, and the result with his great iron bolt, and if you can not appreciate the difference, both in principle and result, I should recommend a course of historic art study until you are convinced. On the other hand, it is not necessary to carry your artistry so far that you build a fence of nothing but cedar logs touching one another, or that you cover your entire door with a meander of wrought iron which culminates in a small bolt. Enthusiastic followers of the Arts and Crafts movement often go to morbid extremes. Recognition of material and method does not connote a display of method and material out of proportion to the demands of the article to be constructed. As in other forms of culture, balance and sanity are necessary, in order to produce a satisfactory result. But when a craftsman is possessed of an aesthetic instinct and faculty, he merits the congratulations offered to the students of Birmingham by William Morris, when he told them that they were among the happiest people in all civilization-"persons whose necessary daily work is inseparable from their greatest pleasure." A mediaeval artist was usually a craftsman as well. He was not content with furnishing designs alone, and then handing them over to men whose hands were trained to their execution, but he took his own designs and carried them out. Thus, the designer adapted his drawing to the demands of his material and the craftsman was necessarily in sympathy with the design since it was his own. The result was a harmony of intention and execution which is often lacking when two men of differing tastes produce one object. Lübke sums up the talents of a mediaeval artist as follows: "A painter could produce panels with coats of arms for the military men of noble birth, and devotional panels with an image of a saint or a conventionalized scene from Scripture for that noble's wife. With the same brush and on a larger panel he could produce a larger sacred picture for the convent round the corner, and with finer pencil and more delicate touch he could paint the vellum leaves of a missal;" and so on. If an artistic earthenware platter was to be made, the painter turned to his potter's wheel and to his kiln. If a filigree coronet was wanted, he took up his tools for metal and jewelry work. Redgrave lays down an excellent maxim for general guidance to designers in arts other than legitimate picture making. He says: "The picture must be independent of the material, the thought alone should govern it; whereas in decoration the material must be one of the suggestors of the thought, its use must govern the design." This shows the difference between decoration and pictorial art. One hears a great deal of the "conventional" in modern art talk. Just what this means, few people who have the word in their vocabularies really know. As Professor Moore defined 165 it once, it does not apply to an arbitrary theoretical system at all, but is instinctive. It means obedience to the limits under which the artist works. The really greatest art craftsmen of all have been those who have recognized the limitations of the material which they employed. Some of the cleverest have been beguiled by the fascination of overcoming obstacles, into trying to make iron do the things appropriate only to wood, or to force cast bronze into the similitude of a picture, or to discount all the credit due to a fine piece of embroidery by trying to make it appear like a painting. But these are the exotics; they are the craftsmen who have been led astray by a false impulse, who respect difficulty more than appropriateness, war rather than peace! No elaborate and tortured piece of Cellini's work can compare with the dignified glory of the Pala d'Oro; Ghiberti's gates in Florence, though a marvellous tour de force, are not so satisfying as the great corona candelabrum of Hildesheim. As a rule, we shall find that mediaeval craftsmen were better artists than those of the Renaissance, for with facility in the use of material, comes always the temptation to make it imitate some other material, thus losing its individuality by a contortion which may be curious and interesting, but out of place. We all enjoy seeing acrobats on the stage, but it would be painful to see them curling in and out of our drawing-room chairs. The true spirit which the Arts and Crafts is trying to inculcate was found in Florence when the great artists turned their attention to the manipulation of objects of daily use, Benvenuto Cellini being willing to make salt-cellars, and Sansovino to work on inkstands, and Donatello on picture frames, while Pollajuolo made candlesticks. The more our leading artists realize the need of their attention in the minor arts, the more nearly shall we attain to a genuine alliance between the arts and the crafts. To sum up the effect of this harmony between art and craft in the Middle Ages, the Abbé Texier has said: "In those days art and manufactures were blended and identified; art gained by this affinity great practical facility, and manufacture much original beauty." And then the value to the artist is almost incalculable. To spend one's life in getting means on which to live is a waste of all enjoyment. To use one's life as one goes along- to live every day with pleasure in congenial occupation-that is the only thing worth while. The life of a craftsman is a constant daily fulfilment of the final ideal of the man who spends all his time and strength in acquiring wealth so that some time (and he may never live to see the day) he may be able to control his time and to use it as pleases him. There is stored up capital represented in the life of a man whose work is a recreation, and expressive of his own personality. In a book of this size it is not possible to treat of every art or craft which engaged the skill of the mediaeval workers. But at some future time I hope to make a separate study of the ceramics, glass in its various forms, the arts of engraving and printing, and some of the many others which have added so much to the pleasure and beauty of the civilized world. CHAPTER I GOLD AND SILVER 166 The worker in metals is usually called a smith, whether he be coppersmith or goldsmith. The term is Saxon in origin, and is derived from the expression "he that smiteth." Metal was usually wrought by force of blows, except where the process of casting modified this. Beaten work was soldered from the earliest times. Egyptians evidently understood the use of solder, for the Hebrews obtained their knowledge of such things from them, and in Isaiah xli. 7, occurs the passage: "So the carpenter encouraged the goldsmith, and he that smootheth with the hammer him that smote the anvil, saying, 'It is ready for the soldering.'" In the Bible there are constant references to such arts in metal work as prevail in our own times: "Of beaten work made he the candlesticks," Exodus. In the ornaments of the tabernacle, the artificer Bezaleel "made two cherubims of gold beaten out of one piece made he them." An account of gold being gathered in spite of vicissitudes is given by Pliny: "Among the Dardoe the ants are as large as Egyptian wolves, and cat coloured. The Indians gather the gold dust thrown up by the ants, when they are sleeping in their holes in the Summer; but if these animals wake, they pursue the Indians, and, though mounted on the swiftest camels, overtake and tear them to pieces." Another legend relates to the blessed St. Patrick, through whose intercession special grace is supposed to have been granted to all smiths. St. Patrick was a slave in his youth. An old legend tells that one time a wild boar came rooting in the field, and brought up a lump of gold; and Patrick brought it to a tinker, and the tinker said, "It is nothing but solder. Give it here to me." But then he brought it to a smith, and the smith told him it was gold; and with that gold he bought his freedom. "And from that time," continues the story, "the smiths have been lucky, taking money every day, and never without work, but as for the tinkers, every man's face is against them!" In the Middle Ages the arts and crafts were generally protected by the formation of guilds and fraternities. These bodies practically exercised the right of patent over their professions, and infringements could be more easily dealt with, and frauds more easily exposed, by means of concerted effort on the part of the craftsmen. The goldsmiths and silversmiths were thus protected in England and France, and in most of the leading European art centres. The test of pure gold was made by "six of the more discreet goldsmiths," who went about and superintended the amount of alloy to be employed; "gold of the standard of the touch of Paris" was the French term for metal of the required purity. Any goldsmith using imitation stones or otherwise falsifying in his profession was punished "by imprisonment and by ransom at the King's pleasure." There were some complaints that fraudulent workers "cover tin with silver so subtilely... that the same cannot be discovered or separated, and so sell tin for fine silver, to the great damage and deceipt of us." This state of things finally led to the adoption of the Hall Mark, which is still to be seen on every piece of silver, signifying that it has been pronounced pure by the appointed authorities. 167 The goldsmiths of France absorbed several other auxiliary arts, and were powerful and influential. In state processions the goldsmiths had the first place of importance, and bore the royal canopy when the King himself took part in the ceremony, carrying the shrine of St. Genevieve also, when it was taken forth in great pageants. In the quaint wording of the period, goldsmiths were forbidden to gild or silver-plate any article made of copper or latten, unless they left some part of the original exposed, "at the foot or some other part,... to the intent that a man may see whereof the thing is made for to eschew the deceipt aforesaid." This law was enacted in 1404. Many of the great art schools of the Middle Ages were established in connection with the numerous monasteries scattered through all the European countries and in England. The Rule of St. Benedict rings true concerning the proper consecration of an artist: "If there be artists in the monastery, let them exercise their crafts with all humility and reverence, provided the abbot shall have ordered them. But if any of them be proud of the skill he hath in his craft, because he thereby seemeth to gain something for the monastery, let him be removed from it and not exercise it again, unless, after humbling himself, the abbot shall permit him." Craft without graft was the keynote of mediaeval art. King Alfred had a monastic art school at Athelney, in which he had collected "monks of all kinds from every quarter." This accounts for the Greek type of work turned out at this time, and very likely for Italian influences in early British art. The king was active in craft work himself, for Asser tells us that he "continued, during his frequent wars, to teach his workers in gold and artificers of all kinds." The quaint old encyclopaedia of Bartholomew Anglicus, called, "The Properties of Things," defines gold and silver in an original way, according to the beliefs of this writer's day. He says of gold, that "in the composition there is more sadness of brimstone than of air and moisture of quicksilver, and therefore gold is more sad and heavy than silver." Of silver he remarks, "Though silver be white yet it maketh black lines and strakes in the body that is scored therewith." Marco Polo says that in the province of Carazan "the rivers yield great quantities of washed gold, and also that which is solid, and on the mountains they find gold in the vein, and they give one pound of gold for six of silver." Workers in gold or silver usually employ one of two methods-casting or beating, combined with delicacy of finish, chasing, and polishing. The technical processes are interestingly described by the writers of the old treatises on divers arts. In the earliest of these, by the monk Theophilus, in the eleventh century, we have most graphic accounts of processes very similar to those now in use. The naïve monastic instructor, in his preface, exhorts his followers to honesty and zeal in their good works. "Skilful in the arts let no one glorify himself," say Theophilus, "as if received from himself, and not from elsewhere; but let him be thankful humbly in the Lord, from whom all things are received." He then advises the craftsman earnestly to study the book which follows, telling him of the riches of instruction therein to be found; "you will there find out 168 whatever... Tuscany knows of mosaic work, or in variety of enamels, whatever Arabia shows forth in work of fusion, ductility or chasing, whatever Italy ornaments with gold... whatever France loves in a costly variety of windows; whatever industrious Germany approves in work of gold, silver or copper, and iron, of woods and of stones." No wonder the authorities are lost in conjecture as to the native place of the versatile Theophilus! After promising all these delightful things, the good old monk continues, "Act therefore, well intentioned man,... hasten to complete with all the study of thy mind, those things which are still wanting among the utensils of the House of the Lord," and he enumerates the various pieces of church plate in use in the Middle Ages. Directions are given by Theophilus for the workroom, the benches at which the smiths are to sit, and also the most minute technical recipes for "instruments for sculping," for scraping, filing, and so forth, until the workshop should be fitted with all necessary tools. In those days, artists began at the very beginning. There were no "Windsor and Newtons," no nice makers of dividers and T-squares, to whom one could apply; all implements must be constructed by the man who contemplated using them. We will see how Theophilus proceeds, after he has his tools in readiness, to construct a chalice. First, he puts the silver in a crucible, and when it has become fluid, he turns it into a mould in which there is wax (this is evidently the "cire perdu" process familiar to casters of every age), and then he says, "If by some negligence it should happen that the melted silver be not whole, cast it again until it is whole." This process of casting would apply equally to all metals. Theophilus instructs his craftsman how to make the handles of the chalice as follows: "Take wax, form handles with it, and grave upon them dragons or animals or birds, or leaves-in whatever manner you may wish. But on the top of each handle place a little wax, round like a slender candle, half a finger in length,... this wax is called the funnel.... Then take some clay and cover carefully the handle, so that the hollows of the sculpture may be filled up.... Afterwards place these moulds near the coals, that when they have become warm you may pour out the wax. Which being turned out, melt the silver,... and cast into the same place whence you poured out the wax. And when they have become cold remove the clay." The solid silver handles are found inside, one hardly need say. In casting in the "cire perdu" process, Benvenuto Cellini warns you to beware lest you break your crucible-"just as you've got your silver nicely molten," he says, "and are pouring it into the mould, crack goes your crucible, and all your work and time and pains are lost!" He advises wrapping it in stout cloths. The process of repoussé work is also much the same to-day as it has always been. The metal is mounted on cement and the design partly beaten in from the outside; then the cement is melted out, and the design treated in more detail from the inside. Theophilus tells us how to prepare a silver vessel to be beaten with a design. After giving a recipe for a sort of pitch, he says, "Melt this composition and fill the vial to the top. And when it has become cold, portray... whatever you wish, and taking a slender ductile instrument, and a small hammer, design that which you have portrayed around it by striking lightly." 169 This process is practically, on a larger scale, what Cellini describes as that of "minuterie." Cellini praises Caradosso beyond all others in this work, saying "it was just in this very getting of the gold so equal all over, that I never knew a man to beat Caradosso!" He tells how important this equality of surface is, for if, in the working, the gold became thicker in one place than in another, it was impossible to attain a perfect finish. Caradosso made first a wax model of the object which he was to make; this he cast in copper, and on that he laid his thin gold, beating and modelling it to the form, until the small hollow basrelief was complete. The work was done with wooden and steel tools of small proportions, sometimes pressed from the back and sometimes from the front; "ever so much care is necessary," writes Cellini, "...to prevent the gold from splitting." After the model was brought to such a point of relief as was suitable for the design, great care had to be exercised in extending the gold further, to fit behind heads and arms in special relief. In those days the whole film of gold was then put in the furnace, and fired until the gold began to liquefy, at which exact moment it was necessary to remove it. Cellini himself made a medal for Girolamo Maretta, representing Hercules and the Lion; the figures were in such high relief that they only touched the ground at a few points. Cellini reports with pride that Michelangelo said to him: "If this work were made in great, whether in marble or in bronze, and fashioned with as exquisite a design as this, it would astonish the world; and even in its present size it seems to me so beautiful that I do not think even a goldsmith of the ancient world fashioned aught to come up to it!" Cellini says that these words "stiffened him up," and gave him much increased ambition. He describes also an Atlas which he constructed of wrought gold, to be placed upon a lapis lazuli background: this he made in extreme relief, using tiny tools, "working right into the arms and legs, and making all alike of equal thickness." A cope-button for Pope Clement was also quite a tour de force; as he said, "these pieces of work are often harder the smaller they are." The design showed the Almighty seated on a great diamond; around him there were "a number of jolly little angels," some in complete relief. He describes how he began with a flat sheet of gold, and worked constantly and conscientiously, gradually bossing it up, until, with one tool and then another, he finally mastered the material, "till one fine day God the Father stood forth in the round, most comely to behold." So skilful was Cellini in this art that he "bossed up in high relief with his punches some fifteen little angels, without even having to solder the tiniest rent!" The fastening of the clasp was decorated with "little snails and masks and other pleasing trifles," which suggest to us that Benvenuto was a true son of the Renaissance, and that his design did not equal his ability as a craftsman. Cellini's method of forming a silver vase was on this wise. The original plate of silver had to be red hot, "not too red, for then it would crack,-but sufficient to burn certain little grains thrown on to it." It was then adjusted to the stake, and struck with the hammer, towards the centre, until by degrees it began to take convex form. Then, keeping the central point always in view by means of compasses, from that point he struck "a series of concentric circles about half a finger apart from each other," and with a hammer, beginning at the centre, struck so that the "movement of the hammer shall be in the form of a spiral, and follow the concentric circles." It was important to keep the form very even all round. Then the vase had to be hammered from within, "till it was equally bellied all round," and after that, the neck was formed by the same method. Then, to ornament 170 the vase, it was filled with pitch, and the design traced on the outside. When it was necessary to beat up the ornament from within, the vase was cleared out, and inverted upon the point of a long "snarling-iron," fastened in an anvil stock, and beaten so that the point should indent from within. The vase would often have to be filled with pitch and emptied in this manner several times in the course of its construction. Benvenuto Cellini was one of the greatest art personalities of all time. The quaintness of the aesthetic temperament is nowhere found better epitomized than in his life and writings. But as a producer of artistic things, he is a great disappointment. Too versatile to be a supreme specialist, he is far more interesting as a man and craftsman than as a designer. Technical skill he had in unique abundance. And another faculty, for which he does not always receive due credit, is his gift for imparting his knowledge. His Treatises, containing valuable information as to methods of work, are less familiar to most readers than his fascinating biography. These Treatises, or directions to craftsmen, are full of the spice and charm which characterize his other work. One cannot proceed from a consideration of the bolder metal work to a study of the dainty art of the goldsmith without a glance at Benvenuto Cellini. The introduction to the Treatises has a naïve opening: "What first prompted me to write was the knowledge of how fond people are of hearing anything new." This, and other reasons, induced him to "write about those loveliest secrets and wondrous methods of the great art of goldsmithing." Francis I. indeed thought highly of Cellini. Upon viewing one of his works, his Majesty raised his hands, and exclaimed to the Mareschal de France, "I command you to give the first good fat abbey that falls vacant to our Benvenuto, for I do not want my kingdom to be deprived of his like." Benvenuto describes the process of making filigree work, the principle of which is, fine wire coiled flat so as to form designs with an interesting and varied surface. Filigree is quite common still, and any one who has walked down the steep street of the Goldsmiths in Genoa is familiar with most of its modern forms. Cellini says: "Though many have practised the art without making drawings first, because the material in which they worked was so easily handled and so pliable, yet those who made their drawings first did the best work. Now give ear to the way the art is pursued." He then directs that the craftsman shall have ready three sizes of wire, and some little gold granules, which are made by cutting the short lengths of wire, and then subjecting them to fervent heat until they become as little round beads. He then explains how the artificer must twist and mould the delicate wires, and tastily apply the little granules, so as to make a graceful design, usually of some floriate form. When the wire flowers and leaves were formed satisfactorily, a wash of gum tragacanth should be applied, to hold them in place until the final soldering. The solder was in powdered form, and it was to be dusted on "just as much as may suffice,... and not more,"... this amount of solder could only be determined by the experience of the artist. Then came the firing of the finished work in the little furnace; Benvenuto is here quite at a loss how to explain himself: "Too much heat would move the wires you have woven out of place," he says, "really it is quite impossible to 171 tell it properly in writing; I could explain it all right by word of mouth, or better still, show you how it is done,-still, come along,-we'll try to go on as we started!" Sometimes embossing was done by thin sheets of metal being pressed on to a wooden carving prepared for the purpose, so that the result would be a raised silver pattern, which, when filled up with pitch or lead, would pass for a sample of repoussé work. I need hardly say that a still simpler mechanical form of pressing obtains on cheap silver to-day. So much for the mechanical processes of treating these metals. We will now examine some of the great historic examples, and glance at the lives of prominent workers in gold and silver in the past. One of the most brilliant times for the production of works of art in gold and silver, was when Constantine, upon becoming Christian, moved the seat of government to Byzantium. Byzantine ornament lends itself especially to such work. The distinguishing mark between the earlier Greek jewellers and the Byzantine was, that the former considered chiefly line, form, and delicacy of workmanship, while the latter were led to expression through colour and texture, and not fineness of finish. The Byzantine emperors loved gold in a lavish way, and on a superb scale. They were not content with chaste rings and necklets, or even with golden crowns. The royal thrones were of gold; their armour was decorated with the precious metal, and their chariots enriched in the same way. Even the houses of the rich people were more endowed with precious furnishings than most of the churches of other nations, and every family possessed a massive silver table, and solid vases and plate. The Emperor Theophilus, who lived in the ninth century, was a great lover of the arts. His palace was built after the Arabian style, and he had skilful mechanical experts to construct a golden tree over his throne, on the branches of which were numerous birds, and two golden lions at the foot. These birds were so arranged by clockwork, that they could be made to sing, and the lions also joined a roar to the chorus! A great designer of the Middle Ages was Alcuin, the teacher of Charlemagne, who lived from 735 to 804; he superintended the building of many fine specimens of church plate. The school of Alcuin, however, was more famous for illumination, and we shall speak of his work at more length when we come to deal with that subject. Another distinguished patron of art was the Abbot Odo of Cluny, who had originally been destined for a soldier; but he was visited with what Maitland describes as "an inveterate headache, which, from his seventeenth to his nineteenth year, defied all medical skill," so he and his parents, convinced that this was a manifestation of the disapproval of Heaven, decided to devote his life to religious pursuits. He became Abbot of Cluny in the year 927. 172 CROWN OF CHARLEMAGNE Examples of ninth century goldsmithing are rare. Judging from the few specimens existing, the crown of Charlemagne, and the beautiful binding of the Hours of Charles the Bold, one would be inclined to think that an almost barbaric wealth of closely set jewels was the entire standard of the art of the time, and that grace of form or contour was quite secondary. The tomb was rifled about the twelfth century, and many of the valuable things with which he was surrounded were taken away. The throne was denuded of its gold, and may be seen to-day in the Cathedral at Aachen, a simple marble chair plain and dignified, with the copper joints showing its construction. Many of the relics of Charlemagne are in the treasury at Aachen, among other interesting items, the bones of the right arm of the Emperor in a golden shrine in the form of a hand and arm. There is a thrill in contemplating the remains of the right arm of Charlemagne after all the centuries, when one remembers the swords and sceptres which have been wielded by that mighty member. The reliquary containing the right arm of Charlemagne is German work (of course later than the opening of the tomb), probably between 1155 and 1190. Frederic Barbarossa and his ancestors are represented on its ornamentation. There is little goldsmith's work of the Norman period in Great Britain, for that was a time of the building of large structures, and probably minor arts and personal adornment took a secondary place. BERNWARD'S CROSS AND CANDLESTICKS, HILDESHEIM Perhaps the most satisfactory display of mediaeval arts and crafts which may be seen in one city is at Hildesheim: the special richness of remains of the tenth century is owing to the life and example of an early bishop-Bernward-who ruled the See from 993 to 1022. Before he was made bishop, Bernward was tutor to the young Emperor Otto III. He was a student of art all his life, and a practical craftsman, working largely in metals, and training up a Guild of followers in the Cathedral School. He was extremely versatile: one of the great geniuses of history. In times of war he was Commander in Chief of Hildesheim; he was a traveller, having made pilgrimages to Rome and Paris, and the grave of St. Martin at Tours. This wide culture was unusual in those days; it is quite evident from his active life of accomplishment in creative art, that good Bishop Bernward was not to be numbered among those who expected the end of the world to occur in the year 1000 A. D. Of his works to be seen in Hildesheim, there are splendid examples. The Goldsmith's School under his direction was famous. He was created bishop in 992; Taugmar pays him a tribute, saying: "He was an excellent penman, a good painter, and as a household manager was unequalled." Moreover, he "excelled in the mechanical no less than in the liberal arts." In fact, a visit to Hildesheim to-day proves that to this man who lived ten centuries ago is due the fact that Hildesheim is the most artistic city in Germany from the antiquarian's point of view. This bishop influenced every branch of art, and with so vital an influence, that his See city is still full of his works and personality. He was not only a practical worker in the arts and crafts, but 173 he was also a collector, forming quite a museum for the further instruction of the students who came in touch with him. He decorated the walls of his cathedral; the great candelabrum, or corona, which circles above the central aisle of the cathedral, was his own design, and the work of his followers; and the paschal column in the cathedral was from his workshop, wrought as delightfully as would be possible in any age, and yet executed nearly a thousand years ago. No bishop ever deserved sainthood more, or made a more practical contribution to the Church. Pope Celestine III. canonized him in 1194. Bernward came of a noble family. His figure may be seen-as near an approach to a portrait of this great worker as we have-among the bas-reliefs on the beautiful choirscreen in St. Michael's Church in Hildesheim. BERNWARD'S CHALICE, HILDESHEIM The cross executed by Bernward's own hands in 994 is a superb work, with filigree covering the whole, and set with gems en cabochon, with pearls, and antique precious stones, carved with Greek divinities in intaglio. The candlesticks of St. Bernward, too, are most interesting. They are made of a metal composed of gold, silver, and iron, and are wrought magnificently, into a mass of animal and floriate forms, their outline being well retained, and the grace of the shaft and proportions being striking. They are partly the work of the mallet and partly of the chisel. They had been buried with Bernward, and were found in his sarcophagus in 1194. Didron has likened them, in their use of animal form, to the art of the Mexicans; but to me they seem more like delightful German Romanesque workmanship, leaning more towards that of certain spirited Lombard grotesques, or even that of Arles and certain parts of France, than to the Aztec to which Didron has reference. The little climbing figures, while they certainly have very large hands and feet, yet are endowed with a certain sprightly action; they all give the impression of really making an effort,-they are trying to climb, instead of simply occupying places in the foliage. There is a good deal of strength and energy displayed in all of them, and, while the work is rude and rough, it is virile. It is not unlike the workmanship on the Gloucester candlestick in the South Kensington Museum, which was made in the twelfth century. Bernward's chalice is set with antique stones, some of them carved. On the foot may be seen one representing the three Graces, in their customary state of nudity "without malice." Bernward was also an architect. He built the delightful church of St. Michael, and its cloister. He also superintended the building of an important wall by the river bank in the lower town. When there was an uneasy time of controversy at Gandesheim, Bernward hastened to headquarters in Rome, to arrange to bring about better feeling. In 1001 he arrived, early in January, and the Pope went out to meet him, kissed him, and invited him to stay as a guest at his palace. After accomplishing his diplomatic mission, and laden with all sorts 174 of sacred relics, Bernward returned home, not too directly to prevent his seeing something of the intervening country. A book which Bishop Bernward had made and illuminated in 1011 has the inscription: "I, Bernward, had this codex written out, at my own cost, and gave it to the beloved Saint of God, Michael. Anathema to him who alienates it." This inscription has the more interest for being the actual autograph of Bernward. He was succeeded by Hezilo, and many other pupils. These men made the beautiful corona of the cathedral, of which I give an illustration in detail. Great coronas or circular chandeliers hung in the naves of many cathedrals in the Middle Ages. The finest specimen is this at Hildesheim, the magnificent ring of which is twenty feet across, as it hangs suspended by a system of rods and balls in the form of chains. It has twelve large towers and twelve small ones set around it, supposed to suggest the Heavenly Jerusalem with its many mansions. There are sockets for seventy-two candles. The detail of its adornment is very splendid, and repays close study. Every little turret is different in architectonic form, and statues of saints are to be seen standing within these. The pierced silver work on this chandelier is as beautiful as any mediaeval example in existence. CORONA AT HILDESHEIM (DETAIL) The great leader of mediaeval arts in France was the Abbot Suger of St. Denis. Suger was born in 1081, he and his brother, Alvise, who was Bishop of Arras, both being destined for the Episcopate. As a youth he passed ten years at St. Denis as a scholar. Here he became intimate with Prince Louis, and this friendship developed in after life. On returning from a voyage to Italy, in 1122, he learned at the same time of the death of his spiritual father, Abbot Adam, and of his own election to be his successor. He thus stood at the head of the convent of St. Denis in 1123. This was due to his noble character, his genius for diplomacy and his artistic talent. He was minister to Louis VI., and afterwards to Louis VII., and during the second Crusade, he was made Regent for the kingdom. Suger was known, after this, as the Father of his Country, for he was a courageous counsellor, firm and convincing in argument, so that the king had really been guided by his advice. While he was making laws and instigating crusades, he was also directing craft shops and propagating the arts in connection with the life of the Church. St. Bernard denounced him, as encouraging too luxurious a ritual; Suger made a characteristic reply: "If the ancient law... ordained that vessels and cups of gold should be used for libations, and to receive the blood of rams,... how much rather should we devote gold, precious stones, and the rarest of materials, to those vessels which are destined to contain the blood of Our Lord." Suger ordered and himself made most beautiful appointments for the sanctuary, and when any vessel already owned by the Abbey was of costly material, and yet unsuitable in style, he had it remodelled. An interesting instance of this is a certain antique vase of red porphyry. There was nothing ecclesiastical about this vase; it was a plain straight Greek jar, with two handles at the sides. Suger treated it as the body of an eagle, making the 175 head and neck to surmount it, and the claw feet for it to stand on, together with its soaring wings, of solid gold, and it thus became transformed into a magnificent reliquary in the form of the king of birds. The inscription on this Ampula of Suger is: "As it is our duty to present unto God oblations of gems and gold, I, Suger, offer this vase unto the Lord." Suger stood always for the ideal in art and character. He had the courage of his convictions in spite of the fulminations of St. Bernard. Instead of using the enormous sums of money at his disposal for importing Byzantine workmen, he preferred to use his funds and his own influence in developing a native French school of artificers. It is interesting to discover that Suger, among his many adaptations and restorations at St. Denis, incorporated some of the works of St. Eloi into his own compositions. For instance, he took an ivory pulpit, and remodelled it with the addition of copper animals. Abbots of St. Denis made beautiful offerings to the church. One of them, Abbot Matthiew de Vendôme, presented a wonderful reliquary, consisting of a golden head and bust, while another gave a reliquary to contain the jaw of St. Louis. Suger presented many fine products of his own art and that of his pupils, among others a great cross six feet in height. A story is told of him, that, while engaged in making a particularly splendid crucifix for St. Denis, he ran short of precious stones, nor could he in any way obtain what he required, until some monks came to him and offered to sell him a superb lot of stones which had formerly embellished the dinner service of Henry I. of England, whose nephew had given them to the convent in exchange for indulgences and masses! In these early and half-barbaric days of magnificence, form and delicacy of execution were not understood. Brilliancy and lavish display of sparkling jewels, set as thickly as possible without reference to a general scheme of composition, was the standard of beauty; and it must be admitted that, with such stones available, no more effective school of work has ever existed than that of which such works Charlemagne's crown, the Iron Crown of Monza, and the crown of King Suinthila, are typical examples. Abbot Suger lamented when he lacked a sufficient supply of stones; but he did not complain when there occurred a deficiency in workmen. It was comparatively easy to train artists who could make settings and bind stones together with soldered straps! In 1352 a royal silversmith of France, Etienne La Fontaine, made a "fauteuil of silver and crystal decorated with precious stones," for the king. The golden altar of Basle is almost as interesting as the great Pala d'Oro in Venice, of which mention is made elsewhere. It was ordered by Emperor Henry the Pious, before 1024, and presented to the Prime Minister at Basle. The central figure of the Saviour has at its feet two tiny figures, quite out of scale; these are intended for the donors, Emperor Henry and his queen, Cunegunda. Silversmith's work in Spain was largely in Byzantine style, while some specimens of Gothic and Roman are also to be seen there. Moorish influence is noticeable, as in all Spanish design, and filigree work of Oriental origin is frequently to be met with. Some specimens of champlevé enamel are also to be seen, though this art was generally 176 confined to Limoges during the Middle Ages. A Guild was formed in Toledo which was in flourishing condition in 1423. An interesting document has been found in Spain showing that craftsmen were supplied with the necessary materials when engaged to make valuable figures for the decoration of altars. It is dated May 12, 1367, "I, Sancho Martinez Orebsc, silversmith, native of Seville, inform you, the Dean and Chapter of the church of Seville, that it was agreed that I make an image of St. Mary with its tabernacle, that it should be finished at a given time, and that you were to give me the silver and stones required to make it." In Spain, the most splendid triumphs of the goldsmith's skill were the "custodias," or large tabernacles, in which the Host was carried in procession. The finest was one made for Toledo by Enrique d'Arphe, in competition with other craftsmen. His design being chosen, he began his work in 1517, and in 1524 the custodia was finished. It was in the form of a Gothic temple, six sided, with a jewelled cross on the top, and was eight feet high. Some of the gold employed was the first ever brought from America. The whole structure weighed three hundred and eighty-eight pounds. Arphe made a similar custodia for Cordova and another for Leon. His grandson, Juan d'Arphe, wrote a verse about the Toledo custodia, in which these lines occur: "Custodia is a temple of rich plate Wrought for the glory of Our Saviour true... That holiest ark of old to imitate, Fashioned by Bezaleel the cunning Jew, Chosen of God to work his sovereign will, And greatly gifted with celestial skill." Juan d'Arphe himself made a custodia for Seville, the decorations and figures on which were directed by the learned Francesco Pacheco, the father-in-law of Velasquez. When this custodia was completed, d'Arphe wrote a description of it, alluding boldly to this work as "the largest and finest work in silver known of its kind," and this could really be said without conceit, for it is a fact. A Gothic form of goldsmith's work obtained in Spain in the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries; it was based upon architectural models and was known as "plateresca." The shrines for holding relics became in these centuries positive buildings on a small scale in precious material. In England also were many of these shrines, but few of them now remain. The first Mayor of London, from 1189 to 1213, was a goldsmith, Henry Fitz Alwyn, the Founder of the Royal Exchange; Sir Thomas Gresham, in 1520, was also a goldsmith and a banker. There is an entertaining piece of cynical satire on the Goldsmiths in Stubbes' Anatomy of Abuses, written in the time of Queen Elizabeth, showing that the tricks of the trade had come to full development by that time, and that the public was being aroused on the subject. Stubbes explains how the goldsmith's shops are decked with chains and rings, "wonderful richly." Then he goes on to say: "They will make you any monster or 177 article whatsoever of gold, silver, or what you will. Is there no deceit in these goodlye shows? Yes, too many; if you will buy a chain of gold, a ring, or any kind of plate, besides that you shall pay almost half more than it is worth... you shall also perhaps have that gold which is naught, or else at least mixed with drossie rubbage.... But this happeneth very seldom by reason of good orders, and constitutions made for the punishment of them that offend in this kind of deceit, and therefore they seldom offend therein, though now and then they chance to stumble in the dark!" Fynes Moryson, a traveller who died in 1614, says that "the goldsmiths' shops in London... are exceedingly richly furnished continually with gold, with silver plate, and with jewels.... I never see any such daily show, anything so sumptuous, in any place in the world, as in London." He admits that in Florence and Paris the similar shops are very rich upon special occasions; but it is the steady state of the market in London to which he has reference. The Company of Goldsmiths in Dublin held quite a prominent social position in the community. In 1649, a great festival and pageant took place, in which the goldsmiths and visiting craftsmen from other corporations took part. Henry III. set himself to enrich and beautify the shrine of his patron saint, Edward the Confessor, and with this end in view he made various extravagant demands: for instance, at one time he ordered all the gold in London to be detailed to this object, and at another, he had gold rings and brooches purchased to the value of six hundred marks. The shrine was of gold, and, according to Matthew Paris, enriched with jewels. It was commenced in 1241. In 1244 the queen presented an image of the Virgin with a ruby and an emerald. Jewels were purchased from time to time,-a great cameo in 1251, and in 1255 many gems of great value. The son of ado the Goldsmith, Edward, was the "king's beloved clerk," and was made "keeper of the shrine." Most of the little statuettes were described as having stones set somewhere about them: "an image of St. Peter holding a church in one hand and the keys in the other, trampling on Nero, who had a big sapphire on his breast;" and "the Blessed Virgin with her Son, set with rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and garnets," are among those cited. The whole shrine was described as "a basilica adorned with purest gold and precious stones." Odo the Goldsmith was in charge of the works for a good while. He was succeeded by his son Edward. Payments were made sometimes in a regular wage, and sometimes for "task work." The workmen were usually known by one name-Master Alexander the King's Carpenter, Master Henry the King's Master Mason, and so forth. In an early life of Edward the Confessor, there is an illumination showing the masons and carpenters kneeling to receive instruction from their sovereign. The golden shrine of the Confessor was probably made in the Palace itself; this was doubtless considered the safest place for so valuable a work to remain in process of construction; for there is an allusion to its being brought on the King's own shoulders (with the assistance of others), from the palace to the Abbey, in 1269, for its consecration. 178 In 1243 Henry III. ordered four silver basins, fitted with cakes of wax with wicks in them, to be placed as lights before the shrine of Thomas à Becket in Canterbury. The great gold shrine of Becket appears to have been chiefly the work of a goldsmith, Master Adam. He also designed the Coronation Chair of England, which is now in Westminster Abbey. The chief goldsmith of England employed by Edward I. was one Adam of Shoreditch. He was versatile, for he was also a binder of books. A certain bill shows an item of his workmanship, "a group in silver of a child riding upon a horse, the child being a likeness of Lord Edward, the King's son." A veritable Arts and Crafts establishment had been in existence in Woolstrope, Lincolnshire, before Cromwell's time; for Georde Gifford wrote to Cromwell regarding the suppression of this monastery: "There is not one religious person there but what doth use either embrothering, wryting books with a faire hand, making garments, or carving." In all countries the chalices and patens were usually, designed to correspond with each other. The six lobed dish was a very usual form; it had a depressed centre, with six indented scallops, and the edge flat like a dinner plate. In an old church inventory, mention is made of "a chalice with his paten." Sometimes there was lettering around the flat edge of the paten. Chalices were-composed of three parts: the cup, the ball or knop, and the stem, with the foot. The original purpose of having this foot hexagonal in shape is said to have been to prevent the chalice from rolling when it was laid on its side to drain. Under many modifications this general plan of the cup has obtained. The bowl is usually entirely plain, to facilitate keeping it clean; most of the decoration was lavished on the knop, a rich and uneven surface being both beautiful and functional in this place. Such Norman and Romanesque chalices as remain are chiefly in museums now. They were usually "coffin chalices"-that is, they had been buried in the coffin of some ecclesiastic. Of Gothic chalices, or those of the Tudor period, fewer remain, for after the Reformation, a general order went out to the churches, for all "chalices to be altered to decent Communion cups." The shape was greatly modified in this change. In the thirteenth century the taste ran rather to a chaster form of decoration; the large cabochons of the Romanesque, combined with a liquid gold surface, gave place to refined ornaments in niello and delicate enamels. The bowls of the earlier chalices were rather flat and broad. When it became usual for the laity to partake only of one element when communicating, the chalice, which was reserved for the clergy alone, became modified to meet this condition, and the bowl was much smaller. After the Reformation, however, the development was quite in the other direction, the bowl being extremely large and deep. In that period they were known as communion cups. In Sandwich there is a cup which was made over out of a ciborium; as it quite plainly shows its origin, it is naïvely inscribed: "This is a Communion Coop." When this change in the form of the chalice took place, it was provided, by admonition of the Archbishop, in all cases with a "cover of silver... 179 which shall serve also for the ministration of the Communion bread." To make this double use of cover and dish satisfactory, a foot like a stand was added to the paten. The communion cup of the Reformation differed from the chalice, too, in being taller and straighter, with a deep bowl, almost in the proportions of a flaring tumbler, and a stem with a few close decorations instead of a knop. The small paten served as a cover to the cup, as has been mentioned. It is not always easy to see old church plate where it originally belonged. On the Scottish border, for instance, there were constant raids, when the Scots would descend upon the English parish churches, and bear off the communion plate, and again the English would cross the border and return the compliment. In old churches, such as the eleventh century structure at Torpenhow, in Cumberland, the deep sockets still to be seen in the stone door jambs were intended to support great beams with which the church had constantly to be fortified against Scottish invasion. Another reason for the disappearance of church plate, was the occasional sale of the silver in order to continue necessary repairs on the fabric. In a church in Norfolk, there is a record of sale of communion silver and "for altering of our church and fynnishing of the same according to our mindes and the parishioners." It goes on to state that the proceeds were appropriated for putting new glass in the place of certain windows "wherein were conteined the lives of certain prophane histories," and for "paving the king's highway" in the church precincts. At the time of the Reformation many valuable examples of Church plate were cast aside by order of the Commissioners, by which "all monuments of feyned miracles, pilgrimages, idolatry, and superstition," were to be destroyed. At this time a calf or a sheep might have been seen browsing in the meadows with a sacring-bell fastened at its neck, and the pigs refreshed themselves with drinking from holy-water fonts! Croziers of ornate design especially roused the ire of the Puritans. In Mr. Alfred Maskell's incomparable book on Ivories, he translates a satirical verse by Guy de Coquille, concerning these objectionable pastoral staves (which were often made of finely sculptured ivory). "The staff of a bishop of days that are old Was of wood, and the bishop himself was of gold. But a bishop of wood prefers gorgeous array, So his staff is of gold in the new fashioned way!" During the Renaissance especially, goldsmith's work was carried to great technical perfection, and yet the natural properties of the metal were frequently lost sight of, and the craftsmen tried to produce effects such as would be more suitable in stone or wood,- little architectonic features were introduced, and gold was frequently made to do the work of other materials. Thus it lost much of its inherent effectiveness. Too much attention was given to ingenuity, and not enough to fitness and beauty. RELIQUARY AT ORVIETO 180 In documents of the fourteenth century, the following list of goldsmiths is given: Jean de Mantreux was goldsmith to King Jean. Claux de Friburg was celebrated for a gold statuette of St. John which he made for the Duke of Normandy. A diadem for this Duke was also recorded, made by Jean de Piguigny. Hannequin made three golden crowns for Charles V. Hans Crest was goldsmith to the Duke of Orleans, while others employed by him were Durosne, of Toulouse, Jean de Bethancourt, a Flemish goldsmith. In the fifteenth century the names of Jean de Hasquin, Perrin Manne, and Margerie d'Avignon, were famous. Artists in the Renaissance were expected to undertake several branches of their craft. Hear Poussin: "It is impossible to work at the same time upon frontispieces of books: a Virgin: at the picture for the congregation of St. Louis, at the designs for the gallery, and for the king's tapestry! I have only a feeble head, and am not aided by anyone!" A goldsmith attached to the Court of King René of Anjou was Jean Nicolas. René also gave many orders to one Liguier Rabotin, of Avignon, who made him several cups of solid gold, on a large tray of the same precious metal. The king often drew his own designs or such bijoux. Among the famous men of Italy were several who practised the art of the goldsmith. Ugolino of Siena constructed the wonderful reliquary at Orvieto; this, is in shape somewhat similar to the façade of the cathedral. Verocchio, the instructor of Leonardo da Vinci, accomplished several important pieces of jewelery in his youth: cope-buttons and silver statuettes, chiefly, which were so successful that he determined to take up the career of a sculptor. Ghirlandajo, as is well known, was trained as a goldsmith originally, his father having been the inventor of a pretty fashion then prevailing among young girls of Florence, and being the maker of those golden garlands worn on the heads of maidens. The name Ghirlandajo, indeed, was derived from these garlands (ghirlandes). Francia began life as a goldsmith, too, and was never in after life ashamed of his profession, for he often signed his works Francesco Francia Aurifex. Francia was a very skilful workman in niello, and in enamels. In fact, to quote the enthusiastic Vasari, "he executed everything that is most beautiful, and which can be performed in that art more perfectly than any other master had ever done." Baccio Baldini, also, was a goldsmith, although a greater portion of his ability was turned in the direction of engraving. His pupil Maso Finniguerra, who turned also to engraving, began his career as a goldsmith. The great silver altar in the Baptistery in Florence occupied nearly all the goldsmiths in that city. In 1330 the father of the Orcagnas, Cione, died; he had worked for some years before that on the altar. In 1366 the altar was destroyed, but the parts in bas-relief by Cione were retained and incorporated into the new work, which was finished in 1478. Ghiberti, Orcagna, Verocchio, and Pollajuolo, all executed various details of this magnificent monument. 181 Goldsmiths did not quite change their standing and characteristics until late in the sixteenth century. About that time it may be said that the last goldsmith of the old school was Claude Ballin, while the first jeweller, in the modern acceptation of the word, was Pierre de Montarsy. Silver has always been selected for the better household utensils, not only on account of its beauty, but also because of its ductility, which is desirable in making larger vessels; its value, too, is less than that of gold, so that articles which would be quite out of the reach of most householders, if made in gold, become very available in silver. Silver is particularly adapted to daily use, for the necessary washing and polishing which it receives keeps it in good condition, and there is no danger from poison through corrosion, as with copper and brass. In the middle ages the customary pieces of plate in English homes were basins, bottles, bowls, candlesticks, saucepans, jugs, dishes, ewers and flagons, and chafing-dishes for warming the hands, which were undoubtedly needed, when we remember how intense the cold must have been in those high, bare, ill-ventilated halls! There were also large cups called hanaps, smaller cups, plates, and porringers, salt-cellars, spoons, and salvers. Forks were of much later date. There are records of several silver basins in the Register of John of Gaunt, and also in the Inventory of Lord Lisle: one being "a basin and ewer with arms" and another, "a shaving basin." John of Gaunt also owned "a silver bowl for the kitchen." If the mediaeval household lacked comforts, it could teach us lessons in luxury in some other departments! He also had a "pair of silver bottles, partly gilt, and enamelled, garnished with tissues of silk, white and blue," and a "casting bottle" for distributing perfume: Silver candelabra were recorded; these, of course, must have been in constant service, as the facilities for lighting were largely dependent upon them. When the Crown was once obliged to ask a loan from the Earl of Salisbury, in 1432, the Earl received, as earnest of payment, "two golden candelabra, garnished with pearls and precious stones." In the Close Roll of Henry III. of England, there is found an interesting order to a goldsmith: "Edward, son of Eudo, with all haste, by day and by night, make a cup with a foot for the Queen: weighing two marks, not more; price twenty marks, against Christmas, that she may drink from it in that feast: and paint it and enamel it all over, and in every other way that you can, let it be decently and beautifully wrought, so that the King, no less than the said Queen, may be content therewith." All the young princes and princesses were presented with silver cups, also, as they came to such age as made the use of them expedient; Lionel and John, sons of Edward III., were presented with cups "with leather covers for the same," when they were one and three years old respectively. In 1423 the chief justice, Sir William Hankford, gave his great-granddaughter a baptismal gift of a gilt cup and a diamond ring, together with a curious testimonial of eight shillings and sixpence to the nurse! 182 Of dishes, the records are meagre, but there is an amusing entry among the Lisle papers referring to a couple of "conserve dishes" for which Lady Lisle expressed a wish. Husee had been ordered to procure these, but writes, "I can get no conserve dishes... however, if they be to be had, I will have of them, or it shall cost me hot water!" A little later he observes, "Towards Christmas day they shall be made at Bevoys, betwixt Abbeville and Paris." Flagons were evidently a novelty in 1471, for there is an entry in the Issue Roll of Edward IV., which mentions "two ollas called silver flagons for the King." An olla was a Latin term for a jar. Lord Lisle rejoiced in "a pair of flagons, the gilt sore worn." Hanaps were more usual, and appear to have been usually in the form of goblets. They frequently had stands called "tripers." Sometimes these stands were very ornate, as, for instance, one owned by the Bishop of Carpentras, "in the shape of a flying dragon, with a crowned damsel sitting upon a green terrace." Another, belonging to the Countess of Cambridge, was described as being "in the shape of a monster, with three buttresses and three bosses of mother of pearl... and an ewer,... partly enamelled with divers babooneries"-a delightful expression! Other hanaps were in the forms of swans, oak trees, white harts, eagles, lions, and the like-probably often of heraldic significance. A set of platters was sent from Paris to Richard II., all of gold, with balas rubies, pearls and sapphires set in them. It is related of the ancient Frankish king, Chilperic, that he had made a dish of solid gold, "ornamented all over with precious stones, and weighing fifty pounds," while Lothaire owned an enormous silver basin bearing as decoration "the world with the courses of the stars and the planets." The porringer was a very important article of table use, for pap, and soft foods such as we should term cereals, and for boiled pudding. These were all denominated porridge, and were eaten from these vessels. Soup was doubtless served in them as well. They were numerous in every household. In the Roll of Henry III. is an item, mentioning that he had ordered twenty porringers to be made, "like the one hundred porringers" which had already been ordered! An interesting pattern of silver cups in Elizabethan times were the "trussing cups," namely, two goblets of silver, squat in shape and broad in bowl, which fitted together at the rim, so that one was inverted as a sort of cover on top of the other when they were not in use. Drinking cups were sometimes made out of cocoanuts, mounted in silver, and often of ostrich eggs, similarly treated, and less frequently of horns hollowed out and set on feet. Mediaeval loving cups were usually named, and frequently for some estates that belonged to the owner. Cups have been known to bear such names as "Spang," "Bealchier," and "Crumpuldud," while others bore the names of the patron saints of their owners. A kind of cruet is recorded among early French table silver, "a double necked bottle in divisions, in which to place two kinds of liquor without mixing them." A curious bit of table silver in France, also, was the "almsbox," into which each guest was supposed to put some piece of food, to be given to the poor. 183 Spoons were very early in their origin; St. Radegond is reported by a contemporary to have used a spoon, in feeding the blind and infirm. A quaint book of instructions to children, called "The Babee's Booke," in 1475, advises by way of table manners: "And whenever your potage to you shall be brought, Take your sponys and soupe by no way, And in your dish leave not your spoon, I pray!" And a later volume on the same subject, in 1500, commends a proper respect for the implements of the table: "Ne playe with spoone, trencher, ne knife." Spoons of curious form were evidently made all the way from 1300 to the present day. In an old will, in 1477, mention is made of spoons "wt leopards hedes printed in the sponself," and in another, six spoons "wt owles at the end of the handles." Professor Wilson said, "A plated spoon is a pitiful imposition," and he was right. If there is one article of table service in which solidity of metal is of more importance than in another, it is the spoon, which must perforce come in contact with the lips whenever it is used. In England the earliest spoons were of about the thirteenth century, and the first idea of a handle seems to have been a plain shaft ending in a ball or knob. Gradually spoons began to show more of the decorative instinct of their designers; acorns, small statuettes, and such devices terminated the handles, which still retained their slender proportions, however. Finally it became popular to have images of the Virgin on individual spoons, which led to the idea, after a bit, of decorating the dozen with the twelve apostles. These may be seen of all periods, differently elaborated. Sets of thirteen are occasionally met with, these having one with the statue of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, with a lamb on his shoulders: it is known as the "Master spoon." APOSTLE SPOONS The first mention of forks in France is in the Inventory, of Charles V., in 1379. We hear a great deal about the promiscuous use of knives before forks were invented; how in the children's book of instructions they are enjoined "pick not thy teeth with thy knife," as if it were a general habit requiring to be checked. Massinger alludes to a "silver fork To convey an olive neatly to thy mouth," but this may apply to pickle forks. Forks were introduced from Italy into England about 1607. A curiosity in cutlery is the "musical knife" at the Louvre; the blade is steel, mounted in parcel gilt, and the handle is of ivory. On the blade is engraved a few bars of music 184 (arranged for the bass only), accompanying the words, "What we are about to take may Trinity in Unity bless. Amen." This is a literal translation. It indicates that there were probably three other knives in the set so ornamented, one with the soprano, one alto, and one tenor, so that four persons sitting down to table together might chant their "grace" in four-part harmony, having the requisite notes before them! It was a quaint idea, but quite in keeping with the taste of the sixteenth century. The domestic plate of Louis, Duke of Anjou, in 1360, consisted of over seven hundred pieces, and Charles V. of France had an enormous treasury of such objects for daily use. Strong rooms and safes were built during IVORY KNIFE HANDLES, WITH PORTRAITS OF QUEEN ELIZABETH AND JAMES I. ENGLIS the fourteenth century, for the lodging of the household valuables. About this time the Dukes of Burgundy were famous for their splendid table service. Indeed, the craze for domestic display in this line became so excessive, that in 1356 King John of France prohibited the further production of such elaborate pieces, "gold or silver plate, vases, or silver jewelry, of more than one mark of gold, or silver, excepting for churches." This edict, however, accomplished little, and was constantly evaded. Many large pieces of silver made in the period of the Renaissance were made simply with a view to standing about as ornaments. Cellini alludes to certain vases which had been ordered from him, saying that "they are called ewers, and they are placed upon buffets for the purpose of display." The salt cellar was always a piece de resistance, and stood in the centre of the table. It was often in the form of a ship in silver. A book entitled "Ffor to serve a Lorde," in 1500, directs the "boteler" or "panter," to bring forth the principal salt, and to "set the saler in the myddys of the table." Persons helped themselves to salt with "a clene kniffe." The seats of honour were all about the salt, while those of less degree were at the lower end of the table, and were designated as "below the salt." The silver ship was commonly an immense piece of plate, containing the napkin, goblet, and knife and spoon of the host, besides being the receptacle for the spices and salt. Through fear of poison, the precaution was taken of keeping it covered. This ship was often known as the "nef," and frequently had a name, as if it were the family yacht! One is recorded as having been named the "Tyger," while a nef belonging to the Duke of Orleans was called the "Porquepy," meaning porcupine. One of the historic salts, in another form, is the "Huntsman's salt," and is kept at All Soul's College, Oxford. The figure of a huntsman, bears upon its head a rock crystal box with a lid. About the feet of this figure are several tiny animals and human beings, so that it looks as if the intent had been to picture some gigantic legendary hunter-a sort of Gulliver of the chase. The table was often furnished also with a fountain, in which drinking-water was kept, and upon which either stood or hung cups or goblets. These fountains were often of fantastic shapes, and usually enamelled. One is described as representing a dragon on a tree top, 185 and another a castle on a hill, with a convenient tap at some point for drawing off the water. The London City Companies are rich in their possessions of valuable plate. Some of the cups are especially beautiful. The Worshipful Company of Skinners owns some curious loving cups, emblematic of the names of the donors. There are five Cockayne Loving Cups, made in the form of cocks, with their tail feathers spread up to form the handles. The heads have to be removed for drinking. These cups were bequeathed by William Cockayne, in 1598. Another cup is in the form of a peacock, walking with two little chicks of minute proportions on either side of the parent bird. This is inscribed, "The gift of Mary the daughter of Richard Robinson, and wife to Thomas Smith and James Peacock, Skinners." Whether the good lady were a bigamist or took her husbands in rotation, does not transpire. An interesting cup is owned by the Vintners in London, called the Milkmaid. The figure of a milkmaid, in laced bodice, holds above her head a small cup on pivots, so that it finds its level when the figure is inverted, as is the case when the cup is used, the petticoat of the milkmaid forming the real goblet. It is constructed on the same principle as the German figures of court ladies holding up cups, which are often seen to-day, made on the old pattern. The cups in the case of this milkmaid are both filled with wine, and it is quite difficult to drink from the larger cup without spilling from the small swinging cup which is then below the other. Every member is expected to perform this feat as a sort of initiation. It dates from 1658. One of the most beautiful Corporation cups is at Norwich, where it is known as the "Petersen" cup. It is shaped like a very thick and squat chalice, and around its top is a wide border of decorative lettering, bearing the inscription, "THE + MOST + HERE + OF. + IS + DUNNE + BY + PETER + PETERSON +." This craftsman was a Norwich silversmith of the sixteenth century, very famous in his day, and a remarkably chaste designer as well. A beautiful ivory cup twelve inches high, set in silver gilt, called the Grace Cup, of Thomas à Becket, is inscribed around the top band, "Vinum tuum bibe cum gaudio." It has a hall-mark THE "MILKMAID CUP" of a Lombardic letter H, signifying the year 1445. It is decorated by cherubs, roses, thistles, and crosses, relieved with garnets and pearls. On another flat band is the inscription: "Sobrii estote," and on the cover, in Roman capitals, "Ferare God." It is owned by the Howard family, of Corby. Tankards were sometimes made of such crude materials as leather (like the "lether bottel" of history), and of wood. In fact, the inventory of a certain small church in the year 1566 tells of a "penny tankard of wood," which was used as a "holy water stock." 186 An extravagant design, of a period really later than we are supposed to deal with in this book, is a curious cup at Barber's and Surgeon's Hall, known as the Royal Oak. It is built to suggest an oak tree,-a naturalistic trunk, with its roots visible, supporting the cup, which is in the form of a semi-conventional tree, covered with leaves, detached acorns swinging free on rings from the sides at intervals! Richard Redgrave called attention to some of the absurdities of the exotic work of his day in England. "Rachel at a well, under an imitative palm tree," he remarks, "draws, not water, but ink; a grotto of oyster shells with children beside it, contains... an ink vessel; the milk pail on a maiden's head contains, not goat's milk, as the animal by her side would lead you to suppose, but a taper!" One great secret of good design in metal is to avoid imitating fragile things in a strong material. The stalk of a flower or leaf, for instance, if made to do duty in silver to support a heavy cup or vase, is a very disagreeable thing to contemplate; if the article were really what it represented, it would break under the strain. While there should be no deliberate perversion of Nature's forms, there should be no naturalistic imitation. CHAPTER II JEWELRY AND PRECIOUS STONES We are told that the word "jewel" has come by degrees from Latin, through French, to its present form; it commenced as a "gaudium" (joy), and progressed through "jouel" and "joyau" to the familiar word, as we have it. The first objects to be made in the form of personal adornment were necklaces: this may be easily understood, for in certain savage lands the necklace formed, and still forms, the chief feature in feminine attire. In this little treatise, however, we cannot deal with anything so primitive or so early; we must not even take time to consider the exquisite Greek and Roman jewelry. Amongst the earliest mediaeval jewels we will study the Anglo-Saxon and the Byzantine. Anglo-Saxon and Irish jewelry is famous for delicate filigree, fine enamels, and flat garnets used in a very decorative way. Niello was also employed to some extent. It is easy, in looking from the Bell of St. Patrick to the Book of Kells, to see how the illuminators were influenced by the goldsmiths in early times,-in Celtic and AngloSaxon work. SAXON BROOCH The earliest forms of brooches were the annular,-that is, a long pin with a hinged ring at its head for ornament, and the "penannular," or pin with a broken circle at its head. Through the opening in the circle the pin returns, and then with a twist of the ring, it is held more firmly in the material. Of these two forms are notable examples in the Arbutus brooch and the celebrated Tara brooch. The Tara brooch is a perfect museum in itself of 187 the jeweller's art. It is ornamented with enamel, with jewels set in silver, amber, scroll filigree, fine chains, Celtic tracery, moulded glass-nearly every branch of the art is represented in this one treasure, which was found quite by accident near Drogheda, in 1850, a landslide having exposed the buried spot where it had lain for centuries. As many as seventy-six different kinds of workmanship are to be detected on this curious relic. THE TARA BROOCH At a great Exhibition at Ironmonger's Hall in 1861 there was shown a leaden fibula, quite a dainty piece of personal ornament, in Anglo-Saxon taste, decorated with a moulded spiral meander. It was found in the Thames in 1855, and there are only three other similar brooches of lead known to exist. Of the Celtic brooches Scott speaks: "...the brooch of burning gold That clasps the chieftain's mantle fold, Wrought and chased with rare device, Studded fair with gems of price." One of the most remarkable pieces of Celtic jewelled work is the bell of St. Patrick, which measures over ten inches in height. This saint is associated with several bells: one, called the Broken Bell of St. Brigid, he used on his last crusade against the demons of Ireland; it is said that when he found his adversaries specially unyielding, he flung the bell with all his might into the thickest of their ranks, so that they fled precipitately into the sea, leaving the island free from their aggressions for seven years, seven months, and seven days. One of St. Patrick's bells is known, in Celtic, as the "white toned," while another is called the "black sounding." This is an early and curious instance of the sub-conscious association of the qualities of sound with those of colour. Viollet le Duc tells how a blind man was asked if he knew what the colour red was. He replied, "Yes: red is the sound of the trumpet." And the great architect himself, when a child, was carried by his nurse into the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, where he cried with terror because he fancied that the various organ notes which he heard were being hurled at him by the stained glass windows, each one represented by a different colour in the glass! SHRINE OF THE BELL OF ST. PATRICK But the most famous bell in connection with St. Patrick is the one known by his own name and brought with his relics by Columbkille only sixty years after the saint's death. The outer case is an exceedingly rich example of Celtic work. On a ground of brass, fine gold and silver filigree is applied, in curious interlaces and knots, and it is set with several jewels, some of large size, in green, blue, and dull red. In the front are two large tallow188 cut Irish diamonds, and a third was apparently set in a place which is now vacant. On the back of the bell appears a Celtic inscription in most decorative lettering all about the edge; the literal translation of this is: "A prayer for Donnell O'Lochlain, through whom this bell shrine was made; and for Donnell, the successor of Patrick, with whom it was made; and for Cahalan O'Mulhollan, the keeper of the bell, and for Cudilig O'Immainen, with his sons, who covered it." Donald O'Lochlain was monarch of Ireland in 1083. Donald the successor of Patrick was the Abbot of Armagh, from 1091 to 1105. The others were evidently the craftsmen who worked on the shrine. In many interlaces, especially on the sides, there may be traced intricate patterns formed of serpents, but as nearly all Celtic work is similarly ornamented, there is probably nothing personal in their use in connection with the relic of St. Patrick! Patrick brought quite a bevy of workmen into Ireland about 440: some were smiths, Mac Cecht, Laebhan, and Fontchan, who were turned at once upon making of bells, while some other skilled artificers, Fairill and Tassach, made patens and chalices. St. Bridget, too, had a famous goldsmith in her train, one Bishop Coula. The pectoral cross of St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne is now to be seen in Durham. It was buried with the saint, and was discovered with his body. The four arms are of equal length, and not very heavy in proportion. It is of gold, made in the seventh century, and is set with garnets, a very large one in the centre, one somewhat smaller at the ends of the arms, where the lines widen considerably, and with smaller ones continuously between. Among the many jewels which decorated the shrine of Thomas à Becket at Canterbury was a stone "with an angell of gold poynting thereunto," which was a gift from the King of France, who had had it "made into a ring and wore it on his thumb." Other stones described as being on this shrine were sumptuous, the whole being damascened with gold wire, and "in the midst of the gold, rings; or cameos of sculptured agates, carnelians, and onyx stones." A visitor to Canterbury in 1500 writes: "Everything is left far behind by a ruby not larger than a man's thumb nail, which is set to the right of the altar. The church is rather dark, and when we went to see it the sun was nearly gone down, and the weather was cloudy, yet we saw the ruby as well as if it had been in my hand. They say it was a gift of the King of France." Possessions of one kind were often converted into another, according to changing fashions. Philippa of Lancaster had a gold collar made "out of two bottles and a turret," in 1380. Mediaeval rosaries were generally composed of beads of coral or carnelian, and often of gold and pearls as well. Marco Polo tells of a unique rosary worn by the King of Malabar; one hundred and four large pearls, with occasional rubies of great price, composed the string. Marco Polo adds: "He has to say one hundred and four prayers to his idols every morning and evening." In the possession of the Shah of Persia is a gold casket studded with emeralds, which is said to have the magic power of rendering the owner invisible as long as he remains celibate. I fancy that this is a safe claim, for the tradition is not likely to be put to the 189 proof in the case of a Shah! Probably there has never been an opportunity of testing the miraculous powers of the stones. The inventory of Lord Lisle contains many interesting side lights on the jewelry of the period: "a hawthorne of gold, with twenty diamonds;" "a little tower of gold," and "a pair of beads of gold, with tassels." Filigree or chain work was termed "perry." In old papers such as inventories, registers, and the like, there are frequent mentions of buttons of "gold and perry;" in 1372 Aline Gerbuge received "one little circle of gold and perry, emeralds and balasses." Clasps and brooches were used much in the fourteenth century. They were often called "ouches," and were usually of jewelled gold. One, an image of St. George, was given by the Black Prince to John of Gaunt. The Duchess of Bretagne had among other brooches one with a white griffin, a balas ruby on its shoulder, six sapphires around it, and then six balasses, and twelve groups of pearls with diamonds. Brooches were frequently worn by being stuck in the hat. In a curious letter from James I. to his son, the monarch writes: "I send for your wearing the Three Brethren" (evidently a group of three stones) "...but newly set... which I wolde wish you to weare alone in your hat, with a Littel black feather." To his favourite Buckingham he also sends a diamond, saying that his son will lend him also "an anker" in all probability; but he adds: "If my Babee will not spare the anker from his Mistress, he may well lend thee his round brooch to weare, and yett he shall have jewels to weare in his hat for three grate dayes." In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the women wore nets in their hair, composed of gold threads adorned with pearls. At first two small long rolls by the temples were confined in these nets: later, the whole back hair was gathered into a large circular arrangement. These nets were called frets-"a fret of pearls" was considered a sufficient legacy for a duchess to leave to her daughter. In the constant resetting and changing of jewels, many important mediaeval specimens, not to mention exquisite vessels and church furniture, were melted down and done over by Benvenuto Cellini, especially at the time that Pope Clement was besieged at the Castle of St. Angelo. Probably the most colossal jewel of ancient times was the Peacock Throne of Delhi. It was in the form of two spread tails of peacocks, composed entirely of sapphires, emeralds and topazes, feather by feather and eye by eye, set so as to touch each other. A parrot of life size carved from a single emerald, stood between the peacocks. In 1161 the throne of the Emperor in Constantinople is described by Benjamin of Tudela: "Of gold ornamented with precious stones. A golden crown hangs over it, suspended on a chain of the same material, the length of which exactly admits the Emperor to sit under it. The crown is ornamented with precious stones of inestimable value. Such is the lustre of these diamonds that even without any other light, they illumine the room in which they are kept." 190 The greatest mediaeval jeweller was St. Eloi of Limoges. His history is an interesting one, and his achievement and rise in life was very remarkable in the period in which he lived. Eloi was a workman in Limoges, as a youth, under the famous Abho, in the sixth century; there he learned the craft of a goldsmith. He was such a splendid artisan that he soon received commissions for extensive works on his own account. King Clothaire II. ordered from him a golden throne, and supplied the gold which was to be used. To the astonishment of all, Eloi presented the king with two golden thrones (although it is difficult to imagine what a king would do with duplicate thrones!), and immediately it was noised abroad that the goldsmith Eloi was possessed of miraculous powers, since, out of gold sufficient for one throne, he had constructed two. People of a more practical turn found out that Eloi had learned the art of alloying the gold, so as to make it do double duty. A great many examples of St. Eloi's work might have been seen in France until the Revolution in 1792, especially at the Abbey of St. Denis. A ring made by him, with which St. Godiberte was married to Christ, according to the custom of mediaeval saints, was preserved at Noyon until 1793, when it disappeared in the Revolution. The Chronicle says of Eloi: "He made for the king a great numer of gold vesses enriched with precious stones, and he worked incessantly, seated with his servant Thillo, a Saxon by birth, who followed the lessons of his master." St. Eloi founded two institutions for goldsmithing: one for the production of domestic and secular plate, and the other for ecclesiastical work exclusively, so that no worker in profane lines should handle the sacred vessels. The secular branch was situated near the dwelling of Eloi, in the Cité itself, and was known as "St. Eloi's Enclosure." When a fire burned them out of house and shelter, they removed to a suburban quarter, which soon became known in its turn, as the "Clôture St. Eloi." The religious branch of the establishment was presided over by the aforesaid Thillo, and was the Abbey of Solignac, near Limoges. This school was inaugurated in 631. While Eloi was working at the court of King Clothaire II., St. Quen was there as well. The two youths struck up a close friendship, and afterwards Ouen became his biographer. His description of Eloi's personal appearance is worth quoting, to show the sort of figure a mediaeval saint sometimes cut before canonization. "He was tall, with a ruddy face, his hair and beard curly. His hands well made, and his fingers long, his face full of angelic sweetness.... At first he wore habits covered with pearls and precious stones; he had also belts sewn with pearls. His dress was of linen encrusted with gold, and the edges of his tunic trimmed with gold embroidery. Indeed, his clothing was very costly, and some of his dresses were of silk. Such was his exterior in his first period at court, and he dressed thus to avoid singularity; but under this garment he wore a rough sack cloth, and later on, he disposed of all his ornaments to relieve the distressed; and he might be seen with only a cord round his waist and common clothes. Sometimes the king, seeing him thus divested of his rich clothing, would take off his own cloak and girdle and give them to him, saying: 'It is not suitable that those who dwell for the world should be richly clad, and that those who despoil themselves for Christ should be without glory.'" Among the numerous virtues of St. Eloi was that of a consistent carrying out of his real beliefs and theories, whether men might consider him quixotic or not. He was strongly 191 opposed to the institution of slavery. In those days it would have been futile to preach actual emancipation. The times were not ripe. But St. Eloi did all that he could for the cause of freedom by investing most of his money in slaves, and then setting them at liberty. Sometimes he would "corner" a whole slave market, buying as many as thirty to a hundred at a time. Some of these manumitted persons became his own faithful followers: some entered the religious life, and others devoted their talents to their benefactor, and worked in his studios for the furthering of art in the Church. He once played a trick upon the king. He requested the gift of a town, in order, as he explained, that he might there build a ladder by which they might both reach heaven. The king, in the rather credulous fashion of the times, granted his request, and waited to see the ladder. St. Eloi promptly built a monastery. If the monarch did not choose to avail himself of this species of ladder,-surely it was no fault of the builder! St. Quen and St. Eloi were consecrated bishops on the same day, May 14, St. Quen to the Bishopric of Rouen, and Eloi to the See of Noyon. He made a great hunt for the body of St. Quentin, which had been unfortunately mislaid, having been buried in the neighbourhood of Noyon; he turned up every available spot of ground around, within and beneath the church, until he found a skeleton in a tomb, with some iron nails. This he proclaimed to be the sacred body, for the legend was that St. Quentin had been martyred by having nails driven into his head! Although it was quite evident to others that these were coffin nails, still St. Eloi insisted upon regarding his discovery as genuine, and they began diligently to dismember the remains for distribution among the churches. As they were pulling one of the teeth, a drop of blood was seen to follow it, which miracle was hailed by St. Eloi as the one proof wanting. Eloi had the genuine artistic temperament and his religious zeal was much influenced by his aesthetic nature. He once preached an excellent sermon, still preserved, against superstition. He inveighed particularly against the use of charms and incantations. But he had his own little streak of superstition in spite of the fact that he fulminated against it. When he had committed some fault, after confession, he used to hang bags of relics in his room, and watch them for a sign of forgiveness. When one of these would turn oily, or begin to affect the surrounding atmosphere peculiarly, he would consider it a sign of the forgiveness of heaven. It seems to us to-day as if he might have looked to his own relic bags before condemning the ignorant. St. Eloi died in 659, and was himself distributed to the faithful in quite a wholesale way. One arm is in Paris. He was canonized both for his holy life and for his great zeal in art. He was buried in a silver coffin adorned with gold, and his tomb was said to work miracles like the shrine of Becket. Indeed, Becket himself was pretty dressy in the matter of jewels; when he travelled to Paris, the simple Frenchmen exclaimed: "What a wonderful personage the King of England must be, if his chancellor can travel in such state!" There are various legends about St. Eloi. It is told that a certain horse once behaved in a very obstreperous way while being shod; St. Eloi calmly cut off the animal's leg, and 192 fixed the shoe quietly in position, and then replaced the leg, which grew into place again immediately, to the pardonable astonishment of all beholders, not to mention the horse. St. Eloi was also employed to coin the currency of Dagobert and Clovis II., and examples of these coins may now be seen, as authentic records of the style of his work. A century after his death the monasteries which he had founded were still in operation, and Charlemagne's crown and sword are very possibly the result of St. Eloi's teachings to his followers. While the monasteries undoubtedly controlled most of the art education of the early middle ages, there were also laymen who devoted themselves to these pursuits. John de Garlande, a famous teacher in the University of Paris, wrote, in the eleventh century, a "Dictionarius" dealing with various arts. In this interesting work he describes, the trades of the moneyers (who controlled the mint), the coining of gold and silver into currency (for the making of coin in those days was permitted by individuals), the clasp makers, the makers of cups or hanaps, jewellers and harness makers, and other artificers. John de Garlande was English, born about the middle of the twelfth century, and was educated in Oxford. In the early thirteenth century he became associated with the University, and when Simon de Montfort was slain in 1218, at Toulouse, John was at the University of Toulouse, where he was made So professor, and stayed three years, returning then to Paris. He died about the middle of the thirteenth century. He was celebrated chiefly for his Dictionarius, a work on the various arts and crafts of France, and for a poem "De Triumphis Ecclesiae." During the Middle Ages votive crowns were often presented to churches; among these a few are specially famous. The crowns, studded with jewels, were suspended before the altar by jewelled chains, and often a sort of fringe of jewelled letters was hung from the rim, forming an inscription. The votive crown of King Suinthila, in Madrid, is among the most ornate of these. It is the finest specimen in the noted "Treasure of Guerrazzar," which was discovered by peasants turning up the soil near Toledo; the crowns, of which there were many, date from about the seventh century, and are sumptuous with precious stones. The workmanship is not that of a barbarous nation, though it has the fascinating irregularities of the Byzantine style. Of the delightful work of the fifth and sixth centuries there are scarcely any examples in Italy. The so-called Iron Crown of Monza is one of the few early Lombard treasures. This crown has within it a narrow band of iron, said to be a nail of the True Cross; but the crown, as it meets the eye, is anything but iron, being one of the most superb specimens of jewelled golden workmanship, as fine as those in the Treasure of Guerrazzar. THE TREASURE OF GUERRAZZAR The crown of King Alfred the Great is mentioned in an old inventory as being of "gould wire worke, sett with slight stones, and two little bells." A diadem is described by William of Malmsbury, "so precious with jewels, that the splendour... threw sparks of 193 light so strongly on the beholder, that the more steadfastly any person endeavoured to gaze, so much the more he was dazzled, and compelled to avert the eyes!" In 1382 a circlet crown was purchased for Queen Anne of Bohemia, being set with a large sapphire, a balas, and four large pearls with a diamond in the centre. The Cathedral at Amiens owns what is supposed to be the head of John the Baptist, enshrined in a gilt cup of silver, and with bands of jewelled work. The head is set upon a platter of gilded and jewelled silver, covered with a disc of rock crystal. The whole, though ancient, is enclosed in a modern shrine. The legend of the preservation of the Baptist's head is that Herodias, afraid that the saint might be miraculously restored to life if his head and body were laid in the same grave, decided to hide the head until this danger was past. Furtively, she concealed the relic for a time, and then it was buried in Herod's palace. It was there opportunely discovered by some monks in the fourth century. This "invention of the head" (the word being interpreted according to the credulity of the reader) resulted in its removal to Emesa, where it was exhibited in 453. In 753 Marcellus, the Abbot of Emesa, had a vision by means of which he re-discovered (or re-invented) the head, which had in some way been lost sight of. Following the guidance of his dream, he repaired to a grotto, and proceeded to exhume the long-suffering relic. After many other similar and rather disconnected episodes, it finally came into possession of the Bishop of Amiens in 1206. A great calamity in early times was the loss of all the valuables of King John of England. Between Lincolnshire and Norfolk the royal cortège was crossing the Wash: the jewels were all swept away. Crown and all were thus lost, in 1216. Several crowns have been through vicissitudes. When Richard III. died, on Bosworth Field, his crown was secured by a soldier and hidden in a bush. Sir Reginald de Bray discovered it, and restored it to its rightful place. But to balance such cases several of the queens have brought to the national treasury their own crowns. In 1340 Edward III. pawned even the queen's jewels to raise money for fighting France. The same inventory makes mention of certain treasures deposited at Westminster: the values are attached to each of these, crowns, plates, bracelets, and so forth. Also, with commendable zeal, a list was kept of other articles stored in an iron chest, among which are the items, "one liver coloured silk robe, very old, and worth nothing," and "an old combe of horne, worth nothing." A frivolous scene is described by Wood, when the notorious Republican, Marten, had access to the treasure stored in Westminster. Some of the wits of the period assembled in the treasury, and took out of the iron chest several of its jewels, a crown, sceptre, and robes; these they put upon the merry poet, George Withers, "who, being thus crowned and royally arrayed, first marched about the room with a stately gait, and afterwards, with a thousand ridiculous and apish actions, exposed the sacred ornaments to contempt and laughter." No doubt the "olde comb" played a suitable part in these pranks,-perhaps it may even have served as orchestra. One Sir Henry Mildmay, in 1649, was responsible for dreadful vandalism, under the Puritan régime. Among other acts which he countenanced was the destruction and sale of 194 the wonderful Crown of King Alfred, to which allusion has just been made. In the Will of the Earl of Pembroke, in 1650, is this clause showing how unpopular Sir Henry had become: "Because I threatened Sir Henry Mildmay, but did not beat him, I give £50 to the footman who cudgelled him. Item, my will is that the said Sir Harry shall not meddle with my jewels. I knew him... when he handled the Crown jewels,... for which reason I now name him the Knave of Diamonds." Jewelled arms and trappings became very rich in the fifteenth century. Pius II. writes of the German armour: "What shall I say of the neck chains of the men, and the bridles of the horses, which are made of the purest gold; and of the spears and scabbards which are covered with jewels?" Spurs were also set with jewels, and often damascened with gold, and ornamented with appropriate mottoes. An inventory of the jewelled cups and reliquaries of Queen Jeanne of Navarre, about 1570, reads like a museum. She had various gold and jewelled dishes for banquets; one jewel is described as "Item, a demoiselle of gold, represented as riding upon a horse, of mother of pearl, standing upon a platform of gold, enriched with ten rubies, six turquoises and three fine pearls." Another item is, "A fine rock crystal set in gold, enriched with three rubies, three emeralds, and a large sapphire, set transparently, the whole suspended from a small gold chain." It is time now to speak of the actual precious stones themselves, which apart from their various settings are, after all, the real jewels. According to Cellini there are only four precious stones: he says they are made "by the four elements," ruby by fire, sapphire by air, emerald by earth, and diamond by water. It irritated him to have any one claim others as precious stones. "I have a thing or two to say," he remarks, "in order not to scandalize a certain class of men who call themselves jewellers, but may be better likened to hucksters, or linen drapers, pawn brokers, or grocers... with a maximum of credit and a minimum of brains... these dunderheads... wag their arrogant tongues at me and cry, 'How about the chrysophrase, or the jacynth, how about the aqua marine, nay more, how about the garnet, the vermeil, the crysolite, the plasura, the amethyst? Ain't these all stones and all different?' Yes, and why the devil don't you add pearls, too, among the jewels, ain't they fish bones?" Thus he classes the stones together, adding that the balas, though light in colour, is a ruby, and the topaz a sapphire. "It is of the same hardness, and though of a different colour, must be classified with the sapphire: what better classification do you want? hasn't the air got its sun?" Cellini always set the coloured stones in a bezel or closed box of gold, with a foil behind them. He tells an amusing story of a ruby which he once set on a bit of frayed silk instead of on the customary foil. The result happened to be most brilliant. The jewellers asked him what kind of foil he had used, and he replied that he had employed no foil. Then they exclaimed that he must have tinted it, which was against all laws of jewelry. Again Benvenuto swore that he had neither used foil, nor had he done anything forbidden or unprofessional to the stone. "At this the jeweller got a little nasty, and used strong language," says Cellini. They then offered to pay well for the information if Cellini would inform them by what means he had obtained so remarkably a lustre. Benvenuto, 195 expressing himself indifferent to pay, but "much honoured in thus being able to teach his teachers," opened the setting and displayed his secret, and all parted excellent friends. Even so early as the thirteenth century, the jewellers of Paris had become notorious for producing artificial jewels. Among their laws was one which stipulated that "the jeweller was not to dye the amethyst, or other false stones, nor mount them in gold leaf nor other colour, nor mix them with rubies, emeralds, or other precious stones, except as a crystal simply without mounting or dyeing." One day Cellini had found a ruby which he believed to be set dishonestly, that is, a very pale stone with a thick coating of dragon's blood smeared on its back. When he took it to some of his favourite "dunderheads," they were sure that he was mistaken, saying that it had been set by a noted jeweller, and could not be an imposition. So Benvenuto immediately removed the stone from its setting, thereby exposing the fraud. "Then might that ruby have been likened to the crow which tricked itself out in the feathers of the peacock," observes Cellini, adding that he advised these "old fossils in the art" to provide themselves with better eyes than they then wore. "I could not resist saying this," chuckles Benvenuto, "because all three of them wore great gig-lamps on their noses; whereupon they all three gasped at each other, shrugged their shoulders, and with God's blessing, made off." Cellini tells of a Milanese jeweller who concocted a great emerald, by applying a very thin layer of the real stone upon a large bit of green glass: he says that the King of England bought it, and that the fraud was not discovered for many years. A commission was once given Cellini to make a magnificent crucifix for a gift from the Pope to Emperor Charles V., but, as he expresses it, "I was hindered from finishing it by certain beasts who had the vantage of the Pope's ear," but when these evil whisperers had so "gammoned the Pope," that he was dissuaded from the crucifix, the Pope ordered Cellini to make a magnificent Breviary instead, so that the "job" still remained in his hands. Giovanni Pisano made some translucid enamels for the decorations of the high altar in Florence, and also a jewelled clasp to embellish the robe of a statue of the Virgin. Ghiberti was not above turning his attention to goldsmithing, and in 1428 made a seal for Giovanni de Medici, a cope-button and mitre for Pope Martin V., and a gold nutre with precious stones weighing five and a half pounds, for Pope Eugene IV. Diamonds were originally cut two at a time, one cutting the other, whence has sprung the adage, "diamond cut diamond." Cutting in facets was thus the natural treatment of this gem. The practise originated in India. Two diamonds rubbing against each other systematically will in time form a facet on each. In 1475 it was discovered by Louis de Berghem that diamonds could be cut by their own dust. It is an interesting fact in connection with the Kohinoor that in India there had always been a legend that its owner should be the ruler of India. Probably the ancient Hindoos 196 among whom this legend developed would be astonished to know that, although the great stone is now the property of the English, the tradition is still unbroken! Marco Polo alludes to the treasures brought from the Isle of Ormus, as "spices, pearls, precious stones, cloth of gold and silver, elephant's teeth, and all other precious things from India." In Balaxiam he says are found "ballasses and other precious stones of great value. No man, on pain of death, dare either dig such stones or carry them out of the country, for all those stones are the King's. Other mountains also in this province yield stones called lapis lazuli, whereof the best azure is made. The like is not found in the world. These mines also yield silver, brass, and lead." He speaks of the natives as wearing gold and silver earrings, "with pearls and-other stones artificially wrought in them." In a certain river, too, are found jasper and chalcedons. Marco Polo's account of how diamonds are obtained is ingenuous in its reckless defiance of fact. He says that in the mountains "there are certain great deep valleys to the bottom of which there is no access. Wherefore the men who go in search of the diamonds take with them pieces of meat," which they throw into this deep valley. He relates that the eagles, when they see these pieces of meat, fly down and get them, and when they return, they settle on the higher rocks, when the men raise a shout, and drive them off. After the eagles have thus been driven away, "the men recover the pieces of meat, and find them full of diamonds, which have stuck to them. For the abundance of diamonds down in the depths," continues Marco Polo, naïvely "is astonishing; but nobody can get down, and if one could, it would be only to be incontinently devoured by the serpents which are so rife there." A further account proceeds thus: "The diamonds are so scattered and dispersed in the earth, and lie so thin, that in the most plentiful mines it is rare to find one in digging;... they are frequently enclosed in clods,... some... have the earth so fixed about them that till they grind them on a rough stone with sand, they cannot move it sufficiently to discover they are transparent or... to know them from other stones. At the first opening of the mine, the unskilful labourers sometimes, to try what they have found, lay them on a great stone, and, striking them one with another, to their costly experience, discover that they have broken a diamond.... They fill a cistern with water, soaking therein as much of the earth they dig out of the mine as it can hold at one time, breaking the clods, picking out the great stones, and stirring it with shovels... then they open a vent, letting out the foul water, and supply it with clean, till the earthy substance be all washed away, and only the gravelly one remains at the bottom." A process of sifting and drying is then described, and the gravel is all spread out to be examined, "they never examine the stuff they have washed but between the hours of ten and three, lest any cloud, by interposing, intercept the brisk beams of the sun, which they hold very necessary to assist them in their search, the diamonds constantly reflecting them when they shine on them, rendering themselves thereby the more conspicuous." The earliest diamond-cutter is frequently mentioned as Louis de Berquem de Bruges, in 1476. But Laborde finds earlier records of the art of cutting this gem: there was in Paris a diamond-cutter named Herman, in 1407. The diamond cutters of Paris were quite numerous in that year, and lived in a special district known as "la Courarie, where reside the workers in diamonds and other stones." 197 Finger rings almost deserve a history to themselves, for their forms and styles are legion. Rings were often made of glass in the eleventh century. Theophilus tells in a graphic and interesting manner how they were constructed. He recommends the use of a bar of iron, as thick as one's finger, set in a wooden handle, "as a lance is joined in its pike." There should also be a large piece of wood, at the worker's right hand, "the thickness of an arm, dug into the ground, and reaching to the top of the window." On the left of the furnace a little clay trench is to be provided. "Then, the glass being cooked," one is admonished to take the little iron in the wooden handle, dip it into the molten glass, and pick up a small portion, and "prick it into the wood, that the glass may be pierced through, and instantly warm it in the flame, and strike it twice upon the wood, that the glass may be dilated, and with quickness revolve your hand with the same iron;" when the ring is thus formed, it is to be quickly thrown into the trench. Theophilus adds, "If you wish to vary your rings with other colours... take... glass of another colour, surrounding the glass of the ring with it in the manner of a thread... you can also place upon the ring glass of another kind, as a gem, and warm it in the fire that it may adhere." One can almost see these rings from this accurate description of their manufacture. The old Coronation Ring, "the wedding ring of England," was a gold ring with a single fine balas ruby; the pious tradition had it that this ring was given to Edward the Confessor by a beggar, who was really St. John the Evangelist in masquerade! The palace where this unique event occurred was thereupon named Have-ring-at-Bower. The Stuart kings all wore this ring and until it came to George IV., with other Stuart bequests, it never left the royal Stuart line. Edward I. owned a sapphire ring made by St. Dunstan. Dunstan was an industrious art spirit, being reported by William of Malmsbury as "taking great delight in music, painting, and engraving." In the "Ancren Riwle," a book of directions for the cloistered life of women, nuns are forbidden to wear "ne ring ne brooche," and to deny themselves other personal adornments. Archbishops seem to have possessed numerous rings in ancient times. In the romance of "Sir Degrevant" a couplet alludes to: "Archbishops with rings More than fifteen." Episcopal rings were originally made of sapphires, said to be typical of the cold austerity of the life of the wearer. Later, however, the carbuncle became a favourite, which was supposed to suggest fiery zeal for the faith. Perhaps the compromise of the customary amethyst, which is now most popularly used, for Episcopal rings, being a combination of the blue and the red, may typify a blending of more human qualities! HEBREW RING 198 In an old will of 1529, a ring was left as a bequest to a relative, described as "a table diamond set with black aniell, meate for my little finger." The accompanying illustration represents a Hebrew ring, surmounted by a little mosque, and having the inscription "Mazul Toub" (God be with you, or Good luck to you). It was the custom in Elizabethan times to wear "posie rings" (or poesie rings) in which inscriptions were cut, such as, "Let likinge Laste," "Remember the ♥ that is in pain," or, "God saw fit this knot to knit," and the like. These posie rings are so called because of the little poetical sentiments associated with them. They were often used as engagement rings, and sometimes as wedding rings. In an old Saxon ring is the inscription, "Eanred made me and Ethred owns me." One of the mottoes in an old ring is pathetic; evidently it was worn by an invalid, who was trying to be patient, "Quant Dieu Plera melior sera." (When it shall please God, I shall be better.) And in a small ring set with a tiny diamond, "This sparke shall grow." An agreeable and favourite "posie" was "The love is true That I O U." A motto in a ring owned by Lady Cathcart was inscribed on the occasion of her fourth marriage; with laudable ambition, she observes, "If I survive, I will have five." It is to these "posie rings" that Shakespeare has reference when he makes Jaques say to Orlando: "You are full of pretty answers: have you not been acquainted with goldsmiths' wives, and conned them out of rings?" In the Isle of Man there was once a law that any girl who had been wronged by a man had the right to redress herself in one of three ways: she was given a sword, a rope and a ring, and she could decide whether she would behead him, hang him, or marry him. Tradition states that the ring was almost invariably the weapon chosen by the lady. Superstition has ordained that certain stones should cure certain evils: the blood-stone was of very general efficacy, it was claimed, and the opal, when folded in a bay leaf, had the power of rendering the owner invisible. Some stones, especially the turquoise, turned pale or became deeper in hue according to the state of the owner's health; the owner of a diamond was invincible; the possession of an agate made a man amiable, and eloquent. Whoever wore an amethyst was proof against intoxication, while a jacynth superinduced sleep in cases of insomnia. Bed linen was often embroidered, and set with bits of jacynth, and there is even a record of diamonds having been used in the decoration of sheets! Another entertaining instance of credulity was the use of "cramp rings." These were rings blessed by the queen, and supposed to cure all manner of cramps, just as the king's touch was supposed to cure scrofula. When a queen died, the demand for these rings became a panic: no more could be produced, until a new queen was crowned. After the beheading 199 of Anne Boleyn, Husee writes to his patroness: "Your ladyship shall receive of this bearer nine cramp rings of silver. John Williams says he never had so few of gold as this year!" A stone engraved with the figure of a hare was believed to be valuable in exorcising the devil. That of a dog preserved the owner from "dropsy or pestilence;" a versatile ring indeed! An old French book speaks of an engraved stone with the image of Pegasus being particularly healthful for warriors; it was said to give them "boldness and swiftness in flight." These two virtues sound a trifle incompatible! The turquoise was supposed to be especially sympathetic. According to Dr. Donne: "A compassionate turquoise, that cloth tell By looking pale, the owner is not well," must have been a very sensitive stone. There was a physician in the fourth century who was famous for his cures of colic and biliousness by means of an iron ring engraved with an exorcism requesting the bile to go and take possession of a bird! There was also a superstition that fits could be cured by a ring made of "sacrament money." The sufferer was obliged to stand at the church door, begging a penny from every unmarried man who passed in or out; this was given to a silversmith, who exchanged it at the cathedral for "sacrament money," out of which he made a ring. If this ring was worn by the afflicted person, the seizures were said to cease. The superstition concerning the jewel in the toad's head was a strangely persistent one: it is difficult to imagine what real foundation there could ever have been for the idea. An old writer gives directions for getting this stone, which the toad in his life time seems to have guarded most carefully. "A rare good way to get the stone out of a toad," he says, "is to put a... toad... into an earthen pot: put the same into an ant's hillocke, and cover the same with earth, which toad... the ants will eat, so that the bones... and stone will be left in the pot." Boethius once stayed up all night watching a toad in the hope that it might relinquish its treasure; but he complained that nothing resulted "to gratify the great pangs of his whole night's restlessness." An old Irish legend says that "the stone Adamant in the land of India grows no colder in any wind or snow or ice; there is no heat in it under burning sods" (this is such an Hibernian touch! The peat fuel was the Celtic idea of a heating system), "nothing is broken from it by striking of axes and hammers; there is one thing only breaks that stone, the blood of the Lamb at the Mass; and every king that has taken that stone in his right hand before going into battle, has always gained the victory." There is also a superstition regarding the stone Hibien, which is said to flame like a fiery candle in the darkness, "it spills out poison before it in a vessel; every snake that comes near to it or crosses it dies on the moment." Another stone revered in Irish legend is the Stone of Istien, which is found "in the brains of dragons after their deaths," and a still more capable jewel seems to be the Stone of Fanes, within which it is claimed that the sun, moon, and twelve stars are to be seen. "In the hearts of the dragons it is always found that make their journey under 200 the sea. No one having it in his hand can tell any lie until he has put it from him; no race or army could bring it into a house where there is one that has made way with his father. At the hour of matins it gives out sweet music that there is not the like of under heaven." Bartholomew, the mediaeval scientist, tells narratives of the magical action of the sapphire. "The sapphire is a precious stone," he says, "and is blue in colour, most like to heaven in fair weather and clear, and is best among precious stones, and most apt and able to fingers of kings. And if thou put an addercop in a box, and hold a very sapphire of India at the mouth of the box any while, by virtue thereof the addercop is overcome and dieth, as it were suddenly. And this same I have seen proved oft in many and divers places." Possibly the fact that the addercop is so infrequent an invader of our modern life accounts for the fact that we are left inert upon reading so surprising a statement; or possibly our incredulity dominates our awe. The art of the lapidary, or science of glyptics, is a most interesting study, and it would be a mistake not to consider it for a few moments on its technical side. It is very ancient as an art. In Ecclesiasticus the wise Son of Sirach alludes to craftsmen "that cut and grave seals, and are diligent to make great variety, and give themselves to counterfeit imagery, and watch to finish a work." Theophilus on glyptics is too delightfully naïve for us to resist quoting his remarks. "Crystal," he announces, "which is water hardened into ice, and the ice of great age hardened into stone, is trimmed and polished in this manner." He then directs the use of sandstone and emery, chiefly used by rubbing, as one might infer, to polish the stones, probably en cabochon as was the method in his time; this style of finish on a gem was called "tallow cutting." But when one wishes to sculp crystal, Theophilus informs one: "Take a goat of two or three years... make an opening between his breast and stomach, in the position of the heart, and lay in the crystal, so that it may lie in its blood until it grow warm... cut what you please in it as long as the heat lasts." Just how many goats were required to the finishing of a sculptured crystal would be determined by the elaboration of the design! Unfortunately Animal Rescue Leagues had not invaded the monasteries of the eleventh century. In sculpturing glass, the ingenuous Theophilus is quite at his best. "Artists!" he exclaims, "who wish to engrave glass in a beautiful manner, I now can teach you, as I have myself made trial. I have sought the gross worms which the plough turns up in the ground, and the art necessary in these things also bid me procure vinegar, and the warm blood of a lusty goat, which I was careful to place under the roof for a short time, bound with a strong ivy plant. After this I infused the worms and vinegar with the warm blood and I anointed the whole clearly shining vessel; which being done, I essayed to sculp the glass with the hard stone called the Pyrites." What a pity good Theophilus had not begun with the pyrites, when he would probably have made the further discovery that his worms and goats could have been spared. 201 In the polishing of precious stones, he is quite sane in his directions. "Procure a marble slab, very smooth," he enjoins, "and act as useful art points out to you." In other words, rub it until it is smooth! Bartholomew Anglicus is as entertaining as Theophilus regarding crystal. "Men trowe that it is of snow or ice made hard in many years," he observes complacently. "This stone set in the sun taketh fire, insomuch if dry tow be put thereto, it setteth the tow on fire," and again, quoting Gregory on Ezekiel I., he adds, "water is of itself fleeting, but by strength of cold it is turned and made stedfast crystal." Of small specimens of sculptured crystal some little dark purple beads carved into the semblance of human faces may be seen on the Tara brooch; while also on the same brooch occur little purple daisies. The Cup of the Ptolemies, a celebrated onyx cup in Paris, is over fifteen inches in circumference, and is a fine specimen of early lapidary's work. It was presented in the ninth century by Charles the Bald to St. Denis, and was always used to contain the consecrated wine when Queens of France were crowned. Henry II. once pawned it to a Jew when he was hard up, and in 1804 it was stolen and the old gold and jewelled setting removed. It was found again in Holland, and was remounted within a century. In the Treasury of St. Mark's in Venice are many valuable examples of carved stones, made into cups, flagons, and the like. These were brought from Constantinople in 1204, when the city was captured by the Venetians. Constantinople was the only place where glyptics were understood and practised upon large hard stones in the early Middle Ages. The Greek artists who took refuge in Italy at that time brought the art with them. There are thirty-two of these Byzantine chalices in St. Mark's. Usually the mountings are of gold, and precious stones. There are also two beautiful cruets of agate, elaborately ornamented, but carved in curious curving forms requiring skill of a superior order. Two other rock crystal cruets are superbly carved, probably by Oriental workmen, however, as they are not Byzantine in their decorations. One of them was originally a vase, and, indeed, is still, for the long gold neck has no connection with the inside; the handle is also of gold, both these adjuncts seem to have been regarded as simply ornament. The other cruet is carved elaborately with leopards, the first and taller one showing monsters and foliate forms. Around the neck of the lower of these rock crystal cruets is an inscription, praying for God's blessing on the "Imam Aziz Billah," who was reigning in Egypt in 980. This cruet has a gold stand. The handle is cleverly cut in the same piece of crystal, but a band of gold is carried down it to give it extra strength. The forming of this handle in connection with the rest of the work is a veritable tour de force, and we should have grave doubts whether Theophilus with his goats could have managed it! CRYSTAL FLAGONS, ST. MARK'S, VENICE Vasari speaks with characteristic enthusiasm of the glyptics of the Greeks, "whose works in that manner may be called divine." But, as he continues, "many and very many years 202 passed over during which the art was lost".... until in the days of Lorenzo di Medici the fashion for cameos and intaglios revived. In the Guild of the Masters of Wood and Stone in Florence, the cameo-cutters found a place, nevertheless it seems fitting to include them at this point among jewellers, instead of among carvers. The Italians certainly succeeded in performing feats of lapidary art at a later period. Vasari mentions two cups ordered by Duke Cosmo, one cut out of a piece of lapis lazuli, and the other from an enormous heliotrope, and a crystal galley with gold rigging was made by the Sanachi brothers. In the Green Vaults in Dresden may be seen numerous specimens of valuable but hideous products of this class. In the seventeenth century, the art had run its course, and gave place to a taste for cameos, which in its turn was run into the ground. Cameo-cutting and gem engraving has always been accomplished partly by means of a drill; the deepest point to be reached in the cutting would be punctured first, and then the surfaces cut, chipped, and ground away until the desired level was attained. This is on much the same principle as that adopted by marble cutters to-day. Mr. Cyril Davenport's definition of a cameo is quite satisfactory: "A small sculpture executed in low relief upon some substance precious either for its beauty, rarity, or hardness." Cameos are usually cut in onyx, the different layers and stratifications of colour being cut away at different depths, so that the sculpture appears to be rendered in one colour on another, and sometimes three or four layers are recognized, so that a shaded effect is obtained. Certain pearly shells are sometimes used for cameo cutting; these were popular in Italy in the fifteenth century. In Greece and Rome the art of cameo cutting was brought to astonishing perfection, the sardonyx being frequently used, and often cut in five different coloured layers. An enormous antique cameo, measuring over nine inches across, may be seen in Vienna; it represents the Apotheosis of Augustus, and the scene is cut in two rows of spirited figures. It dates from the first century A. D. It is in dark brown and white. Among the treasures of the art-loving Henry III. was a "great cameo," in a golden case; it was worth two hundred pounds. This cameo was supposed to compete with a celebrated work at Ste. Chapelle in Paris, which had been brought by Emperor Baldwin II. from Constantinople. SARDONYX CUP, 11TH CENTURY, VENICE In Paris was a flourishing guild, the "Lapidaries, Jewel Cutters, and Engravers of Cameos and Hard Stones," in the thirteenth century; glass cutters were included in this body for a time, but after 1584 the revised laws did not permit of any imitative work, so glass cutters were no longer allowed to join the society. The French work was rather coarse compared with the classic examples. 203 The celebrated Portland Vase is a glass cameo, of enormous proportions, and a work of the first century, in blue and white. There is a quaint legend connected with the famous stone cameo known as the Vase of St. Martin, which is as follows: when St. Martin visited the Martyr's Field at Agaune, he prayed for some time, and then stuck his knife into the ground, and was excusably astonished at seeing blood flow forth. Recognizing at once that he was in the presence of the miraculous (which was almost second nature to mediaeval saints), he began sedulously to collect the precious fluid in a couple of receptacles with which he had had the foresight to provide himself. The two vases, however, were soon filled, and yet the mystical ruby spring continued. At his wit's ends, he prayed again for guidance, and presently an angel descended, with a vase of fine cameo workmanship, in which the remainder of the sacred fluid was preserved. This vase is an onyx, beautifully cut, with fine figures, and is over eight inches high, mounted at foot and collar with Byzantine gold and jewelled work. The subject appears to be an episode during the Siege of Troy,-a whimsical selection of design for an angel. Some apparently mediaeval cameos are in reality antiques recut with Christian characters. A Hercules could easily be turned into a David, while Perseus and Medusa could be transformed quickly into a David and Goliath. There are two examples of cameos of the Virgin which had commenced their careers, one as a Leda, and the other as Venus! While a St. John had originally figured as Jupiter with his eagle! In the Renaissance there was great revival of all branches of gem cutting, and cameos began to improve, and to resemble once more their classical ancestors. Indeed, their resemblance was rather academic, and there was little originality in design. Like most of the Renaissance arts, it was a reversion instead of a new creation. Technically, however, the work was a triumph. The craftsmen were not satisfied until they had quite outdone the ancients, and they felt obliged to increase the depth of the cutting, in order to show how cleverly they could coerce the material; they even under-cut in some cases. During the Medicean period of Italian art, cameos were cut in most fantastic forms; sometimes a negro head would be introduced simply to exhibit a dark stratum in the onyx, and was quite without beauty. One of the Florentine lapidaries was known as Giovanni of the Carnelians, and another as Domenico of the Cameos. This latter carved a portrait of Ludovico il Moro on a red balas ruby, in intaglio. Nicolo Avanzi is reported as having carved a lapis lazuli "three fingers broad" into the scene of the Nativity. Matteo dal Nassaro, a son of a shoemaker in Verona, developed extraordinary talent in gem cutting. An exotic production is a crucifix cut in a blood-stone by Matteo del Nassaro, where the artist has so utilized the possibilities of this stone that he has made the red patches to come in suitable places to portray drops of blood. Matteo worked also in Paris, in 1531, where he formed a school and craft shop, and where he was afterwards made Engraver of the Mint. Vasari tells of an ingenious piece of work by Matteo, where he has carved a chalcedony into a head of Dejanira, with the skin of the lion about it. He says, "In the stone there was a vein of red colour, and here the artist has made the skin turn over... and he has 204 represented this skin with such exactitude that the spectator imagines himself to behold it newly torn from the animal! Of another mark he has availed himself, for the hair, and the white parts he has taken for the face and breast." Matteo was an independent spirit: when a baron once tried to beat him down in his price for a gem, he refused to take a small sum for it, but asked the baron to accept it as a gift. When this offer was refused, and the nobleman insisted upon giving a low price, Matteo deliberately took his hammer and shattered the cameo into pieces at a single blow. His must have been an unhappy life. Vasari says that he "took a wife in France and became the father of children, but they were so entirely dissimilar to himself, that he had but little satisfaction from them." Another famous lapidary was Valerio Vicentino, who carved a set of crystals which were made into a casket for Pope Clement VII., while for Paul III. he made a carved crystal cross and chandelier. Vasari reserves his highest commendation for Casati, called "el Greco," "by whom every other artist is surpassed in the grace and perfection as well as in the universality of his productions."... "Nay, Michelangelo himself, looking at them one day while Giovanni Vasari was present, remarked that the hour for the death of the art had arrived, for it was not possible that better work could be seen!" Michelangelo proved a prophet, in this case surely, for the decadence followed swiftly. CHAPTER III ENAMEL "Oh, thou discreetest of readers," says Benvenuto Cellini, "marvel not that I have given so much time to writing about all this," and we feel like making the same apology for devoting a whole chapter to enamel; but this branch of the goldsmith's art has so many subdivisions, that it cries for space. The word Enamel is derived from various sources. The Greek language has contributed "maltha," to melt; the German "schmeltz," the old French "esmail," and the Italian "smalta," all meaning about the same thing, and suggesting the one quality which is inseparable from enamel of all nations and of all ages,-its fusibility. For it is always employed in a fluid state, and always must be. Enamel is a type of glass product reduced to powder, and then melted by fervent heat into a liquid condition, which, when it has hardened, returns to its vitreous state. Enamel has been used from very early times. The first allusion to it is by Philostratus, in the year 200 A. D., where he described the process as applied to the armour of his day. "The barbarians of the regions of the ocean," he writes, "are skilled in fusing colours on heated brass, which become as hard as stone, and render the ornament thus produced durable." 205 Enamels have special characteristics in different periods: in the late tenth century, of Byzantium and Germany; in the eleventh century, of Italy; while most of the later work owes its leading characteristics to the French, although it continued to be produced in the other countries. It helps one to understand the differences and similarities in enamelled work, to observe the three general forms in which it is employed; these are, the cloisonné, the champlevé, and the painted enamel. There are many subdivisions of these classifications, but for our purpose these three will suffice. In cloisonné, the only manner known to the Greek, Anglo-Saxon, and Celtic craftsmen, the pattern is made upon a gold ground, by little upright wire lines, like filigree, the enamel is fused into all the little compartments thus formed, each bit being one clear colour, on the principle of a mosaic. The colours were always rather clear and crude, but are the more sincere and decorative on this account, the worker recognizing frankly the limitation of the material; and the gold outline harmonizes the whole, as it does in any form of art work. A cloisonné enamel is practically a mosaic, in which the separations consist of narrow bands of metal instead of plaster. The enamel was applied in its powdered state on the gold, and then fused all together in the furnace. GERMAN ENAMEL, 13TH CENTURY Champlevé enamel has somewhat the same effect as the cloisonné, but the end is attained by different means. The outline is left in metal, and the whole background is cut away and sunk, thus making the hollow chambers for the vitreous paste, in one piece, instead of by means of wires. Often it is not easy to determine which method has been employed to produce a given work. Painted enamels were not employed in the earliest times, but came to perfection in the Renaissance. A translucent enamel prevailed especially in Italy: a low relief was made with the graver on gold or silver; fine raised lines were left here and there, to separate the colours. Therefore, where the cutting was deepest, the enamel ran thicker, and consequently darker in colour, giving the effect of shading, while in reality only one tint had been used. The powdered and moistened enamel was spread evenly with a spatula over the whole surface, and allowed to stand in the kiln until it liquefied. Another form of enamel was used to colour gold work in relief, with a permanent coating of transparent colour. Sometimes this colour was applied in several coats, one upon another, and the features painted with a later touch. Much enamelled jewelry was made in this way, figures, dragons, and animal forms, being among the most familiar. But an actual enamel painting-on the principle of a picture, was rendered in still another way. In preparing the ground for enamel painting, there are two things which have been essentially considered in all times and countries. The enamel ground must be more fusible than the metal on which it is placed, or else both would melt together. Also the enamel with which the final decoration is executed must be more easily made fluid than the harder enamel on which it is laid. In fact, each coat must of necessity be a trifle more fusible than the preceding one. 206 A very accurate knowledge is necessary to execute such a work, as will be readily understood. ENAMELLED GOLD BOOK COVER, SIENA In examining historic examples of enamel, the curious oval set in gold, known as the Alfred Jewel, is among the first which come within our province. It was found in Somersetshire, and probably dates from about the year 878. It consists of an enamelled figure covered by a thick crystal, set in filigree, around the edge of which runs the inscription, "AELFRED MEC REHT GAVUR CAN" (Alfred ordered me to be wrought). King Alfred was a great patron of the arts. Of such Anglo-Saxon work, an ancient poem in the Exeter Book testifies: "For one a wondrous skill in goldsmith's art is provided Full oft he decorates and well adorns A powerful king's nobles." Celtic enamels are interesting, being usually set in the spaces among the rambling interlaces of this school of goldsmithing. The Cross of Cong is among the most famous specimens of this work, and also the bosses on the Ardagh Chalice. The monk Theophilus describes the process of enamelling in a graphic manner. He directs his workmen to "adapt their pieces of gold in all the settings in which the glass gems are to be placed" (by which we see that he teaches the cloisonné method). "Cut small bands of exceedingly thin gold," he continues, "in which you will bend and fashion whatever work you wish to make in enamel, whether circles, knots, or small flowers, or birds, or animals, or figures." He then admonishes one to solder it with greatest care, two or three times, until all the pieces adhere firmly to the plate. To prepare the powdered glass, Theophilus advises placing a piece of glass in the fire, and, when it has become glowing, "throw it into a copper vessel in which there is water, and it instantly flies into small fragments which you break with a round pestle until quite fine. The next step is to put the powder in its destined cloison, and to place the whole jewel upon a thin piece of iron, over which fits a cover to protect the enamel from the coals, and put it in the most intensely hot part of the fire." Theophilus recommends that this little iron cover be "perforated finely all over so that the holes may be inside flat and wide, and outside finer and rough, in order to stop the cinders if by chance they should fall upon it." This process of firing may have to be repeated several times, until the enamel fills every space evenly. Then follows the tedious task of burnishing; setting the jewel in a strong bit of wax, you are told to rub it on a "smooth hard bone," until it is polished well and evenly. Benvenuto Cellini recommends a little paper sponge to be used in smoothing the face of enamels. "Take a clean nice piece of paper," he writes, "and chew it well between your teeth,-that is, if you have got any-I could not do it, because I've none left!" 207 A celebrated piece of goldsmith's work of the tenth century is the Pala d'Oro at St. Mark's in Venice. This is a gold altar piece or reredos, about eleven feet long and seven feet high, richly wrought in the Byzantine style, and set with enamels and precious stones. The peculiar quality of the surface of the gold still lingers in the memory; it looks almost liquid, and suggests the appearance of metal in a fluid state. On its wonderful divisions and arched compartments are no less than twelve hundred pearls, and twelve hundred other precious gems. These stones surround the openings in which are placed the very beautiful enamel figures of saints and sacred personages. St. Michael occupies a prominent position; the figure is partly in relief. The largest medallion contains the figure of Christ in glory, and in other compartments may be seen even such secular personages as the Empress Irene, and the Doge who was ruling Venice at the time this altar piece was put in place-the year 1106. The Pala d'Oro is worked in the champlevé process, the ground having been cut away to receive the melted enamel. It is undoubtedly a Byzantine work; the Doge Orseolo, in 976, ordered it to be made by the enamellers of Constantinople. It was not finished for nearly two centuries, arriving in Venice in 1102, when the portrait of the Doge then reigning was added to it. The Byzantine range of colours was copious; they had white, two reds, bright and dark, dark and light blue, green, violet, yellow, flesh tint, and black. These tints were always fused separately, one in each cloison: the Greeks in this period never tried to blend colours, and more than one tint never appears in a compartment. The enlarging and improving of the Pam d'Oro was carried on by Greek artists in Venice in 1105. It was twice altered after that, once in the fourteenth century for Dandolo, and thus the pure Byzantine type is somewhat invaded by the Gothic spirit. The restorations in 1345 were presided over by Gianmaria Boninsegna. One of the most noted specimens of enamel work is on the Crown of Charlemagne,[1] which is a magnificent structure of eight plaques of gold, joined by hinges, and surmounted by a cross in the front, and an arch crossing the whole like a rib from back to front. The other cross rib has been lost, but originally the crown was arched by two ribs at the top. The plates of gold are ornamented, one with jewels, and filigree, and the next with a large figure in enamel. These figures are similar to those occurring on the Pala d'Oro. [Footnote 1: See Fig. 1.] DETAIL; SHRINE OF THE THREE KINGS, COLOGNE The Shrine of the Three Kings in Cologne is decorated both with cloisonné and champlevé enamels,-an unusual circumstance. In Aix la Chapelle the shrine of Charlemagne is extremely like it in some respects, but the only enamels are in champlevé. Good examples of translucent enamels in relief may be seen on several of the reliquaries at Aix la Chapelle. Theophilus gives us directions for making a very ornate chalice with handles, richly embossed and ornamented with mello. Another paragraph instructs us how to make a golden chalice decorated with precious stones and pearls. It would be interesting as a 208 modern problem, to follow minutely his directions, and to build the actual chalice described in the eleventh century. To apply the gems and pearls Theophilus directs us to "cut pieces like straps," which you "bend together to make small settings of them, by which the stones may be enclosed." These little settings, with their stones, are to be fixed with flour paste in their places and then warmed over the coals until they adhere. This sounds a little risky, but we fancy he must have succeeded, and, indeed, it seems to have been the usual way of setting stones in the early centuries. Filigree flowers are then to be added, and the whole soldered into place in a most primitive manner, banking the coals in the shape of a small furnace, so that the coals may lie thickly around the circumference, and when the solder "flows about as if undulating," the artist is to sprinkle it quickly with water, and take it out of the fire. Niello, with which the chalice of Theophilus is also to be enriched, stands in relation to the more beautiful art of enamel, as drawing does to painting, and it is well to consider it here. Both the Romans and the Anglo-Saxons understood its use. It has been employed as an art ever since the sixth and seventh centuries. The term "niello" probably is an abbreviation of the Italian word "nigellus" (black); the art is that of inlaying an engraved surface with a black paste, which is thoroughly durable and hard as the metal itself in most cases, the only difference being in flexibility; if the metal plate is bent, the niello will crack and flake off. FINIGUERRA'S PAX, FLORENCE Niello is more than simply a drawing on metal. That would come under the head of engraving. A graver is used to cut out the design on the surface of the silver, which is simply a polished plane. When the drawing has been thus incised, a black enamel, made of lead, lamp black, and other substances, is filled into the interstices, and rubbed in; when quite dry and hard, this is polished. The result is a black enamel which is then fused into the silver, so that the whole is one surface, and the decoration becomes part of the original plate. The process as described by Theophilus is as follows: "Compose the niello in this manner; take pure silver and divide it into equal parts, adding to it a third part of pure copper, and taking yellow sulphur, break it very small... and when you have liquefied the silver with the copper, stir it evenly with charcoal, and instantly pour into it lead and sulphur." This niello paste is then made into a stick, and heated until "it glows: then with another forceps, long and thin, hold the niello and rub it all over the places which you wish to make black, until the drawing be full, and carrying it away from the fire, make it smooth with a flat file, until the silver appear." When Theophilus has finished his directions, he adds: "And take great care that no further work is required." To polish the niello, he directs us to "pumice it with a damp stone, until it is made everywhere bright." There are various accounts of how Finiguerra, who was a worker in niello in Florence, discovered by its means the art of steel engraving. It is probably only a legendary narrative, but it is always told as one of the apocryphal stories when the origin of printing is discussed, and may not be out of place here. Maso Finiguerra, a Florentine, had just 209 engraved the plate for his famous niello, a Pax which is now to be seen in the Bargello, and had filled it in with the fluid enamel, which was standing waiting until it should be dry. Then, according to some authorities, a piece of paper blew upon the damp surface, on which, after carefully removing it, Maso found his design was impressed; others state that it was through the servant's laying a damp cloth upon it, that the principle of printing from an incised plate was suggested. At any rate, Finiguerra took the hint, it is said, and made an impression on paper, rolling it, as one would do with an etching or engraving. In the Silver Chamber in the Pitti Palace is a Pax, by Mantegna, made in the same way as that by Finiguerra, and bearing comparison with it. The engraving is most delicate, and it is difficult to imagine a better specimen of the art. The Madonna and Child, seated in an arbour, occupy the centre of the composition, which is framed with jewelled bands, the frame being divided into sixteen compartments, in each of which is seen a tiny and exquisite picture. The work on the arbour of roses in which the Virgin sits is of remarkable quality, as well as the small birds and animals introduced into the composition. In the background, St. Christopher is seen crossing the river with the Christ Child on his back, while in the water a fish and a swan are visible. In Valencia in Spain may be seen a chalice which has been supposed to be the very cup in which Our Saviour instituted the Communion. The cup itself is of sardonyx, and of fine form. The base is made of the same stone, and handles and bands are of gold, adorned with black enamel. Pearls, rubies, sapphires, and emeralds are set in profusion about the stem and base. It is a work of the epoch of Imperial Rome. In England, one of the most perfect specimens of fine, close work, is the Wilton Chalice, dating from the twelfth century. The Warwick Bowl, too, is of very delicate workmanship, and both are covered with minute scenes and figures. One of the most splendid treasures in this line is the crozier of William Wyckham, now in Oxford. It is strictly national in style. The agreement entered into between Henry VII., and Abbot Islip, for the building of the chapel of that king in Westminster, is extant. It is bound in velvet and bossed with enamels. It is an interesting fact that some of the enamels are in the Italian style, while others are evidently English. Limoges was the most famous centre of the art of enamelling in the twelfth century, the work being known as Opus de Limogia, or Labor Limogiae. Limoges was a Roman settlement, and enamels were made there as early as the time of Philostratus. Champlevé enamel, while it was not produced among the Greeks, nor even in Byzantine work, was almost invariable at Limoges in the earlier days: one can readily tell the difference between a Byzantine enamel and an early Limoges enamel by this test, when there is otherwise sufficient similarity of design to warrant the question. Some of the most beautiful enamels of Limoges were executed in what was called bassetaille, or transparent enamel on gold grounds, which had been first prepared in bas-relief. Champlevé enamel was often used on copper, for such things as pastoral staves, 210 reliquaries, and larger bits of church furniture. The enamel used on copper is usually opaque, and somewhat coarser in texture than that employed on gold or silver. Owing to their additional toughness, these specimens are usually in perfect preservation. In 1327, Guillaume de Harie, in his will, bequeathed 800 francs to make two high tombs, to be covered with Limoges enamel, one for himself, and the other for "Blanche d'Avange, my dear companion." An interesting form of cloisonné enamel was that known as "plique à jour," which consists of a filigree setting with the enamel in transparent bits, without any metallic background. It is still made in many parts of the world. When held to the light it resembles minute arrangements of stained glass. Francis I. showed Benvenuto Cellini a wonderful bowl of this description, and asked Cellini if he could possibly imagine how the result was attained. "Sacred Majesty," replied Benvenuto, "I can tell you exactly how it is done," and he proceeded to explain to the astonished courtiers how the bowl was constructed, bit by bit, inside a bowl of thin iron lined with clay. The wires were fastened in place with glue until the design was complete, and then the enamel was put in place, the whole being fused together at the soldering. The clay form to which all this temporarily adhered was then removed, and the work, transparent and ephemeral, was ready to stand alone. King John gave to the city of Lynn a magnificent cup of gold, enamelled, with figures of courtiers of the period, engaged in the sports of hawking and hare-hunting, and dressed in the costume of the king's reign. "King John gave to the Corporation a rich cup and cover," says Mackarel, "weighing seventy-three ounces, which is preserved to this day and upon all public occasions and entertainments used with some uncommon ceremonies at drinking the health of the King or Queen, and whoever goes to visit the Mayor must drink out of this cup, which contains a full pint." The colours of the enamels which are used as flat values in backgrounds to the little silver figures, are dark rose, clear blue, and soft green. The dresses of the persons are also picked out in the same colours, varied from the grounds. This cup was drawn by John Carter in 1787, he having had much trouble in getting permission to study the original for that purpose! He took letters of introduction to the Corporation, but they appeared to suspect him of some imposture; at first they refused to entertain his proposal at all, but after several applications, he was allowed to have the original before him, in a closed room, in company with a person appointed by them but at his expense, to watch him and see that no harm came to the precious cup! The translucent enamels on relief were made a great deal by the Italian goldsmiths; Vasari alludes to this class of work as "a species of painting united with sculpture." As enamel came by degrees to be used as if it were paint, one of the chief charms of the art died. The limits of this art were its strength, and simple straight-forward use of the material was its best expression. The method of making a painted enamel was as follows. The design was laid out with a stilus on a copper plate. Then a flux of plain enamel was fused on to the surface, all over it. The drawing was then made again, on the same lines, in a dark medium, and the colours were laid flat inside the dark lines, accepting these lines as if they had been wires around cloisons. All painted enamels had to be enamelled 211 on the back as well, to prevent warping in the furnace when the shrinkage took place. After each layer of colour the whole plate was fired. In the fifteenth century these enamels were popular and retained some semblance of respect for the limitation of material; later, greater facility led, as it does in most of the arts, to a decadence in taste, and florid pictures, with as many colours and shadows as would appear in an oil painting, resulted. Here and there, where special metallic brilliancy was desired, a leaf of gold was laid under the colour of some transparent enamel, giving a decorative lustre. These bits of brilliant metal were known as paillons. When Limoges had finally become the royal manufactory of enamels, under Francis I., the head of the works was Leonard Limousin, created "Valet de Chambre du Roi," to show his sovereign's appreciation. Remarkable examples of the work of Leonard Limousin, executed in 1547, are the large figures of the Apostles to be seen in the church of St. Pierre, at Chartres, where they are ranged about the apsidal chapel. They are painted enamels on copper sheets twenty-four by eleven inches, and are in a wonderful state of preservation. They were the gift of Henri II. to Diàne de Poictiers and were brought to Chartres from the Chateau d'Anet. These enamels, being on a white ground, have something the effect of paintings in Faience; the colouring is delicate, and they have occasional gold touches. A treatise by William of Essex directs the artist how to prepare a plate for a painted enamel, such as were used in miniature work. He says "To make a plate for the artist to paint upon: a piece of gold or copper being chosen, of requisite dimensions, and varying from about 1/18 to 1/16 of an inch in thickness, is covered with pulverized enamel, and passed through the fire, until it becomes of a white heat; another coating of enamel is then added, and the plate again fired; afterwards a thin layer of a substance called flux is laid upon the surface of the enamel, and the plate undergoes the action of heat for a third time. It is now ready for the painter to commence his picture upon." Leonard Limousin painted from 1532 until 1574. He used the process as described by William of Essex (which afterwards became very popular for miniaturists), and also composed veritable pictures of his own design. It is out of our province to trace the history of the Limoges enamellers after this period. CHAPTER IV OTHER METALS The "perils that environ men that meddle with cold iron" are many; but those who attempt to control hot iron are also to be respected, when they achieve an artistic result with this unsympathetic metal, which by nature is entirely lacking in charm, in colour and texture, and depends more upon a proper application of design than any other, in order to overcome the obstacles to beauty with which it is beset. "Rust hath corrupted," unfortunately, many interesting antiquities in iron, so that only a limited number of specimens of this metal have come down to us from very early times; 212 one of the earliest in England is a grave-stone of cast metal, of the date 1350: it is decorated with a cross, and has the epitaph, "Pray for the soul of Joan Collins." The process of casting iron was as follows. The moulds were made of a sandy substance, composed of a mixture of brick dust, loam, plaster, and charcoal. A bed of this sand was made, and into it was pressed a wooden or metal pattern. When this was removed, the imprint remained in the sand. Liquid metal was run into the mould so formed, and would cool into the desired shape. As with a plaster cast, it was necessary to employ two such beds, the sand being firmly held in boxes, if the object was to be rounded, and then the two halves thus made were put together. Flat objects, such as fire-backs, could be run into a single mould. Bartholomew, in his book "On the Properties of Things," makes certain statements about iron which are interesting: "Though iron cometh of the earth, yet it is most hard and sad, and therefore with beating and smiting it suppresseth and dilateth all other metal, and maketh it stretch on length and on breadth." This is the key-note to the work of a blacksmith: it is what he has done from the first, and is still doing. In Spain there have been iron mines ever since the days when Pliny wrote and alluded to them, but there are few samples in that country to lead us to regard it as aesthetic in its purpose until the fifteenth century. For tempering iron instruments, there are recipes given by the monk Theophilus, but they are unfortunately quite unquotable, being treated with mediaeval frankness of expression. St. Dunstan was the patron of goldsmiths and blacksmiths. He was born in 925, and lived in Glastonbury, where he became a monk rather early in life. He not only worked in metal, but was a good musician and a great scholar, in fact a genuine rounded man of culture. He built an organ, no doubt something like the one which Theophilus describes, which, Bede tells us, being fitted with "brass pipes, filled with air from the bellows, uttered a grand and most sweet melody." Dunstan was a favourite at court, in the reign of King Edmund. Enemies were plentiful, however, and they spread the report that Dunstan evoked demoniac aid in his almost magical work in its many departments. It was said that occasionally the evil spirits were too aggravating, and that in such cases Dunstan would stand no nonsense. There is an old verse: "St. Dunstan, so the story goes, Once pulled the devil by the nose, With red hot tongs, which made him roar That he was heard three miles or more!" The same story is told of St. Eloi, and probably of most of the mediaeval artistic spirits who were unfortunate enough to be human in their temperaments and at the same time pious and struggling. He was greatly troubled by visitations such as persecuted St. Anthony. On one occasion, it is related that he was busy at his forge when this fiend was unusually persistent: St. Dunstan turned upon the demon, and grasped its nose in the hot 213 pincers, which proved a most successful exorcism. In old portraits, St. Dunstan is represented in full ecclesiastical habit, holding the iron pincers as symbols of his prowess. He became Archbishop of Canterbury after having held the Sees of Worcester and London. He journeyed to Rome, and received the pallium of Primate of the AngloSaxons, from Pope John XII. Dunstan was a righteous statesman, twice reproving the king for evil deeds, and placing his Royal Highness under the ban of the Church for immoral conduct! St. Dunstan died in 988. WROUGHT IRON HINGE, FRANKFORT Wrought iron has been in use for many centuries for hinges and other decorations on doors; a necessity to every building in a town from earliest times. The word "hinge" comes from the Saxon, hengen, to hang. Primitive hinges were sometimes sockets cut in stone, as at Torcello; but soon this was proved a clumsy and inconvenient method of hanging a door, and hinges more simple in one way, and yet more ornate, came into fashion. Iron hinges were found most useful when they extended for some distance on to the door; this strengthened the door against the invasion of pirates, when the church was the natural citadel of refuge for the inhabitants of a town, and also held it firmly from warping. At first single straps of iron were clamped on: then the natural craving for beauty prevailed, and the hinges developed, flowering out into scrolls and leaves, and spreading all over the doors, as one sees them constantly in mediaeval examples. The general scheme usually followed was a straight strap of iron flanked by two curving horns like a crescent, and this motive was elaborated until a positive lace of iron, often engraved or moulded, covered the surface of the door, as in the wonderful work of Biscornette at Notre Dame in Paris. Biscornette was a very mysterious worker, and no one ever saw him constructing the hinges. Reports went round that the devil was helping him, that he had sold his soul to the King of Darkness in order to enlist his assistance in his work; an instance of aesthetic altruism almost commendable in its exotic zeal. Certain jealous artificers even went so far as to break off bits of the meandering iron, to test it, but with no result; they could not decide whether it was cast or wrought. Later a legend grew up explaining the reason why the central door was not as ornate as the side doors: the story was that the devil was unable to assist Biscornette on this door because it was the aperture through which the Host passed in processions. It is more likely, however, that the doors were originally uniform, and that the iron was subsequently removed for some other reason. The design is supposed to represent the Earthly Paradise. Sauval says: "The sculptured birds and ornaments are marvellous. They are made of wrought iron, the invention of Biscornette and which died with him. He worked the iron with an almost incredible industry, rendering it flexible and tractable, and gave it all the forms and scrolls he wished, with a 'douceur et une gentillesse' which surprised and astonished all the smiths." The iron master Gaegart broke off fragments of the iron, and no member of the craft has ever been able to state with certainty just how the work was accomplished. Some think that it is 214 cast, and then treated with the file; others say that it must have been executed by casting entire, with no soldering. In any case, the secret will never be divulged, for no one was in the confidence of Biscornette. Norman blacksmiths and workers in wrought iron were more plentiful than goldsmiths. They had, in those warlike times, more call for arms and the massive products of the forge than for gaudy jewels and table appointments. One of the doors of St. Alban's Abbey displays the skill of Norman smiths dealing with this stalwart form of ornament. Among special artists in iron whose names have survived is that of Jehan Tonquin, in 1388. Earlier than that, a cutler, Thomas de Fieuvillier, is mentioned, as having flourished about 1330. BISCORNETTE'S DOORS AT PARIS Elaborate iron work is rare in Germany; the Germans always excelled rather in bronze than in the sterner metal. At St. Ursula's in Cologne there are iron floriated hinges, but the design and idea are French, and not native. One may usually recognize a difference between French and English wrought iron, for the French is often in detached pieces, not an outgrowth of the actual hinge itself, and when this is found in England, it indicates French work. Ornaments in iron were sometimes cut out of flat sheet metal, and then hammered into form. In stamping this flat work with embossed effect, the smith had to work while the iron was hot,-as Sancho Panza expressed it, "Praying to God and hammering away." Dies were made, after a time, into which the design could be beaten with less effort than in the original method. One of the quaintest of iron doors is at Krems, where the gate is made up of square sheets of iron, cut into rude pierced designs, giving scenes from the New Testament, and hammered up so as to be slightly embossed. The Guild of Blacksmiths in Florence flourished as early as the thirteenth century. It covered workers in many metals, copper, iron, brass, and pewter included. Among the rules of the Guild was one permitting members to work for ready money only. They were not allowed to advertise by street crying, and were fined if they did so. The Arms of the Guild was a pair of furnace tongs upon a white field. Among the products of the forge most in demand were the iron window-gratings so invariable on all houses, and called by Michelangelo "kneeling windows," on account of the bulging shape of the lower parts. One famous iron worker carried out the law of the Guild both in spirit and letter to the extent of insisting upon payment in advance! This was Nicolo Grosso, who worked about 1499. Vasari calls him the "money grabber." His specialty was to make the beautiful torch holders and lanterns such as one sees on the Strozzi Palace and in the Bargello. 215 In England there were Guilds of Blacksmiths; in Middlesex one was started in 1434, and members were known as "in the worship of St. Eloi." Members were alluded to as "Brethren and Sisteren,"-this term would fill a much felt vacancy! Some of the Guilds exacted fines from all members who did not pay a proper proportion of their earnings to the Church. Another general use of iron for artistic purposes was in the manufacture of grilles. Grilles were used in France and England in cathedrals. The earliest Christian grille is a pierced bronze screen in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. In Hildesheim is an original form of grille; the leaves and rosettes in the design are pierced, instead of being beaten up into bosses. This probably came from the fact that the German smith did not understand the Frankish drawing, and supposed that the shaded portions of the work were intended to be open work. The result, however, is most happy, and a new feature was thus introduced into grille work. WROUGHT IRON FROM THE BARGELLO, FLORENCE Many grilles were formed by the smith's taking an iron bar and, under the intense heat, splitting it into various branches, each of which should be twisted in a different way. Another method was to use the single slighter bar for the foundation of the design, and welding on other volutes of similar thickness to make the scroll work associated with wrought iron. Some of the smiths who worked at Westminster Abbey are known by name; Master Henry Lewis, in 1259, made the iron work for the tomb of Henry III. A certain iron fragment is signed Gilibertus. The iron on the tomb of Queen Eleanor is by Thomas de Leighton, in 1294. Lead workers also had a place assigned to them in the precincts, which was known as "the Plumbery." In 1431 Master Roger Johnson was enjoined to arrest or press smiths into service in order to finish the ironwork on the tomb of Edward IV. Probably the most famous use of iron in Spain is in the stupendous "rejas," or chancel screens of wrought iron; but these are nearly all of a late Renaissance style, and hardly come within the scope of this volume. The requirements of Spanish cathedrals, too, for wrought iron screens for all the side chapels, made plenty of work for the iron masters. In fact, the "rejeros," or iron master, was as regular an adjunct to a cathedral as an architect or a painter. Knockers were often very handsome in Spain, and even nail heads were decorated. An interesting specimen of iron work is the grille that surrounds the tomb of the Scaligers in Verolla. It is not a hard stiff structure, but is composed of circular forms, each made separately, and linked together with narrow bands, so that the construction is flexible, and is more like a gigantic piece of chain mail than an iron fence. 216 Quentin Matsys was known as the "blacksmith of Antwerp," and is reported to have left his original work among metals to become a painter. This was done in order to marry the lady of his choice, for she refused to join her fate to that of a craftsman. She, however, was ready to marry a painter. Quentin, therefore, gave up his hammer and anvil, and began to paint Madonnas that he might prosper in his suit. Some authorities, however, laugh at this story, and claim that the specimens of iron work which are shown as the early works of Matsys date from a time when he would have been only ten or twelve years old, and that they must therefore have been the work of his father, Josse Matsys, who was a locksmith. The well-cover in Antwerp, near the cathedral, is always known as Quentin Matsys' well. It is said that this was not constructed until 1470, while Quentin was born in 1466. The iron work of the tomb of the Duke of Burgundy, in Windsor, is supposed to be the work of Quentin Matsys, and is considered the finest grille in England. It is wrought with such skill and delicacy that it is more like the product of the goldsmith's art than that of the blacksmith. Another object of utility which was frequently ornamented was the key. The Key of State, especially, was so treated. Some are nine or ten inches long, having MOORISH KEYS, SEVILLE been used to present to visiting grandees as typical of the "Freedom of the City." Keys were often decorated with handles having the appearance of Gothic tracery. In an old book published in 1795, there is an account of the miraculous Keys of St. Denis, made of silver, which they apply to the faces of these persons who have been so unfortunate as to be bitten by mad dogs, and who received certain and immediate relief in only touching them. A key in Valencia, over nine inches in length, is richly embossed, while the wards are composed of decorative letters, looking at first like an elaborate sort of filigree, but finally resolving themselves into the autographic statement: "It was made by Ahmed Ahsan." It is a delicate piece of thirteenth or fourteenth century work in iron. Another old Spanish key has a Hebrew inscription round the handle: "The King of Kings will open: the King of the whole Earth will enter," and, in the wards, in Spanish, "God will open, the King will enter." The iron smiths of Barcelona formed a Guild in the thirteenth century: it is to be regretted that more of their work could not have descended to us. A frank treatment of locks and bolts, using them as decorations, instead of treating them as disgraces, upon the surface of a door, is the only way to make them in any degree effective. As Pugin has said, it is possible to use nails, screws, and rivets, so that they become "beautiful studs and busy enrichments." Florentine locksmiths were specially famous; there also was a great fashion for damascened work in that city, and it was executed with much elegance. 217 In blacksmith's work, heat was used with the hammer at each stage of the work, while in armourer's or locksmith's work, heat was employed only at first, to achieve the primitive forms, and then the work was carried on with chisel and file on the cold metal. Up to the fourteenth century the work was principally that of the blacksmith, and after that, of the locksmith. The mention of arms and armour in a book of these proportions must be very slight; the subject is a vast one, and no effort to treat it with system would be satisfactory in so small a space. But a few curious and significant facts relating to the making of armour may be cited. The rapid decay of iron through rust-rapid, that is to say, in comparison with other metals-is often found to have taken place when the discovery of old armour has been made; so that gold ornaments, belonging to a sword or other weapon, may be found in excavating, while the iron which formed the actual weapon has disappeared. Primitive armour was based on a leather foundation, hence the name cuirass, was derived from cuir (leather). In a former book I have alluded to the armour of the nomadic tribes, which is described by Pausanias as coarse coats of mail made out of the hoofs of horses, split, and laid overlapping each other, making them "something like dragon's scales," as Pausanias explains; adding for the benefit of those who are unfamiliar with dragons' anatomy, "Whoever has not yet seen a dragon, has, at any rate, seen a pine cone still green. These are equally like in appearance to the surface of this armour." These horny scales of tough hoofs undoubtedly suggested, at a later date, the use of thick leather as a form of protection, and the gradual evolution may be imagined. The art of the armourer was in early mediaeval times the art of the chain maker. The chain coat, or coats of mail, reached in early days as far as the knees. Finally this developed into an entire covering for the man, with head gear as well; of course this form of armour allowed of no real ornamentation, for there was no space larger than the links of the chain upon which to bestow decoration. Each link of a coat of mail was brought round into a ring, the ends overlapped, and a little rivet inserted. Warriors trusted to no solder or other mode of fastening. All the magnificence of knightly apparel was concentrated in the surcoat, a splendid embroidered or gem-decked tunic to the knees, which was worn over the coat of mail. These surcoats were often trimmed with costly furs, ermine or vair, the latter being similar to what we now call squirrel, being part gray and part white. Cinderella's famous slipper was made of "vair," which, through a misapprehension in being translated "verre," has become known as a glass slipper. After a bit, the makers of armour discovered that much tedious labor in chain making might be spared, if one introduced a large plate of solid metal on the chest and back. This was in the thirteenth century. ARMOUR, SHOWING MAIL DEVELOPING INTO PLATE 218 The elbows and knees were also treated in this way, and in the fourteenth century, the principle of armour had changed to a set of separate plates fastened together by links. This was the evolution from mail to plate armour. A description of Charlemagne as he appeared on the field of battle, in his armour, is given by the Monk of St. Gall, his biographer, and is dramatic. "Then could be seen the iron Charles, helmeted with an iron helmet, his iron breast and broad shoulders protected with an iron breast plate; an iron spear was raised on high in his left hand, his right always rested on his unconquered iron falchion.... His shield was all of iron, his charger was iron coloured and iron hearted.... The fields and open spaces were filled with iron; a people harder than iron paid universal homage to the hardness of iron. The horror of the dungeon seemed less than the bright gleam of iron. 'Oh, the iron! woe for the iron!' was the confused cry that rose from the citizens. The strong walls shook at the sight of iron: the resolution of young and old fell before the iron." By the end of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, whole suits of armour were almost invariable, and then came the opportunity for the goldsmith, the damascener, and the niellist. Some of the leading artists, especially in Italy, were enlisted in designing and decorating what might be called the armour-de-luxe of the warrior princes! The armour of horses was as ornate as that of the riders. The sword was always the most imposingly ornamented part of a knight's equipment, and underwent various modifications which are interesting to note. At first, it was the only weapon invariably at hand: it was enormously large, and two hands were necessary in wielding it. As the arquebuse came into use, the sword took a secondary position: it became lighter and smaller. And ever since 1510 it is a curious fact that the decorations of swords have been designed to be examined when the sword hangs with the point down; the earlier ornament was adapted to being seen at its best when the sword was held upright, as in action. Perhaps the later theory of decoration is more sensible, for it is certain that neither a warrior nor his opponent could have occasion to admire fine decoration at a time when the sword was drawn! That the arts should be employed to satisfy the eye in times of peace, sufficed the later wearers of ornamented swords. Toledo blades have always been famous, and rank first among the steel knives of the world. Even in Roman times, and of course under the Moors, Toledo led in this department. The process of making a Toledo blade was as follows. There was a special fine white sand on the banks of the Tagus, which was used to sprinkle on the blade when it was red hot, before it was sent on to the forger's. When the blade was red hot from being steeped four-fifths of its length in flame, it was dropped point first into a bucket of water. If it was not perfectly straight when it was withdrawn, it was beaten into shape, more sand being first put upon it. After this the remaining fifth of the blade was subjected to the fire, and was rubbed with suet while red hot; the final polish of the whole sword was produced by emery powder on wooden wheels. DAMASCENED HELMET 219 Damascening was a favourite method of ornamenting choice suits of armour, and was also applied to bronzes, cabinets, and such pieces of metal as lent themselves to decoration. The process began like niello: little channels for the design were hollowed out, in the iron or bronze, and then a wire of brass, silver, or gold, was laid in the groove, and beaten into place, being afterwards polished until the surface was uniform all over. One great feature of the art was to sink the incision a little broader at the base than at the top, and then to force the softer metal in, so that, by this undercutting, it was held firmly in place. Cellini tells of his first view of damascened steel blades. "I chanced," he says, "to become possessed of certain little Turkish daggers, the handle of which together with the guard and blade were ornamented with beautiful Oriental leaves, engraved with a chisel, and inlaid with gold. This kind of work differed materially from any which I had as yet practised or attempted, nevertheless I was seized with a great desire to try my hand at it, and I succeeded so admirably that I produced articles infinitely finer and more solid than those of the Turks." Benvenuto had such a humble opinion of his own powers! But when one considers the pains and labour expended upon the arts of damascening and niello, one regrets that the workers had not been inspired to attempt dentistry, and save so much unnecessary individual suffering! On the Sword of Boabdil are many inscriptions, among them, "God is clement and merciful," and "God is gifted with the best memory." No two sentiments could be better calculated to keep a conqueror from undue excesses. Mercia was a headquarters for steel and other metals in the thirteenth century. Seville was even then famous for its steel, also, and in the words of a contemporary writer, "the steel which is made in Seville is most excellent; it would take too much time to enumerate the delicate objects of every kind which are made in this town." King Don Pedro, in his will, in the fourteenth century, bequeathes to his son, his "Castilian sword, which I had made here in Seville, ornamented with stones and gold." Swords were baptized; they were named, and seemed to have a veritable personality of their own. The sword of Charlemagne was christened "Joyeuse," while we all know of Arthur's Excalibur; Roland's sword was called Durandel. Saragossa steel was esteemed for helmets, and the sword of James of Arragon in 1230, "a very good sword, and lucky to those who handled it," was from Monzon. The Cid's sword was similar, and named Tizona. There is a story of a Jew who went to the grave of the Cid to steal his sword, which, according to custom, was interred with the owner: the corpse is said to have resented the intrusion by unsheathing the weapon, which miracle so amazed the Jew that he turned Christian! MOORISH SWORD German armour was popular. Cologne swords were great favourites in England. King Arthur's sword was one of these,- "For all of Coleyne was the blade And all the hilt of precious stone." 220 In the British Museum is a wonderful example of a wooden shield, painted on a gesso ground, the subject being a Knight kneeling before a lady, and the motto: "Vous ou la mort." These wooden shields were used in Germany until the end of Maximilian's reign. The helmet, or Heaume, entirely concealed the face, so that for purposes of identification, heraldic badges and shields were displayed. Later, crests were also used on the helmets, for the same purpose. Certain armourers were very well known in their day, and were as famous as artists in other branches. William Austin made a superb suit for the Earl of Warwick, while Thomas Stevyns was the coppersmith who worked on the same, and Bartholomew Lambspring was the polisher. There was a famous master-armourer at Greenwich in the days of Elizabeth, named Jacob: some important arms of that period bear the inscription, "Made by me Jacob." There is some question whether he was the same man as Jacob Topf who came from Innsbruck, and became court armourer in England in 1575. Another famous smith was William Pickering, who made exquisitely ornate suits of what we might call full-dress armour. Colossal cannon were made: two celebrated guns may be seen, the monster at Ghent, called Mad Meg, and the huge cannon at Edinburgh Castle, Mons Meg, dating from 1476. These guns are composed of steel coils or spirals, afterwards welded into a solid mass instead of being cast. They are mammoth examples of the art of the blacksmith and the forge. In Germany cannon were made of bronze, and these were simply cast. Cross bows obtained great favour in Spain, even after the arquebuse had come into use. It was considered a safer weapon to the one who used it. An old writer in 1644 remarks, "It has never been known that a man's life has been lost by breaking the string or cord, two things which are dangerous, but not to a considerable extent,"... and he goes on "once set, its shot is secure, which is not the case with the arquebus, which often misses fire." There is a letter from Ambassador Salimas to the King of Hungary, in which he says: "I went to Balbastro and there occupied myself in making a pair of cross bows for your Majesty. I believe they will satisfy the desires which were required... as your Majesty is annoyed when they do not go off as you wish." It would seem as though his Majesty's "annoyance" was justifiable; imagine any one dependent upon the shot of a cross bow, and then having the weapon fail to "go off!" Nothing could be more discouraging. ENAMELLED SUIT OF ARMOUR There is a contemporary treatise which is full of interest, entitled, "How a Man shall be Armed at his ease when he shall Fight on Foot." It certainly was a good deal of a contract to render a knight comfortable in spite of the fact that he could see or breathe only imperfectly, and was weighted down by iron at every point. This complete covering with metal added much to the actual noise of battle. Froissart alludes to the fact that in the battle of Rosebeque, in 1382, the hammering on the helmets made a noise which was 221 equal to that of all the armourers of Paris and Brussels working together. And yet the strength needed to sport such accoutrements seems to have been supplied. Leon Alberti of Florence, when clad in a full suit of armour, could spring with ease upon a galloping horse, and it is related that Aldobrandini, even with his right arm disabled, could cleave straight through his opponent's helmet and head, down to the collar bone, with a single stroke! One of the richest suits of armour in the world is to be seen at Windsor; it is of Italian workmanship, and is made of steel, blued and gilded, with wonderfully minute decorations of damascene and appliqué work. This most ornate armour was made chiefly for show, and not for the field: for knights to appear in their official capacity, and for jousting at tournaments, which were practically social events. In the days of Henry VIII. a chronicler tells of a jouster who "tourneyed in harneyse all of gilt from the head piece to the sabattons." Many had "tassels of fine gold" on their suits. Italian weapons called "lasquenets" were very deadly. In a letter from Albrecht Dürer to Pirckheimer, he alludes to them, as having "roncions with two hundred and eighteen points: and if they pink a man with any of these, the man is dead, as they are all poisoned." Bronze is composed of copper with an alloy of about eight or ten per cent. of tin. The fusing of these two metals produces the brown glossy substance called bronze, which is so different from either of them. The art of the bronze caster is a very old and interesting one. The method of proceeding has varied very little with the centuries. A statue to be cast either in silver or bronze would be treated in the following manner. A general semblance of the finished work was first set up in clay; then over this a layer of wax was laid, as thick as the final bronze was intended to be. The wax was then worked with tools and by hand until it took on the exact form designed for the finished product. Then a crust of clay was laid over the wax; on this were added other coatings of clay, until quite a thick shell of clay surrounded the wax. The whole was then subjected to fervent heat, and the wax all melted out, leaving a space between the core and the outer shell. Into this space the liquid bronze was poured, and after it had cooled and hardened the outer shell was broken off, leaving the statue in bronze exactly as the wax had been. Cellini relates an experience in Paris, with an old man eighty years of age, one of the most famous bronze casters whom he had engaged to assist him in his work for Francis I. Something went wrong with the furnace, and the poor old man was so upset and "got into such a stew" that he fell upon the floor, and Benvenuto picked him up fancying him to be dead: "Howbeit," explains Cellini, "I had a great beaker of the choicest wine brought him,... I mixed a large bumper of wine for the old man, who was groaning away like anything, and I bade him most winning-wise to drink, and said: 'Drink, my father, for in yonder furnace has entered in a devil, who is making all this mischief, and, look you, we'll just let him bide there a couple of days, till he gets jolly well bored, and then will you and I together in the space of three hours firing, make this metal run, like so much batter, and without any exertion at all.' The old fellow drank and then I brought him some 222 little dainties to eat: meat pasties they were, nicely peppered, and I made him take down four full goblets of wine. He was a man quite out of the ordinary, this, and a most lovable old thing, and what with my caresses and the virtue of the wine, I found him soon moaning away as much with joy as he had moaned before with grief." Cellini displayed in this incident his belief in the great principle that the artist should find pleasure in his work in order to impart to that work a really satisfactory quality, and did exactly the right thing at the right minute; instead of trusting to a faltering effort in a disheartened man, he cheered the old bronze founder up to such a pitch that after a day or two the work was completed with triumph and joy to both. In the famous statue of Perseus, Cellini experienced much difficulty in keeping the metal liquid. The account of this thrilling experience, told in his matchless autobiography, is too long to quote at this point; an interesting item, however, should be noted. Cellini used pewter as a solvent in the bronze which had hardened in the furnace. "Apprehending that the cause of it was, that the fusibility of the metal was impaired, by the violence of the fire," he says, "I ordered all my dishes and porringers, which were in number about two hundred, to be placed one by one before my tubes, and part of them to be thrown into the furnace, upon which all present perceived that my bronze was completely dissolved, and that my mould was filling," and, such was the relief that even the loss of the entire pewter service of the family was sustained with equanimity; the family, "without delay, procured earthen vessels to supply the place of the pewter dishes and porringers, and we all dined together very cheerfully." Edgecumb Staley, in the "Guilds of Florence," speaks of the "pewter fattened Perseus:" this is worthy of Carlyle. Early Britons cast statues in brass. Speed tells of King Cadwollo, who died in 677, being buried "at St. Martin's church near Ludgate, his image great and terrible, triumphantly riding on horseback, artificially cast in brass, was placed on the Western gate of the city, to the further fear and terror of the Saxons!" In 1562 Bartolomeo Morel, who made the celebrated statue of the Giralda Tower in Seville, executed a fifteen branched candelabrum for the Cathedral. It is a rich Renaissance design, in remarkably chaste and good lines, and holds fifteen statuettes, which are displaced to make room for the candles only during the last few days of Lent. A curious form of mediaeval trinket was the perfume ball; this consisted of a perforated ball of copper or brass, often ornamented with damascene, and intended to contain incense to perfume the air, the balls being suspended. The earliest metal statuary in England was rendered in latten, a mixed metal of a yellow colour, the exact recipe for which has not survived. The recumbent effigies of Henry III. and Queen Eleanor are made of latten, and the tomb of the Black Prince in Canterbury is the same, beautifully chased. Many of these and other tombs were probably originally covered with gilding, painting, and enamel. The effigies of Richard II. and his queen, Anne of Bohemia, were made during the reign of the monarch; a contemporary document states that "Sir John Innocent paid another part 223 of a certain indenture made between the King and Nicolas Broker and Geoffrey Prest, coppersmiths of London, for the making of two images, likenesses of the King and Queen, of copper and latten, gilded upon the said marble tomb." There are many examples of bronze gates in ecclesiastical architecture. The gates of St. Paolo Fuori le Mura in Rome were made in 1070, in Constantinople, by Stauracius the Founder. Many authorities think that those at St. Mark's in Venice were similarly produced. The bronze doors in Rome are composed of fifty-four small designs, not in relief, but with the outlines of the subjects inlaid with silver. The doors are in Byzantine taste. The bronze doors at Hildesheim differ from nearly all other such portals, in the elemental principle of design. Instead of being divided into small panels, they are simply blocked off into seven long horizontal compartments on each side, and then filled with a pictorial arrangement of separate figures; only three or four in each panel, widely spaced, and on a background of very low relief. The figures are applied, at scattered distances apart, and are in unusually high modelling, in some cases being almost detached from the door. The effect is curious and interesting rather than strictly beautiful, on the whole; but in detail many of the figures display rare power of plastic skill, proportion, and action. They are, at any rate, very individual: there are no other doors at all like them. They are the work of Bishop Bernward. Unquestionably, one of the greatest achievements in bronze of any age is the pair of gates by Lorenzo Ghiberti on the Baptistery in Florence. Twenty-one years were devoted to their making, by Ghiberti and his assistants, with the stipulation that all figures in the design were to be personal work of the master, the assistants only attending to secondary details. The doors were in place in April, 1424. The competition for the Baptistery doors reads like a romance, and is familiar to most people who know anything of historic art. When the young Ghiberti heard that the competition was open to all, he determined to go to Florence and work for the prize; in his own words: "When my friends wrote to me that the governors of the Baptistery were sending for masters whose skill in bronze working they wished to prove, BRUNELLESCHI'S COMPETITIVE PANEL and that from all Italian lands many maestri were coming, to place themselves in this strife of talent, I could no longer forbear, and asked leave of Sig. Malatesta, who let me depart." The result of the competition is also given in Ghiberti's words: "The palm of victory was conceded to me by all judges, and by those who competed with me. Universally all the glory was given to me without any exception." GHIBERTI'S COMPETITIVE PANEL 224 Symonds considers the first gate a supreme accomplishment in bronze casting, but criticizes the other, and usually more admired gate, as "overstepping the limits that separate sculpture from painting," by "massing together figures in multitudes at three and sometimes four distances. He tried to make a place in bas-relief for perspective." Sir Joshua Reynolds finds fault with Ghiberti, also, for working at variance with the severity of sculptural treatment, by distributing small figures in a spacious landscape framework. It was not really in accordance with the limitations of his material to treat a bronze casting as Ghiberti treated it, and his example has led many men of inferior genius astray, although there is no use in denying that Ghiberti himself was clever enough to defy the usual standards and rules. Fonts were sometimes made in bronze. There is such a one at Liege cast by Lambert Patras, which stands upon twelve oxen. It is decorated with reliefs from the Gospels. This artist, Patras, was a native of Dinant, and lived in the twelfth century. The bronze font in Hildesheim is among the most interesting late Romanesque examples in Germany. It is a large deep basin entirely covered with enrichment of Scriptural scenes, and is supported by four kneeling figures, typical of the four Rivers of Paradise. The conical cover is also covered with Scriptural scenes, and surmounted by a foliate knob. Among the figures with which the font is covered are the Cardinal Virtues, flanked by their patron saints. Didron considers this a most important piece of bronze from an iconographic point of view theologically and poetically. The archaic qualities of the figures are fascinating and sometimes diverting. In the scene of the Baptism of Christ the water is positively trained to flow upwards in pyramidal form, in order to reach nearly to the waist, while at either side it recedes to the ground level again,-it has an ingenuous and almost startling suddenness in the rising of its flood! An interesting comment upon the prevalence of early national forms may be deduced, when one observes that on the table, at the Last Supper, there lies a perfectly shaped pretzel! The great bronze column constructed by St. Bernward at Hildesheim has the Life of Christ represented in consecutive scenes in a spiral form, like those ornamenting the column of Trajan. Down by Bernward's grave there is a spring which is said to cure cripples and rheumatics. Peasants visit Hildesheim on saints' days in order to drink of it, and frequently, after one of these visitations, crutches are found abandoned near by. Saxony was famous for its bronze founders, and work was sent forth, from this country, in the twelfth century, all over Europe. FONT AT HILDESHEIM, 12TH CENTURY Orcagna's tabernacle at Or San Michele is, as Symonds has expressed it, "a monumental jewel," and "an epitome of the minor arts of mediaeval Italy." On it one sees bas-relief carving, intaglios, statuettes, mosaic, the lapidary's art in agate; enamels, and gilded glass, and yet all in good taste and harmony. The sculpture is properly subordinated to the architectonic principle, and one can understand how it is not only the work of a goldsmith, but of a painter. 225 Of all bronze workers, perhaps Peter Vischer is the best known and is certainly one of the best deserving of his wide fame. Peter Vischer was born about the same time as Quentin Matsys, between 1460 and 1470. He was the most important metal worker in Germany. He and Adam Kraft, of whom mention will be made when we come to deal with sculptural carving, were brought up together as boys, and "when older boys, went with one another on all holidays, acting still as though they were apprentices together." Vischer's normal expression was in Gothic form. His first design for the wonderful shrine of St. Sebald in Nuremberg was made by him in 1488, and is still preserved in Vienna. It is a pure late-Gothic canopy, and I cannot help regretting that the execution was delayed until popular taste demanded more concession towards the Renaissance, and it was resolved in 1507, "to have the Shrine of St. Sebald made of brass." Therefore, although the general lines continue to hold a Gothic semblance, the shrine has many Renaissance features. Regret, however, is almost morbid, in relation to such a perfect work of art. Italian feeling is evident throughout, and the wealth of detail in figures and foliate forms is magnificent. The centre of interest is the little portrait statuette of Peter Vischer himself, according to his biographer, "as he looked, and as he daily went about and worked in the foundry." Though Peter had not been to Italy himself, his son Hermann had visited the historic land, and had brought home "artistic things that he sketched and drew, which delighted his old father, and were of great use to his brothers." Peter Vischer had three sons, who all followed him in the craft. His workshop must have been an ideal institution in its line. Some remnants of Gothic grotesque fancy are to be seen on the shrine, although treated outwardly with Renaissance feeling. A realistic life-sized mouse may be seen in one place, just as if it had run out to inspect the work; and the numbers of little tipsy "putti" who disport themselves in all attitudes, in perilous positions on narrow ledges, are full of merry humour. The metal of St. Sebald's shrine is left as it came from the casting, and owes much of its charm to the lack of filing, polishing, and pointing usual in such monuments. The molten living expression is retained. Only the details and spirit of the figures are Renaissance; the Gothic plan is hardly disturbed, and the whole monument is pleasing in proportion. The figures are exquisite, especially that of St. Peter. PORTRAIT STATUETTE OF PETER VISCHER A great Renaissance work in Germany was the grille of the Rathaus made for Nuremberg by Peter Vischer the Younger. It was of bronze, the symmetrical diapered form of the open work part being supported by chaste and dignified columns of the Corinthian order. It was first designed by Peter Vischer the Elder, and revised and changed by the whole family after Hermann's return from Rome with his Renaissance notions. It was sold in 1806 to a merchant for old metal; later it was traced to the south of France, where it disappeared. 226 Another famous bronze of Nuremberg is the well-known "Goose Man" fountain, by Labenwolf. Every traveller has seen the quaint half-foolish little man, as he stands there holding his two geese who politely turn away their heads in order to produce the streams of water! With the best bronzes, and with steel used for decorative purposes, the original casting has frequently been only for general form, the whole of the surface finishing being done with a shaping tool, by hand, giving the appearance of a carving in bronze or steel. In Japanese bronzes this is particularly felt. The classical bronzes were evidently perfect mosaics of different colours, in metal. Pliny tells of a bronze figure of a dying woman, who was represented as having changed colour at the extremities, the fusion of the different shades of bronze being disguised by anklets, bracelets, and a necklace! A curious and very disagreeable work of art, we should say. One sometimes sees in antique fragments ivory or silver eyeballs, and hair and eyelashes made separately in thin strips and coils of metal; while occasionally the depression of the edge of the lips is sufficient to give rise to the opinion that a thin veneer of copper was applied to give colour. The bronze effigies of Henry III. and Eleanor, at Westminster, were the work of a goldsmith, Master William Torel, and are therefore finer in quality and are in some respects superior to the average casting in bronze. Torel worked at the palace, and the statues were cast in "cire perdue" process, being executed in the churchyard itself. They are considered among the finest bronzes of the period extant. Gilding and enamel were often used in bronze effigies. Splendid bronzes, cast each in a single flow, are the recumbent figures of two bishops at Amiens; they are of the thirteenth century. Ruskin says: "They are the only two bronze tombs of her men of the great ages left in France." An old document speaks of the "moulds and imagines" which were in use for casting effigy portraits, in 1394. Another good English bronze is that of Richard Beauchamp at Warwick, the work of Thomas Stevens, which has been alluded to. In Westminster Abbey, the effigy of Aymer de Valence, dating from 1296, is of copper, but it is not cast; it is of beaten metal, and is enamelled, probably at Limoges. Bells and cannon are among the objects of actual utility which were cast in bronze. Statues as a rule came later. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England, bronze was used to such an extent, that one authority suggested that it should be called the "Age of Bronze." Primitive bells were made of cast iron riveted together: one of these is at the Cologne museum, and the Irish bells were largely of this description. A great bell was presented to the Cathedral of Chartres in 1028, by a donor named Jean, which affords little clue to his personality. This bell weighed over two tons. There is considerable interest attaching to the subject of the making of bells in the Middle Ages. Even in domestic life bells played quite a part; it was the custom to ring a bell when the bath was ready and to announce meals, as well as to summon the servitors. 227 Church bells, both large and small, were in use in England by 670, according to Bede. They were also carried by missionaries; those good saints, Patrick and Cuthbert, announced their coming like town criers! The shrine of St. Patrick's bell has been already described. Bells used to be regarded with a superstitious awe, and were supposed to have the ability to dispel evil spirits, which were exorcised with "bell, book, and candle." The bell of St. Patrick, inside the great shrine, is composed of two pieces of sheet iron, one of which forms the face, and being turned over the top, descends about half-way down the other side, where it meets the second sheet. Both are bent along the edges so as to form the sides of the bell, and they are both secured by rivets. A rude handle is similarly attached to the top. A quaint account is given by the Monk of St. Gall about a bell ordered by Charlemagne. Charlemagne having admired the tone of a certain bell, the founder, named Tancho, said to him: "Lord Emperor, give orders that a great weight of copper be brought to me that I may refine it, and instead of tin give me as much silver as I need,-a hundred pounds at least,-and I will cast such a bell for you that this will seem dumb in comparison to it." Charlemagne ordered the required amount of silver to be sent to the founder, who was, however, a great knave. He did not use the silver at all, but, laying it aside for his own use, he employed tin as usual in the bell, knowing that it would make a very fair tone, and counting on the Emperor's not observing the difference. The Emperor was glad when it was ready to be heard, and ordered it to be hung, and the clapper attached. "That was soon done," says the chronicler, "and then the warden of the church, the attendants, and even the boys of the place, tried, one after the other, to make the bell sound. But all was in vain; and so at last the knavish maker of the bell came up, seized the rope, and pulled at the bell. When, lo! and behold! down from on high came the brazen mass; fell on the very head of the cheating brass founder; killed him on the spot; and passed straight through his carcase and crashed to the ground.... When the aforementioned weight of silver was found, Charles ordered it to be distributed among the poorest servants of the palace." There is record of bronze bells in Valencia as early as 622, and an ancient mortar was found near Monzon, in the ruins of a castle which had formerly belonged to the Arabs. Round the edge of this mortar was the inscription: "Complete blessing, and ever increasing happiness and prosperity of every kind and an elevated and happy social position for its owner." The mortar was richly ornamented. At Croyland, Abbot Egebric "caused to be made two great bells which he named Bartholomew and Bethelmus, two of middle size, called Turketul and Tatwyn, and two lesser, Pega and Bega." Also at Croyland were placed "two little bells which Fergus the brass worker of St. Botolph's had lately given," in the church tower, "until better times," when the monks expressed a hope that they should improve all their buildings and appointments. Oil that dropped from the framework on which church bells were hung was regarded in Florence as a panacea for various ailments. People who suffered from certain complaints were rubbed with this oil, and fully believed that it helped them. 228 The curfew bell was a famous institution; but the name was not originally applied to the bell itself. This leads to another curious bit of domestic metal. The popular idea of a curfew is that of a bell; a bell was undoubtedly rung at the curfew hour, and was called by its name; but the actual curfew (or couvre feu) was an article made of copper, shaped not unlike a deep "blower," which was used in order to extinguish the fire when the bell rang. There are a few specimens in England of these curious covers: they stood about ten to fifteen inches high, with a handle at the top, and closed in on three sides, open at the back. The embers were shovelled close to the back of the hearth, and the curfew, with the open side against the back of the chimney, was placed over them, thus excluding all air. Horace Walpole owned, at Strawberry Hill, a famous old curfew, in copper, elaborately decorated with vines and the York rose. A COPPER "CURFEW" SANCTUARY KNOCKER, DURHAM CATHEDRAL The Sanctuary knocker at Durham Cathedral is an important example of bronze work, probably of the same age as the Cathedral door on which it is fastened. They both date from about the eleventh century. Ever since 740, in the Episcopate of Cynewulf, criminals were allowed to claim Sanctuary in Durham. When this knocker was sounded, the door was opened, by two porters who had their accommodations always in two little chambers over the door, and for a certain length of time the criminal was under the protection of the Church. In speaking of the properties of lead, the old English Bartholomew says: "Of uncleanness of impure brimstone, lead hath a manner of neshness, and smircheth his hand who toucheth it... a man may wipe off the uncleanness, but always it is lead, although it seemeth silver." Weather vanes, made often of lead, were sometimes quite elaborate. One of the most important pieces of lead work in art is the figure of an angel on the chewet of Ste. Chapelle in Paris. Originally this figure was intended to be so controlled by clockwork that it would turn around once in the course of the twenty-four hours, so that his attitude of benediction should be directed to all four quarters of the city; but this was not practicable, and the angel is stationary. The cock on the weather vane at Winchester was described as early as the tenth century, in the Life of St. Swithin, by the scribe Walstan. He calls it "a cock of elegant form, and all resplendent and shining with gold who occupies the summit of the tower. He regards the world from on high, he commands all the country. Before him extend the stars of the North, and all the constellations of the zodiac. Under his superb feet he holds the sceptre of the law, and he sees under him all the people of Winchester. The other cocks are humble subjects of this one, whom they see thus raised in mid-air above them: he scorns the winds, that bring the rains, and, turning, he presents to them his back. The terrible efforts of the tempest do not annoy him, he receives with courage either snow or lightning, alone he watches the sun as it sets and dips into the ocean: and it is he who gives it its first salute on its rising again. The traveller who sees him afar off, fixes on him his gaze; forgetting the road he has still to 229 follow, he forgets his fatigues: he advances with renewed ardour. While he is in reality a long way from the end, his eyes deceive him, and he thinks that he has arrived." Quite a practical tribute to a weather cock! The fact that leaden roofs were placed on all churches and monastic buildings in the Middle Ages, accounts in part for their utter destruction in case of fire; for it is easy to see how impossible it would be to enter a building in order to save anything, if, to the terror of flames, were added the horror of a leaden shower of molten metal proceeding from every part of the roof at once! If a church once caught fire, that was its end, as a rule. The invention of clocks, on the principle of cog-wheels and weights, is attributed to a monk, named Gerbert, who died in 1013. He had been instructor to King Robert, and was made Bishop of Rheims, later becoming Pope Sylvester II. Clocks at first were large affairs in public places. Portable clocks were said to have been first made by Carovage, in 1480. ANGLO SAXON CRUCIFIX OF LEAD An interesting specimen of mediaeval clock work is the old Dijon time keeper, which still performs its office, and which is a privilege to watch at high noon. Twelve times the bell is struck: first by a man, who turns decorously with his hammer, and then by a woman, who does the same. This staunch couple have worked for their living for many centuries. Froissart alludes to this clock, saying: "The Duke of Burgundy caused to be carried away from the market place at Courtray a clock that struck the hours, one of the finest which could be found on either side of the sea: and he conveyed it by pieces in carts, and the bell also, which clock was brought and carted into the town of Dijon, in Burgundy, where it was deposited and put up, and there strikes the twenty-four hours between day and night." This was in 1382, and there is no knowing how long the clock may have performed its functions in Courtray prior to its removal to Dijon. The great clock at Nuremberg shows a procession of the Seven Electors, who come out of one door, pass in front of the throne, each turning and doing obeisance, and pass on through another door. It is quite imposing, at noon, to watch this procession repeated twelve times. The clock is called the Mannleinlauffen. In the Statutes of Francis I., there is a clause stating that clockmakers as well as goldsmiths were authorized to employ in their work gold, silver, and all other materials. In Wells Cathedral is a curious clock, on which is a figure of a monarch, like Charles I., seated above the bell, which he kicks with his heels when the hour comes round. He is popularly known as "Jack Blandiver." This clock came originally from Glastonbury. On the hour a little tournament takes place, a race of little mounted knights rushing out in circles and charging each other vigorously. 230 Pugin regrets the meaningless designs used by early Victorian clock makers. He calls attention to the fact that "it is not unusual to cast a Roman warrior in a flying chariot, round one of the wheels of which on close inspection the hours may be descried; or the whole front of a cathedral church reduced to a few inches in height, with the clock face occupying the position of a magnificent rose window!" This is not overdrawn; taste has suffered many vicissitudes in the course of time, but we hope that the future will hold more beauty for us in the familiar articles of the household than have prevailed at some periods in the past. CHAPTER V TAPESTRY A study of textiles is often subdivided into tapestry, carpet-weaving, mechanical weaving of fabrics of a lighter weight, and embroidery. These headings are useful to observe in our researches in the mediaeval processes connected with the loom and the needle. Tapestry, as we popularly think of it, in great rectangular wall-hangings with rather florid figures from Scriptural scenes, commonly dates from the sixteenth century or later, so that it is out of our scope to study its manufacture on an extensive scale. But there are earlier tapestries, much more restrained in design, and more interesting and frequently more beautiful. Of these earlier works there is less profusion, for the examples are rare and precious, and seldom come into the market nowadays. The later looms were of course more prolific as the technical facilities increased. But a study of the craft as it began gives one all that is necessary for a proper appreciation of the art of tapestry weaving. The earliest European work with which we have to concern ourselves is the Bayeux tapestry. Although this is really needlework, it is usually treated as tapestry, and there seems to be no special reason for departing from the custom. Some authorities state that the Bayeux tapestry was made by the Empress Matilda, daughter of Henry I., while others consider it the achievement of Queen Matilda, the wife of William the Conqueror. She is recorded to have sat quietly awaiting her lord's coming while she embroidered this quaint souvenir of his prowess in conquest. A veritable mediaeval Penelope, it is claimed that she directed her ladies in this work, which is thoroughly Saxon in feeling and costuming. It is undoubtedly the most interesting remaining piece of needlework of the eleventh century, and it would be delightful if one could believe the legend of its construction. Its attribution to Queen Matilda is very generally doubted by those who have devoted much thought to the subject. Mr. Frank Rede Fowke gives it as his opinion, based on a number of arguments too long to quote in this place, that the tapestry was not made by Queen Matilda, but was ordered by Bishop Odo as an ornament for the nave of Bayeux Cathedral, and was executed by Norman craftsmen in that city. Dr. Rock also favours the theory that it was worked by order of Bishop Odo. Odo was a brother of William the Conqueror and might easily have been interested in preserving so important a record of the Battle of Hastings. Dr. Rock states that the tradition that Queen Matilda executed the tapestry did not arise at all until 1730. 231 The work is on linen, executed in worsteds. Fowke gives the length as two hundred and thirty feet, while it is only nineteen inches wide,-a long narrow strip of embroidery, in many colours on a cream white ground. In all, there are six hundred and twenty-three figures, besides two hundred horses and dogs, five hundred and five animals, thirty-seven buildings, forty-one ships, forty-nine trees, making in all the astonishing number of one thousand five hundred and twelve objects! The colours are in varying shades of blue, green, red and yellow worsted. The colours are used as a child employs crayons; just as they come to hand. When a needleful of one thread was used up, the next was taken, apparently quite irrespective of the colour or shade. Thus, a green horse will be seen standing on red legs, and a red horse will sport a blue stocking! Mr. J. L. Hayes believes that these varicoloured animals are planned purposely: that two legs of a green horse are rendered in red on the further side, to indicate perspective, the same principle accounting for two blue legs on a yellow horse! DETAIL, BAYEUX TAPESTRY The buildings are drawn in a very primitive way, without consideration for size or proportion. The solid part of the embroidery is couched on, while much of the work is only rendered in outline. But the spirited little figures are full of action, and suggest those in the celebrated Utrecht Psalter. Sometimes one figure will be as high as the whole width of the material, while again, the people will be tiny. In the scene representing the burial of Edward the Confessor, in Westminster Abbey, the roof of the church is several inches lower than the bier which is borne on the shoulders of men nearly as tall as the tower! The naïve treatment of details is delicious. Harold, when about to embark, steps with bare legs into the tide: the water is laid out in the form of a hill of waves, in order to indicate that it gets deeper later on. It might serve as an illustration of the Red Sea humping up for the benefit of the Israelites! The curious little stunted figure with a bald head, in the group of the conference of messengers, would appear to be an abortive attempt to portray a person at some distance-he is drawn much smaller than the others to suggest that he is quite out of hearing! This seems to have been the only attempt at rendering the sense of perspective. Then comes a mysterious little lady in a kind of shrine, to whom a clerk is making curious advances; to the casual observer it would appear that the gentleman is patting her on the cheek, but we are informed by Thierry that this represents an embroideress, and that the clerk is in the act of ordering the Bayeux Tapestry itself! Conjecture is swamped concerning the real intention of this group, and no certain diagnosis has ever been pronounced! The Countess of Wilton sees in this group "a female in a sort of porch, with a clergyman in the act of pronouncing a benediction upon her!" Every one to his taste. A little farther on there is another unexplained figure: that of a man with his feet crossed, swinging joyously on a rope from the top of a tower. 232 Soon after the Crowning of Harold, may be seen a crowd of people gazing at an astronomic phenomenon which has been described by an old chronicler as a "hairy star." It is recorded as "a blazing starre" such as "never appears but as a prognostic of afterclaps," and again, as "dreadful to be seen, with bloudie haires, and all over rough and shagged at the top." Another author complacently explains that comets "were made to the end that the ethereal regions might not be more void of monsters than the ocean is of whales and other great thieving fish!" A very literal interpretation of this "hairy star" has been here embroidered, carefully fitted out with cog-wheels and all the paraphernalia of a conventional mediaeval comet. In the scenes dealing with the preparation of the army and the arrangement of their food, there occurs the lassooing of an ox; the amount of action concentrated in this group is really wonderful. The ox, springing clear of the ground, with all his legs gathered up under him, turns his horned head, which is set on an unduly long neck, for the purpose of inspecting his pursuers. No better origin for the ancient tradition of the cow who jumped over the moon could be adduced. And what shall we say of the acrobatic antics of Leofwine and Gyrth when meeting their deaths in battle? These warriors are turning elaborate handsprings in their last moments, while horses are represented as performing such somersaults that they are practically inverted. In the border of this part of the tapestry, soldiers are seen stripping off the coats of mail from the dead warriors on the battle-field; this they do by turning the tunic inside out and pulling it off at the head, and the resulting attitudes of the victims are quaint and realistic in the extreme! The border has been appropriately described as "a layer of dead men." In the tenth and eleventh centuries one of the regular petitions in the Litany was "From the fury of the Normans Good Lord Deliver us." The Bayeux Tapestry was designated, in 1746, as "the noblest monument in the world relating to our old English History." It has passed through most trying vicissitudes, having been used in war time as a canvas covering to a transport wagon, among other experiences. For centuries this precious treasure was neglected and not understood. In his "Tour" M. Ducarel states: "The priests... to whom we addressed ourselves for a sight of this remarkable piece of antiquity, knew nothing of it; the circumstance only of its being annually hung up in their church led them to understand what we wanted, no person then knowing that the object of our inquiries any ways related to the Conqueror." This was in the nineteenth century. Anglo-Saxon women spent much of their time in embroidering. Edith, Queen of Edward the Confessor, was quite noted for her needlework, which was sometimes used to decorate the state robes of the king. Formerly there existed at Ely Cathedral a work very like the Bayeux Tapestry, recording the deeds of the heroic Brihtnoth, the East Saxon, who was slain in 991, fighting the Danish forces. His wife rendered his history in needlework, and presented it to Ely. Unhappily there are no remains of this interesting monument now existing. The nearest thing to the Bayeux Tapestry in general texture and style is perhaps a twelfth century work in the Cathedral at Gerona, a little over four yards square, which is worked in 233 crewels on linen, and is ornamented with scenes of an Oriental and primitive character, taken mainly from the story of Genesis. These tapestries come under the head of needlework. The tapestries made on looms proceed upon a different principle, and are woven instead of embroidered. Two kinds of looms were used under varying conditions in different places; high warp looms, or Haute Lisse, and low warp looms, known as Basse Lisse. The general method of making tapestries on a high warp loom has been much the same for many centuries. The warp is stretched vertically in two sets, every other thread being first forward and then back in the setting. M. Lacordaire, late Director of the Gobelins, writes as follows: "The workman takes a spindle filled with worsted or silk... he stops off the weft thread and fastens it to the warp, to the left of the space to be occupied by the colour he has in hand; then, by passing his left hand between the back and the front threads, he separates those that are to be covered with colours; with his right hand, having passed it through the same threads, he reaches to the left side, for the spindle which he brings back to the right; his left hand, then, seizing hold of the warp, brings the back threads to the front, while the right hand thrusts the spindle back to the point whence it started." When a new colour is to be introduced, the artist takes a new shuttle. He fastens his thread on the wrong side of the tapestry (the side on which he works) and repeats the process just described on the strings stretched up and down before him, like harp strings; the work is commenced at the lower part, and worked upwards, so that, when this strictly "hand weaving" is accomplished, it may be crowded down into place by means of a kind of ivory comb, so adjusted that the teeth fit between the warp threads. In tapestry weaving, the warp could be of any inferior but strong thread, for, by the nature of the work, only the woof was visible, the warp being quite hidden and incorporated into the texture under the close lying stitches which met and dove-tailed over it. The worker on a low loom does not see the right side of the work at all, unless he lifts the loom, which is a difficult undertaking. On a high loom, it is only necessary for the worker to go around to the front in order to see exactly what he is doing. The design is put below the work, however, in a low loom, and the work is thus practically traced as the tapestry proceeds. On account of the limitations of the human arm in reaching, the low warp tapestry requires more seams than does that made on the "haute lisse" loom, the pieces being individually smaller. One whole division of the workmen in tapestry establishments used to be known as the "fine drawers," whose whole duty was to join the different pieces together, and also to repair worn tapestries, inserting new stitches for restorations. Tapestry repairing was a necessary craft; at Rheims some tapestries were restored by Jacquemire de Bergeres; these hangings had been "much damaged by dogs, rats, mice, and other beasts." It is not stated where they had been hung! High warp looms have been known in Europe certainly since the ninth century. There is an order extant, from the Bishop of Auxerre, who died in 840, for some "carpets for his church." In 890 the monks of Saumur were manufacturing tapestries. Beautiful textiles 234 had been used to ornament the Church of St. Denis as early as 630, but there is no proof that these were actually tapestries. There is a legend that in 732 a tapestry establishment existed in the district between Tours and Poitiers. At Beauvais, too, the weavers of arras were settled at the time of the Norman ravages. King Dagobert was a mediaeval patron of arts in France. He had the walls of St. Denis (which he built) hung with rich tapestries set with pearls and wrought with gold. At the monastery of St. Florent, at Saumur in 985, the monks wove tapestries, using floral and animal forms in their designs. At Poitiers there was quite a flourishing factory as early as 1025. Tapestry was probably first made in France, to any considerable extent, then, in the ninth century. The historian of the monastery of Saumur tells us an interesting incident in connection with the works there. The Abbot of St. Florent had placed a magnificent order for "curtains, canopies, hangings, bench covers, and other ornaments,... and he caused to be, made two pieces of tapestry of large size and admirable quality, representing elephants." While these were about to be commenced, the aforesaid abbot was called away on a journey. The ecclesiastic who remained issued a command that the tapestries should be made with a woof different from that which they habitually used. "Well," said they, "in the absence of the good abbot we will not discontinue our employment; but as you thwart us, we shall make quite a different kind of fabric." So they deliberately set to work to make square carpets with silver lions on a red ground, with a red and white border of various animals! Abbot William was fortunately pleased with the result, and used lions interchangeably with elephants thereafter in his decorations. At the ninth century tapestry manufactory in Poitiers, an amusing correspondence took place between the Count of Poitou and an Italian bishop, in 1025. Poitou was at that time noted for its fine breed of mules. The Italian bishop wrote to ask the count to send him one mule and one tapestry,-as he expressed it, "both equally marvellous." The count replied with spirit: "I cannot send you what you ask, because for a mule to merit the epithet marvellous, he would have to have horns, or three tails, or five legs, and this I should not be able to find. I shall have to content myself with sending you the best that I can procure!" In 992 the Abbey of Croyland, in England, owned "two large foot cloths woven with lions, to be laid before the high altar on great festivals, and two shorter ones trailed all over with flowers, for the feast days of the Apostles." Under Church auspices in the twelfth century, the tapestry industry rose to its most splendid perfection. When the secular looms were started, the original beauty of the work was retained for a considerable time; in the tenth century German craftsmen worked as individuals, independently of Guilds or organizations. In the thirteenth century the work was in a flourishing condition in France, where both looms were in use. The upright loom is still used at the Gobelin factory. As an adjunct to the stained glass windows in churches, there never was a texture more harmonious than good mediaeval tapestry. In 1260 the best tapestries in France were made by the Church exclusively; in 1461 King René of Anjou bequeathed a magnificent 235 tapestry in twenty-seven subjects representing the Apocalypse, to "the church of Monsieur St. Maurice," at Angers. Although tapestry was made in larger quantities during the Renaissance, the mediaeval designs are better adapted to the material. The royal chambers of the Kings of England were hung with tapestry, and it was the designated duty of the Chamberlain to see to such adornment. In 1294 there is mention of a special artist in tapestry, who lived near Winchester; his name was Sewald, and he was further known as "le tapenyr," which, according to M. G. Thomson, signifies tapestrier. One is led to believe that tapestries were used as church adornments before they were introduced into dwellings; for it was said, when Queen Eleanor of Castile had her bedroom hung with tapestries, that "it was like a church." At Westminster, a writer of 1631 alludes to the "cloths of Arras which adorn the choir." Sets of tapestries to hang entire apartments were known as "Hallings." Among the tapestries which belonged to Charles V. was one "worked with towers, fallow bucks and does, to put over the King's boat." Among early recorded tapestries are those mentioned in the inventory of Philip the Bold, in 1404, while that of Philip the Good tells of his specimens, in 1420. Nothing can well be imagined more charming than the description of a tapestried chamber in 1418; the room being finished in white was decorated with paroquets and damsels playing harps. This work was accomplished for the Duchess of Bavaria by the tapestry maker, Jean of Florence. Flanders tapestry was famous in the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. Arras particularly was the town celebrated for the beauty of its work. This famous manufactory was founded prior to 1350, as there is mention of work of that period. Before the town became known as Arras, while it still retained its original name, Nomenticum, the weavers were famous who worked there. In 282 A. D. the woven cloaks of Nomenticum were spoken of by Flavius Vopiscus. The earliest record of genuine Arras tapestry occurs in an order from the Countess of Artois in 1313, when she directs her receiver "de faire faire six tapis à Arras." Among the craftsmen at Arras in 1389 was a Saracen, named Jehan de Croisètes, and in 1378 there was a worker by the name of Huwart Wallois. Several of its workmen emigrated to Lille, in the fifteenth century, among them one Simon Lamoury and another, Jehan de Rausart. In 1419 the Council Chamber of Ypres was ornamented with splendid tapestries by François de Wechter, who designed them, and had them executed by Arras workmen. The Van Eycks and Memlinc also designed tapestries, and there is no doubt that the art would have continued to show a more consistent regard for the demands of the material if Raphael had never executed his brilliant cartoons. The effort to be Raphaelesque ruined the effect of many a noble piece of technique, after that. In 1302 a body of ten craftsmen formed a Corporation in Paris. The names of several workmen at Lille have been handed down to us. In 1318 Jehan Orghet is recorded, and in 236 1368, Willaume, a high-warp worker. Penalties for false work were extreme. One of the best known workers in France was Bataille, who was closely followed by one Dourdain. FLEMISH TAPESTRY, "THE PRODIGAL SON" A famous Arras tapestry was made in 1386 by a weaver of the name of Michel Bernard. It measured over two hundred and eighty-five square yards, and represented the battle of Roosebecke. At this time a tapestry worker lived, named Jehanne Aghehe, one of the first attested women's names in connection with this art. In the Treasury of the church of Douai there is mention of three cushions made of high loom tapestry presented in 1386 by "la demoiselle Englise." It is not known who this young lady may have been. France and Flanders made the most desirable tapestries in the fourteenth century. In Italy the art had little vogue until the fifteenth. Very little tapestry was made in Spain in the Middle Ages,-the earliest well known maker was named Gutierrez, in the time of Philip IV. The picture by Velasquez, known as "The Weavers," represents the interior of his manufactory. A table cloth in mediaeval times was called a "carpett:" these were often very ornate, and it is useful to know that their use was not for floor covering, for the inventories often mention "carpetts" worked with pearls and silver tissue, which would have been singularly inappropriate. The Arabs introduced the art of carpet weaving into Spain. An Oriental, Edrisi, writing in the twelfth century, says that such carpets were made at that time in Alicante, as could not be produced elsewhere, owing to certain qualities in both air and water which greatly benefited the wool used in their manufacture. In the Travels of Jean Lagrange, the author says that all carpets of Smyrna and Caramania are woven by women. As soon as a girl can hold a shuttle, they stretch cords between two trees, to make a warp, and then they give her all colours of wools, and leave her to her own devices. They tell her, "It is for you to make your own dowry." Then, according to the inborn art instinct of the child, she begins her carpet. Naturally, traditions and association with others engaged in the same pursuit assist in the scheme and arrangement; usually the carpet is not finished until she is old enough to marry. "Then," continues Lagrange, "two masters, two purchasers, present themselves; the one carries off a carpet, and the other a wife." Edward II. of England owned a tapestry probably of English make, described as "a green hanging of wool wove with figures of Kings and Earls upon it." There was a roistering Britisher called John le Tappistere, who was complained of by certain people near Oxford, as having seized Master John of Shoreditch, and assaulted and imprisoned him, confiscating his goods and charging him fifty pounds for ransom. It is not stated what the gentleman from Shoreditch had done thus to bring down upon him the wrath of John the weaver! 237 English weavers had rather the reputation of being fighters: in 1340 one George le Tapicier murdered John le Dextre of Leicester; while Giles de la Hyde also slew Thomas Tapicier in 1385. Possibly these rows occurred on account of a practical infringement upon the manufacturing rights of others as set down in the rules of the Company. There was a woman in Finch Lane who produced tapestry, with a cotton back, "after the manner of the works of Arras:" this was considered a dishonest business, and the work was ordered to be burnt. Roger van der Weyden designed a set of tapestries representing the History of Herkinbald, the stern uncle who, with his own hand, beheaded his nephew for wronging a young woman. Upon his death-bed, Herkinbald refused to confess this act as a sin, claiming the murder to have been justifiable and a positive virtue. Apparently the Higher Powers were on his side, too, for, when the priest refused the Eucharist to the impertinent Herkinbald, it is related that the Host descended by a miracle and entered the lips of the dying man. A dramatic story, of which van der Weyden made the most, in designing his wonderfully decorative tapestries. The originals were lost, but similar copies remain. As early as 1441 tapestries were executed in Oudenardes; usually these were composed of green foliage, and known as "verdures." In time the names "verdure" and "Oudenarde" became interchangeably associated with this class of tapestry. They represented woodland and hunting scenes, and were also called "Tapestry verde," and are alluded to by Chaucer. Curious symbolic subjects were often used: for instance, for a set of hangings for a banquet hall, what could be more whimsically appropriate than the representation of "Dinner," giving a feast to "Good Company," while "Banquet" and "Maladies" attack the guests! This scene is followed by the arrest of "Souper" and "Banquet" by "Experience," who condemns them both to die for their cruel treatment of the Feasters! There is an old poem written by a monk of Chester, named Bradshaw, in which a large hall decorated with tapestries is described as follows: "All herbs and flowers, fair and sweet, Were strawed in halls, and layd under their feet; Cloths of gold, and arras were hanged on the wall, Depainted with pictures and stories manifold Well wrought and craftely." A set of tapestries was made by some of the monks of Troyes, who worked upon the high loom, displaying scenes from the Life of the Magdalen. This task was evidently not devoid of the lighter elements, for in the bill, the good brothers made charge for such wine as they drank "when they consulted together in regard to the life of the Saint in question!" Among the most interesting tapestries are those representing scenes from the Wars of Troy, in South Kensington. They are crowded with detail, and in this respect exhibit most 238 satisfactorily the beauties of the craft, which is enhanced by small intricacies, and rendered less impressive when treated in broad masses of unrelieved woven colour. Another magnificent set, bearing similar characteristics, is the History of Clovis at Rheims. There is a fascinating set of English tapestries representing the Seasons, at Hatfield: these were probably woven at Barcheston. The detail of minute animal and vegetable forms- the flora and fauna, as it were in worsted-are unique for their conscientious finish. They almost amount to catalogues of plants and beasts. The one which displays Summer is a herbal and a Noah's Ark turned loose about a full-sized Classical Deity, who presides in the centre of the composition. Among English makers of tapestries was a workman named John Bakes, who was paid the magnificent sum of twelve pence a day, while in an entry in another document he is said to have received only fourpence daily. The Hunting Tapestries belonging to the Duke of Devonshire are as perfect specimens as any that exist of the best period of the art. They are represented in colour in W. G. Thomson's admirable work on Tapestries, and are thus available to most readers in some public collection. Another splendidly decorative specimen is at Hampton Court, being a series of the Seven Deadly Sins. They measure about twenty-five by thirteen feet each, and are worked in heavy wools and silks. As technical facility developed, certain weaknesses began to show themselves. Tapestry weavers had their favourite figures, which, to save themselves trouble, they would often substitute for others in the original design. Arras tapestries were no longer made in the sixteenth century, and the best work of that time was accomplished in the Netherlands. About 1540 Brussels probably stood at the head of the list of cities famous for the production of these costly textiles. The Raphael tapestries were made there, by Peter van Aelst, under the order of Pope Leo X. They were executed in the space of four years, being finished in 1519, only a year before Raphael's death. In the sixteenth century the Brussels workers began to make certain "short cuts" not quite legitimate in an art of the highest standing, such as touching up the faces with liquid dyes, and using the same to enhance the effect after the work was finished. A law was passed that this must not be done on any tapestry worth more than twelve pence a yard. In spite of this trickery, the Netherlandish tapestries led all others in popularity in that century. It was almost invariable, especially in Flemish work, to treat Scriptural subjects as dressed in the costume of the period in which the tapestry happened to be made. When one sees the Prodigal Son attired in a delightful Flemish costume of a well-appointed dandy, and Adam presented to God the Father, both being clothed in Netherlandish 239 garments suitable for Burgomasters of the sixteenth century, then we can believe that the following description, quoted by the Countess of Wilton, is hardly overdrawn. "In a corner of the apartment stood a bed, the tapestry of which was enwrought with gaudy colours, representing Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.... Adam was presenting our first mother with a large yellow apple gathered from a tree which scarcely reached his knee.... To the left of Eve appeared a church, and a dark robed gentleman holding something in his hand which looked like a pin cushion, but doubtless was intended for a book; he seemed pointing to the holy edifice, as if reminding them that they were not yet married! On the ground lay the rib, out of which Eve, who stood a head higher than Adam, had been formed: both of them were very respectably clothed in the ancient Saxon costume; even the angel wore breeches, which, being blue, contrasted well with his flaming red wings." In France, the leading tapestry works were at Tours in the early sixteenth century. A Flemish weaver, Jean Duval, started the work there in 1540. Until 1552 he and his three sons laboured together with great results, and they left a large number of craftsmen to follow in their footsteps. In Italy the art had almost died out in the early sixteenth century, but revived in full and florid force under the Raphaelesque influence. King René of Anjou collected tapestries so assiduously that the care and repairing of them occupied the whole time of a staff of workers, who were employed steadily, living in the palace, and sleeping at night in the various apartments in which the hangings were especially costly. Queen Jeanne, the mother of Henri IV., was a skilled worker in tapestry. To quote Miss Freer in the Life of Jeanne d'Albret, "During the hours which the queen allowed herself for relaxation, she worked tapestry and discoursed with some one of the learned men whom she protected." This queen was of an active mental calibre and one to whom physical repose was most repugnant. She was a regular and pious attendant at church, but sitting still was torture to her, and listening to the droning sermons put her to sleep. So, with a courage to be admired, Jeanne "demanded permission from the Synod to work tapestry during the sermon. This request was granted; from thenceforth Queen Jeanne, bending decorously over her tapestry frame, and busy with her needle, gave due attention." The Chateau of Blois, during the reign of Louis XII. and Ann of Brittany, is described as being regally appointed with tapestries: "Those which were hung in the apartments of the king and queen," says the chronicler, "were all full of gold; and the tapestries and embroideries of cloth of gold and of silk had others beneath them ornamented with personages and histories as those were above. Indeed, there was so great a number of rich tapestries, velvet carpets, and bed coverings, of gold and silk, that there was not a chamber, hall, or wardrobe, that was not full." 240 In an inventory of the Princess of Burgundy there occurs this curious description of a tapestry: "The three tapestries of the Church Militant, wrought in gold, whereon may be seen represented God Almighty seated in majesty, and around him many cardinals, and below him many princes who present to him a church." Household luxury in England is indicated by a quaint writer in 1586: "In noblemen's houses," he says, "it is not rare to see abundance of arras, rich hangings, of tapestrie... Turkie wood, pewter, brasse, and fine linen.... In times past the costly furniture stayed there, whereas now it is discarded yet lower, even unto the inferior artificers, and many farmers... have for the most part learned to garnish their beds with tapestries and hangings, and their tables with carpetts and fine napery." Henry VIII. was devoted to tapestry collecting, also. An agent who was buying for him in the Netherlands in 1538, wrote to the king: "I have made a stay in my hands of two hundred ells of goodly tapestry; there hath not been brought this twenty year eny so good for the price." Henry VIII. had in his large collection many subjects, among them such characteristic pieces as: "ten peeces of the rich story of King David" (in which Bathsheba doubtless played an important part), "seven peeces of the Stories of Ladies," "A peece with a man and woman and a flagon," "A peece of verdure... having poppinjays at the nether corners," "One peece of Susannah," "Six fine new tapestries of the History of Helena and Paris." A set of six "verdure" tapestries was owned by Cardinal Wolsey, which "served for the hanging of Durham Hall of inferior days." The hangings in a hall in Chester are described as depicting "Adam, Noe, and his Shyppe." In 1563 a monk of Canterbury was mentioned as a tapestry weaver. At York, Norwich, and other cities, were also to be found "Arras Workers" during the sixteenth century. There was an amusing law suit in 1598, which was brought by a gentleman, Charles Lister, against one Mrs. Bridges, for accepting from him, on the understanding of an engagement in marriage, a suite of tapestries for her apartment. He sued for the return of his gifts! Among the State Papers of James I., there is a letter in which the King remarks "Sir Francis Crane desires to know if my baby will have him to-hasten the making of that suite of tapestry that he commanded him." In Florence, the art flourished under the Medici. In 1546 a regular Academy of instruction in tapestry weaving was set up, under the direction of Flemish masters. All the leading artists of the Golden Age furnished designs which, though frequently inappropriate for being rendered in textile, were fine pictures, at any rate. In Venice, too, there were work shops, but the influence of Italy was Flemish in every case so far as technical instruction was concerned. The most celebrated artists of the Renaissance made cartoons: Raphael, Giulio Romano, Jouvenet, Le Brun, and numerous others, in various countries. 241 242 Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson The Arts and Crafts Movement The Movement, passing under the name of 'Arts and Crafts,' admits of many definitions. It may be associated with the movement of ideas, characteristic of the close of the last century, and be defined to be an effort to bring it under the influence of art as the supreme mode in which human activity of all kinds expresses itself at its highest and best; in which case the so-called 'Arts and Crafts Exhibitions' would be but a symbolic presentment of a whole by a part, itself incapable of presentment: or it may be associated with the revival, by a few artists, of hand-craft as opposed to machine-craft, and be defined to be the insistence on the worth of man's hand, a unique tool in danger of being lost in the substitution for it of highly organized and intricate machinery, or of emotional as distinguished from merely skilled and technical labour: or again, it may be defined to be both the one and the other, and to have a wider scope than either; as for example, it may be defined to constitute a movement to bring all the activities of the human spirit under the influence of one idea, the idea that life is creation, and should be creative in modes of art, & that this creation should extend to all the ideas of science and of social organization, to all the ideas and habits begotten of a grandiose and consciously conceived procession of humanity, out of nothing and nowhere, into everything and everywhere, as well as to the merely instrumental occupations thereof at any particular moment. No definition, however, is orthodox or to be propounded with authority: each has its apostles: and besides the definitions attempted above, there are still others, some of them, indeed, concerning themselves only with the facilities to be afforded to the craftsman for the exhibition, advertisement, and sale of his wares. Nor do I propose, myself, to propound one at this stage of my description of the movement. I merely adumbrate the shifting goal, as it may have presented itself to the minds of the men engaged in the movement, that you may know at the outset, in vision, those far-off heights, which they, or some of them, essayed not only themselves to climb, but to make all mankind also to climb. It is to the movement itself that I will first ask your attention. Art is one, though manifold, and when the Royal Academy of Arts, in spite of many protests, continued to restrict its Academic Exhibitions to Painting, Sculpture, and Abstract Architecture, a body of protesters came together, not any longer to protest only, but this time to constitute a society of exhibitioners who should widen the academic conception of art, and open its exhibitions to all forms of art, provided only that the form was of art, born of the imagination, and destined to touch the imagination. Such a society was in due time formed, and, under the name of the 'Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society,' initiated the wider movement which, from itself as source, has spread 243 all the world over, and created a new interest. The arts and crafts have been born again, and, in a new sense, occupy the attention of mankind. The first exhibition was held in the New Gallery, in London, in the autumn of 1888. It is not necessary to dwell on the exhibits which stand enumerated in the catalogue now before me. It is sufficient to say that whereas each exhibit, standing alone, might have been seen without any sense of a new 'movement' being on foot, the accumulation, under one roof and idea, of so many different and differently conceived things of beauty, made a marked impression on the public imagination, & unmistakably heralded the advent of a new force into society, at once creative and classificatory. Old things, long since done, were to be put into new relations, & upon a higher plane, and all new work was to be conceived of as convergent upon one end, the dignity and sweetness of life, and the workman-artist or craftsman-was to derive therefrom his measure of happiness & delight. And that work, which for the world had lost all association with human initiative & solicitude, was to be made to resume that intimate relation, and the workman himself to be recalled into the assembly of those who are consciously striving to the acknowledged end. The workmen contributing to the creation of a work were to be thenceforward named its author, and to have their names inscribed upon the great roll of the world's ever visible record. Such appeared to be the new movement of which the first exhibition of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society was the first overt act. Besides the enumeration and description of exhibits, the catalogue contained a preface by the President, Walter Crane; a notice of lectures to be given in connexion with the exhibition; and a number of 'Notes' upon various arts & crafts written by men who, as stated in the preface, were associated with the subjects of which they treated, not in the literary sense only, but as actual designers and workmen. The object of the lectures was stated to be twofold: (1) To set out the aims of the Society; and (2) by demonstration & otherwise, to direct attention to the processes employed in the arts and crafts, and so to lay a foundation for a just appreciation, both of the processes themselves, and of their importance as methods of expression in design. And here I may intercalate an extract from a book which appeared at that time, as it throws a light upon, indeed constituted, one of the main impulses to which was due the inception of the lectures. I refer to 'Scientific Religion, or Higher Possibilities of Life and Practice through the Operation of Natural Causes,' by Laurence Oliphant; and the passage to which I ask your attention is the following: 'He can no longer be esteemed an excellent workman who can only work excellently! for his work, to prove that it is living, must be generative, and it will not be generative unless the workman has his mind trained to a clear conception of his own methods and their connexion with the laws of Nature: and unless he can impart that understanding by word of mouth: unless, in fine, the sum of his experience, while he is constantly increasing it, is 244 as constantly forced by him into mental shape'-or, as I might add, into imaginative shape and association. When I read this I seemed to see all crafts and manufactures and commerce crystal clear and capable of statement, so that, even as they stood outlined and embodied to the corporeal eye, so they should shine in all their processes and relations clear as in sunlight to the eye of intelligence: and it was in such wise that when the time came I proposed to the Committee of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society that Lectures should form a part of the purpose of the Society, and should accompany and be delivered in the building of the Exhibition (1) to convert the implicit mental processes involved in the exercise of a craft into explicit articulate utterance capable of making such mental processes intelligible at once to the worker himself and to the spectator interested to know, and (2) to widen the horizons of the workers and to set their work in due relation to the other crafts and processes with which it was associated, and to the forces of Nature upon which they and it depended. Lectures, as announced in the Catalogue, were given in connexion with the first exhibition by William Morris on Tapestry, by George Simmonds on Modelling and Sculpture, by Emery Walker on Letterpress Printing, by myself on Bookbinding, and by Walter Crane on Design. Perhaps, in view of the results which have flowed from it, and at this distance of time, I may for a moment dwell particularly on the lecture on Letterpress Printing. It was at my urgent request that Mr. Walker overcame his reluctance to speak in public, and I therefore claim for myself the honour of being the real author of The Kelmscott Press! for it was in consequence of this lecture given by Mr. Emery Walker at my request, and the lantern slides of beautiful old founts of type and MS. by which it was illustrated, that William Morris was induced to turn again his attention to printing, and this time, as a printer, to produce, in friendly collaboration with Mr. Walker, that splendid series of printed books which has inspired printing with a new life, and enriched the libraries of the world with books as nobly conceived and executed as any that distinguish the great age of Printing itself. The 'Notes,' to which reference has already been made, occupied a little more than a third of the Catalogue, and treated of: Textiles, Decorative Painting and Design, Wall papers, Fictiles, Metal work, Stone and Wood carving, Furniture, Stained and Table glass, Printing, and Bookbinding: 245 and as they contain the doctrines of the new movement so far as it was applicable to the crafts of which they treated, it may be worth while to turn over a few pages and to see what those doctrines are. Mr. Morris, who writes on Textiles, opens at once on his subject. 'There are,' he says, 'several ways of ornamenting a woven cloth.' He then enumerates the ways as follows: (1) Real Tapestry; (2) Carpet weaving; (3) Mechanical weaving; (4) Printing or Painting; and (5) Embroidery; and proceeds under each head to lay down principles, accordant with the particular method, for the production of the ornament required, and concludes his note with some general maxims applicable to all the methods alike, as thus, 'Never forget the material you are working with, and try always to use it for doing what it can do best: if you feel yourself hampered by the material in which you are working, instead of being helped by it, you have so far not learned your business, any more than a would-be poet has, who complains of the hardship of writing in measure and rhyme. The special limitations of the material should be a pleasure to you, not a hindrance: a designer, therefore, should always thoroughly understand the processes of the special manufacture he is dealing with, or the result will be a mere tour-de-force. On the other hand it is the pleasure in understanding the capabilities of a special material, and using them for suggesting (not imitating) natural beauty and incident, that gives the raison d'être of decorative art.' In a note on wall papers Mr. Crane goes into useful detail as to the conditions of successful pattern making for their decoration. As, however, our purpose is only with the more general lines and direction of the movement, we need not follow him into this detail, and I will leave it with the remark that this and kindred notes by him and others show sufficiently that the writers did not confine themselves to general principles difficult of application without intermediary illustration, but addressed themselves vigorously to the actual practice of the craft treated of, and sought to quicken it into life at once by Principle and Precept, by Example, and by Trade Recipe. Continuing our exploration of the Notes, we next come upon an interesting one by the late-alas! too many of the early workers in the movement have ceased to be with us, and I feel here tempted to break off, and, in sympathy with that sublime chapter of Ecclesiasticus which I have recently been printing, to commemorate 'our fathers that begat us,' the great Dead. Such as did bear rule in their kingdoms, Men renowned for their power, Giving counsel by their understanding, And declaring prophecies. Burne-Jones, William Morris, Madox Brown-'these be of them that have left a name behind them to declare their praises.' And some there be that have no memorial save the 246 memory of them enshrined in the hearts of them that knew them. But adequately to commemorate were too great an enterprise, and I return to my immediate topic; and yet, as I turn, one of great name, greater than all whom I have named, impels me to pause and to praise him, him who begat the begetters, him who was 'as the morning star in the midst of a cloud, as the moon at the full,' Ruskin! To him we all owe whatever of impulse is in us toward that goal whose outline it is my business to describe to you to-night. To Ruskin, then, all honour, all praise, to Ruskin, the great Dead who in life, living, begat us! To resume. The Note on Fictiles, by the late G. T. Robinson, carries us to the dawn of art and craft, for, as says Mr. Robinson, 'Man's first needs in domestic life, his first utensils, his first efforts at civilization, came from the mother earth, whose son he believed himself to be, and his ashes or his bones returned to earth, enshrined in the fictile vases he created from their common clay. And these fictiles,' continues Mr. Robinson, 'tell the story of his first art instincts, and of his yearnings to unite beauty with use. They tell, too, more of his history than is enshrined and preserved by any other art; for almost all we know of many a people and many a tongue is learned from the fictile record, the sole relic of past civilizations which the destroyer Time has left us. Begun in the simplest fashion, fashioned by the simplest means, created from the commonest materials, fictile Art grew with man's intellectual growth, and fictile Craft grew with his knowledge-the latter conquering in this our day, when the craftsman strangles the artist alike in this as in all other arts. To truly foster and forward an art,' concludes Mr. Robinson, 'the craftsman and the artist should, where possible, be united; or, at least, should work in common, as was the case when, in each civilization, the Potter's Art flourished most, and when the scientific base was of less account than was the art employed upon it.' It is not necessary for our purpose to go through the succeeding Notes, or to say more than that, assuming the principles which underlie all great art, they deal in their several ways with a number of crafts which the creative ingenuity of man, working, as described by Mr. Robinson, for the satisfaction & for the adornment of the satisfaction of his wants, imaginative and real, has in different circumstances and at different times invented, and seek, amid the confusion which has arisen in the abuse of these crafts by pseudocraftsmen and artists, who have approached them from the outside, to restore to them their sanity, alike in process and in choice of material, in aim, and in the expression of beauty and of purpose. The master-principle, however, to be deduced from the Notes may be here restated in the words of Mr. Morris, for it is a principle applicable to the whole range of imaginative creation: 'Never forget the material you are working with, and try always to use it for doing what it can do best.' To the catalogues of the two following exhibitions more Notes were added, and finally, in 1893, all the Notes were put together and published in one volume, entitled 'Art and 247 Crafts Essays by Members of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society,' with a Prefatory Note by William Morris. This volume was reprinted in 1899. In the Prefatory Note Mr. Morris sets out the purpose of the Society as understood by him-too narrowly, I think. 'It is,' he says, 'to help the conscious cultivation of art and to interest the public in it, by calling special attention to that,' in his judgement, 'really most important side of art, the decoration of utilities by furnishing them with genuine artistic finish in place of trade finish.' To this I shall return by and by. After the Prefatory Note comes the Table of Contents of the volume. And looking for a moment down the long list of tongues in which Craft, under the guidance of Art, is striving to speak afresh, how can one fail to lament the time now past and to wish it back, when these tongues, now the language, and too often the quite artificial language, of a professional and specially trained class, were but the vernacular of one common language, widely and familiarly spoken, and craftmanship itself but 'joy in widest commonalty spread'; joy in working in all the various ways of imaginative invention, upon all sorts and kinds of material, material brought from afar, sought with danger or grown in pastoral peace; joy in making and devising things of use and of beauty, homely things, princely things, things of beauty for beauty's adornment, noble things for a city's; all amid Nature's own, yet unsullied, immense creativeness, all for the admiration and use of vigorous emergent and vanishing generations, whose common bond in life was the thing so made, its beauty and its use. We may now leave the explanatory preludes, the Notes, and turn to the Lectures, to which reference has already been made. They were given, I think, at each Exhibition, except the last, and in the Exhibition itself, and were meant, besides the objects officially announced in the catalogues, to widen the scope of the Exhibitions, otherwise restricted to things of minor importance only, and to extend the attention of the public to things not present in the Exhibition, though to be imagined and thought of in association with it. And here we may expect to find, and shall find, as I shall show, a more extended view of the aims of the Society as set out by itself. It is matter of regret that, save one series presently to be mentioned, and a lecture by William Morris, no record has been kept of them. They were delivered, and are now perhaps forgotten. And yet how stimulating, how interesting the circumstances of some of them! William Morris, on a raised platform, surrounded by products of the loom, at work upon a model loom specially constructed from his design-now in the Victoria and Albert Museum-to show how the wools were inwrought, and the visions of his brain fixed in colour and in form; Walter Crane, backed by a great black board, wiped clean, alas! when one would have had it remain for ever still adorned by the spontaneous creations of his inexhaustible brain; George Simmonds, demonstrating to us the uses of the thumb, and how under its pressure things of clay rose into life; Lewis Day, designing as he spoke, and bringing before our inner eye, as well as the outer, the patterns of Asia and of Europe in stage after stage of development; Selwyn Image, by his studied elocution, taking us back to the church which he had left, but with sweet reasonableness depicting before its shadowy background the bright new Jerusalem toward which his 248 enfranchised imagination burned; Lethaby, entrancing us with the cities which crowned the hills of Europe, or sat in white on the still seashore, or mirrored in the waters of Italy: all vanished, save the memory of them! And here, dwelling in memory on the past, may I not recall the fervour, the enthusiasm of those first years, the ready invention, the design, born of the moment and the occasion, for catalogue, rules and room; and one design that caused so much, long-forgotten commotion-the design by the President, to be hung over the out-door entrance to the gallery, of artist and craftsman, hand in hand! But how recall them to those who knew them not? Impossible! I mention them only in piety to that holy time, when we circled about the founts, and played, of that great movement which is now the world's! As I write these words I am reminded of that definition to which I said I would return. 'The aim of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society'-I repeat the definition-'is to help the conscious cultivation of art, and the attempt to interest the public in it, by calling special attention to that really most important side of art, the decoration of utilities, by furnishing them with genuine artistic finish in place of trade finish.' Surely this is a strange misapprehension & restriction of the aims of the Society! Were that the only aim, then the movement was not what I imagined it to be, and still imagine, nor would it be worthy of your attention to-day, not to speak of the world's! In the same preface in which this definition occurs there is a passage which I passed over at the time, but which at this stage of our history it is important that I should notice. 'We can,' says the writer, 'expect no general impulse towards the fine arts till civilization has been transformed into some other condition, the details of which we cannot see.' And it was therefore-because we could expect no general impulse towards the fine arts, until this obstacle was removed, that we were in the meantime, and this was to be our 'movement,' to help the conscious cultivation of art, which the writer at the same time says is no art at all, and the attempt to interest the public in it! Here I am at issue with the writer, and would submit that this general impulse must precede and itself bring about the transformation: and further that this general impulse is precisely and already the impulse constituting that great movement dubbed 'Arts and Crafts,' and that its aim is not merely to help the conscious cultivation of art pending the transformation, but itself to bring the transformation about. In fact, I submit that in the intention of the founders, or in the intention of some of them, Art is, or should be, an agent in the production of noble life, and not merely an executant dependent upon and presupposing its existence. As some evidence of this intention, I may adduce the following conclusion from an unpublished Report of the Committee to the Members of the Society. 'In conclusion, the Committee would venture for a moment to take their stand upon the higher plane of the Society, and to say a word or two upon the cause which in the opinion of the Committee constitutes the claim of the Society to attention and support. For a small body of artists to 249 band themselves together, simply to produce and to exhibit objects of art for an age which is not indeed essentially inartistic, but which, by the accident of the failure of the imagination to grasp and mould its dominant realities, has not had revealed to itself the splendour of its opportunities, or of the meaning of Beauty in association with Industry and Science-for a small body of Artists to band themselves together for such a purpose is indeed something; but it is to leave unfulfilled, unessayed, the main function, in this and every age, of all great Art and of all great Artists. Such Art and such Artists would and should, whilst still producing, as best they may, if not "things of immortal Beauty," at least "things of their own," strive at the same time to understand the true drift and possible Ideal of the Age in which they live. It is the function of an Artist to divine the Ideal of an age, and to express it in manifold Form. The Ideal of the present age has been neglected by him. The actuality has been left as an actuality, unredeemed by ideas, to those whose sole business it is to carry on, and to constitute, the actuality of the age. But there is above and beyond every Actuality an Ideal upon which it can and should be modelled. It is this Ideal which it is the function of the Artist-which it is the function of this Society-to discover and to express, in great things as in small, in small as in great: and the Ideal, expressed, is then as a great Light to those who sit in darkness; it is a light towards which the soul of Actuality turns; it is that which, aspired to, gives to an age dignity and immortality, and converts the work of the hand and brain from work that is sordid and mean, to work that is imaginative and noble.' But the claim does not rest on unpublished records alone. This I think will be apparent if attention be given to the one series of Lectures which has survived their delivery, and been published. I refer to 'Art and Life, and the Building and Decoration of Cities,' a title which of itself carries the scope of the Society beyond all the possible Exhibits of an Exhibition. The object of these Lectures is thus explicitly stated by the Lecturer on 'Art and Life,' which introduces the series, and his statement is borne witness to throughout by all the other speakers. The statement to which I refer is as follows: 'I now begin the first of a series of Lectures having for their object generally the extension of the conception of Art, and more especially the application of the idea of Beauty to the organization and decoration of our greater cities.' And of his own Lecture he says: 'I desire to extend the conception of Art, and to apply it to life as a whole; or, inversely, to make the whole of life, in all its grandeur, as well as in all its delightful detail, the object of the action of Art and Craft.' And in the course of it the Lecturer thus defined what seemed to him the function of art in this extended conception of its meaning. 'Art implies a certain lofty environment, and is itself an adjustment to that environment of all that can be done by mankind within it. Art as a great function of human imagination is not the creation of isolated objects of beauty, though isolated objects of beauty may indeed be created by art, and, in themselves, resume all that is beautiful, orderly, restful, and stable in the artist's conception of that environment. Still less is it, what some may seem to imagine, the objects of beauty themselves. Art is, or should be, alive, alive and a universal stimulus. It is that spirit of order and seemliness, of dignity and sublimity, which, acting in unison with the great 250 procession of natural forces in their own orderly evolution, tends to make out of a chaos of egotistic passions, a great power of disinterested social action; which tends to make out of the seemingly meaningless satisfaction of our daily and annual needs, a beautiful exercise of our innumerable gifts of fancy and invention, an exercise which may be its own exceeding great reward, and come to seem to be indeed the end for which the needs were made.' It was thus and thus that, in the inception of the Society, we sought to 'divine' the Ideal of the Age, and to give effect to it in the work which lay immediately to hand. But it was not to such work only that the ideal was to be extended. 'Nor,' continues the Lecturer, 'do I stop at deeds to be done in such unison. I demand in the name of art-and here is especially the note and distinction of Modern Art as I conceive it-I demand in the name of art, that Science itself, that knowledge, shall enter upon a new phase, and itself become, in the mind of man, the imaginative Re-presentment of the universe without, an analytical knowledge of which has hitherto been its one sole and supreme aim.' Again, in another matter, bearing upon the aims of the Society & of the movement, I must, albeit reluctantly, dissent from the view taken of it by my friend Mr. Morris. It will help, perhaps, to clear up the situation. In an article 'On the revival of Handicraft' published in the 'Fortnightly' in 1888, the year of the first Arts and Crafts Exhibition, an article interesting and stimulating as are all the writings of Mr. Morris, there is, amid so much that is admirable, a statement which would sweep away the whole of modern life, & render the achievement of its distinctive ideal an impossible dream-a consummation devoutly to be wished! we can indeed imagine Mr. Morris to exclaim. 'As a condition of life,' Mr. Morris says, 'production by machinery is wholly an evil.' But surely this is altogether questionable. Surely things there are, the production of which by machinery may be wholly right, things which, moreover, when so produced may be wholly right also, and in their rightness even works of art. Great works of art are useful works, greatly done. In the same article Mr. Morris, deprecating, as I would do, the exclusive production of Beauty for Beauty's sake, goes on to say, as I would wish to say: 'In the great times of art, conscious effort was used to produce great works for the glory of the city, the triumph of the Church, the exaltation of the citizens, the quickening of the devotion of the faithful: even in the higher art, the record of history, the instruction of men alive or to live hereafter, was the aim rather than beauty.' But if in the great times of art, great works were the aims of great art rather than beauty, why to-day should not great works still be the aim of great art rather than beauty? Is today wanting in great works waiting to be done in the great way, which is the way of art? or is it that to-day all great works are machinery only, and so an evil, incapable of artistic treatment? 251 But, to take a simple instance, one short of that complete Transformation of Life which should be the main aim of art, to take a practical problem of modern life, the supply of water to a great city, consider the grandiose character of the problem, despite, or shall we say in consequence of, the mighty mechanical agencies now involved in its solution-the fetching of the water from the far-off pure source, the hills of rain & of snow, to the city of the plain and the sun, its storage and distribution, by the immense pulsations of machinery, day & night, year after year. Is not that a noble problem for the imaginative faculties of the artist, only less noble than the supply of the Holy Spirit from the pulpit or the altar, to the massed congregation at their feet, or than the summons from Tower or Belfry to unity of action or of prayer, of the separated members of a city or a Church? But such a problem, since the great days of Rome, is not thought of in connexion with art, nor is the grandiose character of its solution so much as dreamed of-the carriage of the water to the city, one long triumphant procession: and within the city what noble works! first in importance, the pumping station; how prosaic it sounds! yet to the imagination how magnificent! that mighty heart, that to the uttermost ambit of the city drives the faroff burthen of the hills! Then the public fountains in the great thoroughfares, at the great crossings & in the great squares; noble works of art, at once to typify and to actualize a city's purity and to satiate a city's thirst, and for a city's joy and remembrance, in pleasant shower, to cast into the air the liquid drops which first fell for it, and fall, on the distant heights of snow. And finally in each house, in each room, the separate jet, the very taps this time ablaze with beauty for happy beauty's sake, and happier use! Again, to take a larger instance-still an instance of machinery. The people of England, like the people of Rome, have been engaged for a thousand years or more in making a constitution, a great piece of machinery, for their own governance, and are still engaged in that task, and are likely to be engaged in it, perhaps for a thousand years or more to come. It is a great task, a great problem, ever changing its conditions with the changes which, with other causes, its own changes bring about: it is also, or should be, a great work of art as well as of machinery, in which, in future ages, will be seen the moral & imaginative framework of this people of England. That work of art should be had in view in the struggles of the moment, should be had in view and be promoted by every citizen who would do more than live out his individual years in selfish & ignoble isolation; but it should especially be had in view by the people as a whole, be their ideal, their supreme work of art; and theirs whom the people's will has placed at their head to mould and to guide their destinies, theirs, so that when the world's history shall be rounded off and resumed in planetary stillness, and in the consciousness of the gods, England, England's history, shall shine out starlike, England, which shall have made, not itself its goal, but an immortal purpose-ideal freedom and the world's joy! Such is one other great work of art, of machinery, still awaiting accomplishment, still awaiting the devotion to which all great art is due. But art to-day has no eyes, no devotion, & so for art there is no great object, and for the great object no art. Nor does the great artist, as does the great opportunity, sojourn in our midst. Such art and artists as there are, and are there any? are but engaged in the 252 conscious cultivation of art for art's sake, or of beauty for beauty's sake, pending the great transformation which, meanwhile, is no affair of theirs. Of such art and of such cultivation, nothing need be expected: and such art and such cultivation are certainly not in my judgement, nor are they, so far as I know, in the judgement of the artists whose revolt founded the Society, the aims of the movement now passing under its name. What those aims are, I will now, from my own point of view, endeavour to restate: for of the subsequent exhibitions of the Society, nothing more need be said. Subsequent exhibitions, whether in England, on the Continent, or in the United States of America, were, and are, but repetitions, with variations only of detail, of the first, and need no description; though against exhibitions themselves I may be allowed before I pass away from them to urge one objection, an objection, not indeed condemnatory of them, but an objection which should, I think, be borne in mind in promoting them, and be obviated as far as the circumstances of each exhibition will permit. The objection which I would urge is this. An exhibition, as I have already insisted, is but a small part of the Arts & Crafts movement, which is a movement in the main of ideas and not of objets d'art, & there is a danger in the constant repetition of exhibitions, civic, national, and international, of public attention being diverted from the movement of ideas, & action thereupon, to the mere production and exhibition of exhibits. Moreover, of exhibits, very few things, relatively to the whole of life's possessions and productions, can be brought together usefully, or at all, under one roof, and of those which can very few can tell their own tale, apologize for their shortcomings, or of themselves ask to be forgiven for the sake of their approximate merit. It was to guard against the danger of this possible diversion of interest and forgetfulness of the movement's greater purposes, and indirectly, by suggestion of the ideal, to illuminate the possible deficiencies of the exhibits, as well as to draw attention to their merits, that the aid of lectures was made an essential part of at least the scheme of the Society: and lectures of the kind in question, lectures, that is to say, which shall deal at large with the meaning, as well as the contents, of an exhibition, are, in my opinion, an essential adjunct of every exhibition. With this objection stated, I now proceed to wind up my observations and to come to a conclusion. But before doing so I must ask your attention in one other matter in which I find it necessary to differ from Mr. Morris. But pray note that it is a matter of interpretation only in which here, as elsewhere, I presume to differ from that great spirit, now passed away. Only in the matter of interpretation, for I do not-how could I?-call in question, here or anywhere, the greatness of the aims of William Morris himself. I claim only (1) that the movement which I am attempting to describe had a higher aim than in his own despite he assigned to it in the passage I have quoted: (2) that machinery may be redeemed by imagination, and made to enter even into his restored world, adding to the potency of good, and to its power over evil, which itself, in my view, it is not: and (3) finally, & this is the last point 253 of difference to which I shall have to call your attention, that the age upon which mankind entered, at the close of the fifteenth century, was one of decay of an old world indeed, but at the same time, and this was its characteristic, was an age in which a new and a greater world came to the birth, as in this age it is coming to maturity, and that it is with this new world, and not with the old world, that the movement & ourselves have now to do. To resume, and to revert to what I was about to say. In that magnificent brief lecture on Gothic Architecture, which was first spoken as a lecture at the New Gallery for the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society in the year 1889, and afterwards printed by the Kelmscott Press during and in the Arts and Crafts Exhibition in the New Gallery, 1893, Mr. Morris traced, with lightning-like swiftness and clearness, the progress of Gothic Architecture from its first inception by the Romans in the invention of the Arch to its consummation in the exquisitely poised and traceried buildings of the close of the fifteenth century. At the end of the fifteenth century, Mr. Morris says, 'the great change' came, & Mr. Morris means that we and Architecture, our principal structural expression, entered upon a period of decay. But I would rather-and here is my point of difference-I would rather put it, that the great change came in that the inner vision was substituted for the outer; or, better still, that one inner vision was substituted for another inner vision and that the outward expression of the latter was arrested. Its buildings had been built and the passion for them exhausted, for the world which had inspired them had vanished, & another had been born or created in its place: partly another world of fact, the newly discovered continent of America, and the whole round world itself; partly another world of ideas, the ancient world and its literature, Greece and Rome. At the end of the fifteenth century the printing press was at work, and Europe left for a time the outer world, the world of the senses and material building, and entered into the inner world, the world of imaginative reason, of ideas-communicable henceforward, for a time, by the printed page only, whereon only it could build up and contemplate the vision of its extended universe. Ever since that time this vision has been growing, taking on new matter for greater change still, and now it is worldwide indeed, and the time has come to cast its inspirations into form, to embody them in works of Art. What of the past is past is no matter of regret, but somewhat of the past is imperishable because it is of all time: such is the instinct to build. The building of the past is built and is in decay. The building of the future has yet to be built. Of what will it be? The answer to this question will be the answer to the question: What, then, is the movement which I am attempting to describe? The building of the future will be the building of the industries thereof, the building of its ways of looking at things determined by the vision which has taken the place of that old vision, under the inspiration of which were built the buildings of the past. 254 And the first thing to build will be the vision itself, the supreme vision-for 'where there is no vision the people perish.' The important, the essential thing in the Architecture of the early and middle ages, as of all ages, is not the Architecture itself, but the exaltation of sentiment and knowledge, and skill of hand and brain, which produced it, and the vision of life which was also the creation of the sentiment, and in turn its inspiration. The vision, indeed, here as elsewhere & always, is the important, the essential thing. What then is there in the life of to-day comparable in exaltation to the vision of that day, what vision competent to produce today an Architecture of life and occupation, with resultant material and imaginative expression, comparable to the Architecture of life and occupation and resultant material and imaginative expression, which the vision of that day was competent to produce and did produce? There is one set, static universe, or vision, the Norm of Life, in which all force is at rest, at rest in equilibrium, in equilibrium of motion, and there are in the many minds of men innumerable versions thereof, isolated, unrelated or related, sequent, one: set in motion by passion, crime, terror, frenzy, even of hate, love, madness, ambition, or by the soft touch of the dreamer of dreams, the musician, painter, poet. But be these visions what they may be, they are but visions, which die again into the norm, the static universe, which is the tomb, as it is the womb, of all motion, at once the birth-place and the cinerary urn of all change, the all in all. It is with this all of change and rest, that the soul of man, athwart all distraction, aspires to be at one, at one for the fruit of its energy in creation, at one for the control of its energy in rest, in rest interlocked, repose absolute. And if I were asked, as I have asked, what that supreme vision, that Norm of Life, in plain words was, I should say that it was the vision of the universe as revealed to-day in history & science, including in science all that is not man, though revealed by man working to that end through the ages, and in history all that is man, all his doings, all his imaginings, all his aspirations, all whatsoever that is his, but all seen in the light of science, positively-the vision of the universe, framed in the infinite. And I should say that man is at the top of his thought when in exalted, ecstatic contemplation thereof, and at the top of his doing when in action in accordance therewith, be the action what it may be. And I should say that the supreme consciousness emergent from the supreme vision was the consciousness of Being-the wonder, I AM-and of its inexplicable, insuperable mystery. The next thing to build will be the work of the world in the light of this supreme vision so seen and understood. A time arrives in the development of the world's work when, in addition to the perfect workmanship and beauty of the world's wares, the embellishment of the world's work itself should become the object of ambition of those who carry the world's work on, an embellishment which may take one of two forms, but should take both: the embellishment by material means and the embellishment by ideas. In embellishment by 255 material means the senses are satisfied and the imagination touched, and we have noble roads and houses, noble cities and harbours, noble wharves and warehouses, noble modes and means of communication, and noble modes and means of creativeness, and, crowning and giving significance to all, crowning and expressive ceremonial: in embellishment by ideas we have the illimitation which is the characteristic of the imagination, and enables us to see and to create wholes and relations which surpass the sweep of the senses, and are visible to the eye of reason only; it is thus that we have the vision, and see all man's work in its entirety and as part of the universal process of creation. Thinking, then, dispassionately of the world, not for my country's sake or another's, but for man's, I am haunted by the vision of this its industrial life, as the matter of man's art to-day. And there come to me the murmur of the beat of far-off waves on an unknown shore, the rustle and the struggle of winds through unknown forests and over wide spaces of inhabitable land: I see the masts of shipping far asunder, solitary, on the wide seas, or clustered into peopled harbours: I see the busy hives of industry, glittering like fanes of light by the river's side or bridging them-all part and parcel of the ocean, the land, and the air, obedient like them to the cadency of thought, as day and night, the seasons and the years, beat out their sequences and bear life onward into the future, or leave it, silent, in the irrecoverable past. Such a world, such a wealth of animate forces, such a vision, the creation in part of the unknown force, God, in part of man, who is ourselves, such is the vision upon which, pending the arrival of the shadow which is Death, we should fix the eyes of Art, permeating all, embracing all, producing all, even as would do, were he us, the supreme force, God. As of the world of man's work, so of all the visions within the vision-build with the instincts of fitness and beauty, build & await the Shadow: to-day again, for a time, comes the light, again and yet again. In the infinitude of sequences the soul rests, and whilst it rests, resting, it disappears, even as in life, into sleep, into Death. Build and await the Shadow. Such as I dream it is the Vision of Life, such the Vision of man's world within it, such the Vision of Art, such, or something like it, the Vision of the Arts and Crafts Movement, its inception, its history, and its aims. 'And here I will make an end. And if I have done well and as is fitting the story, it is that which I have desired: but if slenderly and meanly it is yet that which I could attain unto.' It may be, indeed, that I have all the while been describing some other movement, & not that of the Arts and Crafts at all; some movement that has been taking place in my own mind, as I have had the possibilities of man's being and doing brought home to my imagination 'in thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth on men': for in the Introduction to the Lectures on 'Art & Life,' to which reference has been made 256 in support of the Vision, it is stated that the Lectures are not to be taken, nor is any of them to be taken, as the official expression of the aims of the Society! But be the official expression of the aims of the Society what it may be, it is the VISION, some VISION, which imports your good,-which I urgently commend to your attention. WHERE THERE IS NO VISION THE PEOPLE PERISH. 257 The German Art (1800) By no kind Augustus reared, To no Medici endeared, German Art arose; Fostering glory smil'd not on her, Ne'er with kingly smiles to sun her, Did her blooms unclose. No! She went, by Monarchs slighted Went unhonored, unrequited, From high Frederick's throne; Praise and Pride be all the greater, That Man's genius did create her, From Man's worth alone. Therefore, all from loftier mountains, Purer wells and richer Fountains, Streams our Poet-Art; So no rule to curb its rushing-- All the fuller flows it gushing From its deep--The Heart! Project Gutenberg. The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III. Ed. Kuno Francke. <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11692/11692-8.txt>. 258 7 Marsden Hartley Adventures in the Arts Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets PREFATORY NOTE The papers in this book are not intended in any way to be professional treatises. They must be viewed in the light of entertaining conversations. Their possible value lies in their directness of impulse, and not in weight of argument. I could not wish to go into the qualities of art more deeply. A reaction, to be pleasant, must be simple. This is the apology I have to offer: Reactions, then, through direct impulse, and not essays by means of stiffened analysis. Marsden Hartley. Some of the papers included in this book have appeared in Art and Archeology, The Seven Arts, The Dial, The Nation, The New Republic, and The Touchstone. Thanks are due to the editors of these periodicals for permission to reprint. TO ALFRED STIEGLITZ INTRODUCTION TO ADVENTURES IN THE ARTS Perhaps the most important part of Criticism is the fact that it presents to the creator a problem which is never solved. Criticism is to him a perpetual Presence: or perhaps a ghost which he will not succeed in laying. If he could satisfy his mind that Criticism was a certain thing: a good thing or a bad, a proper presence or an irrelevant, he could psychologically dispose of it. But he can not. For Criticism is a configuration of responses and reactions so intricate, so kaleidoscopic, that it would be as simple to category Life itself. The artist remains the artist precisely in so far as he rejects the simplifying and reducing process of the average man who at an early age puts Life away into some snug conception of his mind and race. This one turns the key. He has released his will and love from the vast Ceremonial of wonder, from the deep Poem of Being, into some particular detail of life wherein he hopes to achieve comfort or at least shun pain. Not so, the artist. In the moment when he elects to avoid by whatever makeshift the raw agony of life, he ceases to be fit to create. He must face experience forever freshly: reduce life each day 259 anew to chaos and remould it into order. He must be always a willing virgin, given up to life and so enlacing it. Thus only may he retain and record that pure surprise whose earliest voicing is the first cry of the infant. The unresolved expectancy of the creator toward Life should be his way toward Criticism also. He should hold it as part of his Adventure. He should understand in it, particularly when it is impertinent, stupid and cruel, the ponderable weight of Life itself, reacting upon his search for a fresh conquest over it. Though it persist unchanged in its rôle of purveying misinformation and absurdity to the Public, he should know it for himself a blessed dispensation. With his maturity, the creator's work goes out into the world. And in this act, he puts the world away. For the artist's work defines: and definition means apartness: and the average man is undefined in the social body. Here is a danger for the artist within the very essence of his artistic virtue. During the years of his apprenticeship, he has struggled to create for himself an essential world out of experience. Now he begins to succeed: and he lives too fully in his own selection: he lives too simply in the effects of his effort. The gross and fumbling impact of experience is eased. The grind of ordinary intercourse is dimmed. The rawness of Family and Business is refined or removed. But now once more the world comes in to him, in the form of the Critic. Here again, in a sharp concentrated sense, the world moves on him: its complacency, its hysteria, its down-tending appetites and fond illusions, its pathetic worship of yesterdays and hatred of tomorrows, its feardogmas and its blood-avowals. The artist shall leave the world only to find it, hate it only because he loves, attack it only if he serves. At that epoch of his life when the world's gross sources may grow dim, Criticism brings them back. Wherefore, the function of the Critic is a blessing and a need. The creator's reception of this newly direct, intense, mundane intrusion is not always passive. If the artist is an intelligent man, he may respond to the intervening world on its own plane. He may turn critic himself. When the creator turns critic, we are in the presence of a consummation: we have a complete experience: we have a sort of sacrament. For to the intrusion of the world he interposes his own body. In his art, the creator's body would be itself intrusion. The artist is too humble and too sane to break the ecstatic flow of vision with his personal form. The true artist despises the personal as an end. He makes fluid, and distils his personal form. He channels it beyond himself to a Unity which of course contains it. But Criticism is nothing which is not the sheer projection of a body. The artist turns Self into a universal Form: but the critic reduces Form to Self. Criticism is to the artist the intrusion, in a form irreducible to art, of the body of the world. What can he do but interpose his own? This is the value of the creator's criticism. He gives to the world himself. And his self is a rich life. 260 It includes for instance a direct experience of art, the which no professional critic may possess. And it includes as well a direct knowledge of life, sharpened in the retrospect of that devotion to the living which is peculiarly the artist's. For what is the critic after all, but an "artistic" individual somehow impeded from satisfying his esthetic emotion and his need of esthetic form in the gross and stubborn stuff of life itself: who therefore, since he is too intelligent for substitutes, resorts to the already digested matter of the hardier creators, takes their assimilated food and does with it what the athletic artist does with the meat and lymph and bone of God himself? The artist mines from the earth and smelts with his own fire. He is higher brother to the toilers of the soil. The critic takes the products of the creator, reforges, twists them, always in the cold. For if he had the fire to melt, he would not stay with metals already worked: when the earth's womb bursts with richer. When the creator turns critic, we are certain of a feast. We have a fare that needs no metaphysical sauce (such as must transform the product of the Critic). Here is good food. Go to it and eat. The asides of a Baudelaire, a Goethe, a Da Vinci outweight a thousand tomes of the professional critics. I know of no American book like this one by Marsden Hartley. I do not believe American painting heretofore capable of so vital a response and of so athletic an appraisal. Albert Ryder barricaded himself from the world's intrusion. The American world was not intelligent enough in his days to touch him to an activer response. And Ryder, partaking of its feebleness, from his devotion to the pure subjective note became too exhausted for aught else. As a world we have advanced. We have a fully functioning Criticism ... swarms and schools of makers of the sonorous complacencies of Judgment. We have an integral body of creative-minded men and women interposing itself with valiance upon the antithesis of the social resistance to social growth. Hartley is in some ways a continuance of Ryder. One stage is Ryder, the solitary who remained one. A second stage is Hartley, the solitary who stands against the more aggressive, more interested Marketplace. You will find in this book the artist of a cultural epoch. This man has mastered the plastic messages of modern Europe: he has gone deep in the classic forms of the ancient Indian Dance. But he is, still, not very far from Ryder. He is always the child-whatever wise old worlds he contemplates-the child, wistful, poignant, trammeled, of New England. Hartley has adventured not alone deep but wide. He steps from New Mexico to Berlin, from the salons of the Paris of Marie Laurencin to the dust and tang of the American Circus. He is eclectic. But wherever he goes he chronicles not so much these actual worlds as his own pleasure of them. They are but mirrors, many-shaped and lighted, for his own delicate, incisive humor. For Hartley is an innocent and a naïf. At times he is profound. Always he is profoundly simple. Tragedy and Comedy are adult. The child's world is Tragicomic. So Marsden Hartley's. He is not deep enough-like most of our Moderns-in the pregnant chaos to be 261 submerged in blackness by the hot struggle of the creative will. He may weep, but he can smile next moment at a pretty song. He may be hurt, but he gets up to dance. In this book-the autobiography of a creator-Marsden Hartley peers variously into the modern world: but it is in search of Fairies. Waldo Frank. Lisbon, June, 1921. FOREWORD CONCERNING FAIRY TALES AND ME Sometimes I think myself one of the unique children among children. I never read a fairy story in my childhood. I always had the feeling as a child, that fairy stories were for grown-ups and were best understood by them, and for that reason I think it must have been that I postponed them. I found them, even at sixteen, too involved and mystifying to take them in with quite the simple gullibility that is necessary. But that was because I was left alone with the incredibly magical reality from morning until nightfall, and the nights meant nothing more remarkable to me than the days did, no more than they do now. I find moonlight merely another species of illumination by which one registers continuity of sensation. My nursery was always on the edge of the strangers' knee, wondering who they were, what they might even mean to those who were as is called "nearest" them. I had a childhood vast with terror and surprise. If it is true that one forgets what one wishes to forget, then I have reason for not remembering the major part of those days and hours that are supposed to introduce one graciously into the world and offer one a clue to the experience that is sure to follow. Not that my childhood was so bitter, unless for childhood loneliness is bitterness, and without doubt it is the worst thing that can happen to one's childhood. Mine was merely a different childhood, and in this sense an original one. I was left with myself to discover myself amid the multitudinous other and far greater mysteries. I was never the victim of fear of goblins and ghosts because I was never taught them. I was merely taught by nature to follow, as if led by a rare and tender hand, the then almost unendurable beauty that lay on every side of me. It was pain then, to follow beauty, because I didn't understand beauty; it must always, I think, be distressing to follow anything one does not understand. I used to go, in my earliest school days, into a little strip of woodland not far from the great ominous red brick building in a small manufacturing town, on the edge of a wonderful great river in Maine, from which cool and quiet spot I could always hear the dominant clang of the bell, and there I could listen with all my very boyish simplicity to the running of the water over the stones, and watch-for it was spring, of course-the new leaves pushing up out of the mould, and see the light-hued blossoms swinging on the new breeze. I cared more for these in themselves than I did for any legendary presences sitting under them, shaking imperceptible fingers and waving invisible wands with 262 regality in a world made only for them and for children who were taught mechanically to see them there. I was constantly confronted with the magic of reality itself, wondering why one thing was built of exquisite curves and another of harmonic angles. It was not a scientific passion in me, it was merely my sensing of the world of visible beauty around me, pressing in on me with the vehemence of splendor, on every side. I feel about the world now precisely as I did then, despite all the reasons that exist to encourage the change of attitude. I care for the magic of experience still, the magic that exists even in facts, though little or nothing for the objective material value. Life as an idea engrosses me with the same ardor as in the earlier boyish days, with the difference that there is much to admire and so much less to reverence and be afraid of. I harp always on the "idea" of life as I dwell perpetually on the existence of the moment. I might say, then, that my childhood was comparable, in its simplicity and extravagance of wonder, to the youth of Odilon Redon, that remarkable painter of the fantasy of existence, of which he speaks so delicately in letters to friends. His youth was apparently much like mine, not a youth of athleticism so much as a preoccupancy with wonder and the imminence of beauty surrounding all things. I was preoccupied with the "being" of things. Things in themselves engrossed me more than the problem of experience. I was satisfied with the effect of things upon my senses, and cared nothing for their deeper values. The inherent magic in the appearance of the world about me, engrossed and amazed me. No cloud or blossom or bird or human ever escaped me, I think. I was not indifferent to anything that took shape before me, though when it came to people I was less credulous of their perfection because they pressed forward their not always certain credentials upon me. I reverenced them then too much for an imagined austerity as I admire them now perhaps not enough for their charm, for it is the charm of things and people only that engages and satisfies me. I have completed my philosophical equations, and have become enamored of people as having the same propensities as all other objects of nature. One need never question appearances. One accepts them for their face value, as the camera accepts them, without recommendation or specialized qualification. They are what they become to one. The capacity for legend comes out of the capacity for experience, and it is in this fashion that I hold such high respect for geniuses like Grimm and Andersen, but as I know their qualities I find myself leaning with more readiness toward Lewis Carroll's superb "Alice in Wonderland." I was, I suppose, born backward, physically speaking. I was confronted with the vastitude of the universe at once, without the ingratiating introduction of the fairy tale. I had early made the not so inane decision that I would not read a book until I really wanted to. One of the rarest women in the world, having listened to my remark, said she had a book she knew I would like because it was so different, and forthwith presented me with Emerson's Essays, the first book that I have any knowledge of reading, and it was in my eighteenth year. Until then I had been wholly absorbed with the terrors and the majestical inferences 263 of the moment, the hour, and the day. I was alone with them, and they were wonderful and excessively baffling in their splendors; then, after filling my mind and soul with the legendary splendors of Friendship, and The Oversoul-Circles, and Compensation, each of these words of exciting largeness in themselves, I turned to the dramatic unrealities of Zarathustra, which, of course, was in no way to be believed because it did not exist. And then came expansion and release into the outer world again through interpretation of Plato, and of Leaves of Grass itself. I have saved myself from the disaster of beliefs through these magical books, and am free once more as in my early childhood to indulge myself in the iridescent idea of life, as Idea. But the fairy story is nothing after all but a means whereby we, as children, may arrive at some clue as to the significance of things around us, and it is through them the child finds his way out from incoherency toward comprehension. The universe is a vast place, as we all know who think we comprehend it in admiring it. The things we cannot know are in reality of no consequence, in comparison with the few we can know. I can know, for instance, that my morning is the new era of my existence, and that I shall never live through another like it, as I have never lived through the one I recall in my memory, which was Yesterday. Yesterday was my event in experience then, as it is my event in memory now. I am related to the world by the way I feel attached to the life of it as exemplified in the vividness of the moment. I am, by reason of my peculiar personal experience, enabled to extract the magic from the moment, discarding the material husk of it precisely as the squirrel does the shell of the nut. I am preoccupied with the business of transmutation-which is to say, the proper evaluation of life as idea, of experience as delectable diversion. It is necessary for everyone to poetize his sensations in order to comprehend them. Weakness in the direction of philosophy creates the quality of dogmatic interrogation. A preoccupancy with religious characteristics assists those who are interested in the problem of sublimation. The romanticist is a kind of scientific person engaged in the correct assembling of chemical constituents that will produce a formula by which he can live out every one of his moments with a perfect comprehension of their charm and of their everlasting value to him. If the romanticist have the advantage of comprehension of the sense of beauty as related to art, then he may be said to be wholly equipped for the exquisite legend of life in which he takes his place, as factor in the perfected memory of existence, which becomes the real history of life, as an idea. The person of most power in life is he who becomes high magician with the engaging and elusive trick. It is a fairy-tale in itself if you will, and everyone is entitled to his or her own private splendor, which, of course, must be invented from intelligence for oneself. There will be no magic found away from life. It is what you do with the street-corner in your brain that shall determine your gift. It will not be found in the wilderness, and in one's toying with the magic of existence is the one gift for the management of experience. 264 I hope one day, when life as an "idea" permits, and that I have figured will be somewhere around my ninetieth year, to take up books that absorb the brains of the intelligent. When I read a book, it is because it will somehow expose to me the magic of existence. My fairy tales of late have been "Wuthering Heights," and the work of the Brothers James, Will and Henry. I am not so sure but that I like William best, and I assure you that is[10] saying a great deal, but it is only because I think William is more like life as idea. I shall hope when it comes time to sit in a garden and fold one's hands gently, listening to the birds all over again, watching the blossoms swinging with a still acuter eye, to take up the books of Grimm and Andersen, for I have a feeling they will be the books that will best corroborate my comprehension of life as an idea. I think it will be the best time to read them then, to go out with a memory softened by the warm hues and touches of legend that rise out of the air surrounding life itself. There will be a richer comprehension of "once upon a time there was a princess"-who wore a great many jewelled rings on her fingers and whose eyes were like deep pools in the farthest fields of the sky-for that will be the lady who let me love in the ways I was made to forget; the lady whose hands I have touched as gently as possible and from whom I have exacted no wish save that I might always love someone or something that was so like herself as to make me think it was no other than herself. It is because I love the idea of life better than anything else that I believe most of all in the magic of existence, and in spite of much terrifying and disillusioning experience of late, I believe. PART ONE THE RED MAN It is significant that all races, and primitive peoples especially, exhibit the wish somehow to inscribe their racial autograph before they depart. It is our redman who permits us to witness the signing of his autograph with the beautiful gesture of his body in the form of the symbolic dance which he and his forefathers have practiced through the centuries, making the name America something to be remembered among the great names of the world and of time. It is the redman who has written down our earliest known history, and it is of his symbolic and esthetic endeavors that we should be most reasonably proud. He is the one man who has shown us the significance of the poetic aspects of our original land. Without him we should still be unrepresented in the cultural development of the world. The wide discrepancies between our earliest history and our present make it an imperative issue for everyone loving the name America to cherish him while he remains among us as the only esthetic representative of our great country up to the present hour. He has indicated for all time the symbolic splendor of our plains, canyons, mountains, lakes, mesas and ravines, our forests and our native skies, with their animal inhabitants, the buffalo, the deer, the eagle and the various other living presences in their midst. He has learned throughout the centuries the nature of our soil and has symbolized for his own religious and esthetic satisfaction all the various forms that have become benefactors to him. 265 Americans of this time and of time to come shall know little or nothing of their spacious land until they have sought some degree of intimacy with our first artistic relative. The redman is the one truly indigenous religionist and esthete of America. He knows every form of animal and vegetable life adhering to our earth, and has made for himself a series of striking pageantries in the form of stirring dances to celebrate them, and his relation to them. Throughout the various dances of the Pueblos of the Rio Grande those of San Felipe, Santo Domingo, San Ildefonso, Taos, Tesuque, and all the other tribes of the west and the southwest, the same unified sense of beauty prevails, and in some of the dances to a most remarkable degree. For instance, in a large pueblo like Santo Domingo, you have the dance composed of nearly three hundred people, two hundred of whom form the dance contingent, the other third a chorus, probably the largest singing chorus in the entire redman population of America. In a small pueblo like Tesuque, the theme is beautifully represented by from three to a dozen individuals, all of them excellent performers in various ways. The same quality and the same character, the same sense of beauty, prevails in all of them. It is the little pueblo of Tesuque which has just finished its series of Christmas dances-a four-day festival celebrating with all but impeccable mastery the various identities which have meant so much to them both physically and spiritually-that I would here cite as an example. It is well known that once gesture is organized, it requires but a handful of people to represent multitude; and this lonely handful of redmen in the pueblo of Tesuque, numbering at most but seventy-five or eighty individuals, lessened, as is the case with all the pueblos of the country to a tragical degree by the recent invasions of the influenza epidemic, showed the interested observer, in groups of five or a dozen dancers and soloists including drummers, through the incomparable pageantry of the buffalo, the eagle, the snowbird, and other varying types of small dances, the mastery of the redman in the art of gesture, the art of symbolized pantomimic expression. It is the buffalo, the eagle, and the deer dances that show you their essential greatness as artists. You find a species of rhythm so perfected in its relation to racial interpretation as hardly to admit of witnessing ever again the copied varieties of dancing such as we whites of the present hour are familiar with. It is nothing short of captivating artistry of first excellence, and we are familiar with nothing that equals it outside the Negro syncopation which we now know so well, and from which we have borrowed all we have of native expression. If we had the redman sense of time in our system, we would be better able to express ourselves. We are notoriously unorganized in esthetic conception, and what we appreciate most is merely the athletic phase of bodily expression, which is of course attractive enough, but is not in itself a formal mode of expression. The redman would teach us to be ourselves in a still greater degree, as his forefathers have taught him to be himself down the centuries, despite every obstacle. It is now as the last obstacle in the way of his racial expression that we as his host and guardian are pleasing ourselves to figure. It is as inhospitable host we are quietly urging denunciation of his pagan ceremonials. It is an inhospitable host that we are, and it is amazing enough, our wanting to suppress him. You will travel over many continents to find a more beautifully synthesized artistry than our redman offers. In times of peace we go about the world seeking out every species of life foreign to ourselves for our own esthetic or intellectual 266 diversion, and yet we neglect on our very doorstep the perhaps most remarkable realization of beauty that can be found anywhere. It is of a perfect piece with the great artistry of all time. We have to go for what we know of these types of expression to books and to fragments of stone, to monuments and to the preserved bits of pottery we now may see under glass mostly, while there is the living remnant of a culture so fine in its appreciation of the beauty of things, under our own home eye, so near that we can not even see it. A glimpse of the buffalo dance alone will furnish proof sufficient to you of the sense of symbolic significances in the redman that is unsurpassed. The redman is a genius in his gift of masquerade alone. He is a genius in detail, and in ensemble, and the producer of today might learn far more from him than he can be aware of except by visiting his unique performances. The redman's notion of the theatric does not depend upon artificial appliances. He relies entirely upon the sun with its so clear light of the west and southwest to do his profiling and silhouetting for him, and he knows the sun will cooperate with every one of his intentions. He allows for the sense of mass and of detail with proper proportion, allows also for the interval of escape in mood, crediting the value of the pause with the ability to do its prescribed work for the eye and ear perfectly, and when he is finished he retires from the scene carefully to the beating of the drums, leaving the emotion to round itself out gradually until he disappears, and silence completes the picture for the eye and the brain. His staging is of the simplest, and therefore, the most natural. Since he is sure of his rhythms, in every other dancer as well as himself, he is certain of his ensemble, and is likewise sure there will be no dead spots either in the scenario or in the presentation. His production is not a show for the amusement of the onlooker; it is a pageant for the edification of his own soul. Each man is therefore concerned with the staging of the idea, because it is his own spiritual drama in a state of enaction, and each is in his own way manager of the scene, and of the duos, trios, and ensembles, or whatever form the dances may require. It is therefore of a piece with his conception of nature and the struggle for realism is not necessary, since he is at all times the natural actor, the natural expresser of the indications and suggestions derived from the great theme of nature which occupies his mind, and body, and soul. His acting is invented by himself for purposes of his own, and it is nature that gives him the sign and symbol for the expression of life as a synthesis. He is a genius in plastic expression, and every movement of his is sure to register in the unity of the theme, because he himself is a powerful unit of the group in which he may be performing. He is esthetically a responsible factor, since it concerns him as part of the great idea. He is leading soloist and auxiliary in one. He is the significant instrument in the orchestration of the theme at hand, and knows his body will respond to every requirement of phrasing. You will find the infants, of two and three years of age even, responding in terms of play to the exacting rhythms of the dance, just as with orientals it was the children often who wove the loveliest patterns in their rugs. In the instance of the buffalo dance of the Tesuque Indians, contrary to what might be expected or would popularly be conceived, there is not riotry of color, but the costumes are toned rather in the sombre hues of the animal in question, and after the tone of the dark flanks of the mountains crested and avalanched with snows, looking more like 267 buffaloes buried knee deep in white drifts than anything else one may think of. They bring you the sense of the power of the buffalo personality, the formidable beast that once stampeded the prairies around them, solemnized with austere gesturing, enveloping him with stateliness, and the silence of the winter that surrounds themselves. Three men, two of them impersonating the buffalo, the third with bow and arrow in hand, doubtless the hunter, and two women representing the mother buffalo, furnish the ensemble. Aside from an occasional note of red in girdles and minor trappings, with a softening touch of green in the pine branches in their hands, the adjustment of hue is essentially one of the black and white, one of the most difficult harmonies in esthetic scales the painter encounters in the making of a picture, the most difficult of all probably, by reason of its limited range and the economic severity of color. It calls for nothing short of the finest perception of nuance, and it is the redman of America who knows with an almost flawless eye the natural harmonies of the life that surrounds him. He has for so long decorated his body with the hues of the earth that he has grown to be a part of them.[20] He is a living embodiment in color of various tonal characteristics of the landscape around him. He knows the harmonic value of a bark or a hide, or a bit of broken earth, and of the natural unpolluted coloring to be drawn out of various types of vegetable matter at his disposal. Even if he resorts to our present-day store ribbons and cheap trinkets for accessories, he does it with a view to creating the appearance of racial ensemble. He is one of the essential decorators of the world. A look at the totem poles and the prayer robes of the Indians of Alaska will convince you of that. In the buffalo dance, then, you perceive the redman's fine knowledge of color relations, of the harmonizing of buffalo skins, of white buckskins painted with most expressively simple designs symbolizing the various earth identities, and the accompanying ornamentation of strings of shells and other odd bits having a black or a grey and white lustre. You get an adjusted relation of white which traverses the complete scale of color possibility in monochrome. The two men representing the buffalo, with buffalo heads covering their heads and faces from view, down to their breasts, their bodies to the waist painted black, no sign of pencillings visible to relieve the austerity of intention, legs painted black and white, with cuffs of skunk's fur round the ankles to represent the death mask symbol, relieving the edges of the buckskin moccasins-in all this you have the notes that are necessary for the color balance of the idea of solemnity presented to the eye. You find even the white starlike splashes here and there on backs, breasts and arms coinciding splendidly with the flecks of eagles-down that quiver in the wind down their black bodies, and the long black hair of the accompanying hunter, as flecks of foam would rise from waterfalls of dark mountain streams; and the feathers that float from the tips of the buffalo horns seem like young eaglets ready to leave the eyry, to swim for the first time the far fields of air above and below them, to traverse with skill the sunlit spaces their eyes have opened to with a fierce amazement. Even the clouds of frozen breath darting from the lips of the dancers served as an essential phase of the symbolic decoration, and the girdles of tiny conchlike shells rattling round their agile thighs made a music you were glad to hear. The sunshine fell from them, too, in scales of light, danced around the spaces enveloping them along with the flecks of eagle-down that floated away from their bodies with the vigors of the dance, floating away from their dark warm bodies, and their jet-blue hair. It is the incomparable understanding of their own inventive 268 rhythms that inspire and impress you as spectator. It is the swift comprehension of change in rhythm given them by the drummers, the speedy response of their so living pulsating bodies, the irresistible rapport with the varying themes, that thrills and invites you to remain close to the picture. They know, as perfect artists would know, the essential value of the materials at their disposal, and the eye for harmonic relationships is as keen as the impeccable gift for rhythm which is theirs. The note of skill was again accentuated when, at the close of the season's ensemble with a repetition of the beautiful eagle dance, there appeared two grotesqueries in the form of charming devil spirits in the hues of animals also, again in startling arrangements of black and white, with the single hint of color in the red lips of the masks that covered their heads completely from view, and from which long tails of white horsehair fell down their grey white backs- completing the feeling once again of stout animal spirits roaming through dark forests in search of sad faces, or, it may even be, of evil doers. All these dances form the single spectacle surviving from a great race that no American can afford actually to miss, and certainly not to ignore. It is easy to conceive with what furore of amazement these spectacles would be received if they were brought for a single performance to our metropolitan stage. But they will never be seen away from the soil on which they have been conceived and perpetuated. It is with a simple cordiality the redman permits you to witness the esthetic survivals of his great race. It is the artist and the poet for whom they seem to be almost especially created, since these are probably nearest to understanding them from the point of view of finely organized expression; for it is by the artist and the poet of the first order that they have been invented and perfected. We as Americans of today would profit by assisting as much as possible in the continuance of these beautiful spectacles, rather than to assist in the calm dismissal and destruction of them. It is the gesture of a slowly but surely passing race which they themselves can not live without; just as we, if we but knew the ineffable beauty of them, would want at least to avail ourselves of a feast for the eye which no other country in existence can offer us, and which any other nation in the world would be only too proud to cherish and foster. We are not, I think, more than vaguely conscious of what we possess in these redman festivities, by way of esthetic prize. It is with pain that one hears rumors of official disapproval of these rare and invaluable ceremonials. Those familiar with human psychology understand perfectly that the one necessary element for individual growth is freedom to act according to personal needs. Once an opposition of any sort is interposed, you get a blocked aspect of evolution, you get a withered branch, and it may even be a dead root. All sorts of complexes and complexities occur. You get deformity, if not complete helplessness and annihilation. I can not imagine what would happen to the redman if his one racial gesture were denied him, if he were forbidden to perform his symbolic dances from season to season. It is a survival that is as spiritually imperative to him as it is physically and emotionally necessary. I can see a whole flood of exquisite inhibitions heaped up for burial and dry rot within the caverns and the interstices of his soul. He is a rapidly disappearing splendor, despite the possible encouragement of statistics. He needs the dance to make his body live out its natural existence, precisely as he needs the air for his lungs and blood for his veins. He needs to dance as we need to 269 laugh to save ourselves from fixed stages of morbidity and disintegration. It is the laughter of his body that he insists upon, as well as depends upon. A redman deprived of his racial gesture is unthinkable. You would have him soon the bleached carcass in the desert out of which death moans, and from which the lizard crawls. It would be in the nature of direct race suicide. He needs protection therefore rather than disapproval. It is as if you clipped the wing of the eagle, and then asked him to soar to the sun, to cut a curve on the sky with the instrument dislodged; or as if you asked the deer to roam the wood with its cloven hoofs removed. You can not cut the main artery of the body and expect it to continue functioning. Depriving the redman of his one enviable gesture would be cutting the artery of racial instinct, emptying the beautiful chamber of his soul of its enduring consciousness. The window would be opened and the bird flown to a dead sky. It is simply unthinkable. The redman is essentially a thankful and a religious being. He needs to celebrate the gifts his heaven pours upon him. Without them he would in short perish, and perish rapidly, having no breath to breathe, and no further need for survival. He is already in process of disappearance from our midst, with the attempts toward assimilation. Inasmuch as we have the evidence of a fine aristocracy among us still, it would seem as if it behooved us as a respectable host to let the redman guest entertain himself as he will, as he sublimely does, since as guardians of such exceptional charges we can not seem to entertain them. There is no logical reason why they should accept an inferior hospitality, other than with the idea of not inflicting themselves upon a strange host more than is necessary. The redman in the aggregate is an example of the peaceable and unobtrusive citizen; we would not presume to interfere with the play of children in the sunlight. They are among the beautiful children of the world in their harmlessness. They are among the aristocracy of the world in the matters of ethics, morals, and etiquette. We forget they are vastly older, and in symbolic ways infinitely more experienced than ourselves. They do not share in tailor-made customs. They do not need imposed culture, which is essentially inferior to their own. Soon we shall see them written on tablets of stone, along with the Egyptians and the others among the races that have perished. The esthetics of the redman have been too particular to permit of universal understanding, and of universal adaptation. It is the same with all primitives, who invent regimes and modes of expression for themselves according to their own specific psychological needs. We encourage every other sign and indication of beauty toward the progress of perfection. Why should not we encourage a race that is beautiful by the proof of centuries to remain the unoffensive guest of the sun and the moon and the stars while they may? As the infant prodigy among races, there is much that we could inherit from these people if we could prove ourselves more worthy and less egotistic. The artist and the poet of perception come forward with heartiest approval and it is the supplication of the poet and the artist which the redman needs most of all. Science looks upon him as a phenomenon; esthetics looks upon him as a giant of masterful expression in our midst. The redman is poet and artist of the very first order among the geniuses of time. We have nothing more native at our disposal than the beautiful creations of this people. It is singular enough that the as yet remote black man contributes the only native representation of rhythm and melody we possess. As an intelligent race, we are not even 270 sure we want to welcome him as completely as we might, if his color were just a shade warmer, a shade nearer our own. We have no qualms about yellow and white and the oriental intermediate hues. We may therefore accept the redman without any of the prejudices peculiar to other types of skin, and we may accept his contribution to our culture as a most significant and important one. We haven't even begun to make use of the beautiful hints in music alone which he has given to us. We need, and abjectly so I may say, an esthetic concept of our own. Other nations of the world have long since accepted Congo originality. The world has yet to learn of the originality of the redman, and we who have him as our guest, knowing little or nothing of his powers and the beauty he confers on us by his remarkable esthetic propensities, should be the first to welcome and to foster him. It is not enough to admit of archaeological curiosity. We need to admit, and speedily, the rare and excellent esthetics in our midst, a part of our own intimate scene. The redman is a spiritual expresser of very vital issues. If his pottery and his blankets offer the majority but little, his ceremonials do contribute to the comparative few who can perceive a spectacle we shall not see the equal of in history again. It would help at least a little toward proving to the world around us that we are not so young a country as we might seem, nor yet as diffident as our national attitude would seem to indicate. The smile alone of the redman is the light of our rivers, plains, canyons, and mountains. He has the calm of all our native earth. It is from the earth all things arise. It is our geography that makes us Americans of the present, children. We are the product of a day. The redman is the product of withered ages. He has written and is still writing a very impressive autograph on the waste places of history. It would seem to me to be a sign of modernism in us to preserve the living esthetic splendors in our midst. Every other nation has preserved its inheritances. We need likewise to do the same. It is not enough to put the redman as a specimen under glass along with the auk and the dinosaur. He is still alive and longing to live. We have lost the buffalo and the beaver and we are losing the redman, also, and all these are fine symbols of our own native richness and austerity. The redman will perpetuate himself only by the survival of his own customs for he will never be able to accept customs that are as foreign to him as ours are and must always be; he will never be able to accept a culture which is inferior to his own. In the esthetic sense alone, then, we have the redman as a gift. As Americans we should accept the one American genius we possess, with genuine alacrity. We have upon our own soil something to show the world as our own, while it lives. To restrict the redman now would send him to an unrighteous oblivion. He has at least two contributions to confer, a very aristocratic notion of religion, and a superb gift for stylistic expression. He is the living artist in our midst, and we need not think of him as merely the anthropological variation or as an archaeological diversion merely. He proves the[29] importance of synthetic registration in peoples. He has created his system for himself, from substance on, through outline down to every convincing detail. We are in a position always of selecting details in the hope of constructing something usable for ourselves. It is the superficial approach. We are imitators because we have by nature or force of circumstance to follow, and improve upon, if we can. We merely "impose" something. We can not improve upon what the redman offers us in his own way. To "impose" something-that is the modern culture. The interval of imposition is our imaginary interval of creation. The primitives created a complete cosmos for themselves, an entire 271 principle. I want merely, then, esthetic recognition in full of the contribution of the redman as artist, as one of the finest artists of time; the poetic redman ceremonialist, celebrant of the universe as he sees it, and master among masters of the art of symbolic gesture. It is pitiable to dismiss him from our midst. He needs rather royal invitation to remain and to persist, and he can persist only by expressing himself in his own natural and distinguished way, as is the case with all peoples, and all individuals, indeed. WHITMAN AND CÉZANNE It is interesting to observe that in two fields of expression, those of painting and poetry, the two most notable innovators, Whitman and Cézanne bear a definite relationship in point of similarity of ideals and in their attitudes toward esthetic principles. Both of these men were so true to their respective ideals that they are worth considering at the same time in connection with each other: Cézanne with his desire to join the best that existed in the impressionistic principle with the classical arts of other times, or as he called it, to create an art like the Louvre out of impressionism. We shall find him striving always toward actualities, toward the realization of beauty as it is seen to exist in the real, in the object itself, whether it be mountain or apple or human, the entire series of living things in relation to one another. It is consistent that Cézanne, like all pioneers, was without prescribed means, that he had to spend his life inventing for himself those terms and methods which would best express his feelings about nature. It is natural that he admired the precision of Bouguereau, it is also quite natural that he should have worshipped in turn, Delacroix, Courbet, and without doubt, the mastery of Ingres, and it is indicative too that he felt the frank force of Manet. It was his special distinction to strive toward a simple presentation of simple things, to want to paint "that which existed between himself and the object," and to strive to solidify the impressionistic conception with a greater realization of form in space, the which they had so much ignored. That he achieved this in a satisfying manner may be observed in the best of his landscapes and still-lifes, and in some of the figure studies also. The endeavor to eliminate all aspects of extraneous conception by dismissing the quality of literature, of poetry and romance from painting, was the exact characteristic which made him what he is for us today, the pioneer in the field of modern art. It was significant enough when he once said to Renoir, that it took him twenty years to find out that painting was not sculpture. Those earlier and heavy impasto studies of his are the evidence of this worthy deduction. It was significant, too, when he said that Gaugin was but "a flea on his back," and that "he does nothing but paint Chinese images." The phrase that brings these two strikingly original personages in art together is the one of Cézanne: "I remain the primitive of the way I have discovered"; and that of Whitman, which comes if I am not mistaken from Democratic Vistas, though it may be from elsewhere in Whitman's prose, running chiefly: "I only wish to indicate the way for the innumerable poets that are to come after me," etc., and "I warn you this is not a book, this is a man." These two geniuses are both of one piece as to their esthetic intention, despite the great gulf that lies between their concepts of, and their attitudes toward life. For the one, life was a something to stay close to always, for the other, it was something to be 272 afraid of to an almost abnormal degree; Whitman and his door never closed, Cézanne and his door seldom or never opened, indeed, were heavily padlocked against the intrusion of the imaginary outsider. These are the geniuses who have done most for these two arts of the present time, it is Whitman and Cézanne who have clarified the sleeping eye and withheld it from being totally blinded, from the onslaughts of jaded tradition. There were in Cézanne the requisite gifts for selection, and for discarding all useless encumbrances, there was in him the great desire for purification, or of seeing the superb fact in terms of itself, majestically; and if not always serenely, serenity was nevertheless his passionate longing. He saw what there was for him in those old and accepted masters who meant most to him, and he saw also what there was for him in that newest of old masters, which was also in its way the assumed discovery of our time, he saw the relativity of Greco's beautiful art to the art of his own making. He saw that here was a possible and applicable architectonic suited to the objects of his newly conceived principles, he felt in Greco the magnetic tendency of one thing toward another in nature, that trees and hills and valleys and people were not something sitting still for his special delectation, but that they were constantly aspiring to fruition, either physical, mental, or let us say, spiritual, even when the word is applied to the so-termed inanimate objects. He felt the "palpitancy," the breathing of all things, the urge outward of all life toward the light which helps it create and recreate itself. He felt this "movement" in and about things, and this it is that gives his pictures that sensitive life quality which lifts them beyond the aspect of picture-making or even mere representation. They are not cold studies of inanimate things, they are pulsing realizations of living substances striving toward each other, lending each other their individual activities until his canvases become, as one might name them, ensembles of animation, orchestrated life. We shall, I think, find this is what Greco did for Cézanne, and it is Cézanne who was among the first of moderns, if not the first, to appreciate that particular aspirational quality in the splendid pictures of Greco. They "move" toward their design, they were lifted by the quality of their organization into spaces in which they were free to carry on the fine illusion of life. Whitman has certainly aspired equally, but being more things in one than Cézanne, his task has been in some ways greater, more difficult, and may we say for humanistic reasons, loftier. Whitman's inclusiveness was at one and the same time his virtue and his defect. For mystical reasons, it was imperative for him to include all things in himself, and so he set about enumerating all those elements which were in him, and of which he was so devoted and affectionate a part. That he could leave nothing out was, it may be said, his strongest esthetical defect, for it is by esthetical judgment that we choose and bring together those elements as we conceive it. It is the mark of good taste to reject that which is unessential, and the "tact of omission," well exemplified in Cézanne, has been found excellently axiomatic. So that it is the tendency in Whitman to catalogue in detail the entire obvious universe that makes many of his pages a strain on the mind as well as on the senses, and the eye especially. The absolute enforcement of this gift of omission in painting makes it easier for the artist, in that his mind is perforce engrossed with the idea of simplification, directness, and an easy relationship of the elements selected for presentation to each other. 273 It is the quality of "living-ness" in Cézanne that sends his art to the heights of universality, which is another way of naming the classical vision, or the masterly conception, and brings him together with Whitman as much of the same piece. You get all this in all the great masters of painting and literature, Goethe, Shakespeare, Rubens, and the Greeks. It is the reaching out and the very mastering of life which makes all art great, and all artists into geniuses. It is the specializing on ideas which shuts the stream of its flow. I have felt the same gift for life in a still-life or a landscape of Cézanne's that I have felt in any of Whitman's best pieces. The element in common with these two exceptional creators is liberation. They have done more, these modern pioneers, for the liberation of the artist, and for the "freeing" of painting and poetry than any other men of modern time. Through them, painting and poetry have become literally free, and through them it is that the young painters and poets have sought new fields for self deliverance. Discipleship does not hold out long with the truly understanding. Those who really know what originality is are not long the slave of the power of imitation: it is the gifted assimilator that suffers most under the spell of mastery. Legitimate influence is a quality which all earnest creators learn to handle at once. Both poetry and painting are, or so it seems to me, revealing well the gift of understanding, and as a result we have a better variety of painting and of poetry than at the first outbreak of this so called modern esthetic epidemic. The real younger creators are learning the difference between surface and depth, between exterior semblances, and the underlying substances. Both Whitman and Cézanne stand together in the name of one common purpose, freedom from characteristics not one's own. They have taught the creators of this time to know what classicism really is, that it is the outline of all things that endure. They have both shown that it is not idiosyncrasy alone which creates originality, that idiosyncrasy is but the husk of personal penetration, that it is in no way the constituent essential for genius. For genius is nothing but the name for higher perception, the greater degree of understanding. Cézanne's fine landscapes and still-lifes, and Whitman's majestic line with its gripping imagery are one and the same thing, for it reaches the same height in the mind. They walk together out of a vivid past, these two geniuses, opening the corridors to a possibly vivid future for the artists of now, and to come. They are the gateway for our modern esthetic development, the prophets of the new time. They are most of all, the primitives of the way they have begun, they have voiced most of all the imperative need of essential personalism, of direct expression out of direct experience, with an eye to nothing but quality and proportion as conceived by them. Their dogmas were both simple in the extreme, and of immense worth to us in their respective spheres. We may think of them as the giants of the beginning of the twentieth century, with the same burning desire to enlarge the general scope of vision, and the finer capacity for individual experience. ALBERT P. RYDER Albert P. Ryder possessed in a high degree that strict passivity of mental vision which calls into being the elusive yet fixed element the mystic Blake so ardently refers to and makes a principle of, that element outside the mind's jurisdiction. His work is of the 274 essence of poetry; it is alien to the realm of esthetics pure, for it has very special spiritual histories to relate. His landscapes are somewhat akin to those of Michel and of Courbet. They suggest Michel's wide wastes of prodigal sky and duneland with their winding roads that have no end, his ever-shadowy stretches of cloud upon ever-shadowy stretches of land that go their austere way to the edges of some vacant sea. They suggest, too, those less remote but perhaps even more aloof spaces of solitude which were ever Courbet's theme in his deeper hours, that haunting sense of subtle habitation, that acute invasion of either wind or soft fleck of light or bright presence in a breadth of shadow, as if a breath of living essences always somehow pervaded those mystic woodland or still lowland scenes. But highly populate as these pictures of Courbet's are with the spirit of everpassing feet that hover and hold converse in the remote wood, the remoter plain, they never quite surrender to that ghostliness which possesses the pictures of our Ryder. At all times in his work one has the feeling of there having lately passed, if ever so fleetly, some bodily shape seeking a solitude of its own. I recall no other landscapes impressed with a more terrific austerity save Greco's incredible "Toledo," to my thinking a finality in landscape creation. There is quietude, solace, if you will, in Michel, in Courbet, but there is never a rest for the eye or the mind or the spirit in those most awesome of pictures which Ryder has presented to us, few as they are; for the Ryder legend is akin to the legend of Giorgione. There is always splendor in them but it is the splendor of the dream given over to a genius more powerful than the vision which has conjured them forth. It is distinctly a land of Luthany in which they have their being; he has inscribed for us that utter homelessness of the spirit in the far tracts that exist in the realm of the imagination; there is suffering in his pictures, that fainting of the spirit, that breathlessness which overtakes the soul in search of the consummation of beauty. Ryder is akin to Coleridge, too, for there is a direct visional analogy between "The Flying Dutchman" and the excessively pictorial stanzas of "The Ancient Mariner." Ryder has typified himself in this excellent portrayal of sea disaster, this profound spectacle of the soul's despair in conflict with wind and wave. Could any picture contain more of that remoteness of the world of our real heart as well as our real eye, the artist's eye which visits that world in no official sense but only as a guest or a courtly spectator? No artist, I ought to say, was ever more master of his ideas and less master of the medium of painting than Ryder; there is in some of his finest canvases a most pitiable display of ignorance which will undoubtedly shorten their life by many years. I still retain the vivid impression that afflicted me when I saw my first Ryder, a marine of rarest grandeur and sublimity, incredibly small in size, incredibly large in its emotion- just a sky and a single vessel in sail across a conquering sea. Ryder is, I think, the special messenger of the sea's beauty, the confidant of its majesties, its hauteurs, its supremacies; for he was born within range of the sea and all its legends have hovered with him continually. Since that time I have seen a number of other pictures either in the artist's possession or elsewhere: "Death on the Racetrack," "Pegasus," canvases from The Tempest and Macbeth in that strange little world of chaos that was his home, his hermitage, so distraught with débris of the world for which he could seem to find no 275 other place; I have spent some of the rare and lovelier moments of my experience with this gentlest and sweetest of other-world citizens; I have felt with ever-living delight the excessive loveliness of his glance and of his smile and heard that music of some far-away world which was his laughter; I have known that wisdom[40] which is once and for all wisdom for the artist, that confidence and trust that for the real artist there is but one agency for the expression of self in terms of beauty, the eye of the imagination, that mystical third somewhere in the mind which transposes all that is legitimate to expression. To Ryder the imagination was the man; he was a poet painter, living ever outside the realm of theory. He was fond of Corot, and at moments I have thought of him as the heir and successor to some of Corot's haunting graces; but there was all the difference between them that there is between lyric pure and tragic pure. Ryder has for once transcribed all outer semblances by means of a personality unrelated to anything other than itself, an imagination belonging strictly to our soil and specifically to our Eastern geography. In his autographic quality he is certainly our finest genius, the most creative, the most racial. For our genius, at its best, is the genius of the evasive; we are born lovers of the secret element, the mystery in things. How many of our American painters have given real attention to Ryder? I find him so much the legend among professional artists, this master of arabesque, this first and foremost of our designers, this real creator of pattern, this first of all creators of tragic landscape, whose pictures are sacred to those that revere distinction and power in art. He had in him that finer kind of reverence for the element of beauty which finds all things somehow lovely. He understood best of all the meaning of the grandiose, of everything that is powerful; none of his associates in point of time rose to just that sublimated experience; not Fuller, not Martin, not Blakelock, though each of these was touched to a special expression. They are more derivative than Ryder, more the children of Barbizon. Ryder gave us first and last an incomparable sense of pattern and austerity of mood. He saw with an all too pitiless and pitiful eye the element of helplessness in things, the complete succumbing of things in nature to those elements greater than they that wield a fatal power. Ryder was the last of the romantics, the last of that great school of impressive artistry, as he was the first of our real painters and the greatest in vision. He was a still companion of Blake in that realm of the beyond, the first citizen of the land of Luthany. He knew the fine distinction between drama and tragedy, the tragedy which nature prevails upon the sensitive to accept. He was the painter poet of the immanent in things. WINSLOW HOMER In Winslow Homer we have yankeeism of the first order, turned to a creditable artistic account. With a fierce feeling for truth, a mania, almost, for actualities, there must have been somewhere in his make-up a gentleness, a tenderness and refinement which explain his fine appreciation of the genius of the place he had in mind to represent. There is not an atom of legend in Homer, it is always and always narrative of the obvious world. 276 There is at once the essential dramatic import ruling the scene. With him it is nothing but dramatic relationship, the actionary tendency of the facts themselves, in nature. You are held by him constantly to the bold and naked theme, and you are left to wander in the imagination only among the essentials of simple and common realism. Narrative then, first and last with Homer, and the only creative aspect of his pictures is concealed in the technique. The only touch of invention in them is the desire to improve the language they speak. Dramatic always, I do not call them theatric excepting in the case of one picture that I know, called "Morro Castle" I think, now in the Metropolitan Museum, reminding me much of the commonplace, "Chateau de Chillon" of Courbet's, neither of these pictures being of any value in the careers of their authors. But once you sat on the rocks of Maine, and watched the climbing of the surf up the morning sky after a heavy storm at sea, you realize the force of Homer's gift for the realities. His pictures are yankee in their indications, as a work of art could be, flinty and unyielding, resolute as is the yankee nature itself, or rather to say, the original yankee, which was pioneer then in a so rough yet resourceful country. It is the quality of Thoreau, but without the genius of Thoreau for the poetry of things. Homer's pictures give you nothing but the bare fact told in the better class terms of illustration, for he was illustrator, first of all. While the others were trying to make a little American Barbizon of their own, there were Homer, Ryder, Fuller, Martin, working alone for such vastly opposite ideas, and yet, of these men, four of them were expressing such highly imaginative ideas, and Homer was the unflinching realist among them. I do not know where Homer started, but I believe it was the sea at Prout's Neck that taught him most. I think that William Morris Hunt and Washington Allston must have seemed like infant Michelangelos then, for there is still about them a sturdiness which we see little of in the American art of that time, or even now for that matter. They had a certain massive substance, proving the force of mind and personality which was theirs, and while these men were prov[44]ing the abundance and warmth of themselves, Homer was the frozen one among them. Nature was nature to him, and that alone he realized, and yet it was not precisely slavish imitation that impelled him. There was in him a very creditable sense of selection,-as will be seen especially in the water colours, so original with him, so gifted in their power of treatment-one of the few great masters of the medium the world has known. He knew the meaning of wash as few since have known it, he knew that it has scale and limitation of its own, and for all that, infinite suggestibility. Not Turner or Whistler have excelled him, and I do not know of anyone who has equalled him in understanding of this medium outside of Dodge Macknight and John Marin. It is in these so expressive paintings on paper that you feel the real esthetic longing as well as a certain contribution in Homer, the desire to realize himself and to release himself from too slavish imitation of nature and the too rigid consideration of truth. He was finer in technique than perhaps any that I have mentioned, though the two modern men have seconded him very closely, and in point of vision have, I am certain, surpassed him. Homer arrived because of his power to express what he wished to say, though his reach was far less lofty than theirs. He was essentially on the ground, and wanted to paint the very grip of his own feet on the rocks. He wanted the 277 inevitability put down in recognizable form. He had not feeling for the hint or the suggestion until he came to the water-color, which is of course most essentially that sort of medium. He knew its scope and its limitations and never stepped out of its boundaries, and he achieved a fine mastery in it. His imitators will never arrive at his severity because they are not flint yankee. They have not the hard head and snappy tongue. It was yankee crabbedness that gave Homer his grip on the idea he had in mind. Florida lent a softer tone to what Maine rocks could not give him. He is American from skin to skeleton, and a leader among yankee as well as American geniuses. He probably hated as much as Thoreau, and in his steely way admired as much. It was fire from the flintlock in them both, though nature had a far softer and loftier persuasion with the Concord philosopher and naturalist. Homer remains a figure in our American culture through his feeling for reality. He has learned through slavery to detail to put down the essential fact, however abundantly or however sparsely. He has a little of Courbet's sense of the real, and none whatever of his sense of the imaginative. It was enough for him to classicize the realistic incident. He impels me to praise through his yankee insistence upon integrity. Story is story with Homer and he leaves legend to itself. It is the narrative of the Whittier type, homely, genuine, and typical. He never stepped outside of his yankee determination. Homer has sent the art of water colour painting to a very high place in world consideration. He cannot be ignored as a master in this field. His paintings must be taken as they are, solid renderings of fact, dramatically considered. He offers nothing else. Once you have seen these realistic sea pictures, you may want to remember and you may want to forget, but they call for consideration. They are true in their living appreciation of reality. He knew the sea like the old salts that were his neighbors, and from accounts he was as full of the tang of the sea as they. He was a foe to compromise and a despiser of imposition. The best and most impersonal of him is in his work, for he never ventured to express philosophies, ethics, or morals in terms of picture-painting. That is to his credit at least. He was concerned with illustration first and last, as he was illustrator and nothing else. He taught the proceeding school of illustrators much in the significance of verity, and in the ways and means of expressing verity in terms of pigment. What the stiff pen and ink drawings and the cold engravings of his time taught him, he conferred upon the later men in terms of freedom of technique. And at the same time he rose a place, as painter and artist of no mean order, by a certain distinction inherent in him. He had little feeling for synthesis outside of the water-colours, and here it was necessary by virtue of the limitations of the medium. Winslow Homer will not stimulate for all time only because his mind was too local. There is nothing of universal appeal in him. His realism will never reach the height even of the sea-pieces of Courbet, and I shall include Ryder as well. Courbet was a fine artist, and so was Ryder, and both had the advantage of exceptional imagination. Homer and Ryder are natives of the same coast and typify excellently the two poles in the New England temper, both in art and in life. Homer as realist, had the one idea in mind only, to illustrate realism as best he could in the most distinguished terms at the disposal of his personality. He succeeded admirably. 278 Homer typifies a certain sturdiness in the American temper at least, and sends the lighter men away with his roughness, as doubtless he sent the curious away from his cliffs with the acidity of truth he poured upon them. He had lived so much in the close association of the roughest elements in existence, rocks and the madly swinging sea that glides over and above them defiantly, that he had without doubt taken on the character of them. The portrait of Homer gives him as one would expect him to look, and he looks like his pictures. His visage bore a ferocity that had to be met with a rocky certainty. It is evident there was no fooling him. He was filled with yankee tenacity and yankee courage. Homer is what you would expect to find if you were told to hunt up the natives of "Prout's Neck" or[48] "Perkins Cove," or any of the inlets of the Maine coast. These sea people live so much with the roughness of the sea, that if they are at all inclined to acidity, and the old fashioned yankee was sure to be, they take on the hard edges of a man's temper in accordance with the jaggedness of the shores on which they live. The man around the rocks looks so very like the profiles one sees in the rocks themselves. They have absorbed the energy of the dramatic elements they cope with, and you may be sure that life around the sea in New England is no easy existence; and they give out the same salty equivalent in human association. If you have lived by the sea, you have learned the significance of the bravery of sea people, and you learn to understand and excuse the sharpness of them which is given them from battle with the elemental facts they are confronted with at all times. That is the character of Homer, that is the quality of his painting. That is what makes him original in the American sense, and so recognizable in the New England sense. He is one of New England's strongest spokesmen, and takes his place by the side of Ryder, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Fuller, Whittier, and such representative temperaments, and it is this quality that distinguishes him from men like Inness, Wyant, and the less typical painters. It is obvious, too, that he never painted any other coast, excepting of course Florida, in the water colours. It was Florida that produced the chef d'oeuvre in him. It was Maine that taught him the force of the southern aspect. Romancer among the realistic facts of nature, he might be called, for he did not merely copy nature. He did invest things with their own suggestive reality, and he surmounted his earlier gifts for exact illustration by this other finer gift for romantic appreciation. Homer was an excellent narrator, as will be seen in the "Gulf Stream" picture in the Metropolitan Museum. It has the powers of Jack London and of Conrad in it. Homer was intense, vigorous, and masculine. If he was harsh in his characteristics, he was one who knew the worth of economy in emotion. He was one with his idea and his metier, and that is sufficient. AMERICAN VALUES IN PAINTING There are certain painters who join themselves together in a kind of grouping, which, whether they wish to think of themselves in this light or not, have become in the matter of American values in painting, a fixed associative aspect of painting in America. When we speak of American painting, the choice is small, but definite as to the number of artists, and the type of art they wished themselves to be considered for. From the Hudson River grouping, which up to Inness is not more marked than as a set of men copying nature with scrupulous fidelity to detail, rather than conveying any special feeling or notion of 279 what a picture of, or the landscape itself, may convey; and leaving aside the American pupils of the Academy in Paris and Rome, most of whom returned with a rich sense of rhetorical conventionalities in art-men like William Morris Hunt and Washington Allston-we may turn to that other group of men as being far more typical of our soil and temper. I mean artists such as Homer Martin, Albert P. Ryder, George Fuller, and the later Winslow Homer who certainly did receive more recognition than any of them prior to his death. Martin, Ryder, and Fuller could not have enjoyed much in the way of appreciation outside of a few artists of their time, and even now they may be said to be the artists for artists. It is reasonable to hope that they were not successful, since that which was à la mode in the expression of their time was essentially of the dry Academy. One would hardly think of Homer Martin's "Border of the Seine" landscape in the Metropolitan Museum, hardly more then than now, and it leaves many a painter flat in appreciation of its great dignity, austerity, reserve, and for the distinguished quality of its stylism. What Martin may have gotten, during his stay in Europe, which is called impressionism is, it must be said, a more aristocratic type of impressionism than issued from the Monet followers. Martin must then have been knowing something of the more dignified intellectualism of Pissarro and of Sisley, those men who have been the last to reach the degrees of appreciation due them in the proper exactitude. We cannot think of Martin as ever having carried off academic medals during his period. We cannot think of Martin as President of the Academy, which position was occupied by a far inferior artist who was likewise carried away by impressionism, namely Alden Weir. The actual attachment in characteristic of introspective temper in Alden Weir is not so removed from Martin, Fuller and Ryder as might be imagined; he is more like Martin perhaps though far less profound in his sense of mystery; Fuller being more the romanticist and Ryder in my estimation the greatest romanticist, and artist as well, of all of these men. But Alden Weir failed to carry off any honor as to distinctive qualities and invention. A genial aristocrat if you will, but having for me no marked power outside of a Barbizonian interest in nature with a kind of mystical detachedness. But in the consideration of painters like Martin, Fuller and Ryder we are thinking chiefly of their relation to their time as well as their relation to what is to come in America. America has had as much painting considering its youth as could be expected of it and the best of it has been essentially native and indigenous. But in and out of the various influences and traditional tendencies, these several artists with fine imaginations, typical American imaginations, were proceeding with their own peculiarly original and significantly personal expressions. They represent up to their arrival, and long after as well, all there is of real originality in American painting, and they remain for all time as fine examples of artists with purely native imaginations, working out at great cost their own private salvations for public discovery at a later time. All these men were poor men with highly distinguished aristocratic natures and powerful physiques, as to appearances, with mentalities much beyond the average. When an exhibition of modern American painting is given, as it surely will and must be, these men 280 and not the Barbizonian echoes as represented by Inness, Wyant & Co., will represent for us the really great beginning of art in America. There will follow naturally artists like Twachtman and Robinson, as likewise Kenneth Hayes Miller and Arthur B. Davies for reasons that I think are rather obvious: both Hayes Miller and Arthur B. Davies having skipped over the direct influence of impressionism by reason of their attachment to Renaissance ideas; having joined themselves by conviction in perhaps slight degrees to aspects of modern painting. Miller is, one might say, too intellectually deliberate to allow for spontaneities which mere enthusiasms encourage. Miller is emotionally thrilled by Renoir but he is never quite swept. His essential conservatism hinders such violence. It would be happier for him possibly if the leaning were still more pronounced. The jump to modernism in Arthur B. Davies results in the same sort of way as admixture of influence though it is more directly appreciable in him. Davies is more willing, by reason of his elastic temper and intellectual vivacity, to stray into the field of new ideas with a simple though firm belief, that they are good while they last, no matter how long they last. Davies is almost a propagandist in his feeling for and admiration of the ultramodern movement. Miller is a questioner and ponders long upon every point of consequence or inconsequence. He is a metaphysical analyst which is perhaps the extraneous element in his painting. In his etching, that is, the newest of it, one feels the sense of the classical and the modern joined together and by the classical I mean the quality of Ingres, Conjoined with modern as in Renoir, relieved of the influence of Italian Renaissance. But I do not wish to lose sight of these several forerunners in American art, Martin, Ryder and Fuller who, in their painting, may be linked not without relativity to our artists in literary imagination, Hawthorne and Poe. Fuller is conspicuously like Hawthorne, not by his appreciation of witchcraft merely, but by his feeling for those eery presences which determine the fates of men and women in their time. Martin is the purer artist for me since he seldom or never resorted to the literary emotion in the sense of drama or narrative, whereas in the instances of Ryder or Fuller they built up expression entirely from literary experience. Albert Ryder achieves most by reason of his vaster poetic sensibility-his Homeric instincts for the drama and by a very original power for arabesque. He is alone among the Americans in his unique gift for pattern. We can claim Albert Ryder as our most original painter as Poe takes his place as our most original poet who had of course one of the greatest and most perfect imaginations of his time and possibly of all time. But it is these several painters I speak of, Martin, Ryder, and Fuller, who figure for us as the originators of American indigenous painting. They will not be copied for they further nothing beyond themselves. No influence of these painters has been notable, excepting for a time in the early experience of one of the younger modernists who, by reason of definite associations of birthright and relativity of environment, essayed to claim Albert Ryder as a very definite influence; just as Courbet and Corot must in their ways have been powerful influences upon Ryder himself. Albert Ryder is too much of a figure to dismiss here with group-relationship, he must be treated of separately. So far then, there is no marked evidence that the influence of Fuller or Martin was powerful enough to 281 carry beyond themselves. They had no tenets or theories other than those of personal clarification. All three remained the hermit radicals of life, as they remain isolated examples in American art; and all of them essentially of New England, in that they were conspicuously introspective, and shut in upon their own exclusive experience. But for all these variances, we shall find Homer Martin, George Fuller, and Albert Ryder forming the first nucleus for a definite value in strictly American painting. They were conscious of nothing really outside of native associations and native deductions. The temper of them is as essentially American as the quality of them is essentially Eastern in flavor. They seldom ventured beyond more than a home-spun richness of color, though in Ryder's case Monticelli had assisted very definitely in his notion of the volume of tone. We find here then despite the impress of artists like William Morris Hunt, Washington Allston, and the later Inness with the still later Winslow Homer, that gripping and relentless realist who took hold of the newer school of painter-illustrators, that the artists treated of here may be considered as the most important phase of American painting in the larger sense of the term. If I were to assist in the arrangement of an all American exhibition to show the trend toward individualism I should begin with Martin, Fuller and Ryder. I should then proceed to Winslow Homer, John H. Twachtman, Theodore Robinson, Hayes Miller, Arthur B. Davies, Rockwell Kent, then to those who come under the eighteen-ninety tendency in painting, namely the Whistler-Goya-Velasquez influence. From this it will be found that an entirely new development had taken place among a fairly large group of younger men who came, and very earnestly, under the Cézannesque influence. It may be said that the choice of these men is a wise one for it is conspicuous among artists of today that since Cézanne art will never, cannot ever be the same, just as with Delacroix and Courbet a French art could never have remained the same. Impressionism will be found to have had a far greater value as a suggestive influence than as a creative one. It brought light in as a scientific aspect into modern painting and that is its valuable contribution. So it is that with Cézanne the world is conscious of a new power that will never be effectually shaken off, since the principles that are involved in the intention of Cézanne are of too vital importance to be treated with lightness of judgment. Such valuable ideas as Cézanne contributes must be accepted almost as dogma, albeit valuable dogma. Influence is a conscious and necessary factor in the development of all serious minded artists, as we have seen in the instances of all important ones. So it is I feel that the real art of America, and it can, I think, justly be said that there is such, will be headed by the imaginative artists I have named in point of their value as indigenous creators, having worked out their artistic destinies on home soil with all the virility of creators in the finer sense of the term. They have assisted in the establishment of a native tradition which without question has by this time a definite foundation. The public must be made aware of their contribution to a native production. It will no doubt be a matter for surprise to many people in the world today that art in general is more national or local than it has ever been, due mostly to the recent upheaval, which has been of great service to the re-establishment of art interest and art appreciation everywhere in the modern world. Art, like life, has had to begin all over again, for the very end of the 282 world had been made visible at last. The artist may look safely over an utterly new horizon, which is the only encouragement the artist of today can hope for. MODERN ART IN AMERICA The question may be asked, what is the hope of modern art in America? The first reply would be that modern art will one day be realized in America if only from experience we learn that all things happen in America by means of the epidemical principle. It is of little visible use that single individuals, by sitting in the solitary confinement of their as yet little understood enthusiasms, shall hope to achieve what is necessary for the American idea, precisely as necessary for us here as for the peoples of Europe who have long since recognized that any movement toward expression is a movement of unquestionable importance. Until the moment when public sincerity and the public passion for excitement is stimulated, the vague art interests of America will go on in their dry and conventional manner. The very acute discernment of Maurice Vlaminck that "intelligence is international, stupidity is national, art is local" is a valuable deduction to make, and applies in the two latter instances as admirably to America as to any other country. Our national stupidity in matters of esthetic modernity is a matter for obvious acceptance, and not at all for amazement. That art is local is likewise just as true of America as of any other country, and despite the judgment of stodgy minds, there is a definite product which is peculiar to our specific temper and localized sensibility as it is of any other country which is nameable. Despite the fact that impressionism is still exaggeration, and that large sums are still being paid for a "sheep-piece" of Charles Jacque, as likewise for a Ridgeway Knight, there is a well defined grouping of younger painters working for a definitely localized idea of modernism, just as in modern poetry there is a grouping of poets in America who are adding new values to the English language, as well as assisting in the realization of a freshly evolved localized personality in modern poetics. Art in America is like a patent medicine, or a vacuum cleaner. It can hope for no success until ninety million people know what it is. The spread of art as "culture" in America is from all appearances having little or no success because stupidity in such matters is so national. There is a very vague consideration of modern art among the directors of museums and among art dealers, but the comprehension is as vague as the interest. Outside of a Van Gogh exhibition, a few Matisses, now and then a Cézanne exhibited with great feeling of condescension, there is little to show the American public that art is as much a necessity as a substantial array of food is to an empty stomach. The public hunger cannot groan for what it does not recognize as real nourishment. There is no reason in the world why America does not have as many chances to see modern art as Europe has, save for minor matters of distance. The peoples of the world are alike, sensibilities are of the same nature everywhere among the so-called civilized, and it must be remembered always that the so-called primitive races invented for their own racial salvation what was not to be found ready made for them. Modern art is just as much of a necessity to us as art was to the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Greeks. Those peoples have 283 the advantage of us only because they were in a higher state of culture as a racial unit. They have no more of a monopoly upon the idea of rhythm and organization than we have, because that which was typical of the human consciousness then, is typical of it now. As a result of the war, there has been, it must be said, a heightening of national consciousness in all countries, because creative minds that were allowed to survive were sent home to struggle with the problem of their own soil. There is no reason whatever for believing that America cannot have as many good artists as any other country. It simply does not have them because the integrity of the artist is trifled with by the intriguing agencies of materialism. Painters find the struggle too keen and it is easy to become the advertising designer, or the merchant in painting, which is what many of our respectable artists have become. The lust for prosperity takes the place of artistic integrity and courage. But America need not be surprised to find that it has a creditable grouping of artists sufficiently interested in the value of modern art as an expression of our time, men and possibly some women, who feel that art is a matter of private aristocratic satisfaction at least, until the public is awakened to the idea that art is an essentially local affair and the more local it becomes by means of comprehension of the international character, the truer it will be to the place in which it is produced. A catalogue of names will suffice to indicate the character and variation of the localized degree of expression we are free to call American in type: Morgan Russell, S. Macdonald Wright, Arthur G. Dove, William Yarrow, Dickinson, Thomas H. Benton, Abraham Walkowitz, Max Weber, Ben Benn, John Marin, Charles Demuth, Charles Sheeler, Marsden Hartley, Andrew Dasburg, William McFee, Man Ray, Walt Kuhn, John Covert, Morton Schamberg, Georgia O'Keeffe, Stuart Davis, Rex Slinkard. Added to these, the three modern photographers Alfred Stieglitz, Charles Sheeler, and Paul Strand must be included. Besides these indigenous names, shall we place the foreign artists whose work falls into line in the movement toward modern art in America, Joseph Stella, Marcel Duchamp, Gaston Lachaise, Eli Nadelman. There may be no least questioning as to how much success all of these artists would have in their respective ways in the various groupings that prevail in Europe at this time. They would be recognized at once for the authenticity of their experience and for their integrity as artists gifted with international intelligence. There is no reason to feel that prevailing organizations like the Society of Independent Artists, Inc., and the Société Anonyme, Inc., will not bear a great increase of influence and power upon the public, as there is every reason to believe that at one time or another the public will realize what is being done for them by these societies, as well as what was done by the so famous "291" gallery. The effect however is not vast enough because the public finds no shock in the idea of art. It is not melodramatic enough and America must be appealed to through its essentially typical melodramatic instincts. There is always enough music, and there are some who certainly can say altogether too much of the kind there is in this country. The same thing can be said of painting. There is altogether too much of comfortable art, the art of the uplifted illustration. It is the reflex of the Anglo-Saxon passion for story-telling in pictures which should be relegated to the field of the magazines. Great art often tells a story but great art is always something plus the idea. Ordinary art does not rise above it. 284 I often wonder why it is that America, which is essentially a country of sports and gamblers, has not the European courage as well as rapacity for fresh development in cultural matters. Can it be because America is not really intelligent? I should be embarrassed in thinking so. There is nevertheless an obvious lethargy in the appreciation of creative taste and a still lingering yet old-fashioned faith in the continual necessity for importation. America has a great body of assimilators, and out of this gift for uncreative assimilation has come the type of art we are supposed to accept as our own. It is not at all difficult to prove that America has now an encouraging and competent group of young and vigorous synthesists who are showing with intelligence what they have learned from the newest and most engaging development of art, which is to say-modern art. The names which have been inserted above are the definite indication, and one may go so far as to say proof, of this argument that modern art in America is rapidly becoming an intelligently localized realization. OUR IMAGINATIVES Is it vision that creates temperament or temperament that creates vision? Physical vision is responsible for nearly everything in art, not the power to see but the way to see. It is the eye perfect or the eye defective that determines the kind of thing seen and how one sees it. It was certainly a factor in the life of Lafcadio Hearn, for he was once named the poet of myopia. It was the acutely sensitive eye of Cézanne that taught him to register so ably the minor and major variations of his theme. Manet saw certainly far less colour than Renoir, for in the Renoir sense he was not a colourist at all. He himself said he painted only what he saw. Sight was almost science with Cézanne as it was passion. In artists like Homer Martin there is a something less than visual accuracy and something more than a gift of translation. There is a distinguished interpretation of mood coupled with an almost miniature-like sense of delicate gradation, and at the same time a something lacking as to a sense of physical form. In the few specimens of Martin to be seen there is, nevertheless, eminent distinction paramount. He was an artist of "oblique integrity": He saw unquestionably at an angle, but the angle was a beautiful one, and while many of his associates were doing American Barbizon, he was giving forth a shy, yet rare kind of expression, always a little symbolic in tendency, with the mood far more predominant. In "The sand dunes of Ontario" there will be found at once a highly individualistic feeling for the waste places of the world. There is never so much as a hint of banality in his selection. He never resorts to stock rhetoric. Martin will be remembered for his singularly personal touch along with men like Fuller and Ryder. He is not as dramatic as either of these artists, but he has greater finesse in delicate sensibility. He was, I think, actually afraid of repetition, a characteristic very much in vogue in his time, either conscious or unconscious, in artists like Inness, Wyant, and Blakelock, with their so single note. There is exceptional mysticity hovering over his hills and stretches of dune and sky. It is not fog, or rain, or dew enveloping them. It is a certain veiled presence in nature that he sees and brings forward. His picture of peaks of the White Mountains, Jefferson and Madison, gives you no suggestion of the "Hudson River" emptiness. He was searching for profounder realities. He wanted the personality 285 of his places, and he was successful, for all of his pictures I have seen display the magnetic touch. He "touched it off" vividly in all of them. They reveal their ideas poetically and esthetically and the method is personal and ample for presentation. With George Fuller it was vastly different. He seemed always to be halting in the shadow. You are conscious of a deep and ever so earnest nature in his pictures. He impressed himself on his canvases in spite of his so faulty expression. He had an understanding of depth but surface was strange to him. He garbled his sentences so to speak with excessive and useless wording. "The Octoroon" shows a fine feeling for romance as do all of the other pictures of Fuller that have been publicly visible, but it is romance obsessed with monotone. There is the evidence of extreme reticence and moodiness in Fuller always. I know little of him save that I believe he experienced a severity of domestic problems. Farmer I think he was, and painted at off hours all his life. It is the poetry of a quiet, almost sombre order, walking in the shadow on the edge, of a wood being almost too much of an appearance for him in the light of a busy world. Why is it I think of Hawthorne when I think of Fuller? Is there a relationship here, or is it only a similarity of eeriness in temper? I would suspect Fuller of having painted a Hester Prynne excepting that he could never have come to so much red in one place in his pictures. There was vigour in these strong, simple men, masculine in sensibility all of them, and a fine feeling for the poetic shades of existence. They were intensely serious men, and I think from their isolation in various ways, not popular in their time. Neither are they popular now. They will only be admired by artists of perception, and by laymen of keen sensibility. Whether their enforced isolations taught them to brood, or whether they were brooders by nature, it is difficult to say. I think they were all easterners, and this would explain away certain characteristic shynesses of temper and of expression in them. Ryder, as we know, was the typical recluse, Fuller in all likelihood also. Martin I know little of privately, but his portrait shows him to be a strong elemental nature, with little feeling for, or interest in, the superficialities either of life or of art. Of Blakelock I can say but little, for I do not know him beyond a few stylish canvases which seem to have more of Diaz and Rousseau in them than contributes to real originality, and he was one of the painters of repetition also. A single good Blakelock is beautiful, and I think he must be included among the American imaginatives, but I do not personally feel the force of him in several canvases together. All of these artists are singularly individual, dreamers like Mathew Maris and Marées of Europe. They all have something of Coleridge about them, something of Poe, something of the "Ancient Mariner" and the "Haunted Palace", sailors in the same ship, sleepers in the same house. All of these men were struggling at the same time, the painters I mean, the same hour it might be said, in the midst of conventions of a severer type of rigidity than now, to preserve themselves from commonplace utterance. They were not affected by fashions. They had the one idea in mind, to express themselves in terms of themselves, and they were singularly successful in this despite the various difficulties of circumstance and of temper that attended them. They understood what this was better than anyone, and 286 the results in varying degrees of genius attest to the quality of the American imagination at its best. I should like, for purposes of reference, to see a worthy exhibition of all of these men in one place. It would I am sure prove my statement that the eastern genius is naturally a tragic one, for all of these men have hardly once ventured into the clear sunlight of the world of every day. It would offset highly also, the superficial attitude that there is no imagination in American painting. We should not find so much of form or of colour in them in the stricter meaning of these ideas, as of mood. They might have set themselves to be disciples of William Blake's significant preachment, "put off intellect and put on imagination, the imagination is the man"; the intellect being the cultivated man, and the imagination being the natural man. There is imagination which by reason of its power and brilliance exceeds all intellectual effort, and effort at intellectualism is worse than a fine ignorance by far. Men who are highly imaginative, create by feeling what they do not or cannot know. It is the sixth sense of the creator. These artists were men alone, touched with the pristine significance of nature. It was pioneering of a difficult nature, precarious as all individual investigation of a spiritual or esthetic character is sure to be. Its first requisite is isolation, its last requisite is appreciation. All of these painters are gone over into that place they were so eager to investigate, illusion or reality. Their pictures are witness here to their seriousness. They testify to the bright everlastingness of beauty. If they have not swayed the world, they have left a dignified record in the art of a given time. Their contemporary value is at least inestimable. They are among the very first in the development of esthetics in America in point of merit. They made no compromise, and their record is clear. If one looks over the record of American art up to the period of ultra-modernism, it will be found that these men are the true originals among American painters. We shall find outside of them and a very few others, so much of sameness, a certain academic convention which, however pronounced or meagre the personalities are, leave those personalities in the category of "safe" painters. They do not disturb by an excessively intimate point of view toward art or toward nature. They come up to gallery requirements by their "pleasantness" or the inoffensiveness of their style. They offer little in the way of interpretive power or synthetic understanding. It is the tendency to keep on the comfortable side in American art. Doubtless it is more practical as any innovator or investigator has learned for himself. Artists like Ryder and Martin and Fuller had nothing in common with market appreciations. They had ideas to express, and were sincere to the last in expressing them. You will find little trace of commercialism in these men, even when, as in the case of Martin and Ryder and I do not know whom else, they did panels for somebody-or-other's leather screen, of which "Smuggler's Cove" and the other long panel of Ryder's in the Metropolitan Museum are doubtless two. They were not successful in their time because they could not repeat their performances. We know the efforts that were once made to make Ryder comfortable in a conventional studio, which he is supposed to have looked into once; and then he disappeared, as it was altogether foreign to him. Each picture was 287 a new event in the lives of these men, and had to be pondered over devoutly, and for long periods often, as in the case of Ryder. Work was for him nine-tenths reflection and meditation and poetic brooding, and he put down his sensations on canvas with great difficulty in the manner of a labourer. It seems obvious that his first drafts were always vivid with the life intended for them, but no one could possibly have suffered with the idea of how to complete a picture more than he. His lack of facility held him from spontaneity, as it is likewise somewhat evident in Martin, and still more in Fuller. They were artists in timidity, and had not the courage of physical force in painting. With them it was wholly a mental process. But we shall count them great for their purity of vision as well as for the sincerity and conviction that possessed them. Artistry of this sort will be welcomed anywhere, if only that we may take men seriously who profess seriousness. There is nothing really antiquated about sincerity, though I think conventional painters are not sure of that. It is not easy to think that men consent to repeat themselves from choice, and yet the passing exhibitions are proof of that. Martin and Ryder and Fuller refresh us with a poetic and artistic validity which places them out of association among men of their time or of today, in the field of objective and illustrative painters. We turn to them with pleasure after a journey through the museums, for their reticence let us say, and for the refinement of their vision, their beautiful gift of restraint. They emphasize the commonness of much that surrounds them, much that blatantly would obscure them if they were not pronouncedly superior. They would not be discounted to any considerable degree if they were placed among the known masters of landscape painters of all modern time. They would hold their own by the verity of feeling that is in them, and what they might lose in technical excellence, would be compensated for in uniqueness of personality. I should like well to see them placed beside artists like Maris and Marées, and even Courbet. It would surprise the casual appreciator much, I believe. OUR IMPRESSIONISTS I have for purely personal reasons chosen the two painters who formulate for me the conviction that there have been and are but two consistently convincing American impressionists. These gentlemen are John H. Twachtman and Theodore Robinson. I cannot say precisely in what year Twachtman died but for purposes intended here this data is of no paramount consequence, save that it is always a matter of query as to just how long an artist must live, or have been dead, to be discovered in what is really his own time. John H. Twachtman as artist is difficult to know even by artists; for his work is made difficult to see either by its scarcity as determined for himself or by the exclusiveness of the owners of his pictures. It requires, however, but two or three of them to convince one that Twachtman has a something "plus" to contribute to his excursions into impressionism. One feels that after a Duesseldorf blackness which permeates his earlier work his conversion to impressionism was as fortunate as it was sincere. Twachtman knew, as is evidenced everywhere in his work, what he wished to essay and he proceeded with poetic reticence to give it forth. With a lyricism that is as convincing as it is 288 authentic, you feel that there is a certain underlying spirit of resignation. He surely knew that a love of sunlight would save any man from pondering on the inflated importance of world issues. Having seen Twachtman but once my memory of his face recalls this admixture of emotion. He cared too much for the essential beauties to involve them with analyses extraneous to the meaning of beauty. That the Japanese did more for him than any other Orientals of whom he might have been thinking, is evident. For all that, his own personal lyricism surmounts his interest in outer interpretations of light and movement, and he leaves you with his own notion of a private and distinguished appreciation of nature. In this sense he leads one to Renoir's way of considering nature which was the pleasure in nature for itself. It was all too fine an adventure to quibble about. Twachtman's natural reticence and, I could also believe, natural skepticism kept him from swinging wildly over to the then new theories, a gesture typical of less intelligent natures. He had the good sense to feel out for himself just where the new theories related to himself and set about producing flat simplicity of planes of color to produce a very distinguished notion of light. He dispensed with the photographic attitude toward objectivity and yet at the same time held to the pleasing rhythmical shapes in nature. He did not resort to divisionalism or to ultra-violence of relationship. The pictures that I have seen such as "February", for instance, in the Boston Museum, present for me the sensation of a man of great private spiritual and intellectual means, having the wish to express tactfully and convincingly his personal conclusions and reactions, leaning always toward the side of iridescent illusiveness rather than emotional blatancy and irrelevant extravagance. His nuances are perhaps too finely adjusted to give forth the sense of overwhelming magic either in intention or of execution. It is lyrical idea with Twachtman with seldom or never a dramatic gesture. He is as illusive as a phrase of Mallarmé and it will be remembered that he is of the period more or less of the rose and the lily and the lost idea in poetry. He does recall in essence at least the quality of pastels in prose, though the art intention is a sturdier one. It is enough that Twachtman did find his relationship to impressionism, and that he did not evolve a system of repetition which marks the failure of all influence. Twachtman remains an artist of super-fine sensibility and distinction, and whatever he may have poured into the ears of students as an instructor left no visible haggard traces on his own production other than perhaps limiting that production. But we know that while the quality is valuable in respect of power it has no other precise value. We remember that Giorgione perished likewise with an uncertain product to his credit, as to numbers, but he did leave his immemorial impression. So it is with John H. Twachtman. He leaves his indelible influence among Americans as a fine artist, and he may be said to be among the few artists who, having taken up the impressionistic principle, found a way to express his personal ideas with a true degree of personal force. He is a beautifully sincere product and that is going far. Those pictures I have seen contain no taint of the market or clamoring for praise even. They were done because their author had an unobtrusive yet very aristocratic word to say, and the word was spoken with authority. John H. Twachtman must be counted as one of the genuine American artists, as well as 289 among the most genuine artists of the world. If his pictures do not torment one with problematic intellectualism, they do hold one with their inherent refinement of taste and a degree of aristocratic approach which his true intelligence implies. With the work of Theodore Robinson, there comes a wide divergence of feeling that is perhaps a greater comprehension of the principles of impressionism as applied to the realities involved in the academic principle. One is reminded of Bastien Le Page and Léon L'Hermitte, in the paintings of Robinson, as to their type of subject and the conception of them also. That he lived not far from Giverney is likewise evident. Being of New England yankee extraction, a Vermonter I believe, he must have essayed always a sense of economy in emotion. No one could have gone so far as the then incredible Monet, whose pictures wear us to indifference with vapid and unprofitable thinking. What Monet did was to encourage a new type of audacity and a brand-new type in truth, when no one had up to then attempted to see nature as prismatical under the direct influence of the solar rays. All this has since been worked out with greater exactitude by the later theorists in modernism. While Van Gogh was slowly perishing of a mad ecstasy for light, covering up a natural Dutch realism with fierce attempts at prismatic relationship, always with the rhythms in a state of ecstatic ascendency; and Seurat had come upon the more satisfying pointillism as developed by himself; somewhere in amid all these extravagances men like Robinson were trying to combine orthodoxy of heritage and radicalist conversion with the new and very noble idea of impressionism. That Robinson succeeded in a not startling but nevertheless honorable and respectable fashion, must be conceded him. I sometimes think that Vignon, a seemingly obscure associate of the impressionists, with a similar impassioned feeling of realism, outdid him and approached closer to the principles as understood by Pissarro: probably better by a great deal than Monet himself, who is accredited with the honor of setting the theme moving in a modern line of that day. And Pissarro must have been a man to have so impressed all the men young and old of his time. After seeing a great number of Monet's one turns to any simple Pissarro for relief. And then there was also Sisley. But the talk is of Theodore Robinson. He holds his place as a realist with hardly more than a realist's conception, subjoined to a really pleasing appreciation of the principles of impressionism as imbibed by him from the source direct. Here are, then, the two true American impressionists, who, as far as I am aware, never slipped into the banalities of reiteration and marketable self-copy. They seem to have far more interest in private intellectual success than in a practical public one. It is this which helped them both, as it helps all serious artists, to keep their ideas clean of outward taint. This is one of the most important factors, which gives a man a place in the art he essays to achieve. When the day of his work is at an end it will be seen by everyone precisely what the influences were that prompted his effort toward deliverance through creation. It is for the sake of this alone that sincere artists keep to certain principles, and with genuine sacrifice often, as was certainly the case with Twachtman. And after all, how can a real artist be concerned as to just how salable his product is to be? Certainly not while he is working, if he be decent toward himself. This is of course heresy, with Wall Street so near. 290 ARTHUR B. DAVIES If Arthur B. Davies had found it necessary, as in the modern time it has been found necessary to separate literature from painting, we should doubtless have had a very delicate and sensitive lyric poetry in book form. Titles for pictures like "Mirrored Dreaming," "Sicily-Flowering Isle," "Shell of Gold," "A Portal of the Night," "Mystic Dalliance," are all of them creations of an essentially poetic and literary mind. They are all splendid titles for a real book of legendary experience. The poet will be first to feel the accuracy of lyrical emotion in these titles. The paintings lead one away entirely into the land of legend, into the iridescent splendor of reflection. They take one out of a world of didactic monotone, as to their artistic significance. They are essentially pictures created for the purpose of transportation. From the earlier days in that underground gallery on Fifth Avenue near Twenty-seventh Street to the present time, there has been a constantly flowing production of lyrical simplicity and purification. One can never think of Davies as one thinks of Courbet and of Cézanne, where the intention is first and last a technically esthetic one; especially in Cézanne, whose object was the removal of all significance from painting other than that of painting for itself. With Cézanne it was problem. One might even say it was the removal of personality. With Davies you are aware that it is an entirely intimate personal life he is presenting; a life entirely away from discussion, from all sense of problem; they are not problematic at all, his pictures; they have lyrical serenity as a basis, chiefly. Often you have the sensation of looking through a Renaissance window upon a Greek world-a world of Platonic verities in calm relation with each other. It is essentially an art created from the principle of the harmonic law in nature, things in juxtaposition, cooperating with the sole idea of a poetic existence. The titles cover the subjects, as I have suggested. Arthur B. Davies is a lyric poet with a decidedly Celtic tendency. It is the smile of a radiant twilight in his brain. It is a country of green moon whispers and of shadowed movement. Imagination illuminating the moment of fancy with rhythmic persuasiveness. It is the Pandaean mystery unfolded with symphonic accompaniment. You have in these pictures the romances of the human mind made irresistible with melodic certainty. They are chansons sans paroles, sung to the syrinx in Sicilian glades. I feel that it is our own romantic land transposed into terms of classical metre. The color is mostly Greek, and the line is Greek. You could just as well hear Glück as Keats; you could just as well see the world by the light of the virgin lamp, and watch the smoke of old altars coiling among the cypress boughs. The redwoods of the West become columns of Doric eloquence and simplicity. The mountains and lakes of the West have become settings for the reading of the "Centaur" of Maurice de Guerin. You see the reason for the titles chosen because you feel that the poetry of line and the harmonic accompaniment of color is the primal essential. They are not so dynamic as suggestive in their quality of finality. The way is left open, in other words, for you yourself to wander, if you will, and possess the requisite instincts for poetry. The presence of Arthur B. Davies, and conversation with him convince one that poetry and art are in no sense a diversion or a delusion even. They are an occupation, a real 291 business for intelligent men and women. He is occupied with the essential qualities of poetry and painting. He is eclectic by instinct. Spiritually he arrives at his conviction through these unquestionable states of lyrical existence. He is there when they happen. That is authenticity sufficient. They are not wandering moods. They are organized conditions and attitudes, intellectually appreciated and understood. He is a mystic only in the sense that perhaps all lyrical poetry is mystic, since it strives for union with the universal soul in things. It is perfectly autobiographical, the work of Arthur B. Davies, and that is so with all genuine expression. You find this gift for conviction in powerful painter types, like Courbet and Delacroix, who are almost propagandic in their fiercely defined insistence upon the chosen esthetic principle. Whatever emanation, illusion, or "aura," dreadful word that it is, springing from the work of Davies, is only typical of what comes from all magical intentions, the magic of the world of not-being, made real through the operation of true fancy. Davies' pictures are works of fancy, then, in contradistinction to the essays of the imagination such as those of William Blake. Poets like Davies are lookers-in. Poets like Blake are the austere residents of the country they wander in. The lookers-in are no less genuine. They merely "make" their world. It might be said they make the prosaic world over again, transform it by a system of prescribed magic. This work, then, becomes states of fancy dramatized in lyric metre. Davies feels the visionary life of facts as a scientist would feel them actually. He has the wish for absolute order and consistency. There is nothing vague or disconcerting in his work, no lapses of rhetoric. It is, in its way, complete, one may say, since it is the intelligently contrived purpose of this poet to arrive at a scheme of absolute spiritual harmony. He is first of all the poet-painter in the sense that Albert Ryder is a painter for those with a fine comprehension of the imagination. Precisely as Redon is an artist for artists, though not always their artist in convincing esthetics, he too, satisfies the instinct for legend, for transformation. Painters like Davies, Redon, Rops, Moreau, and the other mystical natures, give us rather the spiritual trend of their own lives. In Redon and in Davies the vision is untouched by the foul breath of the world around them. In Rops and Moreau you feel the imagination hurrying to the arms and breasts of vice for their sense of home. The pathos of deliverance is urgent in them. In the work of Davies, and of Redon, there is the splendid silence of a world created by themselves, a world for the reflection of self. There is even a kind of narcissian arrogance, the enchantment of the illumined fact. Beauty recognizing herself with satisfaction-that seems to be the purpose of the work of Arthur B. Davies. It is so much outside the realm of scientific esthetics as hardly to have been more than overheard. These pictures are efficiently exemplary of the axiom that "all art aspires to the condition of music." I could almost hear Davies saying that, as if Pater had never so much as thought of it. They literally soothe with a rare poetry painted for the eye. They are illuminations for the manuscripts of the ascetic soul. They are windows for houses in which men and women may withdraw, and be reconciled to the doom of isolation. 292 With the arrival of Cubism into the modern esthetic scene, there appeared a change in the manner of creation, though the same methods of invention remained chiefly without change. The result seems more in the nature of kaleidoscopic variance, a perhaps more acutely realized sense of opposites, than in the former mode. They register less completely, it seems to me, because the departure is too sudden in the rhythmus of the artist. The art of Davies is the art of a melodious curved line. Therefore the sudden angularity is abrupt to an appreciative eye. It is the poetry of Arthur B. Davies that comes to the fore in one's appreciation. He has the almost impeccable gift for lyrical truth, and the music of motion is crystallized in his imagination to a masterful degree. He is the highly sensitized illustrator appointed by the states of his soul to picture forth the pauses of the journey through the realm of fancy. It has in it the passion of violet and silver dreaming, the hue of an endless dawn before the day descends upon the world. You expect the lute to regain its jaded tune there. You expect the harp to reverberate once again with the old fervors. You expect the syrinx to unfold the story of the reed in light song. It contains the history of all the hushed horizons that can be found over the edges of a world of materiality. It holds in it always the warm soul of every digit of the moon. Human passion is for once removed, unless it be that the mere humanism of motion excites the sense of passion. You are made to feel the nonessentiality of the stress of the flesh in the true places of spiritual existence. The life of moments is carried over and made permanent in fancy, and they endure by the purity of their[86] presence alone. There is no violence in the work of Davies. It is the appreciable relation of harmony and counterpoint in the human heart and mind. It is the logic of rhythmical equation felt there, almost exclusively. It is the condition of music that art in the lyrical state has seemed to suggest. The artistic versatility of Davies is too familiar to comment upon. He has no distress with mediums. His exceptional sensitivity to substance and texture gives him the requisite rapport with all species of mediums to which the artist has access. One might be inclined to think of him as a virtuoso in pastel possibly, and his paintings in the medium of oil suggest this sort of richness. He is nevertheless at home in all ways. All these are issues waved away to my mind, in view of his acute leaning to the poet that leads the artist away from problems other than that of Greek rhythmical perfection. It is essentially a Platonic expression, the desire of the perfect union of one thing with another. That is its final consummation, so it seems to me. REX SLINKARD "I doubt not that the passionately wept deaths of young men are provided for."-Walt Whitman. We have had our time for regretting the loss of men of genius during the war. We know the significance of the names of Rupert Brooke, Edward Thomas, Elroy Flecker on the other side of the sea, to the hope of England. And on this side of the sea the names of Joyce Kilmer, Alan Seeger and Victor Chapman have been called out to us for the poetic spell they cast upon America. All of them in their manful, poetic way. They were all of them poets in words; all but Victor Chapman were professional poets, and he, even if he 293 himself was not aware, gave us some rare bits of loveliness in his letters. There are others almost nameless among soldier-hero people who gave us likewise real bits of unsuspected beauty in their unpretentious letters. Rex Slinkard was a soldier, poet-painter by inclination, and ranchman as to specific occupation. Rex has gone from us, too. How many are there who know, or could have known, the magic of this unassuming visionary person. Only a few of us who understand the meaning of magic and the meaning of everlasting silences. It is the fortune of America that there remain with us numbers of highly indicative drawings and a group of rare canvases, the quality of which painters will at once acclaim, and poets will at once verify the lyric perfection of, paintings and drawings among the loveliest we have in point of purity of conception and feeling for the subtle shades of existence, those rare states of life which, when they arrive, are called perfect moments in the poetic experience of men and women. There will be no argument to offer or to maintain regarding the work of Rex Slinkard. It is what it is, the perfect evidence that one of the finest lyric talents to be found among the young creators of America has been deprived of its chance to bloom as it would like to have done, as it so eagerly and surely was already doing. Rex Slinkard was a genius of first quality. The word genius may be used these days without fear of the little banalities, since anyone who has evolved for himself a clear vision of life may be said to possess the quality of genius. "The day's work done and the supper past. I walk through the horse-lot and to my shack. Inside I light the lantern, and then the fire, and sitting, I think of the inhabitants of the earth, and of the world, my home." These sentences, out of a letter to a near friend, and the marginalia written upon the edges of many of his drawings, show the varying degrees of delicacy Rex was eager to register and make permanent for his own realization. His thought was once and for all upon the realities, that is, those substances that are or can be realities only to the artist, the poet, and the true dreamer, and Rex Slinkard was all of these. His observation of himself, and his understanding of himself, were uncommonly genuine in this young and so poetic painter. He had learned early for so young a man what were his special idealistic fervors. He had the true romanticist's gift for refinements, and was working continually toward the rarer states of being out from the emotional into the intellectual, through spiritual application into the proper and requisite calm. He lived in a thoroughly ordered world of specified experience which is typified in his predilection for the superiority of Chinese notions of beauty over the more sentimental rhythms of the Greeks. He had found the proper shade of intellectuality he cared for in this type of Oriental expression. It was the Buddhistic feeling of reality that gave him more than the platonic. He was searching for a majesty beyond sensuousness, by which sensuous experience is transformed into greater and more enduring shades of beauty. He wanted the very life of beauty to take the place of sensuous suggestion. Realities in place of semblances, then, he was eager for, but the true visionary realities as far finer than the materialistic reality. 294 He had learned early that he was not, and never would be, the fantasist that some of his earlier canvases indicate. Even his essays in portraiture, verging on the realistic, leaned nevertheless more toward the imaginative reality always. He knew, also, with clarity, the fine line of decision between imagination and vision, between the dramatic and the lyric, and had realized completely the supremacy of the lyric in himself. He was a young boy of light walking on a man's strong feet upon real earth over which there was no shadow for him. He walked straightforwardly toward the elysium of his own very personal organized fancies. His irrigation ditches were "young rivers" for him, rivers of being, across which white youths upon white horses, and white fawns were gliding to the measure of their own delights. He had, this young boy of light, the perfect measure of poetic accuracy coupled with a man's fine simplicity in him. He had the priceless calm for the understanding of his own poetic ecstasies. They acted upon him gently with their own bright pressure. He let them thrive according to their own relationships to himself. Nothing was forced in the mind and soul of Rex Slinkard. He was in quest of the modern rapture for permanent things such as is to be found in "L'après midi d'un Faun" of Mallarmé and Debussy for instance, in quest of those rare, whiter proportions of experience. It was radiance and simplicity immingled in his sense of things. He would have served his country well as one of its clearest and best citizens, far more impressively by the growth and expansion of his soul in his own manly vision, than by the questionable value of his labors in the military service. He did what he could, gladly and heroically, but he had become too weakened by the siege of physical reverses that pursued his otherwise strong body to endure the strain of labor he performed, or wanted to accomplish. He knew long before he entered service the significance of discipline from very profound experience with life from childhood onward. Life had come to him voluminously because he was one who attracted life to him, electrically. He did not "whine" or "postpone," for he was in all of his hours at least mentally and spiritually equal to the world in all of its aspects. He was physically not there for the thing he volunteered to do, despite the appearance of manly strength in him, or thought he would be able to do. He hoped strongly to serve. None knew his secret so well as himself, and he kept his own secret royally and amicably. Exceptional maturity of understanding of life, of nature, and all the little mysteries that are the shape of human moments, was conspicuously evidenced for as long as his intimates remember. The extraordinary measure of calm contained in his last pictures and in so many of the drawings done in moments of rest in camp is evidence of all this. He had a boy's brightness and certainty of the fairness of things, joined with a man's mastery of the simple problem. He was a true executive in material affairs and his vision was another part of the business of existence. As I have said, Rex Slinkard had the priceless poise of the true lyric poet, and it was the ordered[92] system in his vision that proved him. He knew the value of his attitudes and he was certain that perfection is imperishable, and strove with a poet's calm intensity toward that. He had found his Egypt, his Assyria, his Greece, and his own specific Nirvana at his feet everywhere. 295 As he stood attending to the duties of irrigation and the ripening of the alfalfa crops, he spent the moments otherwise lost in carving pebbles he found about him with rare gestures and profiles, either of his own face or body which he knew well, or the grace of other bodies and faces he had seen. He was always the young eye on things, an avid eye sure of the wonder about to escape from every living thing where light or shadow fell upon them gently. He was a sure, unquestionable, and in this sense a perfect poet, and possessed the undeniable painter's gift for presentation. He was of the company of Odilon Redon, of whom he had never heard, in his feeling for the almost occult presence emanating from everything he encountered everywhere, and his simple letters to his friends hold touches of the same beauty his drawings and paintings and carvings on pebbles contain. A born mystic and visionary as to the state of his soul, a boy of light in quest of the real wisdom that is necessary for the lyrical embodiment, this was Rex Slinkard, the western ranchman and poet-painter. "I think of the inhabitants of the earth and of the world, my home." This might have been a marginal note from the Book of Thel, or it might have been a line from some new songs of innocence and experience. It might have been spoken from out of one of the oaks of William Blake. It must have been heard from among the live oaks of Saugus. It was the simple speech of a ranchman of California, a real boy-man who loved everything with a poet's love because everything that lived, lived for him. Such were the qualities of Rex Slinkard, who would like to have remained in the presence of his friends, the inhabitants of the earth, to have lived long in the world, his home. It is all a fine clear testimony to the certainty of youth, perhaps the only certainty there can be. He was the calm declaimer of the life of everlasting beauty. He saw with a glad eye the "something" that is everywhere at all times, and in all places, for the poet's and the visionary's eye at least. He was sure of what he saw; his paintings and drawings are a firm conviction of that. Like all who express themselves clearly, he wanted to say all he had to say. At thirty he had achieved expression remarkably. He had found the way out, and the way out was toward and into the light. He was clear, and entirely unshadowed. This is Rex Slinkard, ranchman, poet-painter, and man of the living world. Since he could not remain, he has left us a carte visite of rarest clarity and beauty. We who care, among the few, for things in relation to essences, are glad Rex Slinkard lived and laughed and wondered, and remained the little while. The new silence is but a phase of the same living one he covered all things with. He was glad he was here. He was another angle of light on the poetic world around us, another unsuspected facet of the bright surface of the world. Surfaces were for him, too, something to be "deepened" with a fresh vividness. He had the irresistible impulse to decorate and to decorate consistently. His sense of decoration was fluid and had no hint of the rhetorical in it. He felt everything joined together, shape to shape, by the harmonic insistence in life and in nature. A flower held a face, and a face held a flowery substance for him. Bodies were young trees in bloom, and trees were lines of human loveliness. The body of the man, the body of the woman, beautiful male and 296 female bodies, the ideal forms of everyone and everything he encountered, he understood and made his own. They were all living radiances against the dropped curtain of the world. He loved the light on flesh, and the shadows on strong arms, legs, and breasts. He avoided theory, either philosophic or esthetic. He had traveled through the ages of culture in his imagination, and was convinced that nothing was new and nothing was old. It was all living and eternal when it was genuine. He stepped out of the world of visible realities but seldom, and so it was, books and methods of interpretation held little for him. He didn't need them, for he held the whole world in his arms through the power of dream and vision. He touched life everywhere, touched it with himself. Rex Slinkard went away into a celestial calm October 18, 1918, in St. Vincent's Hospital, New York City. It is the few among those of us who knew him as poet and visionary and man, who wish earnestly that Rex might have remained. He gave much that many wanted, or would have wanted if they had had the opportunity of knowing him. The pictures and drawings that remain are the testimony of his splendid poetic talents. He was a lyrical painter of the first order. He is something that we miss mightily, and shall miss for long. SOME AMERICAN WATER-COLORISTS With the arrival of Cézanne into the field of water-color painting, this medium suffers a new and drastic instance for comparison. It is not technical audacity alone, of course, that confronts us in these brilliantly achieved performances, so rich in form as well as radiant with light. It is not the kind of virility for its own sake that is typical of our own American artists so gifted in this special medium, like Whistler, Sargent, Winslow Homer, Dodge Macknight, John Marin, and Charles Demuth. With Cézanne it was merely a new instrument to employ for the realization of finer plastic relations. The medium of water-color has been ably employed by the English and the Dutch painters, but it seems as if the artists of both these countries succeeded in removing all the brilliance and charm as well as the freshness which is peculiar to it; few outside of Cézanne have, I think, done more with water-color than the above named American artists, none who have kept more closely and consistently within the confines and peculiarities of this medium. In the consideration of the American water-color artists it will be found that Sargent and Homer tend always toward the graphic aspect of a pictorial idea, yet it is Homer who relieves his pictures of this obsession by a brilliant appreciation of the medium for its own sake. Homer steps out of the dry conventionalism of the English style of painting, which Sargent does not do. Much of that metallic harshness which is found in the oil pictures of Homer is relieved in the water-colors and there is added to this their extreme virtuosity, and a great distinction to be discovered in their sense of light and life, the sense of the object illumined with a wealth of vibrancy that is peculiar to its environment, particularly noticeable in the Florida series. Dodge Macknight has seen with a keen eye the importance of this virility of technique to be found in Homer, and has added to this a passion for impressionistic veracity which 297 heightens his own work to a point distinctly above that of Sargent, and one might almost say above Winslow Homer. Macknight really did authenticate for himself the efficacy of impression with almost incredible feats of visual bravery. There is no array of pigment sufficient to satisfy him as for what heat and cold do to his sensibility, as experienced by the opposite poles of a New England winter and a tropical Mexican landscape. He is always in search of the highest height in contrasts, all this joined by what his sense of fierceness of light could bring to the fantastic dune stretches of Cape Cod in fiery autumn. His work in water-color has the convincing charm of almost fanaticism for itself; and we find this medium progressing still further with the fearlessness of John Marin in the[98] absolute at-home-ness which he displays on all occasions in his audacious watercolor pictures. Marin brings you to the feeling that digression is for him imperative only as affording him relief from the tradition of his medium. John Marin employs all the restrictions of water-color with the wisdom that is necessary in the case. He says that paper plus water, plus emotion will give a result in themselves and proceeds with the idea at hand in what may without the least temerity be called a masterly fashion; he has run the gamut of experience with his materials from the earliest Turner tonalities, through Whisterian vagaries on to American definiteness, and has incidentally noted that the Chinese have been probably the only supreme masters of the wash in the history of water-color painting. I can say for myself that Marin produces the liveliest, handsomest wash that is producible or that has ever been accomplished in the field of water-color painting. Perhaps many of the pictures of John Marin were not always satisfying in the tactile sense because many of them are taken up with an inevitable passion for technical virtuosity, which is no mean distinction in itself but we are not satisfied as once we were with this passion for audacity and virtuosity. We have learned that spatial existence and spatial relationships are the important essentials in any work of art. The precise ratio of thought accompanied by exactitude of emotion for the given idea is a matter of serious consideration with the modern artists of today. That is the special value of modern painting to the development of art. The Chinese really knew just what a wash was capable of, and confined themselves to the majesty of the limitations at hand. John Marin has been wise in this also though he is not precisely fanatical, which may be his chief defect, and it is probably true that the greatest experimenters have shown fanatical tendency, which is only the accentuated spirit of obsession for an idea. How else does one hold a vision? It is the only way for an artist to produce plastic exactitude between two planes of sensation or thought. The parts must be as perfect as the whole and in the best art this is so. There must be the sense of "existence" everywhere and it might even be said that the cool hue of the intellect is the first premise in a true work of art. Virtuosity is a state of expression but it is not the final state. One must search for as well as find the sequential quality which is necessitated for the safe arrival of a work of art into the sphere of esthetic existence. The water-colors of John Marin are restless with energy, which is in its way a real virtue. They do, I think, require, at times at least, more of the calm of research and less of the excitement of it. All true artistry is self-contained and never relies upon outer physical 298 stimulus or inward extravagance of phantasy, or of idiosyncrasy. A work of art is never peculiar, it is always a natural thing. In this sense John Marin approaches real art because he is probably the most natural water-colorist in existence. With Charles Demuth water-color painting steps up into the true condition of ideas followed by experience. He has joined with modernism most consistently, having arrived at this state of progression by the process of investigation. The tradition of water-color painting takes a jump into the new field of modernism, and Demuth has given us his knowledge of the difference between illustration, depiction, and the plastic realization of fact. Probably no young artist has accomplished a finer degree of artistic finesse in illustration than has Charles Demuth in his series of illustrations for "The Two Magics" of Henry James, or more explicitly to say "The Turn of the Screw". These pictures are to the true observer all that could be hoped for in imaginative sincerity as well as in technical elusiveness. Demuth has since that time stepped out of the confinement of water-color pure, over into the field of tempera, which brings it nearer to the sturdier mediums employed in the making of pictures evolving a greater severity of form and a commendable rigidity of line. He has learned like so many moderns that the ruled line offers greater advantages in pictorial structure. You shall find his approach to the spirit of Christopher Wren is as clear and direct as his feeling for the vastiness of New England speechlessness. He has come up beyond the dramatisation of emotion to the point of expression for its own sake. But he is nevertheless to be included among the arrived water-colorists, because his gifts for expression have been evolved almost entirely through this medium. There is then a fine American achievement in the art of water-color painting which may safely be called at this time a localized tradition. It has become an American realization. THE APPEAL OF PHOTOGRAPHY Photography is an undeniable esthetic problem upon our modern artistic horizon. The idea of photography as an art has been discussed no doubt ever since the invention of the pinhole. In the main, I have always said for myself that the kodak offers me the best substitute for the picture of life, that I have found. I find the snapshot, almost without exception, holding my interest for what it contains of simple registration of and adherence to facts for themselves. I have had a very definite and plausible aversion to the "artistic" photograph, and we have had more than a surfeit of this sort of production for the past ten or fifteen years. I have referred frequently in my mind to the convincing portraits by David Octavius Hill as being among the first examples of photographic portraiture to hold my own private interest as clear and unmanipulated expressions of reality; and it is a definite as well as irresistible quality that pervades these mechanical productions, the charm of the object for its own sake. It was the irrelevant "artistic" period in photography that did so much to destroy the vital significance of photography as a type of expression which may be classed as among the real arts of today. And it was a movement that failed because it added nothing to the idea save a distressing superficiality. It introduced a fog on the brain, that was as senseless as 299 it was embarrassing to the eye caring intensely for precision of form and accuracy of presentation. Photography was in this sense unfortunate in that it fell into the hands of adepts at the brush who sought to introduce technical variations which had nothing in reality to do with it and with which it never could have anything in common. All this sort of thing was produced in the age of the famous men and women, the period of eighteen ninety-five to nineteen hundred and ten say, for it was the age when the smart young photographer was frantic to produce famous sitters like Shaw and Rodin. We do not care anything about such things in our time because we now know that anybody well photographed according to the scope as well as the restrictions of the medium at hand could be, as has been proven, an interesting subject. It has been seen, as Alfred Stieglitz has so clearly shown, that an eyebrow, a leg, a tree trunk, a body, a breast, a hand, any part being equal to the whole in its power to tell the story, could be made as interesting, more so indeed than all the famous people in existence. It doesn't matter to us in the least that Morgan and Richard Strauss helped fill a folio alongside of Maeterlinck and such like persons. All this was, of course, in keeping with the theatricism of the period in which it was produced, which is one of the best things to be said of it. But we do know that Whistler helped ruin photography along with Wilde who helped ruin esthetics. Everyone has his office nevertheless. As a consequence, Alfred Stieglitz was told by the prevailing geniuses of that time that he was a back number because of his strict adherence to the scientific nature of the medium, because he didn't manipulate his plate beyond the strictly technical advantages it offered, and it was not therefore a fashionable addition to the kind of thing that was being done by the assuming ones at that time. The exhibition of the life-work of Alfred Stieglitz in March, 1921, at the Anderson Galleries, New York, was a huge revelation even to those of us who along with our own ultra modern interests had found a place for good unadulterated photography in the scheme of our appreciation of the art production of this time. I can say without a qualm that photography has always been a real stimulus to me in all the years I have been personally associated with it through the various exhibitions held along with those of modern painting at the gallery of the Photo-Secession, or more intimately understood as "291". Photography was an interesting foil to the kind of veracity that painting is supposed to express, or rather to say, was then supposed to express; for painting like all other ideas has changed vastly in the last ten years, and even very much since the interval created by the war. I might have learned this anywhere else, but I did get it from the Stieglitz camera realizations with more than perhaps the expected frequency, and I am willing to assert now that there are no portraits in existence, not in all the history of portrait realization either by the camera or in painting, which so definitely present, and in many instances with an almost haunting clairvoyance, the actualities existing in the sitter's mind and body and soul. These portraits are for me without parallel therefore in this particular. And I make bold with another assertion, that from our modern point of view the Stieglitz photographs are undeniable works of art, as are also the fine photographs of the younger men like Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand. Sheeler, being also one of our best modern painters, has probably added to his photographic work a different type of sensibility by reason of his experience in the so-called creative medium of painting. It is, as we know, brain matter that counts in a work of art, and we have 300 dispensed once and for all with the silly notion that a work of art is made by hand. Art is first and last of all, a product of the intelligence. I think the photographers must at least have been a trifle upset with this Stieglitz Exhibition. I know that many of the painters of the day were noticeably impressed. There was much to concern everyone there, in any degree that can be put upon us as interested spectators. For myself, I care nothing for the gift of interpretation, and far less for that dreadful type of effete facility which produces a kind of hocus-pocus technical brilliancy which fuddles the eye with a trickery, and produces upon the untrained and uncritical mind a kind of unintelligent hypnotism. Art these days is a matter of scientific comprehension of reality, not a trick of the hand or the old-fashioned manipulation of a brush or a tool. I am interested in presentation pure and simple. All things that are living are expression and therefore part of the inherent symbology of life. Art, therefore, that is encumbered with excessive symbolism is extraneous, and from my point of view, useless art. Anyone who understands life needs no handbook of poetry or philosophy to tell him what it is. When a picture looks like the life of the world, it is apt to be a fair picture or a good one, but a bad picture is nothing but a bad picture and it is bound to become worse as we think of it. And so for my own pleasure I have consulted the kodak as furnishing me with a better picture of life than many pictures I have seen by many of the so-called very good artists, and I have always delighted in the rotograph series of the Sunday papers because they are as close to life as any superficial representation can hope to be. It was obvious then that many of those who saw the Stieglitz photographs, and there were large crowds of them, were non-plussed by the unmistakable authenticity of experience contained in them. If you stopped there you were of course mystified, but there is no mystery whatever in these productions, for they are as clear and I shall even go so far as to say as objective as the daylight which produced them, and aside from certain intimate issues they are impersonal as it is possible for an artist to be. It is this quality in them which makes them live for me as realities in the art world of modern time. All art calls for one variety of audacity or another and so these photographs unfold one type of audacity which is not common among works of art, excepting of course in highly accentuated instances of autographic revelation. It is the intellectual sympathy with all the subjects on exhibition which is revealed in these photographs: A kind of spiritual diagnosis which is seldom or never to be found among the photographers and almost never among the painters of the conventional portrait. This ability, talent, virtue, or genius, whatever you may wish to name it, is without theatricism and therefore without spectacular demonstration either of the sitter or the method employed in rendering them. It is never a matter of arranging cheap and practically unrelated externals with Alfred Stieglitz. I am confident it can be said that he has never in his life made a spectacular photograph. His intensity runs in quite another channel altogether. It is far closer to the clairvoyant exposure of the psychic aspects of the moment, as contained in either the persons or the objects treated of. With these essays in character of Alfred Stieglitz, you have a series of types who had but one object in mind, to lend themselves for the use of the machine in order that[108] a certain problem might be accurately rendered with the scientific end of the process in view, and the given actuality brought to the surface when 301 possible. I see nothing in these portraits beyond this. I understand them technically very little only that I am aware that I have not for long, and perhaps never, seen plates that hold such depths of tonal value and structural relationship of light and shade as are contained in the hundred and fifty prints on exhibition in the Anderson Galleries. Art is a vastly new problem and this is the first thing which must be learned. Precisely as we learn that a certain type of painting ended in the history of the world with Cézanne. There is an impulse now in painting toward photographic veracity of experience as is so much in evidence in the work of an artist of such fine perceptions as Ingres, with a brushing aside of all old-fashioned notions of what constitutes artistic experience. There is a deliberate revolt, and photography as we know it in the work of Alfred Stieglitz and the few younger men like Strand and Sheeler is part of the new esthetic anarchism which we as younger painters must expect to make ourselves responsible for. It must be remembered you know, that there has been a war, and art is in a condition of encouraging and stimulating renascence, and we may even go so far as to say that it is a greater world issue than it was previous to the great catastrophe. And also, it must be heralded that as far as art is concerned the end of the world has been seen. The true artist, if he is intelligent, is witness of this most stimulating truth that confronts us. We cannot hope to function esthetically as we did before all this happened, because we are not the same beings intellectually. This does not mean in relation to photography that all straight photography is good. It merely means that the kind of photography I must name "Fifth Avenue" art, is a conspicuous species of artistic bunkum, and must be recognized as such. Photographers must know that fogging and blurring the image is curtailing the experience of it. It is a foolish notion that mystification is of any value. Flattery is one of the false elements that enter into the making of a work of art among the artists of doubtful integrity, but this is often if not always the commercial element that enters into it. There is a vast difference between this sort of representation and that which is to be found in Greek sculpture which is nothing short of conscious plastic organization. These figures were set up in terms of the prevailing systems of proportion. Portraits were likewise "arranged" through the artistry of the painter in matters of decoration for the great halls of the periods in which they were hung. They were studies on a large scale of ornamentation. Their beauty lies chiefly in the gift of execution. In these modern photographs of Stieglitz and his followers there is an engaging directness which cannot be and must not be ignored. They do for once give in the case of the portraits, and I mean chiefly of course the Stieglitz portraits, the actuality of the sitter without pose or theatricism of any sort, a rather rare thing to be said of the modern photograph. Stieglitz, therefore, despite his thirty or more years of experimentation comes up among the moderns by virtue of his own personal attitude toward photography, and toward his, as well as its, relation to the subject. His creative power lies in his ability to diagnose the character and quality of the sitter as being peculiar to itself, as a being in relation to itself seen by his own clarifying insight into general and well as special character and characteristic. It need hardly be said that he knows his business technically for he has been acclaimed sufficiently all over the world by a series of almost irrelevant medals and honours without end. The Stieglitz exhibition is one that should have been seen by 302 everyone regardless of any peculiar and special predilection for art. These photos will have opened the eye and the mind of many a sleeping one as to what can be done by way of mechanical device to approach the direct charm of life in nature. The moderns have long since congratulated Alfred Stieglitz for his originality in the special field of his own creative endeavor. It will matter little whether the ancients do or not. His product is a fine testimonial to his time and therefore this is his contribution to his time. He finds himself, and perhaps to his own embarrassment even, among the best modern artists; for Stieglitz as I understand him cares little for anything beyond the rendering of the problem involved which makes him of course scientific first and whatever else afterward, which is the hope of the modern artists of all movements, regardless. Incidentally it may be confided he is an artistic idol of the Dadaists which is at least a happy indication of his modernism. If he were to shift his activities to Paris, he would be taken up at once for his actual value as modern artist expressing present day notions of actual things. Perhaps he will not care to be called Dada, but it is nevertheless true. He has ridden his own vivacious hobby-horse with as much liberty, and one may even say license, as is possible for one intelligent human being. There is no space to tell casually of his various aspects such as champion billiard player, racehorse enthusiast, etcetera. This information would please his dadaistic confrères, if no one else shows signs of interest. XIV MASTERS OF ARTS A two-inch stub of a blue pencil was the wand with which Keogh performed the preliminary acts of his magic. So, with this he covered paper with diagrams and figures while he waited for the United States of America to send down to Coralio a successor to Atwood, resigned. The new scheme that his mind had conceived, his stout heart indorsed, and his blue pencil corroborated, was laid around the characteristics and human frailties of the new president of Anchuria. These characteristics, and the situation out of which Keogh hoped to wrest a golden tribute, deserve chronicling contributive to the clear order of events. President Losada-many called him Dictator-was a man whose genius would have made him conspicuous even among Anglo-Saxons, had not that genius been intermixed with other traits that were petty and subversive. He had some of the lofty patriotism of Washington (the man he most admired), the force of Napoleon, and much of the wisdom of the sages. These characteristics might have justified him in the assumption of the title of "The Illustrious Liberator," had they not been accompanied by a stupendous and amazing vanity that kept him in the less worthy ranks of the dictators. Yet he did his country great service. With a mighty grasp he shook it nearly free from the shackles of ignorance and sloth and the vermin that fed upon it, and all but made it a power in the council of nations. He established schools and hospitals, built roads, bridges, railroads and palaces, and bestowed generous subsidies upon the arts and sciences. He 303 was the absolute despot and the idol of his people. The wealth of the country poured into his hands. Other presidents had been rapacious without reason. Losada amassed enormous wealth, but his people had their share of the benefits. The joint in his armour was his insatiate passion for monuments and tokens commemorating his glory. In every town he caused to be erected statues of himself bearing legends in praise of his greatness. In the walls of every public edifice, tablets were fixed reciting his splendour and the gratitude of his subjects. His statuettes and portraits were scattered throughout the land in every house and hut. One of the sycophants in his court painted him as St. John, with a halo and a train of attendants in full uniform. Losada saw nothing incongruous in this picture, and had it hung in a church in the capital. He ordered from a French sculptor a marble group including himself with Napoleon, Alexander the Great, and one or two others whom he deemed worthy of the honour. He ransacked Europe for decorations, employing policy, money and intrigue to cajole the orders he coveted from kings and rulers. On state occasions his breast was covered from shoulder to shoulder with crosses, stars, golden roses, medals and ribbons. It was said that the man who could contrive for him a new decoration, or invent some new method of extolling his greatness, might plunge a hand deep into the treasury. This was the man upon whom Billy Keogh had his eye. The gentle buccaneer had observed the rain of favors that fell upon those who ministered to the president's vanities, and he did not deem it his duty to hoist his umbrella against the scattering drops of liquid fortune. In a few weeks the new consul arrived, releasing Keogh from his temporary duties. He was a young man fresh from college, who lived for botany alone. The consulate at Coralio gave him the opportunity to study tropical flora. He wore smoked glasses, and carried a green umbrella. He filled the cool, back porch of the consulate with plants and specimens so that space for a bottle and chair was not to be found. Keogh gazed on him sadly, but without rancour, and began to pack his gripsack. For his new plot against stagnation along the Spanish Main required of him a voyage overseas. Soon came the Karlsefin again-she of the trampish habits-gleaning a cargo of cocoanuts for a speculative descent upon the New York market. Keogh was booked for a passage on the return trip. "Yes, I'm going to New York," he explained to the group of his countrymen that had gathered on the beach to see him off. "But I'll be back before you miss me. I've undertaken the art education of this piebald country, and I'm not the man to desert it while it's in the early throes of tintypes." With this mysterious declaration of his intentions Keogh boarded the Karlsefin. 304 Ten days later, shivering, with the collar of his thin coat turned high, he burst into the studio of Carolus White at the top of a tall building in Tenth Street, New York City. Carolus White was smoking a cigarette and frying sausages over an oil stove. He was only twenty-three, and had noble theories about art. "Billy Keogh!" exclaimed White, extending the hand that was not busy with the frying pan. "From what part of the uncivilized world, I wonder!" "Hello, Carry," said Keogh, dragging forward a stool, and holding his fingers close to the stove. "I'm glad I found you so soon. I've been looking for you all day in the directories and art galleries. The free-lunch man on the corner told me where you were, quick. I was sure you'd be painting pictures yet." Keogh glanced about the studio with the shrewd eye of a connoisseur in business. "Yes, you can do it," he declared, with many gentle nods of his head. "That big one in the corner with the angels and green clouds and band-wagon is just the sort of thing we want. What would you call that, Carry-scene from Coney Island, ain't it?" "That," said White, "I had intended to call 'The Translation of Elijah,' but you may be nearer right than I am." "Name doesn't matter," said Keogh, largely; "it's the frame and the varieties of paint that does the trick. Now, I can tell you in a minute what I want. I've come on a little voyage of two thousand miles to take you in with me on a scheme. I thought of you as soon as the scheme showed itself to me. How would you like to go back with me and paint a picture? Ninety days for the trip, and five thousand dollars for the job." "Cereal food or hair-tonic posters?" asked White. "It isn't an ad." "What kind of a picture is it to be?" "It's a long story," said Keogh. "Go ahead with it. If you don't mind, while you talk I'll just keep my eye on these sausages. Let 'em get one shade deeper than a Vandyke brown and you spoil 'em." Keogh explained his project. They were to return to Coralio, where White was to pose as a distinguished American portrait painter who was touring in the tropics as a relaxation from his arduous and remunerative professional labours. It was not an unreasonable hope, even to those who had trod in the beaten paths of business, that an artist with so much prestige might secure a commission to perpetuate upon canvas the lineaments of the 305 president, and secure a share of the pesos that were raining upon the caterers to his weaknesses. Keogh had set his price at ten thousand dollars. Artists had been paid more for portraits. He and White were to share the expenses of the trip, and divide the possible profits. Thus he laid the scheme before White, whom he had known in the West before one declared for Art and the other became a Bedouin. Before long the two machinators abandoned the rigour of the bare studio for a snug corner of a café. There they sat far into the night, with old envelopes and Keogh's stub of blue pencil between them. At twelve o'clock White doubled up in his chair, with his chin on his fist, and shut his eyes at the unbeautiful wall-paper. "I'll go you, Billy," he said, in the quiet tones of decision. "I've got two or three hundred saved up for sausages and rent; and I'll take the chance with you. Five thousand! It will give me two years in Paris and one in Italy. I'll begin to pack to-morrow." "You'll begin in ten minutes," said Keogh. "It's to-morrow now. The Karlsefin starts back at four P.M. Come on to your painting shop, and I'll help you." For five months in the year Coralio is the Newport of Anchuria. Then only does the town possess life. From November to March it is practically the seat of government. The president with his official family sojourns there; and society follows him. The pleasureloving people make the season one long holiday of amusement and rejoicing. Fiestas, balls, games, sea bathing, processions and small theatres contribute to their enjoyment. The famous Swiss band from the capital plays in the little plaza every evening, while the fourteen carriages and vehicles in the town circle in funereal but complacent procession. Indians from the interior mountains, looking like prehistoric stone idols, come down to peddle their handiwork in the streets. The people throng the narrow ways, a chattering, happy, careless stream of buoyant humanity. Preposterous children rigged out with the shortest of ballet skirts and gilt wings, howl, underfoot, among the effervescent crowds. Especially is the arrival of the presidential party, at the opening of the season, attended with pomp, show and patriotic demonstrations of enthusiasm and delight. When Keogh and White reached their destination, on the return trip of the Karlsefin, the gay winter season was well begun. As they stepped upon the beach they could hear the band playing in the plaza. The village maidens, with fireflies already fixed in their dark locks, were gliding, barefoot and coy-eyed, along the paths. Dandies in white linen, swinging their canes, were beginning their seductive strolls. The air was full of human essence, of artificial enticement, of coquetry, indolence, pleasure-the man-made sense of existence. The first two or three days after their arrival were spent in preliminaries. Keogh escorted the artist about town, introducing him to the little circle of English-speaking residents and 306 pulling whatever wires he could to effect the spreading of White's fame as a painter. And then Keogh planned a more spectacular demonstration of the idea he wished to keep before the public. He and White engaged rooms in the Hotel de los Estranjeros. The two were clad in new suits of immaculate duck, with American straw hats, and carried canes of remarkable uniqueness and inutility. Few caballeros in Coralio-even the gorgeously uniformed officers of the Anchurian army-were as conspicuous for ease and elegance of demeanour as Keogh and his friend, the great American painter, Señor White. White set up his easel on the beach and made striking sketches of the mountain and sea views. The native population formed at his rear in a vast, chattering semicircle to watch his work. Keogh, with his care for details, had arranged for himself a pose which he carried out with fidelity. His rôle was that of friend to the great artist, a man of affairs and leisure. The visible emblem of his position was a pocket camera. "For branding the man who owns it," said he, "a genteel dilettante with a bank account and an easy conscience, a steam-yacht ain't in it with a camera. You see a man doing nothing but loafing around making snap-shots, and you know right away he reads up well in 'Bradstreet.' You notice these old millionaire boys-soon as they get through taking everything else in sight they go to taking photographs. People are more impressed by a kodak than they are by a title or a four-carat scarf-pin." So Keogh strolled blandly about Coralio, snapping the scenery and the shrinking señoritas, while White posed conspicuously in the higher regions of art. Two weeks after their arrival, the scheme began to bear fruit. An aide-de-camp of the president drove to the hotel in a dashing victoria. The president desired that Señor White come to the Casa Morena for an informal interview. Keogh gripped his pipe tightly between his teeth. "Not a cent less than ten thousand," he said to the artist-"remember the price. And in gold or its equivalent-don't let him stick you with this bargain-counter stuff they call money here." "Perhaps it isn't that he wants," said White. "Get out!" said Keogh, with splendid confidence. "I know what he wants. He wants his picture painted by the celebrated young American painter and filibuster now sojourning in his down-trodden country. Off you go." The victoria sped away with the artist. Keogh walked up and down, puffing great clouds of smoke from his pipe, and waited. In an hour the victoria swept again to the door of the hotel, deposited White, and vanished. The artist dashed up the stairs, three at a step. Keogh stopped smoking, and became a silent interrogation point. "Landed," exclaimed White, with his boyish face flushed with elation. "Billy, you are a wonder. He wants a picture. I'll tell you all about it. By Heavens! that dictator chap is a 307 corker! He's a dictator clear down to his finger-ends. He's a kind of combination of Julius Caesar, Lucifer and Chauncey Depew done in sepia. Polite and grim-that's his way. The room I saw him in was about ten acres big, and looked like a Mississippi steamboat with its gilding and mirrors and white paint. He talks English better than I can ever hope to. The matter of the price came up. I mentioned ten thousand. I expected him to call the guard and have me taken out and shot. He didn't move an eyelash. He just waved one of his chestnut hands in a careless way, and said, 'Whatever you say.' I am to go back tomorrow and discuss with him the details of the picture." Keogh hung his head. Self-abasement was easy to read in his downcast countenance. "I'm failing, Carry," he said, sorrowfully. "I'm not fit to handle these man's-size schemes any longer. Peddling oranges in a push-cart is about the suitable graft for me. When I said ten thousand, I swear I thought I had sized up that brown man's limit to within two cents. He'd have melted down for fifteen thousand just as easy. Say-Carry-you'll see old man Keogh safe in some nice, quiet idiot asylum, won't you, if he makes a break like that again?" The Casa Morena, although only one story in height, was a building of brown stone, luxurious as a palace in its interior. It stood on a low hill in a walled garden of splendid tropical flora at the upper edge of Coralio. The next day the president's carriage came again for the artist. Keogh went out for a walk along the beach, where he and his "picture box" were now familiar sights. When he returned to the hotel White was sitting in a steamer-chair on the balcony. "Well," said Keogh, "did you and His Nibs decide on the kind of a chromo he wants?" White got up and walked back and forth on the balcony a few times. Then he stopped, and laughed strangely. His face was flushed, and his eyes were bright with a kind of angry amusement. "Look here, Billy," he said, somewhat roughly, "when you first came to me in my studio and mentioned a picture, I thought you wanted a Smashed Oats or a Hair Tonic poster painted on a range of mountains or the side of a continent. Well, either of those jobs would have been Art in its highest form compared to the one you've steered me against. I can't paint that picture, Billy. You've got to let me out. Let me try to tell you what that barbarian wants. He had it all planned out and even a sketch made of his idea. The old boy doesn't draw badly at all. But, ye goddesses of Art! listen to the monstrosity he expects me to paint. He wants himself in the centre of the canvas, of course. He is to be painted as Jupiter sitting on Olympus, with the clouds at his feet. At one side of him stands George Washington, in full regimentals, with his hand on the president's shoulder. An angel with outstretched wings hovers overhead, and is placing a laurel wreath on the president's head, crowning him-Queen of the May, I suppose. In the background is to be cannon, more angels and soldiers. The man who would paint that picture would have to have the soul of a dog, and would deserve to go down into oblivion without even a tin can tied to his tail to sound his memory." 308 Little beads of moisture crept out all over Billy Keogh's brow. The stub of his blue pencil had not figured out a contingency like this. The machinery of his plan had run with flattering smoothness until now. He dragged another chair upon the balcony, and got White back to his seat. He lit his pipe with apparent calm. "Now, sonny," he said, with gentle grimness, "you and me will have an Art to Art talk. You've got your art and I've got mine. Yours is the real Pierian stuff that turns up its nose at bock-beer signs and oleographs of the Old Mill. Mine's the art of Business. This was my scheme, and it worked out like two-and-two. Paint that president man as Old King Cole, or Venus, or a landscape, or a fresco, or a bunch of lilies, or anything he thinks he looks like. But get the paint on the canvas and collect the spoils. You wouldn't throw me down, Carry, at this stage of the game. Think of that ten thousand." "I can't help thinking of it," said White, "and that's what hurts. I'm tempted to throw every ideal I ever had down in the mire, and steep my soul in infamy by painting that picture. That five thousand meant three years of foreign study to me, and I'd almost sell my soul for that." "Now it ain't as bad as that," said Keogh, soothingly. "It's a business proposition. It's so much paint and time against money. I don't fall in with your idea that that picture would so everlastingly jolt the art side of the question. George Washington was all right, you know, and nobody could say a word against the angel. I don't think so bad of that group. If you was to give Jupiter a pair of epaulets and a sword, and kind of work the clouds around to look like a blackberry patch, it wouldn't make such a bad battle scene. Why, if we hadn't already settled on the price, he ought to pay an extra thousand for Washington, and the angel ought to raise it five hundred." "You don't understand, Billy," said White, with an uneasy laugh. "Some of us fellows who try to paint have big notions about Art. I wanted to paint a picture some day that people would stand before and forget that it was made of paint. I wanted it to creep into them like a bar of music and mushroom there like a soft bullet. And I wanted 'em to go away and ask, 'What else has he done?' And I didn't want 'em to find a thing; not a portrait nor a magazine cover nor an illustration nor a drawing of a girl-nothing but the picture. That's why I've lived on fried sausages, and tried to keep true to myself. I persuaded myself to do this portrait for the chance it might give me to study abroad. But this howling, screaming caricature! Good Lord! can't you see how it is?" "Sure," said Keogh, as tenderly as he would have spoken to a child, and he laid a long forefinger on White's knee. "I see. It's bad to have your art all slugged up like that. I know. You wanted to paint a big thing like the panorama of the battle of Gettysburg. But let me kalsomine you a little mental sketch to consider. Up to date we're out $385.50 on this scheme. Our capital took every cent both of us could raise. We've got about enough left to get back to New York on. I need my share of that ten thousand. I want to work a copper deal in Idaho, and make a hundred thousand. That's the business end of the thing. Come down off your art perch, Carry, and let's land that hatful of dollars." 309 "Billy," said White, with an effort, "I'll try. I won't say I'll do it, but I'll try. I'll go at it, and put it through if I can." "That's business," said Keogh heartily. "Good boy! Now, here's another thing-rush that picture-crowd it through as quick as you can. Get a couple of boys to help you mix the paint if necessary. I've picked up some pointers around town. The people here are beginning to get sick of Mr. President. They say he's been too free with concessions; and they accuse him of trying to make a dicker with England to sell out the country. We want that picture done and paid for before there's any row." In the great patio of Casa Morena, the president caused to be stretched a huge canvas. Under this White set up his temporary studio. For two hours each day the great man sat to him. White worked faithfully. But, as the work progressed, he had seasons of bitter scorn, of infinite self-contempt, of sullen gloom and sardonic gaiety. Keogh, with the patience of a great general, soothed, coaxed, argued-kept him at the picture. At the end of a month White announced that the picture was completed-Jupiter, Washington, angels, clouds, cannon and all. His face was pale and his mouth drawn straight when he told Keogh. He said the president was much pleased with it. It was to be hung in the National Gallery of Statesmen and Heroes. The artist had been requested to return to Casa Morena on the following day to receive payment. At the appointed time he left the hotel, silent under his friend's joyful talk of their success. An hour later he walked into the room where Keogh was waiting, threw his hat on the floor, and sat upon the table. "Billy," he said, in strained and labouring tones, "I've a little money out West in a small business that my brother is running. It's what I've been living on while I've been studying art. I'll draw out my share and pay you back what you've lost on this scheme." "Lost!" exclaimed Keogh, jumping up. "Didn't you get paid for the picture?" "Yes, I got paid," said White. "But just now there isn't any picture, and there isn't any pay. If you care to hear about it, here are the edifying details. The president and I were looking at the painting. His secretary brought a bank draft on New York for ten thousand dollars and handed it to me. The moment I touched it I went wild. I tore it into little pieces and threw them on the floor. A workman was repainting the pillars inside the patio. A bucket of his paint happened to be convenient. I picked up his brush and slapped a quart of blue paint all over that ten-thousand-dollar nightmare. I bowed, and walked out. The president didn't move or speak. That was one time he was taken by surprise. It's tough on you, Billy, but I couldn't help it." 310 There seemed to be excitement in Coralio. Outside there was a confused, rising murmur pierced by high-pitched cries. "Bajo el traidor-Muerte el traidor!" were the words they seemed to form. "Listen to that!" exclaimed White, bitterly: "I know that much Spanish. They're shouting, 'Down with the traitor!' I heard them before. I felt that they meant me. I was a traitor to Art. The picture had to go." "'Down with the blank fool' would have suited your case better," said Keogh, with fiery emphasis. "You tear up ten thousand dollars like an old rag because the way you've spread on five dollars' worth of paint hurts your conscience. Next time I pick a sidepartner in a scheme the man has got to go before a notary and swear he never even heard the word 'ideal' mentioned." Keogh strode from the room, white-hot. White paid little attention to his resentment. The scorn of Billy Keogh seemed a trifling thing beside the greater self-scorn he had escaped. In Coralio the excitement waxed. An outburst was imminent. The cause of this demonstration of displeasure was the presence in the town of a big, pink-cheeked Englishman, who, it was said, was an agent of his government come to clinch the bargain by which the president placed his people in the hands of a foreign power. It was charged that not only had he given away priceless concessions, but that the public debt was to be transferred into the hands of the English, and the custom-houses turned over to them as a guarantee. The long-enduring people had determined to make their protest felt. On that night, in Coralio and in other towns, their ire found vent. Yelling mobs, mercurial but dangerous, roamed the streets. They overthrew the great bronze statue of the president that stood in the centre of the plaza, and hacked it to shapeless pieces. They tore from public buildings the tablets set there proclaiming the glory of the "Illustrious Liberator." His pictures in the government offices were demolished. The mobs even attacked the Casa Morena, but were driven away by the military, which remained faithful to the executive. All the night terror reigned. The greatness of Losada was shown by the fact that by noon the next day order was restored, and he was still absolute. He issued proclamations denying positively that any negotiations of any kind had been entered into with England. Sir Stafford Vaughn, the pink-cheeked Englishman, also declared in placards and in public print that his presence there had no international significance. He was a traveller without guile. In fact (so he stated), he had not even spoken with the president or been in his presence since his arrival. During this disturbance, White was preparing for his homeward voyage in the steamship that was to sail within two or three days. About noon, Keogh, the restless, took his camera out with the hope of speeding the lagging hours. The town was now as quiet as if peace had never departed from her perch on the red-tiled roofs. 311 About the middle of the afternoon, Keogh hurried back to the hotel with something decidedly special in his air. He retired to the little room where he developed his pictures. Later on he came out to White on the balcony, with a luminous, grim, predatory smile on his face. "Do you know what that is?" he asked, holding up a 4 × 5 photograph mounted on cardboard. "Snap-shot of a señorita sitting in the sand-alliteration unintentional," guessed White, lazily. "Wrong," said Keogh with shining eyes. "It's a slung-shot. It's a can of dynamite. It's a gold mine. It's a sight-draft on your president man for twenty thousand dollars-yes, sir-twenty thousand this time, and no spoiling the picture. No ethics of art in the way. Art! You with your smelly little tubes! I've got you skinned to death with a kodak. Take a look at that." White took the picture in his hand, and gave a long whistle. "Jove!" he exclaimed, "but wouldn't that stir up a row in town if you let it be seen. How in the world did you get it, Billy?" "You know that high wall around the president man's back garden? I was up there trying to get a bird's-eye of the town. I happened to notice a chink in the wall where a stone and a lot of plaster had slid out. Thinks I, I'll take a peep through to see how Mr. President's cabbages are growing. The first thing I saw was him and this Sir Englishman sitting at a little table about twenty feet away. They had the table all spread over with documents, and they were hobnobbing over them as thick as two pirates. 'Twas a nice corner of the garden, all private and shady with palms and orange trees, and they had a pail of champagne set by handy in the grass. I knew then was the time for me to make my big hit in Art. So I raised the machine up to the crack, and pressed the button. Just as I did so them old boys shook hands on the deal-you see they took that way in the picture." Keogh put on his coat and hat. "What are you going to do with it?" asked White. "Me," said Keogh in a hurt tone, "why, I'm going to tie a pink ribbon to it and hang it on the what-not, of course. I'm surprised at you. But while I'm out you just try to figure out what ginger-cake potentate would be most likely to want to buy this work of art for his private collection-just to keep it out of circulation." The sunset was reddening the tops of the cocoanut palms when Billy Keogh came back from Casa Morena. He nodded to the artist's questioning gaze; and lay down on a cot with his hands under the back of his head. 312 "I saw him. He paid the money like a little man. They didn't want to let me in at first. I told 'em it was important. Yes, that president man is on the plenty-able list. He's got a beautiful business system about the way he uses his brains. All I had to do was to hold up the photograph so he could see it, and name the price. He just smiled, and walked over to a safe and got the cash. Twenty one-thousand-dollar brand-new United States Treasury notes he laid on the table, like I'd pay out a dollar and a quarter. Fine notes, too-they crackled with a sound like burning the brush off a ten-acre lot." "Let's try the feel of one," said White, curiously. "I never saw a thousand-dollar bill." Keogh did not immediately respond. "Carry," he said, in an absent-minded way, "you think a heap of your art, don't you?" "More," said White, frankly, "than has been for the financial good of myself and my friends." "I thought you were a fool the other day," went on Keogh, quietly, "and I'm not sure now that you wasn't. But if you was, so am I. I've been in some funny deals, Carry, but I've always managed to scramble fair, and match my brains and capital against the other fellow's. But when it comes to-well, when you've got the other fellow cinched, and the screws on him, and he's got to put up-why, it don't strike me as being a man's game. They've got a name for it, you know; it's-confound you, don't you understand? A fellow feels-it's something like that blamed art of yours-he-well, I tore that photograph up and laid the pieces on that stack of money and shoved the whole business back across the table. 'Excuse me, Mr. Losada,' I said, 'but I guess I've made a mistake in the price. You get the photo for nothing.' Now, Carry, you get out the pencil, and we'll do some more figuring. I'd like to save enough out of our capital for you to have some fried sausages in your joint when you get back to New York." 313 Anna Jameson Legends of the Madonna as Represented in the Fine Arts. NOTE. The decease of Mrs. Jameson, the accomplished woman and popular writer, at an advanced period of life, took place in March, 1860, after a brief illness. But the frame had long been worn out by past years of anxiety, and the fatigues of laborious literary occupation conscientiously undertaken and carried out. Having entered certain fields of research and enterprise, perhaps at first accidentally, Mrs. Jameson could not satisfy herself by anything less than the utmost that minute collection and progressive study could do to sustain her popularity. Distant and exhausting journeys, diligent examination of far-scattered examples of Art, voluminous and various reading, became seemingly more and more necessary to her; and at the very time of life when rest and slackened effort would have been natural,--not merely because her labours were in aid of others, but to satisfy her own high sense of what is demanded by Art and Literature,--did her hand and brain work more and more perseveringly and thoughtfully, till at last she sank under her weariness; and passed away. The father of Miss Murphy was a miniature-painter of repute, attached, we believe, to the household of the Princess Charlotte. His daughter Anna was naturally taught by him the principles of his own art; but she had instincts for all,--taste for music,--a feeling for poetry,--and a delicate appreciation of the drama. These gifts--in her youth rarer in combination than they are now (when the connection of the arts is becoming understood, and the love of all increasingly diffused)--were, during part of Mrs. Jameson's life, turned to the service of education.--It was not till after her marriage, that a foreign tour led her into authorship, by the publication of "The Diary of an Ennuyée," somewhere about the year 1826.--It was impossible to avoid detecting in that record the presence of taste, thought, and feeling, brought in an original fashion to bear on Art, Society, Morals.--The reception of the book was decisive.--It was followed, at intervals, by "The Loves of the Poets," "Memoirs of Italian Painters," "The Lives of Female Sovereigns," "Characteristics of Women" (a series of Shakspeare studies; possibly its writer's most popular book). After this, the Germanism so prevalent five-andtwenty years ago, and now somewhat gone by, possessed itself of the authoress, and she published her reminiscences of Munich, the imitative art of which was new, and esteemed as almost a revelation. To the list of Mrs. Jameson's books may be added her translation of the easy, if not vigorous Dramas by the Princess Amelia of Saxony, and her "Winter Studies and Summer Rambles"--recollections of a visit to Canada. This included the account of her strange and solitary canoe voyage, and her residence among a tribe of Indians. From this time forward, social questions--especially those concerning the position of women in life and action--engrossed a large share of Mrs. Jameson's attention; and she wrote on them occasionally, always in a large and enlightened spirit, rarely without touches of delicacy and sentiment.--Even when we are unable to accept all Mrs. Jameson's conclusions, or to join her in the hero or heroine worship of this or the other favourite example, we have seldom a complaint to make of the manner of the authoress. It was always earnest, eloquent, and poetical. Besides a volume or two of collected 314 essays, thoughts, notes on books, and on subjects of Art, we have left to mention the elaborate volumes on "Sacred and Legendary Art," as the greatest literary labour of a busy life. Mrs. Jameson was putting the last finish to the concluding portion of her work, when she was bidden to cease forever. There is little more to be told,--save that, in the course of her indefatigable literary career, Mrs. Jameson drew round herself a large circle of steady friends--these among the highest illustrators of Literature and Art in France, Germany, and Italy; and that, latterly, a pension from Government was added to her slender earnings. These, it may be said without indelicacy, were liberally apportioned to the aid of others,--Mrs. Jameson being, for herself, simple, self-relying, and selfdenying;--holding that high view of the duties belonging to pursuits of imagination which rendered meanness, or servility, or dishonourable dealing, or license glossed over with some convenient name, impossible to her.--She was a faithful friend, a devoted relative, a gracefully-cultivated, and honest literary worker, whose mind was set on "the best and honourablest things." Some months since Mrs. Jameson kindly consented to prepare for this edition of her writings the "Legends of the Madonna," "Sacred and Legendary Art," and "Legends of the Monastic Orders;" but, dying before she had time to fulfil her promise, the arrangement has been intrusted to other hands. The text of this whole series will be an exact reprint of the last English Edition. The portrait annexed to this volume is from a photograph taken in London only a short time before Mrs. Jameson's death. BOSTON, September, 1860. AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. In presenting to my friends and to the public this Series of the Sacred and Legendary Art, few preparatory words will be required. If in the former volumes I felt diffident of my own powers to do any justice to my subject, I have yet been encouraged by the sympathy and approbation of those who nave kindly accepted of what has been done, and yet more kindly excused deficiencies, errors, and oversights, which the wide range of subjects rendered almost unavoidable. With far more of doubt and diffidence, yet not less trust in the benevolence and candour of my critics, do I present this volume to the public. I hope it will be distinctly understood, that the general plan of the work is merely artistic; that it really aims at nothing more than to render the various subjects intelligible. For this reason it has been thought advisable to set aside, in a great measure, individual preferences, and all predilections for particular schools and particular periods of Art,--to take, in short, the widest possible range as regards examples,--and then to leave the reader, when thus guided to the meaning of what he sees, to select, compare, admire, according to his own discrimination, taste, and requirements. The great difficulty has been to keep within reasonable limits. Though the subject has a unity not found in the other volumes, it is really boundless as regards variety and complexity. I may have been superficial from mere superabundance of materials; sometimes mistaken as to facts and dates; the tastes, the feelings, and the faith of my readers may not always go along with me; but if attention and interest have been exited--if the sphere of enjoyment in works of Art have been enlarged and enlightened, I have done all I ever wished--all I ever hoped, to do. With regard to a point of infinitely greater importance, I may be allowed to plead,--that it 315 has been impossible to treat of the representations of the Blessed Virgin without touching on doctrines such as constitute the principal differences between the creeds of Christendom. I have had to ascend most perilous heights, to dive into terribly obscure depths. Not for worlds would I be guilty of a scoffing allusion to any belief or any object held sacred by sincere and earnest hearts; but neither has it been possible for me to write in a tone of acquiescence, where I altogether differ in feeling and opinion. On this point I shall need, and feel sure that I shall obtain, the generous construction of readers of all persuasions. INTRODUCTION I. ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF THE EFFIGIES OF THE MADONNA. Through all the most beautiful and precious productions of human genius and human skill which the middle ages and the _renaissance_ have bequeathed to us, we trace, more or less developed, more or less apparent, present in shape before us, or suggested through inevitable associations, one prevailing idea: it is that of an impersonation in the feminine character of beneficence, purity, and power, standing between an offended Deity and poor, sinning, suffering humanity, and clothed in the visible form of Mary, the Mother of our Lord. To the Roman Catholics this idea remains an indisputable religious truth of the highest import. Those of a different creed may think fit to dispose of the whole subject of the Madonna either as a form of superstition or a form of Art. But merely as a form of Art, we cannot in these days confine ourselves to empty conventional criticism. We are obliged to look further and deeper; and in this department of Legendary Art, as in the others, we must take the higher ground, perilous though it be. We must seek to comprehend the dominant idea lying behind and beyond the mere representation. For, after all, some consideration is due to facts which we must necessarily accept, whether we deal with antiquarian theology or artistic criticism; namely, that the worship of the Madonna did prevail through all the Christian and civilized world for nearly a thousand years; that, in spite of errors, exaggerations, abuses, this worship did comprehend certain great elemental truths interwoven with our human nature, and to be evolved perhaps with our future destinies. Therefore did it work itself into the life and soul of man; therefore has it been worked _out_ in the manifestations of his genius; and therefore the multiform imagery in which it has been clothed, from the rudest imitations of life, to the most exquisite creations of mind, may be resolved, as a whole, into one subject, and become one great monument in the history of progressive thought and faith, as well as in the history of progressive art. Of the pictures in our galleries, public or private,--of the architectural adornments of those majestic edifices which sprung up in the middle ages (where they have not been despoiled or desecrated by a zeal as fervent as that which reared them), the largest and most beautiful portion have reference to the Madonna,--her character, her person, her history. It was a theme which never tired her votaries,-whether, as in the hands of great and sincere artists, it became one of the noblest and loveliest, or, as in the hands of superficial, unbelieving, time-serving artists, one of the most degraded. All that human genius, inspired by faith, could achieve of best, all that fanaticism, sensualism, atheism, could perpetrate of worst, do we find in the cycle of 316 those representations which have been dedicated to the glory of the Virgin. And indeed the ethics of the Madonna worship, as evolved in art, might be not unaptly likened to the ethics of human love: so long as the object of sense remained in subjection to the moral idea--so long as the appeal was to the best of our faculties and affections--so long was the image grand or refined, and the influences to be ranked with those which have helped to humanize and civilize our race; but so soon as the object became a mere idol, then worship and worshippers, art and artists, were together degraded. It is not my intention to enter here on that disputed point, the origin of the worship of the Madonna. Our present theme lies within prescribed limits,--wide enough, however, to embrace an immense field of thought: it seeks to trace the progressive influence of that worship on the fine arts for a thousand years or more, and to interpret the forms in which it has been clothed. That the veneration paid to Mary in the early Church was a very natural feeling in those who advocated the divinity of her Son, would be granted, I suppose, by all but the most bigoted reformers; that it led to unwise and wild extremes, confounding the creature with the Creator, would be admitted, I suppose, by all but the most bigoted Roman Catholics. How it extended from the East over the nations of the West, how it grew and spread, may be read in ecclesiastical histories. Everywhere it seems to have found in the human heart some deep sympathy--deeper far than mere theological doctrine could reach--ready to accept it; and in every land the ground prepared for it in some already dominant idea of a mother-Goddess, chaste, beautiful, and benign. As, in the oldest Hebrew rites and Pagan superstitions, men traced the promise of a coming Messiah,--as the deliverers and kings of the Old Testament, and even the demigods of heathendom, became accepted types of the person of Christ,--so the Eve of the Mosaic history, the Astarte of the Assyrians-- "The mooned Ashtaroth, queen and mother both,"-the Isis nursing Horus of the Egyptians, the Demeter and the Aphrodite of the Greeks, the Scythian Freya, have been considered by some writers as types of a divine maternity, foreshadowing the Virginmother of Christ. Others will have it that these scattered, dim, mistaken--often gross and perverted--ideas which were afterwards gathered into the pure, dignified, tender image of the Madonna, were but as the voice of a mighty prophecy, sounded through all the generations of men, even from the beginning of time, of the coming moral regeneration, and complete and harmonious development of the whole human race, by the establishment, on a higher basis, of what has been called the "feminine element" in society. And let me at least speak for myself. In the perpetual iteration of that beautiful image of THE WOMAN highly blessed--_there_, where others saw only pictures or statues, I have seen this great hope standing like a spirit beside the visible form; in the fervent worship once universally given to that gracious presence, I have beheld an acknowledgment of a higher as well as gentler power than that of the strong hand and the might that makes the right,--and in every earnest votary one who, as he knelt, was in this sense pious beyond the reach of his own thought, and "devout beyond the meaning of his will." It is curious to observe, as the worship of the Virgin-mother expanded and gathered to itself the relics of many an ancient faith, how the new and the old elements, some of them apparently the most heterogeneous, became amalgamated, and were combined into the early forms of art;--how the Madonna, when she assumed the characteristics of the great Diana of Ephesus, at once the type of Fertility, and the Goddess of Chastity, became, as the impersonation of motherhood, all beauty, bounty and graciousness; and at the same time, by virtue of her perpetual virginity, the patroness of 317 single and ascetic life--the example and the excuse for many of the wildest of the early monkish theories. With Christianity, new ideas of the moral and religious responsibility of woman entered the world; and while these ideas were yet struggling with the Hebrew and classical prejudices concerning the whole sex, they seem to have produced some curious perplexity in the minds of the greatest doctors of the faith. Christ, as they assure us, was born of a woman only, and had no earthly father, that neither sex might despair; "for had he been born a man (which was necessary), yet not born of woman, the women might have despaired of themselves, recollecting the first offence, the first man having been deceived by a woman. Therefore we are to suppose that, for the exaltation of the male sex, Christ appeared on earth as a man; and, for the consolation of womankind, he was born of a woman only; as if it had been said, 'From henceforth no creature shall be base before God, unless perverted by depravity.'" (Augustine, Opera Supt. 238, Serm. 63.) Such is the reasoning of St. Augustine, who, I must observe, had an especial veneration for his mother Monica; and it is perhaps for her sake that he seems here desirous to prove that through the Virgin Mary all womankind were henceforth elevated in the scale of being. And this was the idea entertained of her subsequently: "Ennobler of thy nature!" says Dante apostrophizing her, as if her perfections had ennobled not merely her own sex, but the whole human race. But also with Christianity came the want of a new type of womanly perfection, combining all the attributes of the ancient female divinities with others altogether new. Christ, as the model-man, united the virtues of the two sexes, till the idea that there are essentially masculine and feminine virtues intruded itself on the higher Christian conception, and seems to have necessitated the female type. The first historical mention of a direct worship paid to the Virgin Mary, occurs in a passage in the works of St. Epiphanius, who died in 403. In enumerating the heresies (eighty-four in number) which had sprung up in the early Church, he mentions a sect of women, who had emigrated from Thrace into Arabia, with whom it was customary to offer cakes of meal and honey to the Virgin Mary, as if she had been a divinity, transferring to her, in fact, the worship paid to Ceres. The very first instance which occurs in written history of an invocation to Mary, is in the life of St. Justina, as related by Gregory Nazianzen. Justina calls on the Virgin-mother to protect her against the seducer and sorcerer, Cyprian; and does not call in vain. (Sacred and Legendary Art.) These passages, however, do not prove that previously to the fourth century there had been no worship or invocation of the Virgin, but rather the contrary. However this may be, it is to the same period--the fourth century--we refer the most ancient representations of the Virgin in art. The earliest figures extant are those on the Christian sarcophagi; but neither in the early sculpture nor in the mosaics of St. Maria Maggiore do we find any figure of the Virgin standing alone; she forms part of a group of the Nativity or the Adoration of the Magi. There is no attempt at individuality or portraiture. St. Augustine says expressly, that there existed in his time no _authentic_ portrait of the Virgin; but it is inferred from his account that, authentic or not, such pictures did then exist, since there were already disputes concerning their authenticity. There were at this period received symbols of the person and character of Christ, as the lamb, the vine, the fish, &c., but not, as far as I can learn, any such accepted symbols of the Virgin Mary. Further, it is the opinion of the learned in ecclesiastical antiquities that, previous to the first Council of Ephesus, it was the custom to represent the figure of the Virgin alone without the Child; but that none of these original effigies remain to us, only supposed copies of a later date. And this is all I 318 have been able to discover relative to her in connection with the sacred imagery of the first four centuries of our era. The condemnation of Nestorius by the Council of Ephesus, in the year 431, forms a most important epoch in the history of religious art. I have given further on a sketch of this celebrated schism, and its immediate and progressive results. It may be thus summed up here. The Nestorians maintained, that in Christ the two natures of God and man remained separate, and that Mary, his human mother, was parent of the man, but not of the God; consequently the title which, during the previous century, had been popularly applied to her, "Theotokos" (Mother of God), was improper and profane. The party opposed to Nestorius, the Monophysite, maintained that in Christ the divine and human were blended in one incarnate nature, and that consequently Mary was indeed the Mother of God. By the decree of the first Council of Ephesus, Nestorius and his party were condemned as heretics; and henceforth the representation of that beautiful group, since popularly known as the "Madonna and Child," became the expression of the orthodox faith. Every one who wished to prove his hatred of the arch-heretic exhibited the image of the maternal Virgin holding in her arms the Infant Godhead, either in his house as a picture, or embroidered on his garments, or on his furniture, on his personal ornaments--in short, wherever it could be introduced. It is worth remarking, that Cyril, who was so influential in fixing the orthodox group, had passed the greater part of his life in Egypt, and must nave been familiar with the Egyptian type of Isis nursing Horus. Nor, as I conceive, is there any irreverence in supposing that a time-honoured intelligible symbol should be chosen to embody and formalize a creed. For it must be remembered that the group of the Mother and Child was not at first a representation, but merely a theological symbol set up in the orthodox churches, and adopted by the orthodox Christians. It is just after the Council of Ephesus that history first makes mention of a supposed authentic portrait of the Virgin Mary. The Empress Eudocia, when travelling in the Holy Land, sent home such a picture of the Virgin holding the Child to her sister-inlaw Pulcheria, who placed it in a church at Constantinople. It was at that time regarded, as of very high antiquity, and supposed to have been painted from the life. It is certain that a picture, traditionally said to be the same which Eudocia had sent to Pulcheria, did exist at Constantinople, and was so much venerated by the people as to be regarded as a sort of palladium, and borne in a superb litter or car in the midst of the imperial host, when the emperor led the army in person. The fate of this relic is not certainly known. It is said to have been taken by the Turks in 1453, and dragged through the mire; but others deny this as utterly derogatory to the majesty of the Queen of Heaven, who never would have suffered such an indignity to have been put on her sacred image. According to the Venetian legend, it was this identical effigy which was taken by the blind old Dandolo, when he besieged and took Constantinople in 1204, and brought in triumph to Venice, where it has ever since been preserved in the church of St. Mark, and held in _somma venerazione_. No mention is made of St. Luke in the earliest account of this picture, though like all the antique effigies of uncertain origin, it was in after times attributed to him. The history of the next three hundred years testifies to the triumph of orthodoxy, the extension and popularity of the worship of the Virgin, and the consequent multiplication of her image in every form and material, through the whole of Christendom. Then followed the schism of the Iconoclasts, which distracted the Church for more than one hundred years, under Leo III., the Isaurian, and his immediate successors. Such were the extravagances of superstition to which the image-worship had led the excitable Orientals, 319 that, if Leo had been a wise and temperate reformer, he might have done much good in checking its excesses; but he was himself an ignorant, merciless barbarian. The persecution by which he sought to exterminate the sacred pictures of the Madonna, and the cruelties exercised on her unhappy votaries, produced a general destruction of the most curious and precious remains of antique art. In other respects, the immediate result was naturally enough a reaction, which not only reinstated pictures in the veneration of the people, but greatly increased their influence over the imagination; for it is at this time that we first hear of a miraculous picture. Among those who most strongly defended the use of sacred images in the churches, was St. John Damascene, one of the great lights of the Oriental Church. According to the Greek legend, he was condemned to lose his right hand, which was accordingly cut off; but he, full of faith, prostrating himself before a picture of the Virgin, stretched out the bleeding stump, and with it touched her lips, and immediately a new hand sprung forth "like a branch from a tree." Hence, among the Greek effigies of the Virgin, there is one peculiarly commemorative of this miracle, styled "the Virgin with three hands." (Didron, Manuel, p. 462.) In the west of Europe, where the abuses of the image-worship had never yet reached the wild superstition of the Oriental Christians, the fury of the Iconoclasts excited horror and consternation. The temperate and eloquent apology for sacred pictures, addressed by Gregory II. to the Emperor Leo, had the effect of mitigating the persecution in Italy, where the work of destruction could not be carried out to the same extent as in the Byzantine provinces. Hence it is in Italy only that any important remains of sacred art anterior to the Iconoclast dynasty have been preserved. The second Council of Nice, under the Empress Irene in 787, condemned the Iconoclasts, and restored the use of the sacred pictures in the churches. Nevertheless, the controversy still raged till after the death of Theophilus, the last and the most cruel of the Iconoclasts, in 842. His widow Theodora achieved the final triumph of the orthodox party, and restored the Virgin to her throne. We must observe, however, that only pictures were allowed; all sculptured imagery was still prohibited, and has never since been allowed in the Greek Church, except in very low relief. The flatter the surface, the more orthodox. It is, I think, about 886, that we first find the effigy of the Virgin on the coins of the Greek empire. On a gold coin of Leo VI., the Philosopher, she stands veiled, and draped, with a noble head, no glory, and the arms outspread, just as she appears in the old mosaics. On a coin of Romanus the Younger, she crowns the emperor, having herself the nimbus; she is draped and veiled. On a coin of Nicephorus Phocus (who had great pretensions to piety), the Virgin stands, presenting a cross to the emperor, with the inscription, "Theotokos, be propitious." On a gold coin of John Zimisces, 975, we first find the Virgin and Child,--the symbol merely: she holds against her bosom a circular glory, within which is the head of the Infant Christ. In the successive reigns of the next two centuries, she almost constantly appears as crowning the emperor. Returning to the West, we find that in the succeeding period, from Charlemagne to the first crusade, the popular devotion to the Virgin, and the multiplication of sacred pictures, continued steadily to increase; yet in the tenth and eleventh centuries art was at its lowest ebb. At this time, the subjects relative to the Virgin were principally the Madonna and Child, represented according to the Greek form; and those scenes from the Gospel in which she is introduced, as the Annunciation, the Nativity, and the Worship of the Magi. Towards the end of the tenth century the custom of adding the angelic salutation, the "_Ave Maria_," to the Lord's prayer, was first introduced; and by the end of the following 320 century, it had been adopted in the offices of the Church. This was, at first, intended as a perpetual reminder of the mystery of the Incarnation, as announced by the angel. It must have had the effect of keeping the idea of Mary as united with that of her Son, and as the instrument of the Incarnation, continually in the minds of the people. The pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and the crusades in the eleventh and the twelfth centuries, had a most striking effect on religious art, though this effect was not fully evolved till a century later. More particularly did this returning wave of Oriental influences modify the representations of the Virgin. Fragments of the apocryphal gospels and legends of Palestine and Egypt were now introduced, worked up into ballads, stories, and dramas, and gradually incorporated with the teaching of the Church. A great variety of subjects derived from the Greek artists, and from particular localities and traditions of the East, became naturalized in Western Europe, Among these were the legends of Joachim and Anna; and the death, the assumption, and the coronation of the Virgin. Then came the thirteenth century, an era notable in the history of mind, more especially notable in the history of art. The seed scattered hither and thither, during the stormy and warlike period of the crusades, now sprung up and flourished, bearing diverse fruit. A more contemplative enthusiasm, a superstition tinged with a morbid melancholy, fermented into life and form. In that general "fit of _compunction_," which we are told seized all Italy at this time, the passionate devotion for the benign Madonna mingled the poetry of pity with that of pain; and assuredly this state of feeling, with its mental and moral requirements, must have assisted in emancipating art from the rigid formalism of the degenerate Greek school. Men's hearts, throbbing with a more feeling, more pensive life, demanded something more _like_ life,--and produced it. It is curious to trace in the Madonnas of contemporary, but far distant and unconnected schools of painting, the simultaneous dawning of a sympathetic sentiment--for the first time something in the faces of the divine beings responsive to the feeling of the worshippers. It was this, perhaps, which caused the enthusiasm excited by Cimabue's great Madonna, and made the people shout and dance for joy when it was uncovered before them. Compared with the spectral rigidity, the hard monotony, of the conventional Byzantines, the more animated eyes, the little touch of sweetness in the still, mild face, must have been like a smile out of heaven. As we trace the same softer influence in the earliest Siena and Cologne pictures of about the same period, we may fairly regard it as an impress of the spirit of the time, rather than that of an individual mind. In the succeeding century these elements of poetic art, expanded and animated by an awakened observation of nature, and a sympathy with her external manifestations, were most especially directed by the increasing influence of the worship of the Virgin, a worship at once religious and chivalrous. The title of "Our Lady" came first into general use in the days of chivalry, for she was the lady "of all hearts," whose colours all were proud to wear. Never had her votaries so abounded. Hundreds upon hundreds had enrolled themselves in brotherhoods, vowed to her especial service; or devoted to acts of charity, to be performed in her name. Already the great religious communities, which at this time comprehended all the enthusiasm, learning, and influence of the Church, had placed themselves solemnly and especially under her protection. The Cistercians wore white in honour of her purity; the Servi wore black in respect to her sorrows; the Franciscans had enrolled themselves as champions of the Immaculate Conception; and the Dominicans introduced the rosary. All these richly endowed communities vied with each other in multiplying churches, chapels, 321 and pictures, in honour of their patroness, and expressive of her several attributes. The devout painter, kneeling before his easel, addressed himself to the task of portraying those heavenly lineaments which had visited him perhaps in dreams. Many of the professed monks and friars became themselves accomplished artists. At this time, Jacopo di Voragine compiled the "Golden Legend," a collection of sacred stories, some already current, some new, or in a new form. This famous book added many themes to those already admitted, and became the authority and storehouse for the early painters in their groups and dramatic compositions. The increasing enthusiasm for the Virgin naturally caused an increasing demand for the subjects taken from her personal history, and led, consequently, to a more exact study of those natural objects and effects which were required as accessories, to greater skill in grouping the figures, and to a higher development of historic art. But of all the influences on Italian art in that wonderful fourteenth century, Dante was the greatest. He was the intimate friend of Giotto. Through the communion of mind, not less than through his writings, he infused into religious art that mingled theology, poetry, and mysticism, which ruled in the Giottesque school during the following century, and went hand in hand with the development of the power and practice of imitation. Now, the theology of Dante was the theology of his age. His ideas respecting the Virgin Mary were precisely those to which the writings of St. Bernard, St. Bonaventura, and St. Thomas Aquinas had already lent all the persuasive power of eloquence, and the Church all the weight of her authority. Dante rendered these doctrines into poetry, and Giotto and his followers rendered them into form. In the Paradise of Dante, the glorification of Mary, as the "Mystic Rose" (_Roxa Mystica_) and Queen of Heaven,--with the attendant angels, circle within circle, floating round her in adoration, and singing the Regina Coeli, and saints and patriarchs stretching forth their hands towards her,--is all a splendid, but still indefinite vision of dazzling light crossed by shadowy forms. The painters of the fourteenth century, in translating these glories into a definite shape, had to deal with imperfect knowledge and imperfect means; they failed in the power to realize either their own or the poet's conception; and yet--thanks to the divine poet!--that early conception of some of the most beautiful of the Madonna subjects--for instance, the _Coronation_ and the _Sposalizio_--has never, as a religious and poetical conception, been surpassed by later artists, in spite of all the appliances of colour, and mastery of light and shade, and marvellous efficiency of hand since attained. Every reader of Dante will remember the sublime hymn towards the close of the Paradiso:-- "Vergine Madre, figlia del tuo figlio! Umile ed alta più che creatura, Terrains fisso d'eterno consiglio; Tu se' colei che l'umana natura Nobilitasti si, che 'l suo fattore Non disdegno di farsi sua fattura; Nel ventre tuo si raccese l'amore Per lo cui caldo nell' eterna pace Cosi è germinato questo fiore; 322 Qui se' a noi meridiana face Di caritade, e giuso intra mortali Se' di speranza fontana vivace: Donna, se' tanto grande e tanto vali, Che qual vuol grazia e a te non ricorre Sua disianza vuol volar senz' ali; La tua benignita noa pur soccorre A chi dimanda, ma molte fiate Liberamente al dimandar precorre; In te misericordia, in te pietate, In te magnificenza, in te s' aduna Quantunque in creatura è di bontate!" To render the splendour, the terseness, the harmony, of this magnificent hymn seems impossible. Cary's translation has, however, the merit of fidelity to the sense:-- "Oh, Virgin-Mother, daughter of thy Son! Created beings all in lowliness Surpassing, as in height above them all; Term by the eternal counsel preordain'd; Ennobler of thy nature, so advanc'd In thee, that its great Maker did not scorn To make himself his own creation; For in thy womb, rekindling, shone the love Reveal'd, whose genial influence makes now This flower to germin in eternal peace: Here thou, to us, of charity and love Art as the noon-day torch; and art beneath, To mortal men, of hope a living spring. So mighty art thou, Lady, and so great, That he who grace desireth, and comes not To thee for aidance, fain would have desire Fly without wings. Not only him who asks, Thy bounty succours; but doth freely oft Forerun the asking. Whatsoe'er may be Of excellence in creature, pity mild, Relenting mercy, large munificence, Are all combin'd in thee!" It is interesting to turn to the corresponding stanzas in Chaucer. The invocation to the Virgin with which he commences the story of St. Cecilia is rendered almost word for word from Dante:-- 323 "Thou Maid and Mother, daughter of thy Son! Thou wel of mercy, sinful soules cure!" The last stanza of the invocation is his own, and as characteristic of the practical Chaucer, as it would have been contrary to the genius of Dante:-- "And for that faith is dead withouten workis, So for to worken give me wit and grace! That I be quit from thence that most dark is; O thou that art so fair and full of grace, Be thou mine advocate in that high place, There, as withouten end is sung Hozanne, Thou Christes mother, daughter dear of Anne!" Still more beautiful and more his own is the invocation in the "Prioress's Tale." I give the stanzas as modernized by Wordsworth:-- "O Mother Maid! O Maid and Mother free! O bush unburnt, burning in Moses' sight! That down didst ravish from the Deity, Through humbleness, the Spirit that that did alight Upon thy heart, whence, through that glory's might Conceived was the Father's sapience, Help me to tell it in thy reverence! "Lady, thy goodness, thy magnificence, Thy virtue, and thy great humility, Surpass all science and all utterance; For sometimes, Lady! ere men pray to thee, Thou go'st before in thy benignity, The light to us vouchsafing of thy prayer, To be our guide unto thy Son so dear. "My knowledge is so weak, O blissful Queen, To tell abroad thy mighty worthiness, That I the weight of it may not sustain; But as a child of twelve months old, or less, That laboureth his language to express, Even so fare I; and therefore, I thee pray, Guide thou my song, which I of thee shall say." And again, we may turn to Petrarch's hymn to the Virgin, wherein he prays to be delivered from his love and everlasting regrets for Laura:-- "Vergine bella, che di sol vestita, 324 Coronata di stelle, al sommo Sole Piacesti sì, che'n te sua luce ascose. "Vergine pura, d'ogni parte intera, Del tuo parto gentil figliuola e madre! "Vergine sola al mondo senza esempio, Che 'l ciel di tue bellezze innamorasti." The fancy of the theologians of the middle ages played rather dangerously, as it appears to me, for the uninitiated and uninstructed, with the perplexity of these divine relationships. It is impossible not to feel that in their admiration for the divine beauty of Mary, in borrowing the amatory language and luxuriant allegories of the Canticles, which represent her as an object of delight to the Supreme Being, theologians, poets, and artists had wrought themselves up to a wild pitch of enthusiasm. In such passages as those I have quoted above, and in the grand old Church hymns, we find the best commentary and interpretation of the sacred pictures of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Yet during the thirteenth century there was a purity in the spirit of the worship which at once inspired and regulated the forms in which it was manifested. The Annunciations and Nativities were still distinguished by a chaste and sacred simplicity. The features of the Madonna herself, even where they were not what we call beautiful, had yet a touch of that divine and contemplative grace which the theologians and the poets had associated with the queenly, maternal, and bridal character of Mary. Thus the impulses given in the early part of the fourteenth century continued in progressive development through the fifteenth; the spiritual for some time in advance of the material influences; the moral idea emanating as it were _from_ the soul, and the influences of external nature flowing _into_ it; the comprehensive power of fancy using more and more the apprehensive power of imitation, and both working together till their "blended might" achieved its full fruition in the works of Raphael. Early in the fifteenth century, the Council of Constance (A.D. 1414), and the condemnation of Huss, gave a new impulse to the worship of the Virgin. The Hussite wars, and the sacrilegious indignity with which her sacred images had been treated in the north, filled her orthodox votaries of the south, of Europe with a consternation and horror like that excited by the Iconoclasts of the eighth century, and were followed by a similar reaction. The Church was called upon to assert more strongly than ever its orthodox veneration for her, and, as a natural consequence, votive pictures multiplied, the works of the excelling artists of the fifteenth century testify to the zeal of the votaries, and the kindred spirit in which the painters worked. Gerson, a celebrated French priest, and chancellor of the university of Paris, distinguished himself in the Council of Constance by the eloquence with which he pleaded for the Immaculate Conception, and the enthusiasm with which he preached in favour of instituting a festival in honour of this mystery, as well as another in honour of Joseph, the husband of the Virgin. In both he was unsuccessful during his lifetime; but 325 for both eventually his writings prepared the way. He also composed a Latin poem of three thousand lines in praise of Joseph, which was among the first works published after the invention of printing. Together with St. Joseph, the parents of the Virgin, St. Anna more particularly, became objects, of popular veneration, and all were at length exalted to the rank of patron saints, by having festivals instituted in their honour. It is towards the end of the fifteenth century, or rather a little later, that we first meet with that charming domestic group, called the "Holy Family," afterwards so popular, so widely diffused, and treated with such an infinite variety. Towards the end of this century sprung up a new influence,--the revival of classical learning, a passionate enthusiasm for the poetry and mythology of the Greeks, and a taste for the remains of antique art. This influence on the representations of the Virgin, as far as it was merely external, was good. An added dignity and grace, a more free and correct drawing, a truer feeling for harmony of proportion and all that constitutes elegance, were gradually infused into the forms and attitudes. But dangerous became the craving for mere beauty,--dangerous the study of the classical and heathen literature. This was the commencement of that thoroughly pagan taste which in the following century demoralized Christian art. There was now an attempt at varying the arrangement of the sacred groups which led to irreverence, or at best to a sort of superficial mannered grandeur; and from this period we date the first introduction of the portrait Virgins. An early, and most scandalous example remains to us in one of the frescoes in the Vatican, which represents Giulia Farnese in the character of the Madonna, and Pope Alexander VI. (the infamous Borgia) kneeling at her feet in the character of a votary. Under the influence of the Medici the churches of Florence were filled with pictures of the Virgin, in which the only thing aimed at was an alluring and even meretricious beauty. Savonarola thundered from his pulpit in the garden of San Marco against these impieties. He exclaimed against the profaneness of those who represented the meek mother of Christ in gorgeous apparel, with head unveiled, and under the features of women too well and publicly known. He emphatically declared that if the painters knew as well as he did the influence of such pictures in perverting simple minds, they would hold their own works in horror and detestation. Savonarola yielded to none in orthodox reverence for the Madonna; but he desired that she should be represented in an orthodox manner. He perished at the stake, but not till after he had made a bonfire in the Piazza at Florence of the offensive effigies; he perished--persecuted to death by the Borgia family. But his influence on the greatest Florentine artists of his time is apparent in the Virgins of Botticelli, Lorenzo di Credi, and Fra Bartolomeo, all of whom had been his friends, admirers, and disciples: and all, differing from each other, were alike in this, that, whether it be the dignified severity of Botticelli, or the chaste simplicity of Lorenzo di Credi, or the noble tenderness of Fra Bartolomeo, we feel that each of them had aimed to portray worthily the sacred character of the Mother of the Redeemer. And to these, as I think, we might add Raphael himself, who visited Florence but a short time after the horrible execution of Savonarola, and must have learned through his friend Bartolomeo to mourn the fate and revere the memory of that remarkable man, whom he placed afterwards in the grand fresco of the "Theologia," among the doctors and teachers of the Church. (Rome, Vatican.) Of the numerous Virgins painted by Raphael in after times, not one is supposed to have been a portrait: he says himself, in a letter to Count Castiglione, that he painted from an idea in his own mind, "mi servo d' una certa idea che mi viene in mente;" while in the contemporary works of Andrea del Sarto, we have the features of his 326 handsome but vulgar wife in every Madonna he painted. In the beginning of the sixteenth century, the constellation of living genius in every department of art, the riches of the Church, the luxurious habits and classical studies of the churchmen, the decline of religious conviction, and the ascendency of religious controversy, had combined to multiply church pictures, particularly those of a large and decorative character. But, instead of the reign of faith, we had now the reign of taste. There was an absolute passion for picturesque grouping; and, as the assembled figures were to be as varied as possible in action and attitude, the artistic treatment, in order to prevent the lines of form and the colours of the draperies from interfering with each other, required great skill and profound study: some of these scenic groups have become, in the hands of great painters, such as Titian, Paul Veronese, and Annibale Caracci, so magnificent, that we are inclined to forgive their splendid errors. The influence of Sanazzaro, and of his famous Latin poem on the Nativity ("_De Partu Virginis_"), on the artists of the middle of the sixteenth century, and on the choice and treatment of the subjects pertaining to the Madonna, can hardly be calculated; it was like that of Dante in the fourteenth century, but in its nature and result how different! The grand materialism of Michael Angelo is supposed to have been allied to the genius of Dante; but would Dante have acknowledged the group of the Holy Family in the Florentine Gallery, to my feeling, one of the most profane and offensive of the so-called _religious_ pictures, in conception and execution, which ever proceeded from the mind or hand of a great painter? No doubt some of the sculptural Virgins of Michael Angelo are magnificent and stately in attitude and expression, but too austere and mannered as religious conceptions: nor can we wonder if the predilection for the treatment of mere form led his followers and imitators into every species of exaggeration and affectation. In the middle of the sixteenth century, the same artist who painted a Leda, or a Psyche, or a Venus one day, painted for the same patron a Virgin of Mercy, or a "Mater Purissima" on the morrow. _Here_, the votary told his beads, and recited his Aves, before the blessed Mother of the Redeemer; _there_, she was invoked in the purest Latin by titles which the classical mythology had far otherwise consecrated. I know nothing more disgusting in art than the long-limbed, studied, inflated Madonnas, looking grand with all their might, of this period; luckily they have fallen into such disrepute that we seldom see them. The "Madonna dell' lungo Collo" of Parmigiano might be cited as a favourable example of this mistaken and wholly artificial grace. (Florence, Pitti Pal.) But in the midst of these paganized and degenerate influences, the reform in the discipline of the Roman Catholic Church was preparing a revolution in religious art. The Council of Trent had severely denounced the impropriety of certain pictures admitted into churches: at the same time, in the conflict of creed which now divided Christendom, the agencies of art could not safely be neglected by that Church which had used them with such signal success. Spiritual art was indeed no more. It was dead: it could never be revived without a return to those modes of thought and belief which had at first inspired it. Instead of religious art, appeared what I must call _theological_ art. Among the events of this age, which had great influence on the worship and the representations of the Madonna, I must place the battle of Lepanto, in 1571, in which the combined fleets of Christendom, led by Don Juan of Austria, achieved a memorable victory over the Turks. This victory was attributed by Pope Pius V. to the especial interposition of the Blessed Virgin. A new invocation was now added to her Litany, under the title of _Auxilium Christianorum_; a new festival, that of the Rosary, 327 was now added to those already held in her honour; and all the artistic genius which existed in Italy, and all the piety of orthodox Christendom, were now laid under contribution to incase in marble sculpture, to enrich with countless offerings, that miraculous house, which the angels had borne over land and sea, and set down at Loretto; and that miraculous, bejewelled, and brocaded Madonna, enshrined within it. In the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Caracci school gave a new impetus to religious, or rather, as it has been styled in contradistinction, sacerdotal or theological art. If these great painters had been remarkable merely for the application of new artistic methods, for the success with which they combined the aims of various schools- "Di Michel Angiol la terribil via E 'l vero natural di Tiziano," the study of the antique with the observation of real life,--their works undoubtedly would never have taken such a hold on the minds of their contemporaries, nor kept it so long. Everything to live must have an infusion of truth within it, and this "patchwork ideal," as it has been well styled, was held together by such a principle. The founders of the Caracci school, and their immediate followers, felt the influences of the time, and worked them out. They were devout believers in their Church, and most sincere worshippers of the Madonna. Guido, in particular, was so distinguished by his passionate enthusiasm for her, that he was supposed to have been favoured by a particular vision, which enabled him more worthily to represent her divine beauty. It is curious that, hand in hand with this development of taste and feeling in the appreciation of natural sentiment and beauty, and this tendency to realism, we find the associations of a peculiar and specific sanctity remaining with the old Byzantine type. This arose from the fact, always to be borne in mind, that the most ancient artistic figure of the Madonna was a purely theological symbol; apparently the moral type was too nearly allied to the human and the real to satisfy faith. It is the ugly, dark-coloured, ancient Greek Madonnas, such as this, which had all along the credit of being miraculous; and "to this day," says Kugler, "the Neapolitan lemonade-seller will allow no other than a formal Greek Madonna, with olive-green complexion and veiled head, to be set up in his booth." It is the same in Russia. Such pictures, in which there is no attempt at representation, real or ideal, and which merely have a sort of imaginary sanctity and power, are not so much idols as they are mere _Fetishes_. The most lovely Madonna by Raphael or Titian would not have the same effect. Guido, who himself painted lovely Virgins, went every Saturday to pray before the little black _Madonna della Guardia_, and, as we are assured, held this old Eastern relic in devout veneration. In the pictures of the Madonna, produced by the most eminent painters of the seventeenth century, is embodied the theology of the time. The Virgin Mary is not, like the Madonna di San Sisto, "a single projection of the artist's mind," but, as far as he could put his studies together, she is "a compound of every creature's best," sometimes majestic, sometimes graceful, often full of sentiment, elegance, and refinement, but wanting wholly in the spiritual element. If the Madonna did really sit to Guido in person, (see Malvasia, 328 "Felsina Pittrice,") we fancy she must have revealed her loveliness, but veiled her divinity. Without doubt the finest Madonnas of the seventeenth century are those produced by the Spanish school; not because they more realize our spiritual conception of the Virgin-quite the contrary: for here the expression of life through sensation and emotion prevails over abstract mind, grandeur, and grace;--but because the intensely human and sympathetic character given to the Madonna appeals most strongly to our human nature. The appeal is to the faith through the feelings, rather than through the imagination. Morales and Ribera excelled in the Mater Dolorosa; and who has surpassed Murilio in the tender exultation of maternity? There is a freshness and a depth of feeling in the best Madonnas of the late Spanish school, which puts to shame the mannerism of the Italians, and the naturalism of the Flemish painters of the same period: and this because the Spaniards were intense and enthusiastic believers, not mere thinkers, in art as in religion. As in the sixth century, the favourite dogma of the time (the union of the divine and human nature in Christ, and the dignity of Mary as parent of both) had been embodied in the group of the Virgin and Child, so now, in the seventeenth, the doctrine of the eternal sanctification and predestination of Mary was, after a long controversy, triumphant, and took form in the "Immaculate Conception;" that beautiful subject in which Guido and Murilio excelled, and which became the darling theme of the later schools of art. It is worthy of remark, that while in the sixth century, and for a thousand years afterwards, the Virgin, in all devotional subjects, was associated in some visible manner with her divine Son, in this she appears without the Infant in her arms. The maternal character is set aside, and she stands alone, absolute in herself, and complete in her own perfections. This is a very significant characteristic of the prevalent theology of the time. I forbear to say much of the productions of a school of art which sprung up simultaneously with that of the Caracci, and in the end overpowered its higher aspirations. The _Naturalisti_, as they were called, imitated nature without selection, and produced some charming painters. But their religious pictures are almost all intolerable, and their Madonnas are almost all portraits. Rubens and Albano painted their wives; Allori and Vandyck their mistresses; Domenichino his daughter. Salvator Rosa, in his Satires, exclaims against this general profaneness in terms not less strong than those of Savonarola in his Sermons; but the corruption was by this time beyond the reach of cure; the sin could neither be preached nor chided away. Striking effects of light and shade, peculiar attitudes, scenic groups, the perpetual and dramatic introduction of legendary scenes and personages, of visions and miracles of the Madonna vouchsafed to her votaries, characterize the productions of the seventeenth century. As "they who are whole need not a physician, but they who are sick," so in proportion to the decline of faith were the excitements to faith, or rather to credulity: just in proportion as men were less inclined to believe were the wonders multiplied which they were called on to believe. I have not spoken of the influence of Jesuitism on art. This Order kept alive that devotion for the Madonna which their great founder Loyola had so ardently professed when he chose for the "Lady" of his thoughts, "no princess, no duchess, but one far greater, more peerless." The learning of the Jesuits supplied some themes not hitherto in use, principally of a fanciful and allegorical kind, and never had the meek Mary been so 329 decked out with earthly ornament as in their church pictures. If the sanctification of simplicity, gentleness, maternal love, and heroic fortitude, were calculated to elevate the popular mind, the sanctification of mere glitter and ornament, embroidered robes, and jewelled crowns, must have tended to degrade it. It is surely an unworthy and a foolish excuse that, in thus desecrating with the vainest and most vulgar finery the beautiful ideal of the Virgin, an appeal was made to the awe and admiration of vulgar and ignorant minds; for this is precisely what, in all religious imagery, should be avoided. As, however, this sacrilegious millinery does not come within the province of the fine arts, I may pass it over here. Among the Jesuit prints of the seventeenth century, I remember one which represents the Virgin and Child in the centre, and around are the most famous heretics of all ages, lying prostrate, or hanging by the neck. Julian the Apostate; Leo the Isaurian; his son, Constantine Capronymus; Arius; Nestorius; Manicheus; Luther; Calvin:--very characteristic of the age of controversy which had succeeded to the age of faith, when, instead of solemn saints and grateful votaries, we have dead or dying heretics surrounding the Mother of Mercy! After this rapid sketch of the influences which modified in a general way the pictures of the Madonna, we may array before us, and learn to compare, the types which distinguished in a more particular manner the separate schools, caught from some more local or individual impulses. Thus we have the stern, awful quietude of the old Mosaics; the hard lifelessness of the degenerate Greek; the pensive sentiment of the Siena, and stately elegance of the Florentine Madonnas; the intellectual Milanese, with their large foreheads and thoughtful eyes; the tender, refined mysticism of the Umbrian; the sumptuous loveliness of the Venetian; the quaint, characteristic simplicity of the early German, so stamped with their nationality, that I never looked round me in a room full of German girls without thinking of Albert Durer's Virgins; the intense life-like feeling of the Spanish; the prosaic, portrait-like nature of the Flemish schools, and so on. But here an obvious question suggests itself. In the midst of all this diversity, these ever-changing influences, was there no characteristic type universally accepted, suggested by common religious associations, if not defined by ecclesiastical authority, to which the artist was bound to conform? How is it that the impersonation of the Virgin fluctuated, not only with the fluctuating tendencies of successive ages, but even with the caprices of the individual artist? This leads us back to reconsider the sources from which the artist drew his inspiration. The legend which represents St. Luke the Evangelist as a painter appears to be of Eastern origin, and quite unknown in Western Europe before the first crusade. It crept in then, and was accepted with many other oriental superstitions and traditions. It may have originated in the real existence of a Greek painter named Luca--a saint, too, he may have been; for the Greeks have a whole calendar of canonized artists,--painters, poets, and musicians; and this Greek San Luca may have been a painter of those Madonnas imported from the ateliers of Mount Athos into the West by merchants and pilgrims; and the West, which knew but of one St. Luke, may have easily confounded the painter and the evangelist. But we must also remember, that St. Luke the Evangelist was early regarded as the great authority with respect to the few Scripture particulars relating to the character and life of Mary; so that, in the figurative sense, he may be said to have _painted_ that portrait of her which has been since received as the perfect type of womanhood:--1. Her noble, trustful humility, when she receives the salutation of the angel (Luke i. 38); the complete and feminine 330 surrender of her whole being to the higher, holier will--"Be it unto me according to thy word." 2. Then, the decision and prudence of character, shown in her visit to Elizabeth, her older relative; her journey in haste over the hills to consult with her cousin, which journey it is otherwise difficult to accord with the oriental customs of the time, unless Mary, young as she was, had possessed unusual promptitude and energy of disposition. (Luke i. 39, 40.) 3. The proof of her intellectual power in the beautiful hymn she has left us, "_My soul doth magnify the Lord._" (Luke i. 46.) The commentators are not agreed as to whether this effusion was poured forth by immediate inspiration, or composed and written down, because the same words, "and Mary said," may be interpreted in either sense; but we can no more doubt her being the authoress, than we can doubt of any other particulars recorded in the same Gospel: it proves that she must have been, for her time and country, most rarely gifted in mind, and deeply read in the Scriptures. 4. She was of a contemplative, reflecting, rather silent disposition. "She kept all these sayings, and pondered them in her heart." (Luke ii. 51.) She made no boast of that wondrous and most blessed destiny to which she was called; she thought upon it in silence. It is inferred that as many of these sayings and events could be known to herself alone, St. Luke the Evangelist could have learned them only from her own lips. 5. Next her truly maternal devotion to her divine Son, whom she attended humbly through his whole ministry; 6. and lastly, the sublime fortitude and faith with which she followed her Son to the death scene, stood beside the cross till all was finished, and then went home, and _lived_ (Luke xxiii.); for she was to be to us an example of all that a woman could endure, as well as all that a woman could be and act out in her earthly life. (John xix. 25.) Such was the character of Mary; such the _portrait_ really _painted_ by St. Luke; and, as it seems to me, these scattered, artless, unintentional notices of conduct and character converge into the most perfect moral type of the intellectual, tender, simple, and heroic woman that ever was placed before us for our edification and example. 331 9 Julia de Wolf Addison Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages INTRODUCTION The very general and keen interest in the revival of arts and crafts in America is a sign full of promise and pleasure to those who are working among the so-called minor arts. One reads at every turn how greatly Ruskin and Morris have influenced handicraft: how much these men and their co-workers have modified the appearance of our streets and houses, our materials, textiles, utensils, and all other useful things in which it is possible to shock or to please the aesthetic taste, without otherwise affecting the value of these articles for their destined purposes. In this connection it is interesting to look into the past, particularly to those centuries known as the Middle Ages, in which the handicrafts flourished in special perfection, and to see for ourselves how these crafts were pursued, and exactly what these arts really were. Many people talk learnedly of the delightful revival of the arts and crafts without having a very definite idea of the original processes which are being restored to popular favour. William Morris himself, although a great modern spirit, and reformer, felt the necessity of a basis of historic knowledge in all workers. "I do not think," he says, "that any man but one of the highest genius could do anything in these days without much study of ancient art, and even he would be much hindered if he lacked it." It is but turning to the original sources, then, to examine the progress of mediaeval artistic crafts, and those sources are usually to be found preserved for our edification in enormous volumes of plates, inaccessible to most readers, and seldom with the kind of information which the average person would enjoy. There are very few books dealing with the arts and crafts of the olden time, which are adapted to inform those who have no intention of practising such arts, and yet who wish to understand and appreciate the examples which they see in numerous museums or exhibitions, and in travelling abroad. There are many of the arts and crafts which come under the daily observation of the tourist, which make no impression upon him and have no message for him, simply because he has never considered the subject of their origin and construction. After one has once studied the subject of historic carving, metal work, embroidery, tapestry, or illumination, one can never fail to look upon these things with intelligent interest and vastly increased pleasure. Until the middle of the nineteenth century art had been regarded as a luxury for the rich dilettante,-the people heard little of it, and thought less. The utensils and furniture of the middle class were fashioned only with a view to utility; there was a popular belief that beautiful things were expensive, and the thrifty housekeeper who had no money to put into bric-à-brac never thought of such things as an artistic lamp shade or a well-coloured sofa cushion. Decorative art is well defined by Mr. Russell Sturgis: "Fine art applied to the making beautiful or interesting that which is made for utilitarian purposes." 332 Many people have an impression that the more ornate an article is, the more work has been lavished upon it. There never was a more erroneous idea. The diligent polish in order to secure nice plain surfaces, or the neat fitting of parts together, is infinitely more difficult than adding a florid casting to conceal clumsy workmanship. Of course certain forms of elaboration involve great pains and labour; but the mere fact that a piece of work is decorated does not show that it has cost any more in time and execution than if it were plain,-frequently many hours have been saved by the device of covering up defects with cheap ornament. How often one finds that a simple chair with a plain back costs more than one which is apparently elaborately carved! The reason is, that the plain one had to be made out of a decent piece of wood, while the ornate one was turned out of a poor piece, and then stamped with a pattern in order to attract the attention from the inferior material of which it was composed. The softer and poorer the wood, the deeper it was possible to stamp it at a single blow. The same principle applies to much work in metal. Flimsy bits of silverware stamped with cheap designs of flowers or fruits are attached to surfaces badly finished, while the work involved in making such a piece of plate with a plain surface would increase its cost three or four times. A craft may easily be practised without art, and still serve its purpose; the alliance of the two is a means of giving pleasure as well as serving utility. But it is a mistake to suppose that because a design is artistic, its technical rendering is any the less important. Frequently curious articles are palmed off on us, and designated as "Arts and Crafts" ornaments, in which neither art nor craft plays its full share. Art does not consist only in original, unusual, or unfamiliar designs; craft does not mean hammering silver so that the hammer marks shall show; the best art is that which produces designs of grace and appropriateness, whether they are strikingly new or not, and the best craftsman is so skilful that he is able to go beyond the hammer marks, so to speak, and to produce with the hammer a surface as smooth as, and far more perfect than, that produced by an emery and burnisher. Some people think that "Arts and Crafts" means a combination which allows of poor work being concealed under a mask of aesthetic effect. Labour should not go forth blindly without art, and art should not proceed simply for the attainment of beauty without utility,-in other words, there should be an alliance between labour and art. One principle for which craftsmen should stand is a respect for their own tools: a frank recognition of the methods and implements employed in constructing any article. If the article in question is a chair, and is really put together by means of sockets and pegs, let these constructive necessities appear, and do not try to disguise the means by which the result is to be attained. Make the requisite feature a beauty instead of a disgrace. It is amusing to see a New England farmer build a fence. He begins with good cedar posts,-fine, thick, solid logs, which are at least genuine, and handsome so far as a cedar post is capable of being handsome. You think, "Ah, that will be a good unobjectionable fence." But, behold, as soon as the posts are in position, he carefully lays a flat plank vertically in front of each, so that the passer-by may fancy that he has performed the feat of making a fence of flat laths, thus going out of his way to conceal the one positive and 333 good-looking feature in his fence. He seems to have some furtive dread of admitting that he has used the real article! A bolt is to be affixed to a modern door. Instead of being applied with a plate of iron or brass, in itself a decorative feature on a blank space like that of the surface of a door, the carpenter cuts a piece of wood out of the edge of the door, sinks the bolt out of sight, so that nothing shall appear to view but a tiny meaningless brass handle, and considers that he has performed a very neat job. Compare this method with that of a mediaeval locksmith, and the result with his great iron bolt, and if you can not appreciate the difference, both in principle and result, I should recommend a course of historic art study until you are convinced. On the other hand, it is not necessary to carry your artistry so far that you build a fence of nothing but cedar logs touching one another, or that you cover your entire door with a meander of wrought iron which culminates in a small bolt. Enthusiastic followers of the Arts and Crafts movement often go to morbid extremes. Recognition of material and method does not connote a display of method and material out of proportion to the demands of the article to be constructed. As in other forms of culture, balance and sanity are necessary, in order to produce a satisfactory result. But when a craftsman is possessed of an aesthetic instinct and faculty, he merits the congratulations offered to the students of Birmingham by William Morris, when he told them that they were among the happiest people in all civilization-"persons whose necessary daily work is inseparable from their greatest pleasure." A mediaeval artist was usually a craftsman as well. He was not content with furnishing designs alone, and then handing them over to men whose hands were trained to their execution, but he took his own designs and carried them out. Thus, the designer adapted his drawing to the demands of his material and the craftsman was necessarily in sympathy with the design since it was his own. The result was a harmony of intention and execution which is often lacking when two men of differing tastes produce one object. Lübke sums up the talents of a mediaeval artist as follows: "A painter could produce panels with coats of arms for the military men of noble birth, and devotional panels with an image of a saint or a conventionalized scene from Scripture for that noble's wife. With the same brush and on a larger panel he could produce a larger sacred picture for the convent round the corner, and with finer pencil and more delicate touch he could paint the vellum leaves of a missal;" and so on. If an artistic earthenware platter was to be made, the painter turned to his potter's wheel and to his kiln. If a filigree coronet was wanted, he took up his tools for metal and jewelry work. Redgrave lays down an excellent maxim for general guidance to designers in arts other than legitimate picture making. He says: "The picture must be independent of the material, the thought alone should govern it; whereas in decoration the material must be one of the suggestors of the thought, its use must govern the design." This shows the difference between decoration and pictorial art. One hears a great deal of the "conventional" in modern art talk. Just what this means, few people who have the word in their vocabularies really know. As Professor Moore defined 334 it once, it does not apply to an arbitrary theoretical system at all, but is instinctive. It means obedience to the limits under which the artist works. The really greatest art craftsmen of all have been those who have recognized the limitations of the material which they employed. Some of the cleverest have been beguiled by the fascination of overcoming obstacles, into trying to make iron do the things appropriate only to wood, or to force cast bronze into the similitude of a picture, or to discount all the credit due to a fine piece of embroidery by trying to make it appear like a painting. But these are the exotics; they are the craftsmen who have been led astray by a false impulse, who respect difficulty more than appropriateness, war rather than peace! No elaborate and tortured piece of Cellini's work can compare with the dignified glory of the Pala d'Oro; Ghiberti's gates in Florence, though a marvellous tour de force, are not so satisfying as the great corona candelabrum of Hildesheim. As a rule, we shall find that mediaeval craftsmen were better artists than those of the Renaissance, for with facility in the use of material, comes always the temptation to make it imitate some other material, thus losing its individuality by a contortion which may be curious and interesting, but out of place. We all enjoy seeing acrobats on the stage, but it would be painful to see them curling in and out of our drawing-room chairs. The true spirit which the Arts and Crafts is trying to inculcate was found in Florence when the great artists turned their attention to the manipulation of objects of daily use, Benvenuto Cellini being willing to make salt-cellars, and Sansovino to work on inkstands, and Donatello on picture frames, while Pollajuolo made candlesticks. The more our leading artists realize the need of their attention in the minor arts, the more nearly shall we attain to a genuine alliance between the arts and the crafts. To sum up the effect of this harmony between art and craft in the Middle Ages, the Abbé Texier has said: "In those days art and manufactures were blended and identified; art gained by this affinity great practical facility, and manufacture much original beauty." And then the value to the artist is almost incalculable. To spend one's life in getting means on which to live is a waste of all enjoyment. To use one's life as one goes along- to live every day with pleasure in congenial occupation-that is the only thing worth while. The life of a craftsman is a constant daily fulfilment of the final ideal of the man who spends all his time and strength in acquiring wealth so that some time (and he may never live to see the day) he may be able to control his time and to use it as pleases him. There is stored up capital represented in the life of a man whose work is a recreation, and expressive of his own personality. In a book of this size it is not possible to treat of every art or craft which engaged the skill of the mediaeval workers. But at some future time I hope to make a separate study of the ceramics, glass in its various forms, the arts of engraving and printing, and some of the many others which have added so much to the pleasure and beauty of the civilized world. 335 CHAPTER I GOLD AND SILVER The worker in metals is usually called a smith, whether he be coppersmith or goldsmith. The term is Saxon in origin, and is derived from the expression "he that smiteth." Metal was usually wrought by force of blows, except where the process of casting modified this. Beaten work was soldered from the earliest times. Egyptians evidently understood the use of solder, for the Hebrews obtained their knowledge of such things from them, and in Isaiah xli. 7, occurs the passage: "So the carpenter encouraged the goldsmith, and he that smootheth with the hammer him that smote the anvil, saying, 'It is ready for the soldering.'" In the Bible there are constant references to such arts in metal work as prevail in our own times: "Of beaten work made he the candlesticks," Exodus. In the ornaments of the tabernacle, the artificer Bezaleel "made two cherubims of gold beaten out of one piece made he them." An account of gold being gathered in spite of vicissitudes is given by Pliny: "Among the Dardoe the ants are as large as Egyptian wolves, and cat coloured. The Indians gather the gold dust thrown up by the ants, when they are sleeping in their holes in the Summer; but if these animals wake, they pursue the Indians, and, though mounted on the swiftest camels, overtake and tear them to pieces." Another legend relates to the blessed St. Patrick, through whose intercession special grace is supposed to have been granted to all smiths. St. Patrick was a slave in his youth. An old legend tells that one time a wild boar came rooting in the field, and brought up a lump of gold; and Patrick brought it to a tinker, and the tinker said, "It is nothing but solder. Give it here to me." But then he brought it to a smith, and the smith told him it was gold; and with that gold he bought his freedom. "And from that time," continues the story, "the smiths have been lucky, taking money every day, and never without work, but as for the tinkers, every man's face is against them!" In the Middle Ages the arts and crafts were generally protected by the formation of guilds and fraternities. These bodies practically exercised the right of patent over their professions, and infringements could be more easily dealt with, and frauds more easily exposed, by means of concerted effort on the part of the craftsmen. The goldsmiths and silversmiths were thus protected in England and France, and in most of the leading European art centres. The test of pure gold was made by "six of the more discreet goldsmiths," who went about and superintended the amount of alloy to be employed; "gold of the standard of the touch of Paris" was the French term for metal of the required purity. Any goldsmith using imitation stones or otherwise falsifying in his profession was punished "by imprisonment and by ransom at the King's pleasure." There were some complaints that fraudulent workers "cover tin with silver so subtilely... that the same cannot be discovered or separated, and so sell tin for fine silver, to the great damage and deceipt of us." This state of things finally led to the adoption of the Hall Mark, which is 336 still to be seen on every piece of silver, signifying that it has been pronounced pure by the appointed authorities. The goldsmiths of France absorbed several other auxiliary arts, and were powerful and influential. In state processions the goldsmiths had the first place of importance, and bore the royal canopy when the King himself took part in the ceremony, carrying the shrine of St. Genevieve also, when it was taken forth in great pageants. In the quaint wording of the period, goldsmiths were forbidden to gild or silver-plate any article made of copper or latten, unless they left some part of the original exposed, "at the foot or some other part,... to the intent that a man may see whereof the thing is made for to eschew the deceipt aforesaid." This law was enacted in 1404. Many of the great art schools of the Middle Ages were established in connection with the numerous monasteries scattered through all the European countries and in England. The Rule of St. Benedict rings true concerning the proper consecration of an artist: "If there be artists in the monastery, let them exercise their crafts with all humility and reverence, provided the abbot shall have ordered them. But if any of them be proud of the skill he hath in his craft, because he thereby seemeth to gain something for the monastery, let him be removed from it and not exercise it again, unless, after humbling himself, the abbot shall permit him." Craft without graft was the keynote of mediaeval art. King Alfred had a monastic art school at Athelney, in which he had collected "monks of all kinds from every quarter." This accounts for the Greek type of work turned out at this time, and very likely for Italian influences in early British art. The king was active in craft work himself, for Asser tells us that he "continued, during his frequent wars, to teach his workers in gold and artificers of all kinds." The quaint old encyclopaedia of Bartholomew Anglicus, called, "The Properties of Things," defines gold and silver in an original way, according to the beliefs of this writer's day. He says of gold, that "in the composition there is more sadness of brimstone than of air and moisture of quicksilver, and therefore gold is more sad and heavy than silver." Of silver he remarks, "Though silver be white yet it maketh black lines and strakes in the body that is scored therewith." Marco Polo says that in the province of Carazan "the rivers yield great quantities of washed gold, and also that which is solid, and on the mountains they find gold in the vein, and they give one pound of gold for six of silver." Workers in gold or silver usually employ one of two methods-casting or beating, combined with delicacy of finish, chasing, and polishing. The technical processes are interestingly described by the writers of the old treatises on divers arts. In the earliest of these, by the monk Theophilus, in the eleventh century, we have most graphic accounts of processes very similar to those now in use. The naïve monastic instructor, in his preface, exhorts his followers to honesty and zeal in their good works. "Skilful in the arts let no one glorify himself," say Theophilus, "as if received from himself, and not from 337 elsewhere; but let him be thankful humbly in the Lord, from whom all things are received." He then advises the craftsman earnestly to study the book which follows, telling him of the riches of instruction therein to be found; "you will there find out whatever... Tuscany knows of mosaic work, or in variety of enamels, whatever Arabia shows forth in work of fusion, ductility or chasing, whatever Italy ornaments with gold... whatever France loves in a costly variety of windows; whatever industrious Germany approves in work of gold, silver or copper, and iron, of woods and of stones." No wonder the authorities are lost in conjecture as to the native place of the versatile Theophilus! After promising all these delightful things, the good old monk continues, "Act therefore, well intentioned man,... hasten to complete with all the study of thy mind, those things which are still wanting among the utensils of the House of the Lord," and he enumerates the various pieces of church plate in use in the Middle Ages. Directions are given by Theophilus for the workroom, the benches at which the smiths are to sit, and also the most minute technical recipes for "instruments for sculping," for scraping, filing, and so forth, until the workshop should be fitted with all necessary tools. In those days, artists began at the very beginning. There were no "Windsor and Newtons," no nice makers of dividers and T-squares, to whom one could apply; all implements must be constructed by the man who contemplated using them. We will see how Theophilus proceeds, after he has his tools in readiness, to construct a chalice. First, he puts the silver in a crucible, and when it has become fluid, he turns it into a mould in which there is wax (this is evidently the "cire perdu" process familiar to casters of every age), and then he says, "If by some negligence it should happen that the melted silver be not whole, cast it again until it is whole." This process of casting would apply equally to all metals. Theophilus instructs his craftsman how to make the handles of the chalice as follows: "Take wax, form handles with it, and grave upon them dragons or animals or birds, or leaves-in whatever manner you may wish. But on the top of each handle place a little wax, round like a slender candle, half a finger in length,... this wax is called the funnel.... Then take some clay and cover carefully the handle, so that the hollows of the sculpture may be filled up.... Afterwards place these moulds near the coals, that when they have become warm you may pour out the wax. Which being turned out, melt the silver,... and cast into the same place whence you poured out the wax. And when they have become cold remove the clay." The solid silver handles are found inside, one hardly need say. In casting in the "cire perdu" process, Benvenuto Cellini warns you to beware lest you break your crucible-"just as you've got your silver nicely molten," he says, "and are pouring it into the mould, crack goes your crucible, and all your work and time and pains are lost!" He advises wrapping it in stout cloths. The process of repoussé work is also much the same to-day as it has always been. The metal is mounted on cement and the design partly beaten in from the outside; then the cement is melted out, and the design treated in more detail from the inside. Theophilus tells us how to prepare a silver vessel to be beaten with a design. After giving a recipe for 338 a sort of pitch, he says, "Melt this composition and fill the vial to the top. And when it has become cold, portray... whatever you wish, and taking a slender ductile instrument, and a small hammer, design that which you have portrayed around it by striking lightly." This process is practically, on a larger scale, what Cellini describes as that of "minuterie." Cellini praises Caradosso beyond all others in this work, saying "it was just in this very getting of the gold so equal all over, that I never knew a man to beat Caradosso!" He tells how important this equality of surface is, for if, in the working, the gold became thicker in one place than in another, it was impossible to attain a perfect finish. Caradosso made first a wax model of the object which he was to make; this he cast in copper, and on that he laid his thin gold, beating and modelling it to the form, until the small hollow basrelief was complete. The work was done with wooden and steel tools of small proportions, sometimes pressed from the back and sometimes from the front; "ever so much care is necessary," writes Cellini, "...to prevent the gold from splitting." After the model was brought to such a point of relief as was suitable for the design, great care had to be exercised in extending the gold further, to fit behind heads and arms in special relief. In those days the whole film of gold was then put in the furnace, and fired until the gold began to liquefy, at which exact moment it was necessary to remove it. Cellini himself made a medal for Girolamo Maretta, representing Hercules and the Lion; the figures were in such high relief that they only touched the ground at a few points. Cellini reports with pride that Michelangelo said to him: "If this work were made in great, whether in marble or in bronze, and fashioned with as exquisite a design as this, it would astonish the world; and even in its present size it seems to me so beautiful that I do not think even a goldsmith of the ancient world fashioned aught to come up to it!" Cellini says that these words "stiffened him up," and gave him much increased ambition. He describes also an Atlas which he constructed of wrought gold, to be placed upon a lapis lazuli background: this he made in extreme relief, using tiny tools, "working right into the arms and legs, and making all alike of equal thickness." A cope-button for Pope Clement was also quite a tour de force; as he said, "these pieces of work are often harder the smaller they are." The design showed the Almighty seated on a great diamond; around him there were "a number of jolly little angels," some in complete relief. He describes how he began with a flat sheet of gold, and worked constantly and conscientiously, gradually bossing it up, until, with one tool and then another, he finally mastered the material, "till one fine day God the Father stood forth in the round, most comely to behold." So skilful was Cellini in this art that he "bossed up in high relief with his punches some fifteen little angels, without even having to solder the tiniest rent!" The fastening of the clasp was decorated with "little snails and masks and other pleasing trifles," which suggest to us that Benvenuto was a true son of the Renaissance, and that his design did not equal his ability as a craftsman. Cellini's method of forming a silver vase was on this wise. The original plate of silver had to be red hot, "not too red, for then it would crack,-but sufficient to burn certain little grains thrown on to it." It was then adjusted to the stake, and struck with the hammer, towards the centre, until by degrees it began to take convex form. Then, keeping the central point always in view by means of compasses, from that point he struck "a series of concentric circles about half a finger apart from each other," and with a hammer, beginning at the centre, struck so that the "movement of the hammer shall be in the form 339 of a spiral, and follow the concentric circles." It was important to keep the form very even all round. Then the vase had to be hammered from within, "till it was equally bellied all round," and after that, the neck was formed by the same method. Then, to ornament the vase, it was filled with pitch, and the design traced on the outside. When it was necessary to beat up the ornament from within, the vase was cleared out, and inverted upon the point of a long "snarling-iron," fastened in an anvil stock, and beaten so that the point should indent from within. The vase would often have to be filled with pitch and emptied in this manner several times in the course of its construction. Benvenuto Cellini was one of the greatest art personalities of all time. The quaintness of the aesthetic temperament is nowhere found better epitomized than in his life and writings. But as a producer of artistic things, he is a great disappointment. Too versatile to be a supreme specialist, he is far more interesting as a man and craftsman than as a designer. Technical skill he had in unique abundance. And another faculty, for which he does not always receive due credit, is his gift for imparting his knowledge. His Treatises, containing valuable information as to methods of work, are less familiar to most readers than his fascinating biography. These Treatises, or directions to craftsmen, are full of the spice and charm which characterize his other work. One cannot proceed from a consideration of the bolder metal work to a study of the dainty art of the goldsmith without a glance at Benvenuto Cellini. The introduction to the Treatises has a naïve opening: "What first prompted me to write was the knowledge of how fond people are of hearing anything new." This, and other reasons, induced him to "write about those loveliest secrets and wondrous methods of the great art of goldsmithing." Francis I. indeed thought highly of Cellini. Upon viewing one of his works, his Majesty raised his hands, and exclaimed to the Mareschal de France, "I command you to give the first good fat abbey that falls vacant to our Benvenuto, for I do not want my kingdom to be deprived of his like." Benvenuto describes the process of making filigree work, the principle of which is, fine wire coiled flat so as to form designs with an interesting and varied surface. Filigree is quite common still, and any one who has walked down the steep street of the Goldsmiths in Genoa is familiar with most of its modern forms. Cellini says: "Though many have practised the art without making drawings first, because the material in which they worked was so easily handled and so pliable, yet those who made their drawings first did the best work. Now give ear to the way the art is pursued." He then directs that the craftsman shall have ready three sizes of wire, and some little gold granules, which are made by cutting the short lengths of wire, and then subjecting them to fervent heat until they become as little round beads. He then explains how the artificer must twist and mould the delicate wires, and tastily apply the little granules, so as to make a graceful design, usually of some floriate form. When the wire flowers and leaves were formed satisfactorily, a wash of gum tragacanth should be applied, to hold them in place until the final soldering. The solder was in powdered form, and it was to be dusted on "just as much as may suffice,... and not more,"... this amount of solder could only be determined 340 by the experience of the artist. Then came the firing of the finished work in the little furnace; Benvenuto is here quite at a loss how to explain himself: "Too much heat would move the wires you have woven out of place," he says, "really it is quite impossible to tell it properly in writing; I could explain it all right by word of mouth, or better still, show you how it is done,-still, come along,-we'll try to go on as we started!" Sometimes embossing was done by thin sheets of metal being pressed on to a wooden carving prepared for the purpose, so that the result would be a raised silver pattern, which, when filled up with pitch or lead, would pass for a sample of repoussé work. I need hardly say that a still simpler mechanical form of pressing obtains on cheap silver to-day. So much for the mechanical processes of treating these metals. We will now examine some of the great historic examples, and glance at the lives of prominent workers in gold and silver in the past. One of the most brilliant times for the production of works of art in gold and silver, was when Constantine, upon becoming Christian, moved the seat of government to Byzantium. Byzantine ornament lends itself especially to such work. The distinguishing mark between the earlier Greek jewellers and the Byzantine was, that the former considered chiefly line, form, and delicacy of workmanship, while the latter were led to expression through colour and texture, and not fineness of finish. The Byzantine emperors loved gold in a lavish way, and on a superb scale. They were not content with chaste rings and necklets, or even with golden crowns. The royal thrones were of gold; their armour was decorated with the precious metal, and their chariots enriched in the same way. Even the houses of the rich people were more endowed with precious furnishings than most of the churches of other nations, and every family possessed a massive silver table, and solid vases and plate. The Emperor Theophilus, who lived in the ninth century, was a great lover of the arts. His palace was built after the Arabian style, and he had skilful mechanical experts to construct a golden tree over his throne, on the branches of which were numerous birds, and two golden lions at the foot. These birds were so arranged by clockwork, that they could be made to sing, and the lions also joined a roar to the chorus! A great designer of the Middle Ages was Alcuin, the teacher of Charlemagne, who lived from 735 to 804; he superintended the building of many fine specimens of church plate. The school of Alcuin, however, was more famous for illumination, and we shall speak of his work at more length when we come to deal with that subject. Another distinguished patron of art was the Abbot Odo of Cluny, who had originally been destined for a soldier; but he was visited with what Maitland describes as "an inveterate headache, which, from his seventeenth to his nineteenth year, defied all medical skill," so he and his parents, convinced that this was a manifestation of the 341 disapproval of Heaven, decided to devote his life to religious pursuits. He became Abbot of Cluny in the year 927. CROWN OF CHARLEMAGNE Examples of ninth century goldsmithing are rare. Judging from the few specimens existing, the crown of Charlemagne, and the beautiful binding of the Hours of Charles the Bold, one would be inclined to think that an almost barbaric wealth of closely set jewels was the entire standard of the art of the time, and that grace of form or contour was quite secondary. The tomb was rifled about the twelfth century, and many of the valuable things with which he was surrounded were taken away. The throne was denuded of its gold, and may be seen to-day in the Cathedral at Aachen, a simple marble chair plain and dignified, with the copper joints showing its construction. Many of the relics of Charlemagne are in the treasury at Aachen, among other interesting items, the bones of the right arm of the Emperor in a golden shrine in the form of a hand and arm. There is a thrill in contemplating the remains of the right arm of Charlemagne after all the centuries, when one remembers the swords and sceptres which have been wielded by that mighty member. The reliquary containing the right arm of Charlemagne is German work (of course later than the opening of the tomb), probably between 1155 and 1190. Frederic Barbarossa and his ancestors are represented on its ornamentation. There is little goldsmith's work of the Norman period in Great Britain, for that was a time of the building of large structures, and probably minor arts and personal adornment took a secondary place. BERNWARD'S CROSS AND CANDLESTICKS, HILDESHEIM Perhaps the most satisfactory display of mediaeval arts and crafts which may be seen in one city is at Hildesheim: the special richness of remains of the tenth century is owing to the life and example of an early bishop-Bernward-who ruled the See from 993 to 1022. Before he was made bishop, Bernward was tutor to the young Emperor Otto III. He was a student of art all his life, and a practical craftsman, working largely in metals, and training up a Guild of followers in the Cathedral School. He was extremely versatile: one of the great geniuses of history. In times of war he was Commander in Chief of Hildesheim; he was a traveller, having made pilgrimages to Rome and Paris, and the grave of St. Martin at Tours. This wide culture was unusual in those days; it is quite evident from his active life of accomplishment in creative art, that good Bishop Bernward was not to be numbered among those who expected the end of the world to occur in the 342 year 1000 A. D. Of his works to be seen in Hildesheim, there are splendid examples. The Goldsmith's School under his direction was famous. He was created bishop in 992; Taugmar pays him a tribute, saying: "He was an excellent penman, a good painter, and as a household manager was unequalled." Moreover, he "excelled in the mechanical no less than in the liberal arts." In fact, a visit to Hildesheim to-day proves that to this man who lived ten centuries ago is due the fact that Hildesheim is the most artistic city in Germany from the antiquarian's point of view. This bishop influenced every branch of art, and with so vital an influence, that his See city is still full of his works and personality. He was not only a practical worker in the arts and crafts, but he was also a collector, forming quite a museum for the further instruction of the students who came in touch with him. He decorated the walls of his cathedral; the great candelabrum, or corona, which circles above the central aisle of the cathedral, was his own design, and the work of his followers; and the paschal column in the cathedral was from his workshop, wrought as delightfully as would be possible in any age, and yet executed nearly a thousand years ago. No bishop ever deserved sainthood more, or made a more practical contribution to the Church. Pope Celestine III. canonized him in 1194. Bernward came of a noble family. His figure may be seen-as near an approach to a portrait of this great worker as we have-among the bas-reliefs on the beautiful choirscreen in St. Michael's Church in Hildesheim. BERNWARD'S CHALICE, HILDESHEIM The cross executed by Bernward's own hands in 994 is a superb work, with filigree covering the whole, and set with gems en cabochon, with pearls, and antique precious stones, carved with Greek divinities in intaglio. The candlesticks of St. Bernward, too, are most interesting. They are made of a metal composed of gold, silver, and iron, and are wrought magnificently, into a mass of animal and floriate forms, their outline being well retained, and the grace of the shaft and proportions being striking. They are partly the work of the mallet and partly of the chisel. They had been buried with Bernward, and were found in his sarcophagus in 1194. Didron has likened them, in their use of animal form, to the art of the Mexicans; but to me they seem more like delightful German Romanesque workmanship, leaning more towards that of certain spirited Lombard grotesques, or even that of Arles and certain parts of France, than to the Aztec to which Didron has reference. The little climbing figures, while they certainly have very large hands and feet, yet are endowed with a certain sprightly action; they all give the impression of really making an effort,-they are trying to climb, instead of simply occupying places in the foliage. There is a good deal of strength and energy displayed in all of them, and, while the work is rude and rough, it is virile. It is not unlike the workmanship on the Gloucester candlestick in the South Kensington Museum, which was made in the twelfth century. 343 Bernward's chalice is set with antique stones, some of them carved. On the foot may be seen one representing the three Graces, in their customary state of nudity "without malice." Bernward was also an architect. He built the delightful church of St. Michael, and its cloister. He also superintended the building of an important wall by the river bank in the lower town. When there was an uneasy time of controversy at Gandesheim, Bernward hastened to headquarters in Rome, to arrange to bring about better feeling. In 1001 he arrived, early in January, and the Pope went out to meet him, kissed him, and invited him to stay as a guest at his palace. After accomplishing his diplomatic mission, and laden with all sorts of sacred relics, Bernward returned home, not too directly to prevent his seeing something of the intervening country. A book which Bishop Bernward had made and illuminated in 1011 has the inscription: "I, Bernward, had this codex written out, at my own cost, and gave it to the beloved Saint of God, Michael. Anathema to him who alienates it." This inscription has the more interest for being the actual autograph of Bernward. He was succeeded by Hezilo, and many other pupils. These men made the beautiful corona of the cathedral, of which I give an illustration in detail. Great coronas or circular chandeliers hung in the naves of many cathedrals in the Middle Ages. The finest specimen is this at Hildesheim, the magnificent ring of which is twenty feet across, as it hangs suspended by a system of rods and balls in the form of chains. It has twelve large towers and twelve small ones set around it, supposed to suggest the Heavenly Jerusalem with its many mansions. There are sockets for seventy-two candles. The detail of its adornment is very splendid, and repays close study. Every little turret is different in architectonic form, and statues of saints are to be seen standing within these. The pierced silver work on this chandelier is as beautiful as any mediaeval example in existence. CORONA AT HILDESHEIM (DETAIL) The great leader of mediaeval arts in France was the Abbot Suger of St. Denis. Suger was born in 1081, he and his brother, Alvise, who was Bishop of Arras, both being destined for the Episcopate. As a youth he passed ten years at St. Denis as a scholar. Here he became intimate with Prince Louis, and this friendship developed in after life. On 344 returning from a voyage to Italy, in 1122, he learned at the same time of the death of his spiritual father, Abbot Adam, and of his own election to be his successor. He thus stood at the head of the convent of St. Denis in 1123. This was due to his noble character, his genius for diplomacy and his artistic talent. He was minister to Louis VI., and afterwards to Louis VII., and during the second Crusade, he was made Regent for the kingdom. Suger was known, after this, as the Father of his Country, for he was a courageous counsellor, firm and convincing in argument, so that the king had really been guided by his advice. While he was making laws and instigating crusades, he was also directing craft shops and propagating the arts in connection with the life of the Church. St. Bernard denounced him, as encouraging too luxurious a ritual; Suger made a characteristic reply: "If the ancient law... ordained that vessels and cups of gold should be used for libations, and to receive the blood of rams,... how much rather should we devote gold, precious stones, and the rarest of materials, to those vessels which are destined to contain the blood of Our Lord." Suger ordered and himself made most beautiful appointments for the sanctuary, and when any vessel already owned by the Abbey was of costly material, and yet unsuitable in style, he had it remodelled. An interesting instance of this is a certain antique vase of red porphyry. There was nothing ecclesiastical about this vase; it was a plain straight Greek jar, with two handles at the sides. Suger treated it as the body of an eagle, making the head and neck to surmount it, and the claw feet for it to stand on, together with its soaring wings, of solid gold, and it thus became transformed into a magnificent reliquary in the form of the king of birds. The inscription on this Ampula of Suger is: "As it is our duty to present unto God oblations of gems and gold, I, Suger, offer this vase unto the Lord." Suger stood always for the ideal in art and character. He had the courage of his convictions in spite of the fulminations of St. Bernard. Instead of using the enormous sums of money at his disposal for importing Byzantine workmen, he preferred to use his funds and his own influence in developing a native French school of artificers. It is interesting to discover that Suger, among his many adaptations and restorations at St. Denis, incorporated some of the works of St. Eloi into his own compositions. For instance, he took an ivory pulpit, and remodelled it with the addition of copper animals. Abbots of St. Denis made beautiful offerings to the church. One of them, Abbot Matthiew de Vendôme, presented a wonderful reliquary, consisting of a golden head and bust, while another gave a reliquary to contain the jaw of St. Louis. Suger presented many fine products of his own art and that of his pupils, among others a great cross six feet in height. A story is told of him, that, while engaged in making a particularly splendid crucifix for St. Denis, he ran short of precious stones, nor could he in any way obtain what he required, until some monks came to him and offered to sell him a superb lot of stones which had formerly embellished the dinner service of Henry I. of England, whose nephew had given them to the convent in exchange for indulgences and masses! In these early and half-barbaric days of magnificence, form and delicacy of execution were not understood. Brilliancy and lavish display of sparkling jewels, set as thickly as possible without reference to a general scheme of composition, was the standard of beauty; and it must be admitted that, with such stones available, no more effective school 345 of work has ever existed than that of which such works Charlemagne's crown, the Iron Crown of Monza, and the crown of King Suinthila, are typical examples. Abbot Suger lamented when he lacked a sufficient supply of stones; but he did not complain when there occurred a deficiency in workmen. It was comparatively easy to train artists who could make settings and bind stones together with soldered straps! In 1352 a royal silversmith of France, Etienne La Fontaine, made a "fauteuil of silver and crystal decorated with precious stones," for the king. The golden altar of Basle is almost as interesting as the great Pala d'Oro in Venice, of which mention is made elsewhere. It was ordered by Emperor Henry the Pious, before 1024, and presented to the Prime Minister at Basle. The central figure of the Saviour has at its feet two tiny figures, quite out of scale; these are intended for the donors, Emperor Henry and his queen, Cunegunda. Silversmith's work in Spain was largely in Byzantine style, while some specimens of Gothic and Roman are also to be seen there. Moorish influence is noticeable, as in all Spanish design, and filigree work of Oriental origin is frequently to be met with. Some specimens of champlevé enamel are also to be seen, though this art was generally confined to Limoges during the Middle Ages. A Guild was formed in Toledo which was in flourishing condition in 1423. An interesting document has been found in Spain showing that craftsmen were supplied with the necessary materials when engaged to make valuable figures for the decoration of altars. It is dated May 12, 1367, "I, Sancho Martinez Orebsc, silversmith, native of Seville, inform you, the Dean and Chapter of the church of Seville, that it was agreed that I make an image of St. Mary with its tabernacle, that it should be finished at a given time, and that you were to give me the silver and stones required to make it." In Spain, the most splendid triumphs of the goldsmith's skill were the "custodias," or large tabernacles, in which the Host was carried in procession. The finest was one made for Toledo by Enrique d'Arphe, in competition with other craftsmen. His design being chosen, he began his work in 1517, and in 1524 the custodia was finished. It was in the form of a Gothic temple, six sided, with a jewelled cross on the top, and was eight Page 25 feet high. Some of the gold employed was the first ever brought from America. The whole structure weighed three hundred and eighty-eight pounds. Arphe made a similar custodia for Cordova and another for Leon. His grandson, Juan d'Arphe, wrote a verse about the Toledo custodia, in which these lines occur: "Custodia is a temple of rich plate Wrought for the glory of Our Saviour true... That holiest ark of old to imitate, Fashioned by Bezaleel the cunning Jew, 346 Chosen of God to work his sovereign will, And greatly gifted with celestial skill." Juan d'Arphe himself made a custodia for Seville, the decorations and figures on which were directed by the learned Francesco Pacheco, the father-in-law of Velasquez. When this custodia was completed, d'Arphe wrote a description of it, alluding boldly to this work as "the largest and finest work in silver known of its kind," and this could really be said without conceit, for it is a fact. A Gothic form of goldsmith's work obtained in Spain in the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries; it was based upon architectural models and was known as "plateresca." The shrines for holding relics became in these centuries positive buildings on a small scale in precious material. In England also were many of these shrines, but few of them now remain. The first Mayor of London, from 1189 to 1213, was a goldsmith, Henry Fitz Alwyn, the Founder of the Royal Exchange; Sir Thomas Gresham, in 1520, was Page 26 also a goldsmith and a banker. There is an entertaining piece of cynical satire on the Goldsmiths in Stubbes' Anatomy of Abuses, written in the time of Queen Elizabeth, showing that the tricks of the trade had come to full development by that time, and that the public was being aroused on the subject. Stubbes explains how the goldsmith's shops are decked with chains and rings, "wonderful richly." Then he goes on to say: "They will make you any monster or article whatsoever of gold, silver, or what you will. Is there no deceit in these goodlye shows? Yes, too many; if you will buy a chain of gold, a ring, or any kind of plate, besides that you shall pay almost half more than it is worth... you shall also perhaps have that gold which is naught, or else at least mixed with drossie rubbage.... But this happeneth very seldom by reason of good orders, and constitutions made for the punishment of them that offend in this kind of deceit, and therefore they seldom offend therein, though now and then they chance to stumble in the dark!" Fynes Moryson, a traveller who died in 1614, says that "the goldsmiths' shops in London... are exceedingly richly furnished continually with gold, with silver plate, and with jewels.... I never see any such daily show, anything so sumptuous, in any place in the world, as in London." He admits that in Florence and Paris the similar shops are very rich upon special occasions; but it is the steady state of the market in London to which he has reference. 347 The Company of Goldsmiths in Dublin held quite a prominent social position in the community. In 1649, a great festival and pageant took place, in which the goldsmiths and visiting craftsmen from other corporations took part. Henry III. set himself to enrich and beautify the shrine of his patron saint, Edward the Confessor, and with this end in view he made various extravagant demands: for instance, at one time he ordered all the gold in London to be detailed to this object, and at another, he had gold rings and brooches purchased to the value of six hundred marks. The shrine was of gold, and, according to Matthew Paris, enriched with jewels. It was commenced in 1241. In 1244 the queen presented an image of the Virgin with a ruby and an emerald. Jewels were purchased from time to time,-a great cameo in 1251, and in 1255 many gems of great value. The son of ado the Goldsmith, Edward, was the "king's beloved clerk," and was made "keeper of the shrine." Most of the little statuettes were described as having stones set somewhere about them: "an image of St. Peter holding a church in one hand and the keys in the other, trampling on Nero, who had a big sapphire on his breast;" and "the Blessed Virgin with her Son, set with rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and garnets," are among those cited. The whole shrine was described as "a basilica adorned with purest gold and precious stones." Odo the Goldsmith was in charge of the works for a good while. He was succeeded by his son Edward. Payments were made sometimes in a regular wage, and sometimes for "task work." The workmen were usually known by one name-Master Alexander the King's Carpenter, Master Henry the King's Master Mason, and so forth. In an early life of Edward the Confessor, there is an illumination showing the masons and carpenters kneeling to receive instruction from their sovereign. The golden shrine of the Confessor was probably made in the Palace itself; this was doubtless considered the safest place for so valuable a work to remain in process of construction; for there is an allusion to its being brought on the King's own shoulders (with the assistance of others), from the palace to the Abbey, in 1269, for its consecration. In 1243 Henry III. ordered four silver basins, fitted with cakes of wax with wicks in them, to be placed as lights before the shrine of Thomas à Becket in Canterbury. The great gold shrine of Becket appears to have been chiefly the work of a goldsmith, Master Adam. He also designed the Coronation Chair of England, which is now in Westminster Abbey. The chief goldsmith of England employed by Edward I. was one Adam of Shoreditch. He was versatile, for he was also a binder of books. A certain bill shows an item of his 348 workmanship, "a group in silver of a child riding upon a horse, the child being a likeness of Lord Edward, the King's son." A veritable Arts and Crafts establishment had been in existence in Woolstrope, Lincolnshire, before Cromwell's time; for Georde Gifford wrote to Cromwell regarding the suppression of this monastery: "There is not one religious person there but what doth use either embrothering, wryting books with a faire hand, making garments, or carving." In all countries the chalices and patens were usually, designed to correspond with each other. The six lobed dish was a very usual form; it had a depressed centre, with six indented scallops, and the edge flat like a dinner plate. In an old church inventory, mention is made of "a chalice with his paten." Sometimes there was lettering around the flat edge of the paten. Chalices were-composed of three parts: the cup, the ball or knop, and the stem, with the foot. The original purpose of having this foot hexagonal in shape is said to have been to prevent the chalice from rolling when it was laid on its side to drain. Under many modifications this general plan of the cup has obtained. The bowl is usually entirely plain, to facilitate keeping it clean; most of the decoration was lavished on the knop, a rich and uneven surface being both beautiful and functional in this place. Such Norman and Romanesque chalices as remain are chiefly in museums now. They were usually "coffin chalices"-that is, they had been buried in the coffin of some ecclesiastic. Of Gothic chalices, or those of the Tudor period, fewer remain, for after the Reformation, a general order went out to the churches, for all "chalices to be altered to decent Communion cups." The shape was greatly modified in this change. In the thirteenth century the taste ran rather to a chaster form of decoration; the large cabochons of the Romanesque, combined with a liquid gold surface, gave place to refined ornaments in niello and delicate enamels. The bowls of the earlier chalices were rather flat and broad. When it became usual for the laity to partake only of one element when communicating, the chalice, which was reserved for the clergy alone, became modified to meet this condition, and the bowl was much smaller. After the Reformation, however, the development was quite in the other direction, the bowl being extremely large and deep. In that period they were known as communion cups. In Sandwich there is a cup which was made over out of a ciborium; as it quite plainly shows its origin, it is naïvely inscribed: "This is a Communion Coop." When this change in the form of the chalice took place, it was provided, by admonition of the Archbishop, in all cases with a "cover of silver... which shall serve also for the ministration of the Communion bread." To make this double use of cover and dish satisfactory, a foot like a stand was added to the paten. The communion cup of the Reformation differed from the chalice, too, in being taller and straighter, with a deep bowl, almost in the proportions of a flaring tumbler, and a stem 349 with a few close decorations instead of a knop. The small paten served as a cover to the cup, as has been mentioned. It is not always easy to see old church plate where it originally belonged. On the Scottish border, for instance, there were constant raids, when the Scots would descend upon the English parish churches, and bear off the communion plate, and again the English would cross the border and return the compliment. In old churches, such as the eleventh century structure at Torpenhow, in Cumberland, the deep sockets still to be seen in the stone door jambs were intended to support great beams with which the church had constantly to be fortified against Scottish invasion. Another reason for the disappearance of church plate, was the occasional sale of the silver in order to continue necessary repairs on the fabric. In a church in Norfolk, there is a record of sale of communion silver and "for altering of our church and fynnishing of the same according to our mindes and the parishioners." It goes on to state that the proceeds were appropriated for putting new glass in the place of certain windows "wherein were conteined the lives of certain prophane histories," and for "paving the king's highway" in the church precincts. At the time of the Reformation many valuable examples of Church plate were cast aside by order of the Commissioners, by which "all monuments of feyned miracles, pilgrimages, idolatry, and superstition," were to be destroyed. At this time a calf or a sheep might have been seen browsing in the meadows with a sacring-bell fastened at its neck, and the pigs refreshed themselves with drinking from holy-water fonts! Croziers of ornate design especially roused the ire of the Puritans. In Mr. Alfred Maskell's incomparable book on Ivories, he translates a satirical verse by Guy de Coquille, concerning these objectionable pastoral staves (which were often made of finely sculptured ivory). "The staff of a bishop of days that are old Was of wood, and the bishop himself was of gold. But a bishop of wood prefers gorgeous array, So his staff is of gold in the new fashioned way!" During the Renaissance especially, goldsmith's work was carried to great technical perfection, and yet the natural properties of the metal were frequently lost sight of, and the craftsmen tried to produce effects such as would be more suitable in stone or wood,- little architectonic features were introduced, and gold was frequently made to do the work 350 of other materials. Thus it lost much of its inherent effectiveness. Too much attention was given to ingenuity, and not enough to fitness and beauty. 351 10 Carleton Eldredge Noyes The Gate of Appreciation PREFACE IN the daily life of the ordinary man, a life crowded with diverse interests and increasingly complex demands, some few moments of a busy week or month or year are accorded to an interest in art. Whatever may be his vocation, the man feels instinctively that in his total scheme of life books, pictures, music have somewhere a place. In his own business or profession he is an expert, a man of special training; and intelligently he does not aspire to a complete understanding of a subject which lies beyond his province. In the same spirit in which he is a master of his own craft, he is content to leave expert knowledge of art to the expert, to the artist and to the connoisseur. For his part as a layman he remains frankly and happily on the outside. But he feels none the less that art has an interest and a meaning even for him. Though he does not practice any art himself, he knows that he enjoys fine things, a beautiful room, noble buildings, books and plays, statues, pictures, music; and he believes that in his own fashion he is able to appreciate art, I venture to think that he is right. There is a case for the outsider in reference to art. And I have tried here to state it. This book is an attempt to suggest the possible meaning of art to the ordinary man, to indicate methods of approach to art, and to trace the way of appreciation. It is essentially a personal record, an account of my own adventures with the problem. The book does not pretend to finality; the results are true for me as far as I have gone. They may or may not be true for another. If they become true for another man, he is the one for whom the book was written. I do not apologize because the shelter here put together, in which I have found a certain comfort, is not a palace. Rude as the structure may be, any man is welcomed to it who may find solace there in an hour of need. C. N. CAMBRIDGE, November second, 1906. I THE IMPULSE TO EXPRESSION TOWARD evening a traveler through a wild country finds himself still in the open, with no hope of reaching a village that night. The wind is growing chill; clouds are gathering 352 in the west, threatening rain. There rises in him a feeling of the need of shelter; and he looks about him to see what material is ready to his hand. Scattered stones will serve for supports and low walls; there are fallen branches for the roof; twigs and leaves can be woven into a thatch. Already the general design has shaped itself in his mind. He sets to work, modifying the details of his plan to suit the resources of his material. At last, after hours of hard thought and eager toil, spurred on by his sense of his great need, the hut is ready; and fee takes refuge in it as the storm breaks. The entire significance of the man's work is shelter. The beginning of it lay in his need of shelter. The impulse to action rose out of his consciousness of his need. His imagination conceived the plan whereby the need might be met, and the plan gave shape to his material. The actual result of his labor was a hut, but the hut itself was not the end for which he strove. The hut was but the means. The all-inclusive import of his work-the stimulus which impelled him to act, the purpose for which he toiled, and the end which he accomplished-is shelter. A man of special sensitiveness to the appeal of color and form finds himself also in the open. He is weary with the way, which shows but broken glimpses of the road. His spirit, heavy with the "burden of the mystery," is torn by conflict and confusion. As he looks across the stony places to the gnarled and weather-tortured trees beyond, and up to the clouds piling black above him, there is revealed to him a sudden harmony among the discords; an inner principle, apprehended by his imagination, compels the fragments of the seeming chaos into a regnant order. These natural forms become for him the expression external to himself of the struggle of his own spirit and its final resolution. The desire rises in him to express by his own act the order he has newly perceived, the harmony of his spirit with the spirit of nature. As life comes to him dominantly in terms of color and form, it is with color and form that he works to expression so as to satisfy his need. The design is already projected in his imagination, and to realize concretely his ideal he draws upon the material of nature about him. The picture which he paints is not the purpose of his effort. The picture is but the means. His end is to express the great new harmony in which his spirit finds shelter. Both men, the traveler and the painter, are wayfarers. Both are seeking shelter from stress and storm, and both construct their means. In one case the product is more obviously and immediately practical, and the informing purpose tends to become obscured in the actual serviceableness of the result. The hut answers a need that is primarily physical; the need in the other case is spiritual. But it is a matter of degree. In essence and import the achievement of the two men is the same. The originating impulse, a sense of need; the processes involved, the combination of material elements to a definite end; the result attained, shelter which answers the need,-they are identical. Both men are artists. Both hut and picture are works of art. So art is not remote from common life after all. In its highest manifestations art is life at its best; painting, sculpture, poetry, music are the distillment and refinement of experience. Architecture and the subsidiary arts of decoration adorn necessity and add delight to use. But whatever the flower and final fruit, art strikes its roots deep down into 353 human need, and draws its impulse and its sustenance from the very sources of life itself. In the wide range from the hut in the wilderness to a Gothic cathedral, from the rude scratches recorded on the cave walls of prehistoric man to the sublimities of the Sistine Chapel, there is no break in the continuity of effort and aspiration. Potentially every man is an artist. Between the artist, so-called, and the ordinary man there is no gulf fixed which cannot be passed. Such are the terms of our mechanical civilization to-day that art has become specialized and the practice of it is limited to a few; in consequence artists have become a kind of class. But essentially the possibilities of art lie within the scope of any man, given the right conditions. So too the separation of the "useful arts" from the "fine arts" is unjust to art and perversive of right appreciation. Whatever the form in which it may manifest itself, from the lowest to the highest, the art spirit is one, and it may quicken in any man who sets mind and heart to the work of his hand. That man is an artist who fashions a new thing that he may express himself in response to his need. Art is creation. It is the combination of already existing material elements into new forms which become thus the realization of a preconceived idea. Both hut and picture rose in the imagination of their makers before they took shape as things. The material of each was given already in nature; but the form, as the maker fashioned it, was new. Commonly we think of art as the expression and communication of emotion. A picture, a statue, a symphony we recognize as the symbol of what the artist has felt in some passage of his experience and the means by which he conveys his feeling to us. Art is the expression of emotion, but all art springs out of need. The sense of need which impels expression through the medium of creation is itself an emotion. The hut which the traveler built for himself in the wilderness-shaping it according to the design which his imagination suggested, having reference to his need and to the character of his materials-was a work of creation; the need which prompted it presented itself to him as emotion. The picture which the other wayfarer painted of the storm-swept landscape, a harmony which his imagination compelled out of discords, was a work of creation; the emotion which inspired the work was attended by need, the need of expression. The material and practical utility of the hut obscures the emotional character of its origin; the emotional import of the picture outweighs consideration of its utility to the painter as the means by which his need of expression is satisfied. The satisfaction of physical needs which results in the creation of utilities and the satisfaction of spiritual needs which results in the forms of expression we commonly call works of art differ one from the other in their effect on the total man only in degree. All works of use whose conception and making have required an act of creation are art; all art-even in its supreme manifestations-embraces elements of use. The measure in which a work is art is established by the intensity and scope of its maker's emotion and by his power to body forth his feeling in harmonious forms which in turn recreate the emotion in the spirit of those whom his work reaches. In its essence and widest compass art is the making of a new thing in response to a sense of need. The very need itself creates, working through man as its agent. This truth is illustrated vividly by the miracles of modern invention. The hand of man unaided was not able to cope with his expanding opportunities; the giant steam and the magician electricity came at his call to work their wonders. The plow and scythe of the New England colonist on his little farm were metamorphosed into the colossal steam-driven 354 shapes, in which machinery seems transmuted into intelligence, as he moved to the conquest of the acres of the West which summoned him to dominion. First the need was felt; the contrivance was created in response. A man of business sees before him in imagination the end to be reached, and applying his ideal to practical conditions, he makes every detail converge to the result desired. All rebellious circumstances, all forces that pull the other way, he bends to his compelling will, and by the shaping power of his genius he accomplishes his aim. His business is his medium of self-expression; his success is the realization of his ideal. A painter does no more than this, though he works with a different material. The landscape which is realized ultimately upon his canvas is the landscape seen in his imagination. He draws his colors and forms from nature around; but he selects his details, adapting them to his end. All accidents and incidents are purged away. Out of the apparent confusion of life rises the evident order of art. And in the completed work the artist's idea stands forth salient and victorious. That consciousness of need which compels creation is the origin of art. The owner of a dwelling who first felt the need of securing his door so that he alone might possess the secret and trick of access devised a lock and key, rude enough, as we can fancy. As the maker of the first lock and key he was an artist. All those who followed where he had led, repeating his device without modification, were but artisans. In the measure that any man changed the design, however, adapting it more closely to his peculiar needs and so making it anew, to that extent he was an artist also. The man who does a thing for the first time it is done is an artist; a man who does a thing better is an artist. The painter who copies his object imitatively, finding nothing, creating nothing, is an artisan, however skillful he may be. He is an artist in the degree in which he brings to his subject something of his own, and fashioning it, however crudely, to express the idea he has conceived of the object, so creates. The difference between work which is art and work which is not art is just this element of the originating impulse and creative act. The difference, though often seemingly slight and not always immediately perceived, is all-important. It distinguishes the artist from the artisan; a free spirit from a slave; a thinking, feeling man from a soulless machine. It makes the difference between life rich and significant, and mere existence; between the mastery of fate and the passive acceptance of things as they are. If a mind and heart are behind it to control and guide it to expression, even the machine may be an instrument in the making of a work of art. It is not the work itself, but the motive which prompted the making of it, that determines its character as art. Art is not the way a thing is done, but the reason why it is done. A chair, though turned on a lathe, may be a work of art, if the maker has truly expressed himself in his work. A picture, though "hand-painted," may be wholly mechanical in spirit. To set about "making a picture" is to begin at the wrong end. The impulse to art flows from within outwards. Art is bound up with life itself; like nature, it is organic and must grow. The form cannot be laid on from the outside; it is born and must develop in response to vital need. In so far as our acts are consciously the expression of ourselves they are prompted by the art spirit. 355 All our acts are reducible to one of two kinds: either they are acts of creation, effecting a new result, or they are acts of repetition. Acts of repetition tend rapidly to become habits; and they may be performed without attention or positive volition. Thus, as I am dressing in the morning I may be planning the work for the day; while my mind is given over to thought, I lose the sense of my material surroundings, my muscles work automatically, the motor-currents flowing through the well-worn grooves, and by force of habit the acts execute themselves. Obviously, acts of repetition, or habits, make up the larger part of our daily lives. Acts of creation, on the other hand, are performed by an effort of the will in response to the consciousness of a need. To meet the new need we are obliged to make new combinations. I assume that the traveler constructed his hut for the first time, shaping it to the special new conditions; that the harmony which the painter discerned in the tumult around him he experienced for the first time, and the picture which he paints, shaped with reference to his need and fulfilling it, is a new thing. In the work produced by this act of creation, the feeling which has prompted it finds expression. In the making of the hut, in the painting of the picture, the impelling need is satisfied. Although acts of repetition constitute the bulk of life, creation is of its very essence and determines its quality. The significance and joy of life are less in being than in becoming. Growth is expression, and in turn expression is made possible by growth. In our conscious experience the sense of becoming is one of our supreme satisfactions. Growth is the purpose and the recompense of our being here, the end for which we strive and the reward of all the effort and the struggle. In the exercise of brain or hand, to feel the work take form, develop, and become something,-that is happiness. And the joy is in the creating rather than in the thing created; the completed work is behind us, and we move forward to new creation. A painter's best picture is the blank canvas before him; an author's greatest book is the one he is just setting himself to write. The desire for change for the sake of change which we all feel at times, a vague restlessness of mind and body, is only the impulse to growth which has not found its direction. Outside of us we love to see the manifestation of growth. We tend and cherish the little plant in the window; we watch with delight the unfolding of each new leaf and the upward reach into blossom. The spring, bursting triumphant from the silent, winter-stricken earth, is nature's parable of expression, her symbol perennially renewed of the joy of growth. The impulse to expression is cosmic and eternal. But even in the homeliness and familiarity of our life from day to day the need of expression is there, whether we are entirely aware of it or not; and we are seeking the realization and fulfillment of ourselves through the utterance of what we are. A few find their expression in forms which with distinct limitation of the term we call works of art. Most men find it in their daily occupations, their profession or their business. The president of one of the great Western railroads remarked once in conversation that he would rather build a thousand miles of railroad than live in the most sumptuous palace on Fifth Avenue. Railroad building was his medium of expression; it was his art. Some express themselves in shaping their material environment, in the decoration and ordering of their houses. A young woman said, "My ambition is to keep my house well." Again, for her, housekeeping is her art. 356 Some find the realization of themselves in the friends they draw around them. Love is but the utterance of what we essentially are; and the response to it in the loved one makes the utterance articulate and complete. Expression rises out of our deepest need, and the need impels expression. The assertion that art is thus involved with need seems for the moment to run counter to the usual conception, which regards art as a product of leisure, a luxury, and the result not of labor but of play. Art in its higher forms becomes more and more purely the expression of emotion, the un-trammeled record of the artist's spiritual experience. It is only when physical necessities have been met or ignored that the spirit of man has free range. But the maker who adds decoration to his bowl after he has moulded it is just as truly fulfilling a need-the need of self-expression-as he fulfilled a need when he fashioned the bowl in the first instance in order that he might slake his thirst. Art is not superadded to life,-something different in kind. All through its ascent from its rudimentary forms to its highest, from hut to cathedral, art is coordinate with the development of life, continuous and without breach or sudden end; it is the expression step by step of ever fuller and ever deeper experience. Creation, therefore, follows upon the consciousness of need, whether the need be physical, as with the traveler, or spiritual, as with the painter; from physical to spiritual we pass by a series of gradations. At their extremes they are easy to distinguish, one from the other; but along the way there is no break in the continuity. The current formula for art, that art is the utterance of man's joy in his work, is not quite accurate. In the act of creation the maker finds the expression of himself. The man who decorates a bowl in response to his own creative impulse is expressing himself. The painter who thrills to the wonder and significance of nature is impelled to expression; and his delight is not fully realized and complete until he has uttered it. Such art is love expressed, and the artist's work is his "hymn of the praise of things." But the joy for both the potter and the painter, the joy which is so bound up with art as to partake of its very essence, is the joy which attends self-expression and the satisfaction of the need. A work of art is a work of creation brought into being as the expression of emotion. The traveler creates not the wood and stone but shelter, by means of the hut; the painter creates not the landscape but the beauty of it; the musician creates not the musical tones, but by means of a harmony of tones he creates an emotional experience. The impulse to art rises out of the earliest springs of consciousness and vibrates through all life. Art does not disdain to manifest itself in the little acts of expression of simple daily living; with all its splendid past and vital present it is ever seeking new and greater forms whose end is not yet. I spoke of the work of the traveler through the wilderness as art; the term was applied also to railroad-building and to housekeeping. The truth to be illustrated by these examples is that the primary impulse to artistic expression does not differ in essence from the impulse to creation of any kind. The nature of the thing created, as art, depends upon the emotional value of the result, the degree in which it expresses immediately the emotion of its creator, and the power it possesses to rouse the emotion in others. To show that all art is creation and that all creation tends toward art is not to obscure useful distinctions, but rather to restore art to its rightful place in the life of man. 357 In the big sense, then, art is bounded only by life itself. It is not a cult; it is not an activity practiced by the few and a mystery to be understood only by those who are initiated into its secrets. One difficulty in the way of the popular understanding of art is due to the fact that the term art is currently limited to its highest manifestations; we withhold the title of artist from a good carpenter or cabinet-maker who takes a pride in his work and expresses his creative desire by shaping his work to his own idea, and we bestow the name upon any juggler in paint: with the result that many people who are not painters or musicians feel themselves on that account excluded from all appreciation. If we go behind the various manifestations of art to discover just what art is in itself and to determine wherein it is able to link itself with common experience, we find that art is the response to a need. And that need may waken in any man. Every man may be an artist in his degree; and every man in his degree can appreciate art. A work of art is the expression of its maker's experience, the expression in such terms that the experience can be communicated to another. The processes of execution involved in fashioning a work, its technique, may be as incomprehensible and perplexed and difficult as its executants choose to make them. Technique is not the same as art. The only mystery of art is the mystery of all life itself. Accept life with its fundamental mysteries, with its wonders and glories, and we have the clue to art. But we miss the central fact of the whole matter if we do not perceive that art is only a means. It is by expression that we grow and so fulfill ourselves. The work itself which art calls into being is not the end. It fails of its purpose, remaining void and vain, if it does not perform its function. The hut which does not furnish shelter is labor lost. The significance of the painter's effort does not stop with the canvas and pigment which he manipulates into form and meaning. The artist sees beyond the actual material thing which he is fashioning; his purpose in creation is expression. By means of his picture he expresses himself and so finds the satisfaction of his deepest need. The beginning and the end of art is life. But the artist's work of expression is not ultimately complete until the message is received, and expression becomes communication as his utterance calls out a response in the spirit of a fellow-man. Art exists not only for the artist's sake but for the appreciator too. As art has its origin in emotion and is the expression of it, so for the appreciator the individual work has a meaning and is art in so far as it becomes for him the expression of what he has himself felt but could not phrase; and it is art too in the measure in which it is the revelation of larger possibilities of feeling and creates in him a new emotional experience. The impulse to expression is common to all; the difference is one of degree. And the message of art is for all, according as they are attuned to the response. Art is creation. For the artist it is creation by expression; for the appreciator it is creation by evocation. These two principles complete the cycle; abstractly and very briefly they are the whole story of art. To be responsive to the needs of life and its emotional appeal is the first condition of artistic creation. By new combinations of material elements to bring emotion to expression in concrete harmonious forms, themselves charged with emotion and communicating it, is to fashion a work of art. To feel in material, whether in the forms of nature or in works of art, a meaning for the spirit is the condition of appreciation. 358 II THE ATTITUDE OF RESPONSE IT is a gray afternoon in late November. The day is gone; evening is not yet come. Though too dark to read or write longer, it is not dark enough for drawn shades and the lamp. As I sit in the gathering dusk, my will hovering between work done and work to do, I surrender to the mood of the moment. The day is accomplished, but it is not yet a remembrance, for it is still too near for me to define the details that made up its hours. Consciousness, not sharp enough for thought, floats away into diffused and obscure emotion. The sense is upon me and around me that I am vaguely, unreasoningly, yet pleasantly, unhappy. Out of the dimness a trick of memory recalls to me the lines,- "Tears! tears! tears! In the night, in solitude, tears, On the white shore dripping, dripping, suck'd in by the sand, Tears, not a star shining, all dark and desolate, Moist tears from the eyes of a muffled head; O who is that ghost? that form in the dark, with tears? What shapeless lump is that, bent, crouch'd there on the sand? Streaming tears, sobbing tears, throes, choked with wild cries; O storm, embodied, rising, careering with swift steps along the beach! O wild and dismal night storm, with wind-O belching and desperate! O shade so sedate and decorous by day, with calm countenance and regulated pace, But away at night as you fly, none looking-O then the unloosened ocean Of tears! tears! tears!" Now I know. My mood was the mood of tears. The poet, too, has felt what I was feeling. And as a poet he has been able to bring his emotion to expression. By the magic of phrase and the mystery of image he has, out of the moving of his spirit, fashioned a concrete reality. By means of his expression, because of it, his emotion becomes realized, and so reaches its fulfillment. And for me, what before was vague has been made definite. The poet's lines have wakened in me a response; I have felt what he has phrased; and now they become my expression too. As my mood takes form, I become conscious of its meaning. I can distill its significance for the spirit, and in the emotion made definite and realizable as consciousness I feel and know that I am living. Doubly, completely, the poem is a work of art. And my response to it, the absorption of it into my own experience, is appreciation. I appreciate the poem as I make the experience which the poet has here phrased my own, and at the instant of reading I live out in myself what he has lived and here expressed. I read the words, and intellectually I take in their signification, but the poem is not realized in me until it wakens in me the feeling which the words are framed to convey. The images which an artist employs have the power to rouse emotion in us, so that they come 359 to stand for the emotion itself. We care for nature and it is beautiful to us as its forms become objectively the intimate expression for us of what we feel. "O to realize space! The plenteousness of all, that there are no bounds, To emerge and be of the sky, of the sun and moon and flying clouds, as one with them." In his contact with the external world the artist identifies himself with his object. If he is painting a tree he in a measure becomes the tree; he values it at all because it expresses for him concretely what he feels in its presence. The object and his spirit fuse; and through the fusion they together grow into a new and larger unity. What his work expresses is not the object for its own sake but this larger unity of his identity with it. To appreciate the artist's work, therefore, we must in our turn merge ourselves in his emotion, and becoming one with it, so extend our personality into larger life. To make the artist's emotion our own, to identify ourselves with the object which he presents to us, we must pass beyond the material form in which the work is embodied, letting the spirit and meaning of it speak to our spirit. In itself an individual picture or statue or symphony is an objective, material thing, received into consciousness along the channel of the senses; but its origin and its end alike are in emotion. The material form, whether in nature or in works of art, is only the means by which the emotion is communicated. A landscape in nature is composed of meadow and hills, blue sky and tumbling clouds; these are the facts of the landscape. But they are not fixed and inert. The imagination of the beholder combines these elements into a harmony of color and mass; his spirit flows into consonance with the harmony his imagination has compelled out of nature, becoming one with it. To regard the world not as facts and things, but as everywhere the stimulus of feeling, feeling which becomes our own experience, is the condition of appreciation. To the awakening mind of a child, life is full of wonder, and each unfolding day reveals new marvels of excitement and surprise. As yet untrammeled by any sense of the limitations of material, his quick imagination peoples his world with creatures of his fancy, which to him are more real than the things he is able actually to see and touch. For him the external world is fluid and plastic, to be moulded into forms at will in obedience to his creative desire. In the tiny bundle of rags which mother-love clasps tight to her heart, a little girl sees only the loveliest of babies; and a small boy with his stick of lath and newspaper cap and plume is a mightier than Napoleon. The cruder the toy, the greater is the pleasure in the game; for the imagination delights in the exercise of itself. A wax doll, sent from Paris, with flaxen hair and eyes that open and shut, is laid away, when the mere novelty of it is exhausted, in theatric chest, and the little girl is fondling again her first baby of rag and string. A real steel sword and tin helmet are soon cast aside, and the boy is back again among the toys of his own making. That impulse to creation which all men feel, the impulse which makes the artist, is especially active in a child; his games are his art. With a child material is not an end but a means. Things are for him but the skeleton of life, to be clothed upon by the flesh and blood reality of his 360 own fashioning. His feeling is in excess of his knowledge. He has a faculty of perception other than the intellectual. It is imagination. The child is the first artist. Out of the material around him he creates a world of his own. The prototypes of the forms which he devises exist in life, but it is the thing which he himself makes that interests him, not its original in nature. His play is his expression. He creates; and he is able to merge himself in the thing created. In his play he loses all consciousness of self. He and the toy become one, caught up in the larger unity of the game. According as he identifies himself with the thing outside of him, the child is the first appreciator. Then comes a change. "Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing Boy, But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy; The Youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is Nature's Priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended; At length the Man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day." Imagination surrenders to the intellect; emotion gives place to knowledge. Gradually the material world shuts in about us until it becomes for us a hard, inert thing, and no longer a living, changing presence, instinct with infinite possibilities of experience and feeling. Now custom lies upon us "with a weight, Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!" It happens, unfortunately for our enjoyment of life, that we get used to things. Little by little we come to accept them, to take them for granted, and they cease to mean anything to us. Habit, which is our most helpful ally in lending our daily life its practical efficiency, is the foe of emotion and appreciation. Habit allows us to perform without conscious effort the innumerable little acts of each day's necessity which we could not possibly accomplish if every single act required a fresh exercise of will. But just because its action is unconscious and unregarded, habit blunts the edge of our sensibilities. "Thus let but a Rising of the Sun," says Carlyle, "let but a creation of the World happen twice, and it ceases to be marvelous, to be noteworthy, or noticeable." "Except ye become as little children!" Unless the world is new-created every day, unless we can thrill to the beauty of nature with its fair surfaces and harmonies of vibrant 361 sounds, or quicken to the throb of human life with its occupations and its play of energies, its burdens and its joys, unless we find an answer to our needs, and gladness, in sunlight or storms, in the sunset and evening and solitude under the stars, in fields and hills or in thronging city streets, in conflict and struggle or in the face of a friend, unless each new day is a gift and new opportunity, then we cannot interpret the meaning of life nor read the riddle of art. For we cannot truly appreciate art except as we learn to appreciate life. Until then art has no message for us; it is a sealed book, and we shall not open the book nor loose the seals thereof. The meaning of life is for the spirit, and art is its minister. To share in the communion we must become as children. As a child uses the common things of life to his own ends, transfiguring them by force of his creative desire, and fashioning thus a wonderful world of his own by the exercise of his shaping imagination, a world of limitless incident and high adventure, so we must penetrate the visible and tangible actuality around us, the envelope of seemingly inert matter cast in forms of rigid definition, and we must open ourselves to the influence of nature. That influence-nature's power to inspire, quicken, and dilate-flowing through the channel of the senses, plays upon our spirit. The indwelling significance of things is apprehended by the imagination, and is won for us in the measure that we feel. As we respond to the emotional appeal of the great universe external to ourselves we come to realize that the material world which we see and touch is not final. In the experience of us all there are moments of exaltation and quickened response, moments of illumination when- "with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things." The "life of things" is their significance for the spirit. By spirit I mean the sum of our conscious being, that complete entity within us which we recognize as the self. The material world, external, visible, tangible, may be regarded as the actual world. The real world is the world of spiritual forces and relations, apprehended by the imagination and received with feeling. Life, in the sense of our conscious experience of the world, is the moving of the spirit in emotion. The measure of life for the individual, therefore, is the degree of intensity with which he feels. Experience is not meted out by weeks and months; it is to be sounded by the depth and poignancy of instant emotion. Variety and multitude of incident may crowd through insentient years and leave no record of their progress along the waste places of their march. Or a day may be a lifetime. In such moments of intensest experience time and space fall away and are not. The outermost bounds of things recede; they vanish altogether: and we are made free of the universe. At such moments we are truly living; then we really are. As the meaning of art is not the material thing which it calls into form, but what the work expresses of life, so in order to appreciate art it is necessary to appreciate life, which is the inspiration of art and its fulfillment. To appreciate life is to send out our being into 362 experience and to feel,-to realize in terms of emotion our identity with the great universe outside of us, this world of color and form and sound and movement, this web of illimitable activities and energies, shot through with currents of endlessly varied and modulated feeling. "My son," says the father in Hindu lore, pointing to an animal, a tree, a rock, "my son, thou art that!" The universe is one. Of it we are each an essential part, distinct as individuals, yet fusing with it in our sense of our vital kinship with all other parts and with the whole. I am sauntering through the Public Garden on a fragrant hushed evening in June; touched by the lingering afterglow, the twilight has not yet deepened into night. Grouped about a bench, children are moving softly in the last flicker of play, while the mother nods above them. On the next bench a wanderer is stretched at full length, his face hidden in his crooked-up arm. I note a couple seated, silent, with shoulder touching shoulder. I meet a young man and woman walking hand in hand; they do not see me as I pass. Beyond, other figures are soundless shadows, gathering out of the enveloping dusk. It is all so intimate and friendly. The air, the flowers, the bit of water through the trees reflecting the lights of the little bridge, are a caress. And it is all for me! I am a child at his tired play, I am the sleeping tramp, I am the young fellow with his girl. It is not the sentiment of the thing, received intellectually, that makes it mine. My being goes out into these other lives and becomes one with them. I feel them in myself. It is not thought that constitutes appreciation; it is emotion. Another glimpse, caught this time through a car window. Now it is a winter twilight. The flurry of snow has passed. The earth is penetrated with blue light, suffused by it, merged in it, ever blue. Vague forms, still and shadowy, of hills and trees, soppy with light, are blue within the blue. The brief expanse of bay is deeply luminous and within the pervasive tempering light resolves itself into the cool and solemn reaches of the sky which bends down and touches it. Once more my spirit meets and mingles with the spirit of the landscape. By the harmony of nature's forms and twilight tones I am brought into a larger harmony within myself and with the world around. All experience offers to us at any moment just such possibilities of living. The infinite and ever-changing expressiveness of nature at every instant of day and night is ours to read if we will but look upon it with the inner vision. The works of men in cities and cultivated fields, if we will see beyond the actual material, may quicken our emotions until we enact in ourselves their story of struggle, of hopes and ambitions partly realized, of defeat or final triumph. The faces seen in a passing crowd bear each the record of life lived, of lives like ours of joys or disappointments, lives of great aims or no aims at all, of unwritten heroisms, of hidden tragedies bravely borne, lives sordid and mean or generous and bright. The panorama of the world unrolls itself for us. It is ours to experience and live out in our own being according as we are able to feel. Just as the impulse to expression is common to all men, and all are artists potentially, differing in the depth of their insight into life and in the degree of emotion they have to express, so appreciation lies within the scope of all, and the measure of it to us as individuals is determined by our individual capability of response. Life means to each one of us what we are able to receive of it in "wise passiveness," and then are able by the constructive force of our individuality to shape into coherence and 363 completeness. As the landscape which an artist paints is the landscape visioned in imagination, though composed of forms given in nature, so life furnishes us the elements of experience, and out of these elements we construct a meaning, each for himself. To one man an object or incident is commonplace and blank; to another it may be charged with significance and big with possibilities of fuller living. "In every object." says Carlyle, "there is inexhaustible meaning; the eye sees in it what it brings means of seeing." To see is not merely to receive an image upon the retina. The stimulation of the visual organ becomes sight properly only as the record is conveyed to the consciousness. When I am reading a description of a sunset, there is an image upon my retina of a white page and black marks of different forms grouped in various combinations. But what I see is the sunset. Momentarily to rest the eye upon a landscape is not really to see it, for our mind may be quite otherwhere. We see the landscape only as it becomes part of our conscious experience. The beauty of it is in us. A novelist conceives certain characters and assembles them in action and reaction, but it is we who in effect create the story as we read. We take up a novel, perhaps, which we read five years ago; we find in it now new significances and appeals. The book is the same; it is we who have changed. We bring to it the added power of feeling of those five years of living. Art works not by information but by evocation. Appreciation is not reception but response. The artist must compel us to feel what he has felt,-not something else. But the scope of his message, with its overtones and subtler implications, is limited by the rate of vibration to which we are attuned. "All architecture is what you do to it when you look upon it, (Did you think it was in the white or gray stone? or the lines of the arches and cornices?) All music is what awakes from you when you are reminded by the instruments." And again Whitman says, "A great poem is no finish to a man or woman, but rather a beginning." The final significance of both life and art is not won by the exercise of the intellect, but unfolds itself to us in the measure that we feel. To illustrate the nature of appreciation and the power from which appreciation derives, the power to project ourselves into the world external to us, I spoke of the joy of living peculiar to the child and to the childlike in heart. But that is not quite the whole of the story. A child by force of his imagination and capacity of feeling is able to pass beyond the limits of material, and he lives in a world of exhaustless play and happiness; for him objects are but means and not an end. To transcend thus the bounds of matter imposed by the senses and to live by the power of emotion is the first condition of appreciation. The second condition of appreciation is to feel and know it, to become conscious of ourselves in our relation to the object. To live is the purpose of life; to be aware that we are living is its fulfillment and the reward of appreciation. Experience has a double value. There is the instant of experience itself, and then the reaction on it. A child is unconscious in his play; he is able to forget himself in it completely. At that moment he is most happy. The instant of supreme joy is the instant of ecstasy, when we lose all consciousness of ourselves as separate and distinct 364 individualities. We are one with the whole. But experience does not yield us its fullest and permanent significance until, having abandoned ourselves to the moment, we then react upon it and become aware of what the moment means. A group of children are at play. Without thought of themselves they are projected into their sport; with their whole being merged in it, they are intensely living. A passer on the street stands and watches them. For the moment, in spirit he becomes a child with them. In himself he feels the absorption and vivid reality to them of what they are doing. But he feels also what they do not feel, and that is, what it means to be a child. Where they are unconscious he is conscious; and therefore he is able, as they are not, to distill the significance of their play. This recognition makes possible the extension of his own life; for the man adds to himself the child. The reproach is sometimes brought against Walt Whitman that the very people he writes about do not read him. The explanation is simple and illustrates the difference between the unconscious and the conscious reception of life. The "average man" who is the hero of Whitman's chants is not aware of himself as such. He goes about his business, content to do his work; and that makes up his experience. It is not the average man himself, but the poet standing outside and looking on with imaginative sympathy, who feels what it means to be an average man. It is the poet who must "teach the average man the glory of his daily walk and trade." It is not enough to be happy as children are happy,-unconsciously. We must be happy and know it too. The attitude of appreciation is the attitude of response,-the projection of ourselves into new and fuller ranges of feeling, with the resultant extension of our personality and a larger grasp on life. We do not need to go far afield for experience; it is here and now. To-day is the only day, and every day is the best day. "The readiness is all." But mere contact with the surface of life is not enough. Living does not consist in barely meeting the necessities of our material existence; to live is to feel vibrantly throughout our being the inner significance of things, their appeal and welcome to the spirit. This fair world of color and form and texture is but a show world, after all,-this world which looms so near that we can see it, touch it, which comes to us out of the abysms of time and recedes into infinitudes of space whither the imagination cannot follow it. The true and vital meaning of it resides within and discovers itself to us finally as emotion. Some of this meaning art reveals to us, and in that measure it helps us to find ourselves. But art is only the means. The starting-point of the appreciation of art, and its goal, is the appreciation of life. The reward of living is the added ability to live. And life yields its fullest opportunities, its deepest tragedies, its highest joys, all its infinite scope of feeling, to those who enter by the gate of appreciation. III TECHNIQUE AND THE LAYMAN A PEASANT is striding across a field in the twilight shadow of a hill. Beyond, where the fold of the hill dips down into the field, another peasant is driving a team of oxen at a 365 plow. The distant figures are aglow with golden mellow light, the last light of day, which deepens the gloom of the shadowing hillside. The sower's cap is pulled tight about his head, hiding under its shade the unseeing eyes. The mouth is brutal and grim. The heavy jaw flows down into the thick, resistive neck. The right arm swings powerfully out, scattering the grain. The left is pressed to his body; the big, stubborn hand clutches close the pouch of seed. Action heroic, elemental; the dumb bearing of the universal burden. In the flex of the shoulder, the crook of the outstretched arm, the conquering onward stride, is expressed all the force of that word of the Lord to the first toiler, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." Three men are standing before Millet's canvas. One recognizes the subject of the picture. With the pleasure of recognition he notes what the artist has here represented, and he is interested in the situation. This is a peasant, and he is sowing his grain. So the onlooker stands and watches the peasant in his movement, and he thinks about the sower, recalling any sower he may have read of or seen or known, his own sower rather than the one that Millet has seen and would show to him. This man's pleasure in the picture has its place. The second of the three men is attracted by the qualities of execution which the work displays, and he is delighted by what he calls the "actual beauty" of the painting. With eyes close to the canvas he notes the way Millet has handled his materials, his drawing, his color, his surfaces and edges, all the knack of the brush-work, recognizing in his examination of the workmanship of the picture that though Millet was a very great artist, he was not a great painter, that the reach of his ideas was not equaled by his technical skill. Then as the beholder stands back from the canvas to take in the ensemble, his eye is pleased by the color-harmony, it rests lovingly upon the balance of the composition, and follows with satisfaction the rhythmic flow of line. His enjoyment is both intellectual and sensuous. And that too has its place. The third spectator, with no thought of the facts around which the picture is built, not observing the technical execution as such, unconscious at the moment also of its merely sensuous charm, feels within himself, "I am that peasant!" In his own spirit is enacted the agelong world-drama of toil. He sees beyond the bare subject of the picture; the medium with all its power of sensuous appeal and satisfaction becomes transparent. The beholder enters into the very being of the laborer; and as he identifies himself with this other life outside of him, becoming one with it in spirit and feeling, he adds just so much to his own experience. In his reception of the meaning of Millet's painting of the "Sower" he lives more deeply and abundantly. It is the last of these three men who stands in the attitude of full and true appreciation. The first of the three uses the picture simply as a point of departure; his thought travels away from the canvas, and he builds up the entire experience out of his own knowledge and store of associations. The second man comes a little nearer to appreciation, but even he falls short of full realization, for he stops at the actual material work itself. His interest in the technical execution and his pleasure in the sensuous qualities of the medium do not 366 carry him through the canvas and into the emotion which it was the artist's purpose to convey. Only he truly appreciates the painting of the "Sower" who feels something of what Millet felt, partaking of the artist's experience as expressed by means of the picture, and making it vitally his own. But before the appreciator can have brought himself to the point of perception where he is able to respond directly to the significance of art and to make the artist's emotion a part of his own emotional experience, he must needs have traveled a long and rather devious way. Appreciation is not limited to the exercise of the intellect, as in the recognition of the subject of a work of art and in the interest which the technically minded spectator takes in the artist's skill. It does not end with the gratification of the senses, as with the delight in harmonious color and rhythmic line and ordered mass. Yet the intellect and the senses, though they are finally but the channel through which the artist's meaning flows to reach and rouse the feelings, nevertheless play their part in appreciation. Between the spirit of the artist and the spirit of the appreciator stands the individual work of art as the means of expression and communication. In the work itself emotion is embodied in material form. The material which art employs for expression constitutes its language. Certain principles govern the composition of the work, certain processes are involved in the making of it, and the result possesses certain qualities and powers. The processes which enter into the actual fashioning of the work are both intellectual and physical, requiring the exercise of the artist's mind in the planning of the work and in the directing of his hand; so far as the appreciator concerns himself with them, they address themselves to his intellect. The finished work in its material aspect possesses qualities which are perceived by the senses and which have a power of sensuous delight. Upon these processes and these qualities depends in part the total character of a work of art, and they must be reckoned with in appreciation. In his approach to any work of art, therefore, the layman is confronted first of all with the problem of the language which the work employs. Architecture uses as its language the structural capabilities of its material, as wood or stone, bringing all together into coherent and serviceable form. Poetry is phrased in words. Painting employs as its medium color and line and mass. At the outset, in the case of any art, we have some knowledge of the signification of its terms. Here is a painting of a sower. Out of previous experience of the world we easily recognize the subject of the picture. But whence comes the majesty of this rude peasant, the dignity august of this rough and toil-burdened laborer, his power to move us? In addition to the common signification of its terms, then, language seems to have a further expressiveness, a new meaning imparted to it by the way in which the artist uses it. In a poem we know the meaning of the words, but the poetry of it, which we feel rather than know, is the creation of the poet, wrought out of the familiar words by his cunning manipulation of them. "The grey sea and the long black land; And the yellow half-moon large and low; And the startled little waves that leap In fiery ringlets from their sleep, As I gain the cove with pushing prow, 367 And quench its speed i' the slushy sand. "Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach; Three fields to cross till a farm appears; A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch And blue spurt of a lighted match, And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears, Than the two hearts beating each to each!" A drama in twelve lines. These are words of common daily usage, every one,-for the most part aggressively so. But the romance which they effuse, the glamour which envelops the commonplace incident as with an aura, is due to the poet's strategic selection of his terms, the one right word out of many words that offered, and his subtle combination of his terms into melody and rhythm. The wonder of the poet's craft is like the musician's,- "That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star." A building rises before us; we recognize it as a building, and again easily we infer the purpose which it serves, that it is a temple or a dwelling. And then the beauty of it, a power to affect us beyond the mere feet that it is a building, lays hold upon us, an influence emanating from it which we do not altogether explain to ourselves. Simply in its presence we feel that we are pleased. The fact, the material which the artist uses, exists out there in nature. But the beauty of the building, the majesty and power of the picture, the charm of the poem,-this is the art of the artist; and he wins his effects by the way in which he handles his materials, by his technique. Some knowledge of technique, therefore,-not the artist's knowledge of it, but the ability to read the language of art as the artist intends it to be read,-is necessary to appreciation. The hut which the traveler through a wild country put together to provide himself shelter against storm and the night was in essence a work of art. The purpose of his effort was not the hut itself but shelter, to accomplish which he used the hut as his means. The emotion of which the work was the expression, in this case the traveler's consciousness of his need, embodied itself in a concrete form and made use of material. The hut which he conceived in response to his need became for him the subject or motive of his work. For the actual expression of his design he took advantage of the qualities of his material, its capabilities to combine thus and so; these inherent qualities were his medium. The material wood and stone which he employed were the vehicle of his design. The way in which he handled his vehicle toward the construction of the hut, availing himself of the qualities and capabilities of his material, might be called his technique. The sight of some landscape wakens in the beholder a vivid and definite emotion; he is moved by it to some form of expression. If he is a painter he will express his emotion by means of a picture, which involves in the making of it certain elements and certain processes. The picture will present selected facts in the landscape; the landscape, then, as constructed according to the design the painter has conceived of it, becomes the motive 368 or subject of his picture. The particular aspects of the landscape which the picture records are its color and its form. These qualities of color and form are the painter's medium. An etching of the scene would use not color but line to express the artist's emotion in its presence; so line is the medium of etching. But "qualities" of objects are an abstraction unless they are embodied in material. In order, therefore, to give his medium actual embodiment the painter uses pigment, as oil-color or water-color or tempera, laid upon a surface, as canvas, wood, paper, plaster; this material pigment is his vehicle. The etcher employs inked scratches upon his plate of zinc or copper, bitten by acid or scratched directly by the needle; these marks of ink are the vehicle of etching. To the way in which the artist uses his medium for practical expression and to his methods in the actual handling of his vehicle is applied the term technique. The general conception of his picture, its total design, the choice of motive, the selection of details, the main scheme of composition,-these belong to the great strategy of his art. The application of these principles in practice and their material working out upon his canvas are an affair of tactics and fall within the province of technique. The ultimate significance of a work of art is its content of emotion, the essential controlling idea, which inspires the work and gives it concrete form. In its actual embodiment, the expressive power of the work resides in the medium. The medium of any art, then, as color and mass in painting, line in drawing and etching, form in sculpture, sound in music, is its means of expression and constitutes its language. Now the signification of language derives from convention. Line, for example, which may be so sensitive and so expressive, is only an abstraction and does not exist in nature. What the draughtsman renders as line is objectively in fact the boundary of forms. A head, with all its subtleties of color and light and shade, may be represented by a pencil or charcoal drawing, black upon a white surface. It is not the head which is black and white, but the drawing. Our acceptance of the drawing as an adequate representation of the head rests upon convention. Writing is an elementary kind of drawing; the letters of the alphabet were originally pictures or symbols. So to-day written or printed letters are arbitrary symbols of sounds, and grouped together in arbitrary combinations they form words, which are symbols of ideas. The word sum stood to the old Romans for the idea "I am;" to English-speaking people the word signifies a "total" and also a problem in arithmetic. A painting of a landscape does not attempt to imitate the scene; it uses colors and forms as symbols which serve for expression. The meaning attaching to these symbols derives from common acceptance and usage, Japanese painting, rendering the abstract spirit of movement of a wave, for example, rather than the concrete details of its surface appearance, differs fundamentally from the painting of the western world; it is none the less pregnant with meaning for those who know the convention. To understand language, therefore, we must understand the convention and accept its terms. The value of language as a means of expression and communication depends upon the knowledge, common to the user and to the person addressed, of the signification of its terms. Its effectiveness is determined by the way in which it is employed, involving the choice of terms, as the true line for the false or meaningless one, the right value or note of color out of many that would almost do, the exact and specific word rather than the vague and feeble; involving also the combination of terms into articulate forms. These ways and methods in the use of 369 language are the concern of technique. Technique, therefore, plays an important part in the creation and the ultimate fortunes of the artist's work. Just here arises a problem for the layman in his approach to art. The man who says, "I don't know anything about art, but I know what I like," is a familiar figure in our midst; of such, for the most part, the "public" of art is constituted. What he really means is, "I don't know anything about technique, but art interests me. I read books, I go to concerts and the theatre, I look at pictures; and in a way they have something for me." If we make this distinction between art and technique, the matter becomes simplified. The layman does not himself paint pictures or write books or compose music; his contact with art is with the purpose of appreciation. Life holds some meaning for him, as he is engaged in living, and there his chief interest lies. So art too has a message addressed to him, for art starts with life and in the end comes back to it. If art is not the expression of vital feeling, in its turn communicating the feeling to the appreciator so that he makes it a real part of his experience of life, then the thing called art is only an exercise in dexterity for the maker and a pastime for the receiver; it is not art. But art is not quite the same as life at first hand; it is rather the distillment of it. In order to render the significance of life as he has perceived and felt it, the artist selects and modifies his facts; and his work depends for its expressiveness upon the material form in which the emotion is embodied. The handling of material to the end of making it expressive is an affair of technique. The layman may ask himself, then, To what extent is a knowledge of technique necessary for appreciation? And how may he win that knowledge? On his road to appreciation the layman is beset with difficulties. Most of the talk about art which he hears is either the translation of picture or sonata into terms of literary sentiment or it is a discussion of the way the thing is done. He knows at least that painting is not the same as literature and that music has its own province; he recognizes that the meaning of pictures is not literary but pictorial, the meaning of music is musical. But the emphasis laid upon the manner of execution confuses and disturbs him. At the outset he frankly admits that he has no knowledge of technical processes as such. Yet each art must be read in its own language, and each has its special technical problems. He realizes that to master the technique of any single art is a career. And yet there are many arts, all of which may have some message for him in their own kind. If he must be able to paint in order to enjoy pictures rightly, if he cannot listen intelligently at a concert without being able himself to compose or at least to perform, his case for the appreciation of art seems hopeless. If the layman turns to his artist friends for enlightenment and a little sympathy, it is possible he may encounter a rebuff. Artists sometimes speak contemptuously of the public. "A painter," they say, "paints for painters, not for the people; outsiders know nothing about painting." True, outsiders know nothing about painting, but perhaps they know a little about life. If art is more than intellectual subtlety and manual skill, if art is the expression of something the artist has felt and lived, then the outsider has after all some standard for his estimate of art and a basis for his enjoyment. He is able to determine the value of the work to himself according as it expresses what he already knows about life or reveals to him fuller possibilities of experience which he can make 370 his own. He does not pretend to judge painting; but he feels that he has some right to appreciate art. In reducing all art to a matter of technique artists themselves are not quite consistent. My friends Jones, a painter, and Smith, a composer, do not withhold their opinion of this or that novel and poem and play, and they discourse easily on the performances of Mr. James and Mr. Swinburne and Mr. Shaw; but I have no right to talk about the meaning to me of Jones's picture or Smith's sonata, for my business is with words, and therefore I cannot have any concern with painting or with music. To be sure, literature uses as its vehicle the means of communication of daily life, namely, words. But the art in literature, the interpretation of life which it gives us, as distinct from mere entertainment, is no more generally appreciated than the art in painting. A man's technical accomplishment may be best understood and valued by his fellow-workmen in the same craft; and often the estimate set by artists on their own work is referred to the qualities of its technical execution. As a classic instance, Raphael sent some of his drawings to Albert Dürer to "show him his hand." So a painter paints for the painters. But the artist gives back a new fullness and meaning to life and addresses all who live. That man is fortunate who does not allow his progress toward appreciation to be impeded by this confusion of technique with art. The emphasis which workers in any art place upon their powers of execution is for themselves a false valuation of technique, and it tends to obscure the layman's vision of essentials. Technique is not, as it would seem, the whole of art, but only a necessary part. A work of art in its creation involves two elements,-the idea and the execution. The idea is the emotional content of the work; the execution is the practical expressing of the idea by means of the medium and the vehicle. The idea of Millet's "Sower" is the emotion attending his conception of the laborer rendered in visual terms; the execution of the picture is exhibited in the composition, the color, the drawing, and the actual brush-work. So, too, the artist himself is constituted by two qualifications, which must exist together: first, the power of the subject over the artist; and second, the artist's power over his subject. The first of these without the second results simply in emotion which does not come to expression as art. The second without the first produces sham art; the semblance of art may be fashioned by technical skill, but the life which inspires art is wanting. The artist, then, may be regarded in a dual aspect. He is first a temperament and a mind, capable of feeling intensely and able to integrate his emotions into unified coherent form; in this aspect he is essentially the artist. Secondly, for the expression of his idea he brings to bear on the execution of his work his command of the medium, his intellectual adroitness and his manual skill; in this aspect he is the technician. Every artist has a special kind of means with which he works, requiring knowledge and dexterity; but it may be assumed that in addition to his ability to express himself he has something to say. We may test a man's merit as a painter by his ability to paint. As an artist his greatness is to be judged with reference to the greatness of his ideas; and in his capacity as artist his technical skill derives its value from the measure in which it is adequate to their expression. In the case of an accomplished pianist or violinist we take his proficiency of technique for granted, and we ask, What, with all this power of expression at his command, has he to say? In his rendering of the composer's work what has he of his own to contribute by way of interpretation? Conceding at once to Mr. Sargent his supreme competence as a painter, his consummate mastery of all his means, we ask, What has he 371 seen in this man or this woman before him worthy of the exercise of such skill? In terms of the personality he is interpreting, what has he to tell us of the beauty and scope of life and to communicate to us of larger emotional experience? The worth of technique is determined, not by its excellence as such, but by its efficiency for expression. It is difficult for an outsider to understand why painters, writers, sculptors, and the rest, who are called artists in distinction from the ordinary workman, should make so much of their skill. Any man who works freely and with joy takes pride in his performance. And instinctively we have a great respect for a good workman. Skill is not confined to those who are engaged in what is conventionally regarded as art. Indeed, the distinction implied in favor of "art" is unjust to the wide range of activities of familiar daily life into which the true art spirit may enter. A bootblack who polishes his shoes as well as he can, not merely because he is to be paid for it, though too he has a right to his pay, but because that is his work, his means of expression, even he works in the spirit of an artist. Extraordinary skill is often developed by those who are quite outside the pale of art. In a circus or music-hall entertainment we may see a man throw himself from a trapeze swinging high in air, and after executing a double somersault varied by complex lateral gyrations, catch the extended arms of his partner, who is hanging by his knees on another flying bar. Or a man leaning backwards over a chair shoots at a distance of fifty paces a lump of sugar from between the foreheads of two devoted assistants. Such skill presupposes intelligence. Of the years of training and practice, of the sacrifice and the power of will, that have gone to the accomplishment of this result, the looker-on can form but little conception. These men are not considered artists. Yet a painter who uses his picture to exhibit a skill no more wonderful than theirs would be grieved to be accounted an acrobat or a juggler. Only such skill as is employed in the service of expression is to be reckoned with as an element in art; and in art it is of value not for its own sake but as it serves its purpose. The true artist subordinates his technique to expression, justly making it a means and not the end. He cares for the significance of his idea more than for his sleight of hand; he effaces his skill for his art. A recognition of the skill exhibited in the fashioning of a work of art, however, if seen in its right relation to the total scope of the work, is a legitimate source of pleasure. Knowledge of any subject brings its satisfactions. To understand with discerning insight the workings of any process, whether it be the operation of natural laws, as in astronomy or chemistry, whether it be the construction of a locomotive, the playing of a game of foot-ball, or the painting of a picture, to see the "wheels go round" and know the how and the wherefore,-undeniably this is a source of pleasure. In the understanding of technical processes, too, there is a further occasion of enjoyment, differing somewhat from the satisfaction which follows in the train of knowledge. "There is a pleasure in poetic pains Which only poets know," says the poet Cowper. There is a pleasure in the sense of difficulties overcome known only to those who have tried to overcome them. But such enjoyment-the pleasure which comes with enlightened recognition and the pleasure of mastery and triumph-derives 372 from an intellectual exercise and is not to be confounded with the full appreciation of art. Art, finally, is not the "how" but the "what" in terms of its emotional significance. Our pleasure in the result, in the design itself, is not the same as our pleasure in the skill that produced the work. The design, with the message that it carries, not the making of it, is the end of art. Too great preoccupation with technique conflicts with full appreciation. To fix the attention upon the manner of expression is to lose the meaning. A style which attracts notice to itself is in so far forth bad style, because it defeats its own end, which is expression; but beyond this, our interest in technical execution is purely intellectual, whereas art reaches the emotions. At the theatre a critic sits unmoved; dispassionately he looks upon the personages of the drama, as they advance, retreat, and countermarch, little by little yielding up their secret, disclosing all the subtle interplay of human motives. From the heights of his knowledge the critic surveys the spectacle; with an insight born of his learning, he penetrates the mysteries of the playwright's craft. He knows what thought and skill have gone into this result; he knows the weary hours of toil, the difficulties of invention and selection, the heroic rejections, the intricacies of construction, the final triumph. He sees it all from the point of view of the masterworkman, and sympathetically he applauds his success; his recognition of what has been accomplished is his pleasure. But all the while he has remained on the outside. Not for a moment has he become a party to the play. He brings to it nothing of his own feeling and power of response. There has been no union of his spirit with the artist's spirit,-that union in which a work of art achieves its consummation. The man at his side, with no knowledge or thought of how the effect has been won, surrenders himself to the illusion. These people on the stage are more intensely and vividly real to him than in life itself; the artist has distilled the significance of the situation and communicates it to him as emotion. The man's reaction is not limited to the exercise of his intellect,-he gives himself. In the experience which the dramatist conveys to him beautifully, shaping discords into harmony and disclosing their meaning for the spirit, he lives. A true artist employs his medium as an instrument of expression; and he values his own technical skill in the handling of it according to the measure that he is enabled thereby to express himself more effectively. On the layman's part so much knowledge of technique is necessary as makes it possible for him to understand the artist's language and the added expressiveness wrought out of language by the artist's cunning use of it. And such knowledge is not beyond his reach. In order to understand the meaning of any language we must first understand the signification of its terms, and then we must know something of the ways in which they may be combined into articulate forms of expression. The terms of speech are words; in order to speak coherently and articulately we must group words into sentences according to the laws of the tongue to which they belong. Similarly, every art has its terms, or "parts of speech," and its grammar, or the ways in which the terms are combined. The terms of painting are color and form, the terms of music are tones. Colors and forms are brought together into harmony and balance that by their juxtaposition they may be made expressive and beautiful. Tones are woven into a pattern according to principles of 373 harmony, melody, and rhythm, and they become music. When technique is turned to such uses, not for the vainglory of a virtuoso, but for the service of the artist in his earnest work of expression, then it identifies itself with art. A knowledge of the signification of the terms of art the layman may win for himself by a recognition of the expressive power of all material and by sensitiveness to it. The beholder will not respond to the appeal of a painting of a landscape unless he has himself felt something of the charm or glory of landscape in nature; he will not quicken and expand to the dignity or force caught in rigid marble triumphantly made fluent in statue or relief until he has realized for himself the significance of form and movement which exhales from every natural object. Gesture is a universal language. The mighty burden of meaning in Millet's picture of the "Sower" is carried by the gesture of the laborer as he swings across the background of field and hill, whose forms also are expressive; here, too, the elemental dignity of form and movement is reinforced by the solemnity of the color. Gesture is but one of nature's characters wherewith she inscribes upon the vivid, shifting surface of the world her message to the spirit of man. A clue to the understanding of the terms of art, therefore, is found in the layman's own appreciation of the emotional value of all objects of sense and their multitudinous power of utterance,-the sensitive decision of line, the might or delicacy of form, the splendor and subtlety of color, the magic of sound, the satisfying virtue of harmony in whatever embodiment, all the beauty of nature, all the significance of human life. And this appreciation is to be won largely by the very experience of it. The more we feel, the greater becomes our power for deeper feeling. Every emotion to which we thrill is the entrance into larger capacity of emotion. We may allow for growth and trust to the inevitable working of its laws. In the appreciation of both life and art the individual may be his own teacher by experience. The qualities of objects with their inherent emotional values constitute the raw material of art, to be woven by the artist into a fabric of expressive form and texture. Equipped with a knowledge of the terms of any art, the layman has yet to understand something of the ways in which the terms may be combined. Every artist has his idiom or characteristic style. Rembrandt on the flat surface of his canvas secures the illusion of form in the round by a system of light and shade; modeling is indicated by painting the parts in greater relief in light and the parts in less relief in shadow. Manet renders the relief of form by a system of "values," or planes of more and less light. The local color of objects is affected by the amount of light they receive and the distance an object or part of an object is from the eye of the spectator. Manet paints with degrees of light, and he wins his effects, not by contrasts of color, but by subtle modulations within a given hue. Landscape painters before the middle of the nineteenth century, working with color in masses, secured a total harmony by bringing all their colors, mixed upon the palette, into the same key. The "Luminarists," like Claude Monet, work with little spots or points of color laid separately upon the canvas; the fusion of these separate points into the dominant tone is made by the eye of the beholder. The characteristic effect of a work of art is determined by the way in which the means are employed. Some knowledge, therefore, of the artist's aims as indicated in his method of working is necessary to a full understanding of what he wants to say. 374 In his effort to understand for his own purposes of appreciation what the artist has accomplished by his technique, the layman may first of all distinguish between processes and results. A landscape in nature is beautiful to the beholder because he perceives in it some harmony of color and form which through the eye appeals to the emotions. His vision does not transmit every fact in the landscape; instinctively his eye in its sweep over meadow and trees and hill selects those details that compose. By this act of integration he is for himself in so far forth an artist. If he were a painter he would know what elements in the landscape to put upon his canvas. But he has no skill in the actual practice of drawing and of handling the brush, no knowledge of mixing colors and matching tones; he understands nothing of perspective and "values" and the relations of light and shade. He knows only what he sees, that the landscape as he sees it is beautiful; and equally he recognizes as beautiful the presentment of it upon canvas. He is ignorant of the technical problems with which the painter in practice has had to contend in order to reach this result; it is the result only that is of concern to him in so far as it is or is not what he desires. The painter's color is significant to him, not because he knows how to mix the color for himself, but because that color in nature has spoken to him unutterable things and he has responded to it. The layman cannot make a sunset and he cannot paint a picture; but he can enjoy both. So he cares, then, rather for what the painter has done than for how he has done it, because the processes do not enter into his own experience. The picture has a meaning for him in the measure that it expresses what he perceives and feels, and that is the beauty of the landscape. Any knowledge of technical processes which the layman may happen to possess may be a source of intellectual pleasure. But for appreciation, only so much understanding of technique is necessary as enables him to receive the message of a given work in the degree of expressiveness which the artist by his use of his medium has attained. A clue to this understanding may come to him by intuition, by virtue of his own native insight and intelligence. He may gain it by reading or by instruction. He may go out and win it by intrepid questioning of those who know; and it is to be hoped that such will be very patient with him, for after all even a layman has the right to live. Once started on the path, then, in the mysteries of art as in the whole complex infinite business of living, he becomes his own tutor by observation and experience; and he may develop into a fuller knowledge in obedience to the law of growth. Each partial clue to understanding brings him a step farther on his road; each new glimmer of insight beckons him to ultimate illumination. Though baffled at the outset, yet patient under disappointment, undauntedly he pushes on in spite of obstacles, until he wins his way at last to true appreciation. If the layman seeks a standard by which to test the value of any technical method, he finds it in the success of the work itself. Every method is to be judged in and for itself on its own merits, and not as better or worse than some other method. Individually we may prefer Velasquez to Frans Hals; Whistler may minister to our personal satisfaction in larger measure than Mr. Sargent; we may enjoy Mr. James better than Stevenson; Richard Strauss may stir us more deeply than Brahms. We do not affirm thereby that impressionism is inherently better than realism, or that subtlety is more to be desired than strength; the psychological novel is not necessarily greater than romance; because of our preference "programme music" is not therefore more significant than "absolute music." 375 The greatness of an artist is established by the greatness of his ideas, adequately expressed. And the value of any technical method is determined by its own effectiveness for expression. There is, then, no invariable standard external to the work itself by which to judge technique. For no art is final. A single work is the manifestation of beauty as the individual artist has conceived or felt it. The perception of what is beautiful varies from age to age and with each person. So, too, standards of beauty in art change with each generation; commonly they are deduced from the practice of preceding artists. Classicism formulates rules from works that have come to be recognized as beautiful, and it requires of the artist conformity to these rules. By this standard, which it regards as absolute, it tries a new work, and it pretends to adjudge the work good or bad according as it meets the requirements. Then a Titan emerges who defies the canons, wrecks the old order, and in his own way, to the despair or scorn of his contemporaries, creates a work which the generation that follows comes to see is beautiful. "Every author," says Wordsworth, "as far as he is great and at the same time original, has had the task of creating the taste by which he is to be enjoyed." Wordsworth in his own generation was ridiculed; Millet, when he ceased painting nudes for art-dealers' windows and ventured to express himself, faced starvation. Every artist is in some measure an innovator; for his own age he is a romanticist. But the romanticist of one age becomes a classic for the next; and his performance in its turn gives laws to his successors. Richard Strauss, deriving in some sense from Wagner, makes the older man seem a classic and conservative. Then a new mind again is raised up, a new temperament, with new needs; and these shape their own adequate new expression. "The cleanest expression," says Whitman, "is that which finds no sphere worthy of itself and makes one." As all life is growth, as there are no bounds to the possibilities of human experience, so the workings of the art-impulse cannot be compressed within the terms of a hard and narrow definition, and any abstract formula for beauty is in the very nature of things foredoomed to failure. No limit can be set to the forms in which beauty may be made manifest. "The true poets are not followers of beauty, but the august masters of beauty." And Whitman's own verse is a notable example of a new technique forged in response to a new need of expression. Dealing as he did with the big basic impulses of common experience accessible to all men, Whitman needed a largeness and freedom of expression which he did not find in the accepted and current poetic forms. To match the limitlessly diversified character of the people, occupations, and aspirations of "these States," as yet undeveloped but vital and inclosing the seed of unguessed-at possibilities, to tally the fluid, indeterminate, outward-reaching spirit of democracy and a new world, the poet required a medium of corresponding scope and flexibility, all-inclusive and capable of endless modulation and variety. Finding none ready to his hand, he created it. Not that Whitman did not draw for his resources on the great treasury of world-literature; and he profited by the efforts and achievement of predecessors. But the form in his hands and as he uses it is new. Whatever we may think of the success of his total accomplishment, there are very many passages to which we cannot deny the name of poetry. Nor did Whitman work without conscious skill and deliberate regard for technical processes. His note-books and papers reveal the extreme calculation and pains with which he wrote, 376 beginning with the collection of synonyms applying to his idea and mood, and so building them up gradually, with many erasures, corrections, and substitutions, into the finished poem. Much of the vigor of his style is due to his escape from conventional literary phrase-making and his return to the racy idiom of common life. His verse, apparently inchoate and so different from classical poetic forms, is shaped with a cunning incredible skill. And more than that, it is art, in that it is not a bare statement of fact, but communicates to us the poet's emotion, so that we realize the emotion in ourselves. When his purpose is considered, it is seen that no other technique was possible. His achievement proves that a new need creates its own means of expression. What is true of Whitman in respect to his technique is true in greater or less degree of every artist, working in any form. It is true of Pheidias, of Giotto and Michelangelo and Rembrandt, of Dante and Shakespeare, of Beethoven and Wagner, of Monet, of Rodin, in fine, from the beginnings of art to the day that now is. All have created out of existing forms of expression their own idiom and way of working. Every artist owes something to his predecessors, but language is re-created in the hands of each master and becomes a new instrument. There can be then no single formula for technical method nor any fixed and final standard of judgment. An artist himself is justified from his own point of view in his concern with technique, for upon his technique depends his effectiveness of expression. His practice serves to keep alive the language and to develop its resources. Art in its concrete manifestations is an evolution. From Velasquez through Goya to Manet and Whistler is a line of inheritance. But a true artist recognizes that technique is only a means. As an artist he is seeking to body forth in external form the vision within, and he tries to make his medium "faithful to the coloring of his own spirit." Every artist works out his characteristic manner; but the progress must be from within outwards. Toward the shaping of his own style he is helped by the practice of others, but he is helped and not hindered only in so far as the manner of others can be made genuinely the expression of his own feeling. Direct borrowing of a trick of execution and servile imitation of a style have no place in true art. A painter who would learn of Velasquez should study the master's technique, not that in the end he may paint like Velasquez, but that he may discover just what it was that the master, by means of his individual style, was endeavoring to express, and so bring to bear on his own environment here in America to-day the same ability to see and the same power of sympathetic and imaginative penetration that Velasquez brought to his environment at the court of seventeenth-century Spain. The way to paint like Velasquez is to be Velasquez. No man is a genius by imitation. Every man may seek to be a master in his own right. Technique does not lead; it follows. Style is the man. From within outwards. Art is the expression of sincere and vital feeling; the material thing, picture, statue, poem, which the artist conjures into being is only a means. The moment art is worshiped for its own sake, that moment decadence begins. "No one," says Leonardo, "will ever be a great painter who takes as his guide the paintings of other men." In general the history of art exhibits this course. In the beginning arises a man of deep and genuine feeling, the language at whose command, however, has not been developed to the point where it is able to carry the full burden of his meaning. Such a 377 man is Giotto; and we have the "burning messages of prophecy delivered by the stammering lips of infants." In the generations which supervene, artists with less fervor of spirit but with growing skill of hand, increased with each inheritance, turn their efforts to the development of their means. The names of this period of experiment and research are Masaccio, Uccello, Pollaiuolo, Verrocchio. At length, when the fullness of time is come, emerges the master-mind, of original insight and creative power. Heir to the technical achievements of his predecessors, he is able to give his transcendent idea its supremely adequate expression. Content is perfectly matched by form. On this summit stand Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo. Then follow the Carracci, Domenichino, Guercino, Guido Reni, Carlo Dolci, men who mistake the master's manner for his meaning. The idea, the vital principle, has spent itself. The form only is left, and that is elaborated into the exuberance of decay. Painters find their impulse no longer in nature and life but in paint. Technique is made an end in itself. And art is dead, to be reborn in another shape and guise. The relation of technique to appreciation in the experience of the layman begins now to define itself. Technique serves the artist for efficient expression; an understanding of it is of value to the layman in so far as the knowledge helps him to read the artist's language and thus to receive his message. Both for artist and for layman technique is only a means. Out of his own intelligent and patient experience the layman can win his way to an understanding of methods; and his standard of judgment, good enough for his own purposes, is the degree of expressiveness which the work of art, by virtue of its qualities of execution, is able to achieve. Skill may be enjoyed intellectually for its own sake as skill; in itself it is not art. Technique is most successful when it is least perceived. Ars celare artem: art reveals life and conceals technique. We must understand something of technique and then forget it in appreciation. When we thrill to the splendor and glory of a sunset we are not thinking of the laws of refraction. Appreciation is not knowledge, but emotion. IV THE VALUE OF THE MEDIUM AS I swing through the wide country in the freshness and fullness of a blossoming, sunsteeped morning in May, breathing the breath of the fields and the taller by inches for the sweep of the hills and the reaches of sky above my head, every nerve in my body is alive with sensation and delight. My joy is in the fragrance of earth, the ingratiating warmth of the fresh morning, the spacious, inclosing air. My pleasure in this direct contact with the landscape is a physical reaction, to be enjoyed only by the actual experience of it; it cannot be reproduced by any other means; it can be recalled by memory but faintly and as the echo of sensation. There is, however, something else in the landscape which can be reproduced; and this recall may seem more glorious than the original in nature. There are elements in the scene which a painter can render for me more intensely and vividly than I 378 perceived them for myself. These elements embody the value that the landscape has for my emotions. The scene appeals to something within me which lies beyond my actual physical contact with it and the mere sense of touch. The harmony that the eye perceives in these open fields, the gracious line of trees along the stream's edge, the tossing hills beyond, and the arch of the blue sky above impregnating the earth with light, is communicated to my spirit, and I feel that this reach of radiant country is an extension of my own personality. A painter, by the manipulation of his color and line and mass, concentrates and intensifies the harmony of it and so heightens its emotional value. The meaning of the scene for the spirit is conveyed in terms of color and mass. Color and mass are the painter's medium, his language. The final import of art is the idea, the emotional content of the work. On his way to the expression of his idea the artist avails himself of material to give his feeling concrete actuality and visible or audible realization. He paints a picture, glorious in color and compelling in the concentration of its massing; he carves a statue, noble in form or subtly rhythmic; he weaves a pattern of harmonious sounds. He values objects not for their own sake but for the energies they possess,-their power to rouse his whole being into heightened activity. And they have this power by virtue of their material qualities, as color and form or sound. A landscape is gay in springtime or sad in autumn. The difference in its effect upon us is not due to our knowledge that it is spring or autumn and our consciousness of the associations appropriate to each season. The emotional quality of the scene is largely a matter of its color. Let the spring landscape be shrouded in gray mist sifting down out of gray skies, and we are sad. Let the autumn fields and woodland sparkle and dance in the crisp golden sunlight, and our blood dances with them and we want to shout from full lungs. In music the major key wakens a different emotion from the minor. The note of a violin is virgin in quality; the voice of the 'cello is the voice of experience. The distinctive emotional value of each instrument inheres in the character of its sound. These qualities of objects art uses as its language. Though all art is one in essence, yet each art employs a medium of its own. In order to understand a work in its scope and true significance we must recognize that an artist thinks and feels in terms of his special medium. His impulse to create comes with his vision, actual or imaginative, of color or form, and his thought is transmitted to his hand, which shapes the work, without the intervention of words. The nature of his vehicle and the conditions in which he works determine in large measure the details of the form which his idea ultimately assumes. Thus a potter designs his vessel first with reference to its use and then with regard to his material, its character and possibilities. As he models his plastic clay upon a wheel, he naturally makes his bowl or jug round rather than sharply angular. A pattern for a carpet, to be woven by a system of little squares into the fabric, will have regard for the conditions in which it is to be rendered, and it will differ in the character of its lines and masses from a pattern for a wall-paper, which may be printed from blocks. The designer in stained glass will try less to make a picture in the spirit of graphic representation than to produce an harmonious color-pattern whose outlines will be guided and controlled by the possibilities of the "leading" of the window. The true artist uses the conditions and very limitations of his material as his opportunity. 379 The restraint imposed by the sonnet form is welcomed by the poet as compelling a collectedness of thought and an intensity of expression which his idea might not achieve if allowed to flow in freer channels. The worker in iron has his triumphs; the goldsmith has his. The limitations of each craft open to it effects which are denied to the other. There is an art of confectionery and an art of sculpture. The designer of frostings who has a right feeling for his art will not emulate the sculptor and strive to model in the grand style; the sculptor who tries to reproduce imitatively the textures of lace or other fabrics and who exuberates in filigrees and fussinesses so far departs from his art as to rival the confectioner. In the degree that a painter tries to wrench his medium from its right use and function and attempts to make his picture tell a story, which can better be told in words, to that extent he is unfaithful to his art. Painting, working as it does with color and form, should confine itself to the expression of emotion and idea that can be rendered visible. On the part of the appreciator, likewise, the emotion expressed in one kind of medium is not to be translated into any other terms without a difference. Every kind of material has its special value for expression. The meaning of pictures, accordingly, is limited precisely to the expressive power of color and form. The impression which a picture makes upon the beholder maybe phrased by him in words, which are his own means of expression; but he suggests the import of the picture only incompletely. If I describe in words Millet's painting of the "Sower" according to my understanding of it, I am telling in my own terms what the picture means to me. What it meant to Millet, the full and true significance of the situation as the painter felt it, is there expressed upon his canvas in terms of visible aspect; and correspondingly, Millet's meaning is fully and truly received in the measure that we feel in ourselves the emotion roused by the sight of his color and form. The essential content of a work of art, therefore, is modified in its effect upon us by the kind of medium in which it is presented. If an idea phrased originally in one medium is translated into the terms of another, we have illustration. Turning the pages of an "illustrated" novel, we come upon a plate showing a man and a woman against the background of a divan, a chair, and a tea-table. The man, in a frock coat, holding a top hat in his left hand, extends his right hand to the woman, who has just risen from the table. The legend under the picture reads, "Taking his hat, he said good-by." Here the illustrator has simply supplied a visible image of what was suggested in the text; the drawing has no interest beyond helping the reader to that image. It is a statement of the bare fact in other terms. In the hands of an artist, however, the translation may take on a value of its own, changing the original idea, adding to it, and becoming in itself an independent work of art. This value derives from the form into which the idea is translated. The frescoes of the Sistine Chapel are only sublime illustration; but how little of their power attaches to the subject they illustrate, and how much of their sublimity lies in the painter's rendering! Conversely, an example of the literary interpretation of a picture is Walter Pater's description of Leonardo's Mona Lisa. The presence that thus rose so strangely beside the waters, is expressive of what in the ways of a thousand years men had come to desire. Hers is the head upon which all "the ends of the world are come," and the eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic 380 reveries and exquisite passions. Set it for a moment beside one of those white Greek goddesses or beautiful women of antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this beauty, into which the soul with all its maladies has passed! All the thoughts and experience of the world have etched and moulded there, in that which they have of power to refine and make expressive the outward form, the animalism of Greece, the lust of Rome, the reverie of the middle age with its spiritual ambition and imaginative loves, the return of the Pagan world, the sins of the Borgias. She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants; and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands. The fancy of a perpetual life, sweeping together ten thousand experiences, is an old one; and modern thought has conceived the idea of humanity as wrought upon by, and summing up in itself, all modes of thought and life. Certainly Lady Lisa might stand as the embodiment of the old fancy, the symbol of the modern idea. It is Leonardo's conception, yet with a difference. Here the critic has woven about the subject an exquisite tissue of associations, a whole wide background of knowledge and thought and feeling which it lay beyond the painter's range to evoke; but the critic is denied the vividness, the immediateness and intimate warmth of vital contact, which the painter was able to achieve. The Lisa whom Leonardo shows us and the Lisa whom Pater interprets for us are the same in essence yet different in their power to affect us. The difference resulting from the kind of medium employed is well exemplified by Rossetti's "Blessed Damozel." The fundamental concept of both poem and picture is identical, but picture and poem have each its distinctive range and limitations and its own peculiar appeal. If we cancel the common element in the two, the difference remaining makes it possible for us to realize how much of the effect of a work of art inheres in the medium itself. Painting may be an aid to literature in that it helps us to more vivid images; the literary interpretation of pictures or music gives to the works with which it deals an intellectual definiteness. But the functions peculiar to each art are not to be confounded nor the distinctions obscured. Pictures are not a substitute for literature, and their true meaning is finally not to be translated into words. Their beauty is a visible beauty; the emotions they rouse are such as can be conveyed through the sense of sight. In the end they carry their message sufficingly as color and mass. Midway, however, our enjoyment may be complicated by other elements which have their place in our total appreciation. Thus a painting of a landscape may appeal to us over and above its inherent beauty because we are already, out of actual experience, familiar with the scene it represents, and the sight of it wakens in our memory a train of pleasant allied associations. A ruined tower, in itself an exquisite composition in color and line and mass, may gather about it suggestions of romance, elemental passions and wild life, and may epitomize for the beholder the whole Middle Age. Associated interest, therefore, may be sentimental or intellectual. It may be sensuous also, appealing to other senses than those of sight. The sense of touch plays a large part in our enjoyment of the world. We like the "feel" of objects, the catch of raw 381 silk, the chill smoothness of burnished brass, the thick softness of mists, the "amorous wet" of green depths of sea. The senses of taste and smell may be excited imaginatively and contribute to our pleasure. Winslow Homer's breakers bring back to us the salt fragrance of the ocean, and in the presence of these white mad surges we feel the stinging spray in our faces and we taste the cosmic exhilaration of the sea-wind. But the final meaning of a picture resides in the total harmony of color and form, a harmony into which we can project our whole personality and which itself constitutes the emotional experience. All language in its material aspect has a sensuous value, as the wealth of color of Venetian painting, the sumptuousness of Renaissance architecture, the melody of Mr. Swinburne's verse, the gem-like brilliance of Stevenson's prose, the all-inclusive sensuousness, touched with sensuality, of Wagner's music-dramas. Because of the charm of beautiful language there are many art-lovers who regard the sensuous qualities of the work itself as making up the entire experience. Apart from any consideration of intention or expressiveness, the material thing which the artist's touch summons into form is held to be "its own excuse for being." This order of enjoyment, valid as far as it goes, falls short of complete appreciation. It does not pass the delight one has in the radiance of gems or the glowing tincture of some fabric. The element of meaning does not enter in. There is a beauty for the eye and a beauty for the mind. The qualities of material may give pleasure to the senses; the object embodying these qualities becomes beautiful only as it is endowed with a significance wakened in the human spirit. A landscape, says Walter Crane, "owes a great part of its beauty to the harmonious relation of its leading lines, or to certain pleasant contrasts, or a certain impressiveness of form and mass, and at the same time we shall perceive that this linear expression is inseparable from the sentiment or emotion suggested by that particular scene." In the appreciation of art, to stop with the sensuous appeal of the medium is to mistake means for an end. "Rhyme," says the author of "Intentions," "in the hands of a real artist becomes not merely a material element of metrical beauty, but a spiritual element of thought and passion also." An artist's color, glorious or tender, is only a symbol and manifestation to sense of his emotion. At first glance Titian's portrait of the "Man with the Glove" is an ineffable color-harmony. But truly seen it is infinitely more. By means of color and formal design Titian has embodied here his vision of superb young manhood; by the expressive power of his material symbols he has rendered visible his sense of dignity, of fineness, of strength in reserve. The color is beautiful because his idea was beautiful. Through the character of this young man as revealed and interpreted by the artist, the beholder is brought into contact with a vital personality, whose influence is communicated to him; in the appreciation of Titian's message he sees and feels and lives. The value of the medium resided not in the material itself but in its power for expression. When language is elaborated at the expense of the meaning, we have in so far forth sham art. It should be easy to distinguish in art between what is vital and what is mechanical. The mechanical is the product of mere execution and calls attention to the manner. The vital is born out of inspiration, and the living idea transmutes its material into emotion. 382 Too great an effort at realization defeats the intended illusion, for we think only of the skill exercised to effect the result, and the operation of the intellect inhibits feeling. In the greatest art the medium is least perceived, and the beholder stands immediately in the presence of the artist's idea. The material is necessarily fixed and finite; the idea struggles to free itself from its medium and untrammeled to reach the spirit. It is mind speaking to mind. However complete the material expression may seem, it is only a part of what the artist would say; imagination transcends the actual. In the art which goes deepest into life, the medium is necessarily inadequate. The artist fashions his work in a sublime despair as he feels how little of the mighty meaning within him he is able to convey. In the greatest works rightly seen the medium becomes transparent. Within the Sistine Chapel the visitor, when once he has yielded to the illusion, is not conscious of plaster surface and pigment; indeed, he hardly sees color and design as such at all; through them he looks into the immensity of heaven, peopled with gods and godlike men. Consummate acting is that which makes the spectator forget that it is acting. The part and the player become one. The actor, in himself and in the words he utters, is the unregarded vehicle of the dramatist's idea. In a play like Ibsen's "Ghosts," the stage, the actors, the dialogue merge and fall away, and the overwhelming meaning stands revealed in its complete intensity. As the play opens, it cuts out a segment from the chaos of human life; step by step it excludes all that is unessential, stroke by stroke with an inevitableness that is crushing, it converges to the great one-thing that the dramatist wanted to say, until at the end the spectator, conscious no longer of the medium but only of the idea and allresolving emotion, bows down before its overmastering force with the cry, "What a mind is there!" In the art which most completely achieves expression the medium is not perceived as distinct from the emotion of which the medium is the embodiment. In order to render expressive the material employed in its service, art seeks constantly to identify means and end, to make the form one with the content. The wayfarer out of his need of shelter built a hut, using the material which chance gave into his hand and shaping his design according to his resources; the purpose of his work was not the hut itself but shelter. So the artist in any form is impelled to creation by his need of expression; the thing which he creates is not the purpose and end of his effort, but only the means. Each art has its special medium, and each medium has its peculiar sensuous charm and its own kind of expressiveness. This power of sensuous delight is incidental to the real beauty of the work; and that beauty is the message the work is framed to convey to the spirit. In the individual work, the inspiring and shaping idea seeks so to fuse its material that we feel the idea could not have been phrased in any other way as we surrender to its ultimate appeal,-the sum of the emotional content which gave it birth and in which it reaches its fulfillment. V THE BACKGROUND OF ART SCENE: The main hall of the Accademia in Venice. 383 Time: Noon of a July day. Dramatis personae: A guide; two drab-colored and tired men; a group of women, of various ages, equipped with red-covered little volumes, and severally expressive of great earnestness, wide-eyed rapture, and giggles. The guide, in strident, accentless tones: Last work of Titian. Ninety-nine years old. He died of smallpox. A woman: Is that it? A high voice on the outskirts: I'm going to get one for forty dollars. Another voice: Well, I'm not going to pay more than fifty for mine. A straggler: Eliza, look at those people. Oh, you missed it! (Stopping suddenly?) My, isn't that lovely! Chorus: Yes, that's Paris Bordone. Which one is that? He has magnificent color. The guide: The thing you want to look at is the five figures in front. A voice: Oh, that's beautiful. I love that. A man: Foreshortened; well, I should say so! But I say, you can't remember all these pictures. The other man: Let's get out of this! The guide, indicating a picture of the Grand Canal: This one has been restored. A girl's voice: Why, that's the house where we are staying! The guide: The next picture . . . The squad shuffles out of range. This little comedy, enacted in fact and here faithfully reported, is not without its pathos. These people are "studying art." They really want to understand, and if possible, to enjoy. They have visited galleries and seen many pictures, and they will visit other galleries and see many more pictures before their return home. They have read guide-books, noting the stars and double stars; they have dipped into histories of art and volumes of criticism. They have been told to observe the dramatic force of Giotto, the line of Botticelli, the perfect composition of Raphael, the color of Titian; all this they have done punctiliously. They know in a vague way that Giotto was much earlier than Raphael, that Botticelli was 384 rather pagan than Christian, that Titian belonged to the Venetian school. They have come to the fountain head of art, the very works themselves as gathered in the galleries; they have tried to remember what they have read and to do what they have been told; and now they are left still perplexed and unsatisfied. The difficulty is that these earnest seekers after knowledge of art have laid hold on partial truths, but they have failed to see these partial truths in their right relation to the whole. The period in which an artist lived means something. His way of thinking and feeling means something. The quality of his color means something. But what does his picture mean? These people have not quite found the key by which to piece the fragments of the puzzle into the complete design. They miss the central fact with regard to art; and as a consequence, the ways of approach to the full enjoyment of art, instead of bringing them nearer the centre, become for them a network of by-paths in which they enmesh themselves, and they are left to wander helplessly up and down and about in the blindalleys of the labyrinth. The central fact with regard to art is this, that a work of art is the expression of some part of the artist's experience of life, his vision of some aspect of the world. For the appreciator, the work takes on a meaning as it becomes for him in his turn the expression of his own actual or possible experience and thus relates itself by the subtle links of feeling to his own life. This is the central fact; but there are side issues. Any single work of art is in itself necessarily finite. Because of limitations in both the artist and the appreciator the work cannot express immediately and completely of itself all that the author wished to convey; it can present but a single facet of his many-sided radiating personality. What is actually said may be reinforced by some understanding on the beholder's part of what was intended. In order to win its fullest message, therefore, the appreciator must set the work against the large background out of which it has proceeded. A visitor in the Salon Carré of the Louvre notes that there are arrayed before him pictures by Jan van Eyck and Memling, Raphael and Leonardo, Giorgione and Titian, Rembrandt and Metsu, Rubens and Van Dyck, Fouquet and Poussin, Velasquez and Murillo. Each one bears the distinctive impress of its creator. How different some of them, one from another,-the Virgin of Van Eyck from the Virgin of Raphael, Rembrandt's "Pilgrimsat Emmaus" from the "Entombment" by Titian. Yet between others there are common elements of likeness. Raphael and Titian are distinguished by an opulence of form and a luxuriance of color which reveal supreme technical accomplishment in a fertile land under light-impregnated skies. The rigidity and restraint of Van Eyck and Memling suggest the tentative early efforts of the art of a sober northern race. To a thoughtful student of these pictures sooner or later the question comes, Whence are these likenesses and these differences? Hitherto I have referred to the creative mind and executive hand as generically the artist. I have thought of him as a type, representative of all the great class of those who feel and express, and who by means of their expression communicate their feeling. Similarly I have spoken of the work of art, as though it were complete in itself and isolated, sprung full-formed and panoplied from the brain of its creator, able to win its way and consummate its destiny alone. The type is conceived intellectually; in actual life the type 385 resolves itself into individuals. So there are individual artists, each with his own distinctive gifts and ideals, each with his own separate experience of life, with his personal and special vision of the world, and his characteristic manner of expression. Similarly, a single work of art is not an isolated phenomenon; it is only a part of the artist's total performance, and to these other works it must be referred. The kind of work an artist sets himself to do is determined to some extent by the period into which he was born and the country in which he lived. The artist himself, heir to the achievements of his predecessors, is a development, and his work is the product of an evolution. A work of art, therefore, to be judged aright and truly appreciated, must be seen in its relation to its background, from which it detaches itself at the moment of consideration,-the background of the artist's personality and accomplishment and of the national life and ideals of his time. If the layman's interest in art is more than the casual touch-and-go of a picture here, a concert there, and an entertaining book of an evening, he is confronted with the important matter of the study of art as it manifests itself through the ages and in diverse lands. It is not a question of practicing an art himself, for technical skill lies outside his province. The study of art in the sense proposed has to do with the consideration of an individual work in its relation to all the factors that have entered into its production. The work of an artist is profoundly influenced by the national ideals and way of life of his race and of his age. The art of Catholic Italy is ecclesiastical; the art of the Protestant North is domestic and individual. The actual form an artist's work assumes is modified by the resources at his disposal,-resources both of material and of technical methods. Raphael may have no more to say than Giotto had, but he is able to express himself in a fuller and more finished way, because in his time the language of painting had become richer and more varied and the rhetoric of it had been carried to a farther point of development. Finally, as all art is in essence the expression of personality, a single work is to be understood in its widest intention and scope by reference to the total personality of the individual artist as manifested in his work collectively, and to be interpreted by the appreciator through his knowledge of the artist's experience of life. In order to wrest its fullest expressiveness from a work of art it is necessary as far as possible to regard the work from the artist's own point of view. We must try to see with his eyes and to feel with him what he was working for. To this end we must reconstruct imaginatively on a basis of the facts the conditions in which he lived and wrought. The difference between Giotto and Raphael is a difference not of individuality only. Each gives expression to the ideals and ways of thought of his age. Each is a creative mind, but each bases his performance upon what has gone before, and the form of their work is conditioned by the resources each had at his disposal. To discover the artist's purpose more completely than he was able to realize it for himself in the single work,-that is the aim and function of the historical study of art. A brief review of the achievement of Giotto and of Raphael may serve to illustrate concretely the application of the principle and to fix its value to appreciation. In the period of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire art passed from Rome to Byzantium. The arts of sculpture and painting were employed in the service of the 386 Church, imposing by its magnificence and all-powerful in its domination over the lives and minds of men. The function of art was to teach; its character was symbolic and decorative. Art had no separate and independent existence. It had no direct reference to nature; the pictorial representation of individual traits was quite outside its scope; a few signs fixed by convention sufficed. A fish-derived from the acrostic ichtbus- symbolized the Saviour; a cross was the visible token of redeeming grace. And so through several hundred years. The twelfth century saw the beginnings of a change in the direction of spiritual and intellectual emancipation. The teachings and example of Francis of Assisi brought men to the consciousness of themselves and to a realization of the worth and significance of the individual life. The work of Giotto is the expression in art of the new spirit. Of necessity Giotto founded his work upon the accepted forms of the Byzantine tradition. But Giotto was a man of genius and a creative mind. In the expression of his fresh impulse and vital feeling, the assertion of new-found individuality, he tried to realize as convincingly and vividly as possible the situation with which he was dealing; and with this purpose he looked not back upon art but out upon nature. Where the Byzantine convention had presented but a sign and remote indication of form by means of flat color, Giotto endows his figures with life and movement and actuality by giving them a body in three dimensions; his forms exist in the round. Until his day, light and shade had not been employed; and such perspective as he was able to achieve he had to discover for himself. For the first time in Christian painting a figure has bodily existence. Giotto gives the first evidence, too, of a sense of the beauty of color, and of the value of movement as a means of added expressiveness. His power of composition shows an immense advance on his predecessors. In dealing with traditional subjects, as the Madonna and child, he follows in general the traditional arrangement. But in those subjects where his own inventiveness is given free play, as in the series of frescoes illustrating the life of St. Francis, he reveals an extraordinary faculty of design and a dramatic sense which is matched by a directness and clarity of expression. Not only in the technique of his craft was Giotto an innovator, but also in the direction of naturalness and reality of feeling. He was the first to introduce portraits into his work. His Madonnas and saints are no longer mere types; they are human and individual, vividly felt and characterized by immediate and present actuality. Giotto was the first realist, but he was a poet too. His insight into life is tempered by a deep sincerity and piety; his work is genuinely and powerfully felt. As a man Giotto was reverent and earnest, joyous and beautifully sane. As a painter, by force of the freshness of his impulse and the clarity of his vision, he created a new manner of expression. As an artist he reveals a true power of imaginative interpretation. The casual spectator of to-day finds him naive and quaint. In the eyes of his contemporaries he was anything but that; they regarded him as a marvel of reality, surpassing nature itself. When judged with reference to the conditions of life in which he worked and to the technical resources at his command, Giotto is seen to be of a very high order of creative mind. The year 1300 divides the life of Giotto into two nearly equal parts; the year 1500 similarly divides the life of Raphael. In the two centuries that intervene, the great age of 387 Italian painting, initiated by Giotto, reaches its flower and perfection in Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael. The years which followed the passing of these greatnesses were the years of decadence and eclipse. If we are to understand and justly appreciate the work of each man in its own kind, the painting of Giotto must be tried by other standards than those we apply to the judgment of Raphael. Giotto was a pioneer; Raphael is a consummation. The two centuries between were a period of development and change, a development in all that regards technique, a change in national ideals and in the artist's attitude toward life and toward his art. A quick survey of the period, if so hasty a generalization permits correctness of statement, will help us in the understanding of the craft and art of Raphael. Giotto was succeeded by a host of lesser men, regarded as his followers, men who sought to apply the principles and methods of painting worked out by the master, but who lacked his inspiration and his power. Thus it was for nearly a hundred years. The turn of the fourteenth century into the fifteenth saw the emergence of new forces in the science and the mechanics of painting. The laws of perspective and foreshortening were made the object of special research and practice by men like Uccello (1397-1475), Piero dei Franceschi (1416-1492), and Mantegna (1431-1506). "Oh, what a beautiful thing this perspective is!" Uccello exclaimed, as he stood at his desk between midnight and dawn while his wife begged him to take some rest. In the first thirty years of the fifteenth century, Masaccio contributed to the knowledge of anatomy by his painting of the nude form; and the study of the nude was continued by Pollaiuolo and Luca Signorelli, in the second half of the century. Masaccio, also, was the first to place his figures in air, enveloping them in atmosphere. Verrocchio, a generation later than Masaccio, was one of the first of the Florentines to understand landscape and the part played in it by air and light. The realistic spirit, which suffices itself with subjects drawn from every-day actual experience, finds expression in the first half of the fifteenth century in the work of Andrea del Castagno. And so down through that century of spring and summer. Each painter in his own way carries some detail of his craft to a further point of development and prepares the path for the supreme triumphs of Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael. The growing mastery of the principles and technique of painting accompanied a change in the painter's attitude toward his art. Originally, painting, applied in subjection to architecture and employed in the service of the Church, was decorative in scope; its purpose was illustration, its function was to teach. As painters, from generation to generation, went deeper into the secrets of their craft, they became less interested in the didactic import of their work, and they concerned themselves more and more with its purely artistic significance. Religious subjects were no longer used merely as symbols for the expression of piety and as incitements to devotion; they became inherently artistic motives, valued as they furnished the artist an opportunity for the exercise of his knowledge and skill and for the exhibition of lovely color and significant form. A change in the mechanical methods of painting, also, had its influence on a change in the conception of the function of art. With a very few exceptions, the works of Giotto were executed in fresco as wall decorations. The principles of mural painting require that the composition shall be subordinated to the architectural conditions of the space it is to fill and that the color shall be kept flat. The fresco method meets these requirements 388 admirably, but because of its flatness it has its limitations. The introduction of an oil vehicle for the pigment material, in the fifteenth century, made possible a much greater range in gradated color, and reinforcing the increased knowledge of light and shade, aided in the evolution of decoration into the "easel picture," complete in itself. Released from its subjection to architecture, increasing its technical resources, and widening its interests in the matter of subject so as to include all life, painting becomes an independent and self-sufficing art. Coincident with the development of painting as a craft, a mighty change was working itself out in the national ideals and in men's ways of thought and feeling. Already in Giotto's time the spirit of individualism had begun to assert itself in reaction from the dominance of an all-powerful restrictive ecclesiasticism, but the age was still essentially pietistic and according to its lights, religious. The fifteenth century witnessed the emancipation from tradition. The new humanism, which took its rise with the rediscovery of Greek culture, extended the intellectual horizon and intensified the enthusiasm for beauty. Men's interest in life was no longer narrowly religious, but human; their art became the expression of the new spirit. Early Christianity had been ascetic, enjoining negation of life and the mortification of the flesh. The men of the Renaissance, with something of the feeling of the elder Greeks, glorified the body and delighted in the pride of life. Pagan myths and Greek legends take their place alongside of Bible episodes and stories of saints and martyrs, as subjects of representation; all served equally as motives for the expression of the artist's sense of the beauty of this world. To this new culture and to these two centuries of growth and accomplishment in the practice of painting Raphael was heir. With a knowledge of the background out of which he emerges, we are prepared now to understand and appreciate his individual achievement. In approaching the study of his work we may ask, What is in general his ideal, his dominant motive, and in what manner and by what means has he realized his ideal? How much was already prepared for him, what does he owe to the age and the conditions in which he worked, and what to the common store has he added that is peculiarly his own? Whereas Giotto, the shepherd boy, was a pioneer, almost solitary, by sheer force of mind and by his sincerity and intensity of feeling breaking new paths to expression, for Raphael, on the contrary, the son of a painter and poet, the fellow-worker and wellbeloved friend of many of the most powerful artistic personalities of his own or any age, the way was already prepared along which he moved in triumphant progress. The life of Raphael as an artist extends through three well-defined periods, the Umbrian, the Florentine, and the Roman, each one of which contributed a distinctive influence upon his development and witnessed a special and characteristic achievement. To his father, who died when the boy was eleven years old, Raphael owed his poetic nature, scholarly tastes, and love of beauty, though he probably received from him no training as a painter. His first master was Timoteo Viti of Urbino, a pupil of Francia; 389 from him he learned drawing and acquired a "certain predilection for round and opulent forms which is in itself the negation of the ascetic ideal." At the age of seventeen he went from Urbino to Perugia; there he entered the workshop of Perugino as an assistant. The ideal of the Umbrian school was tenderness and sweetness, the outward and visible rapture of pietistic feeling; something of these qualities Raphael expressed in his Madonnas throughout his career. Under the teaching of Perugino he laid hold on the principles of "space composition" which he was afterwards to carry to supreme perfection. From Perugia the young Raphael made his way to Florence, and here he underwent many influences. At that moment Florence was the capital city of Italian culture. It was here that the new humanism had come to finest flower. Scholarship was the fashion; art was the chief interest of this beauty-loving people. It was the Florentines who had carried the scientific principles of painting to their highest point of development, particularly in their application to the rendering of the human figure. In Florence were collected the art treasures of the splendid century; here Michelangelo and Leonardo were at work; here were gathered companies of lesser men. By the study of Masaccio Raphael was led out to a fresh contact with nature. Fra Bartolomeo revealed to him further possibilities of composition and taught him some of the secrets of color. In Florence, too, he acknowledged the spell of Michelangelo and Leonardo. But though he learned from many teachers, Raphael was never merely an imitator. His scholarship and his skill he turned to his own uses; and when we have traced the sources of his motives and the influences in the moulding of his manner, there emerges out of the fusion a creative new force, which is his genius. What remains after our analysis is the essential Raphael. Raphael's residence in Florence is the period of his Madonnas. From Florence Raphael, twenty-five years old and now a master in his own right, was summoned to Rome by Pope Julius II; and here he placed his talents and his mastership at the disposal of the Church. He found time to paint Madonnas and a series of powerful and lovely portraits; but these years in Rome, which brought his brief life to a close, are preeminently the period of the great frescoes, which are his supreme achievement. But even in these mature years, and though he was himself the founder of a school, he did not cease to learn. Michelangelo was already in Rome, and now Raphael came more immediately under his influence, although not to submit to it but to use it for his own ends. In Rome were revealed to him the culture of an older and riper civilization and the glories and perfectness of an elder art. Raphael laid antiquity under contribution to the consummation of his art and the fulfillment and complete realization of his genius. This analysis of the elements and influences of Raphael's career as an artist-inadequate as it necessarily is-may help us to define his distinctive accomplishment. A comparison of his work with that of his predecessors and contemporaries serves to disengage his essential significance. By nature he was generous and tender; the bent of his mind was scholarly; and he was impelled by a passion for restrained and formal beauty. Chiefly characteristic of his mental make-up was his power of assimilation, which allowed him to respond to many and diverse influences and in the end to dominate and use them. He gathered up in himself the achievements of two centuries of experiment and progress, and 390 fusing the various elements, he created by force of his genius a new result and stamped it with the seal perfection. Giotto, to whom religion was a reality, was deeply in earnest about his message, and he phrased it as best he could with the means at his command; his end was expression. Raphael, under the patronage of wealthy dilettanti and in the service of a worldly and splendor-loving Church, delighted in his knowledge and his skill; he worshiped art, and his end was beauty. The genius of Giotto is a first shoot, vigorous and alive, breaking ground hardily, and tentatively pushing into freer air. The genius of Raphael is the full-blown flower and final fruit, complete, mature. The step beyond is decay. By reference to Giotto and to Raphael I have tried to illustrate the practical application of certain principles of art study. A work of art is not absolute; both its content and its form are determined by the conditions out of which it proceeds. All judgment, therefore, must be comparative, and a work of art must be considered in its relation to its background and its conventions. Art is an interpretation of some aspect of life as the artist has felt it; and the artist is a child of his time. It is not an accident that Raphael portrayed Madonnas, serene and glorified, and Millet pictured rude peasants bent with toil. Raphael's painting is the culmination of two centuries of eager striving after the adequate expression of religious sentiment; in Millet's work the realism of his age is transfigured. As showing further how national ideals and interests may influence individual production, we may note that the characteristic art of the Italian Renaissance is painting; and Italian sculpture of the period is pictorial rather than plastic in motive and handling. Ghiberti's doors of the Florence Baptistery, in the grouping of figures and the three and four planes in perspective of the backgrounds, are essentially pictures in bronze. Conversely, in the North the characteristic art of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries is carving and sculpture; and "the early painters represented in their pictures what they were familiar with in wood and stone; so that not only are the figures dry and hard, but in the groups they are packed one behind another, heads above heads, without really occupying space, in imitation of the method adopted in the carved relief." Some knowledge of the origin and development of a given form of technique, a knowledge to be reached through historical study, enables us to measure the degree of expressiveness of a given work. The ideas of a child may be very well worth listening to, though his range of words is limited and his sentences are crude and halting, A grown man, having acquired the trick of language, may talk fluently and say nothing. In our endeavor to understand a work of art, a poem by Chaucer or by Tennyson, a picture by Greco or by Manet, a prelude by Bach or a symphony by Brahms, we may ask, Of that which the artist wanted to say, how much could he say with the means at his disposal? With a sense of the artist's larger motive, whether religious sentiment, or a love of sheer beauty of color and form, or insight into human character, we are aided by a study of the history of technique to determine how far the artist with the language at his command was able to realize his intention. But not only is art inspired and directed by the time-spirit of its age. A single work is the expression for the artist who creates it of his ideal. An artist's ideal, what he sets himself to accomplish, is the projection of his personality, and that is determined by many influences. He is first of all a child of his race and time; inheritance and training shape him to these larger conditions. Then his ideal is modified by his special individuality. A 391 study of the artist's character as revealed in his biography leads to a fuller understanding of the intention and scope of his work. The events of his life become significant as they are seen to be the causes or the results of his total personality, that which he was in mind and temperament. What were the circumstances that moulded his character and decided his course? What events did he shape to his own purpose by the active force of his genius? What was the special angle of vision from which he looked upon the world? The answers to these questions are the clue to the full drift of his work. As style is the expression of the man, so conversely a knowledge of the man is an entrance into the wider and subtler implications of his style. We explore the personality of the man in order more amply to interpret his art, and we turn to his art as the revelation of his personality. In studying an artist we must look for his tendency and seek the unifying principle which binds his separate works into a whole. An artist has his successive periods or "manners." There is the period of apprenticeship, when the young man is influenced by his predecessors and his masters. Then he comes into his own, and he registers nature and life as he sees it freshly for himself. Finally, as he has mastered his art and won some of the secrets of nature, and as his own character develops, he tends more and more to impose his subjective vision upon the world, and he subordinates nature to the expression of his distinctive individuality. A single work, therefore, is to be considered in relation to its place in the artist's development; it is but a part, and it is to be interpreted by reference to the whole. In the study of biography, however, the man must not be mistaken for the artist; his acts are not to be confounded with his message. "A man is the spirit he worked in; not what he did, but what he became." We must summon forth the spirit of the man from within the wrappages of material and accident. In our preoccupation with the external details of a man's familiar and daily life it is easy to lose sight of his spiritual experience, which only is of significance. Whistler, vain, aggressive, quarrelsome, and yet so exquisite and so subtle in extreme refinement, is a notable example of a great spirit and a little man. Wagner wrote to Liszt: "As I have never felt the real bliss of love, I must erect a monument to the most beautiful of my dreams, in which from beginning to end that love shall be thoroughly satiated." Not the Wagner of fact, but the Wagner of dreams. Life lived in the spirit and imagination may be different from the life of daily act. So we should transcend the material, trying through that to penetrate to the spiritual. It is not a visit to the artist's birthplace that signifies, it is not to do reverence before his likeness or cherish a bit of his handwriting. All this may have a value to the disciple as a matter of loyalty and fine piety. But in the end we must go beyond these externals that we may enter intelligently and sympathetically into the temper of his mind and mood and there find disclosed what he thought and felt and was able only in part to express. It is not the man his neighbors knew that is important. His work is the essential thing, what that work has to tell us about life in terms of emotional experience. Studies in the history of art and in biography are avenues of approach to the understanding of a work of art; they do not in themselves constitute appreciation. Historical importance must not be mistaken for artistic significance. In reading about pictures we may forget to look at them. The historical study of art in its various divisions reduces itself to an exercise in analysis, resolving a given work into its elements. But art 392 is a synthesis. In order to appreciate a work the elements must be gathered together and fused into a whole. A statue or a picture is meant not to be read about, but to be looked at; and its final message must be received through vision. Our knowledge will serve us little if we are not sensitive to the appeal of color and form. There is danger that preoccupation with the history of art may betray us if we are not careful to keep it in its place. The study of art should follow and not lead appreciation. We are apt to see what we are looking for. So we ought to come to each work freshly without prejudice or bias; it is only afterwards that we should bring to bear on it our knowledge about the facts of its production. Connoisseurship is a science and may hold within itself no element of aesthetic enjoyment. Appreciation is an art, and the quality of it depends upon the appreciator himself. The end of historical study is not a knowledge of facts for their own sake, but through those facts a deeper penetration and fuller true enjoyment. By the aid of such knowledge we are enabled to recognize in any work more certainly and abundantly the expression of an emotional experience which relates itself to our own life. The final meaning of art to the appreciator lies in just this sense of its relation to his own experience. The greatest works are those which express reality and life, not limited and temporary conditions, but life universal and for all time. Without commentary these carry their message, appealing to the wisest and the humblest. Gather into a single room a fragment of the Parthenon frieze, Michelangelo's "Day and Night," Botticelli's "Spring," the sprites and children of Donatello and Delia Robbia, Velasquez's "Pope Innocent," Rembrandt's "Cloth-weavers," Frans Hals' "Musician," Millet's "Sower," Whistler's "Carlyle." There is here no thought of period or of school. These living, present, eternal verities are all one company. VI THE SERVICE OF CRITICISM THE greatest art is universal. It transcends the merely local conditions in which it is produced. It sweeps beyond the individual personality of its creator, and links itself with the common experience of all men. The Parthenon, so far as it can be reconstructed in imagination, appeals to a man of any race or any period, whatever his habit of mind or degree of culture, as a perfect utterance. The narrow vault of the Sistine Chapel opens into immensity, and every one who looks upon it is lifted out of himself into new worlds. Shakespeare's plays were enjoyed by the apprentices in the pit and royalty in the boxes, and so all the way between. The man Shakespeare, of such and such birth and training, and of this or that experience in life, is entirely merged in his creations; he becomes the impersonal channel of expression of the profoundest, widest interpretation of life the world has known. Such art as this comes closest to the earth and extends farthest into infinity, "beyond the reaches of our souls." 393 But there is another order of art, more immediately the product of local conditions, the personal expression of a distinctive individuality, phrased in a language of less scope and currency, and limited as to its content in the range of its appeal. These lesser works have their place; they can minister to us in some moment of need and at some point in our development. Because of their limitations, however, their effectiveness can be furthered by interpretation. A man more sensitive than we to the special kind of beauty which they embody and better versed in their language, can discover to us a significance and a charm in them to which we have not penetrated. To help us to the fullest enjoyment of the great things and to a more enlightened and juster appreciation of the lesser works is the service of criticism. We do not wholly possess an experience until, having merged ourselves in it, we then react upon it and become conscious of its significance. A novel, a play, a picture interests us, and we surrender to the enjoyment of the moment. Afterwards we think about our pleasure, defining the nature of the experience and analyzing the means by which it was produced, the subject of the work and the artist's method of treating it. It may be that we tell our pleasure to a friend, glad also perhaps to hear his opinion of the matter. The impulse is natural; the practice is helpful. And herein lies the origin of criticism. In so far as an appreciator does not rest in his immediate enjoyment of a work of art, but seeks to account for his pleasure, to trace the sources of it, to establish the reasons for it, and to define its quality, so far he becomes a critic. As every man who perceives beauty in nature and takes it up into his own life is potentially an artist, so every man is a critic in the measure that he reasons about his enjoyment. The critical processes, therefore, are an essential part of our total experience of art, and criticism may be an aid to appreciation. The function of criticism has been variously understood through the centuries of its practice. Early modern criticism, harking back to the method of Aristotle, concerned itself with the form of a work of art. From the usage of classic writers it deduced certain "rules" of composition; these formulas were applied to the work under examination, and that was adjudged good or bad in the degree that it conformed or failed to conform to the established rules. It was a criticism of law-giving and of judgment. In the eighteenth century criticism extended its scope by the admission of a new consideration, passing beyond the mere form of the work and reckoning with its power to give pleasure. Addison, in his critique of "Paradise Lost," still applies the formal tests of the Aristotelian canons, but he discovers further that a work of art exists not only for the sake of its form, but also for the expression of beautiful ideas. This power of "affecting the imagination" he declares is the "very life and highest perfection" of poetry. This is a long step in the right direction. With the nineteenth century, criticism conceives its aims and procedure in new and larger ways. A work of art is now seen to be an evolution; and criticism adapts to its own uses the principles of historical study and the methods of scientific investigation. Recognizing that art is organic, that an art-form, as religious painting or Gothic architecture or the novel, is born, develops, comes to maturity, lapses, and dies, that an individual work is the product of "race, environment, and the moment," that it is the expression also of the personality of the artist himself, criticism no longer regards the single work as an isolated phenomenon, but tries to see it in its relation to its total background. 394 Present-day criticism avails itself of this larger outlook upon art. But the ends to be reached are understood differently by different critics. With M. Brunetière, to cite now a few representative names, criticism is authoritative and dogmatic: he looks at the work objectively, refusing to be the dupe of his pleasure, if he has any; and approaching the work in the spirit of dispassionate impersonal inquiry as an object of historical importance and scientific interest, he decrees that it is good or bad. Matthew Arnold considers literature a "criticism of life," and he values a work with reference to the moral significance of its ideas. Ruskin's criticism is didactic; he wishes to educate his public, and by force of his torrential eloquence he succeeds in persuading his disciples into acceptance of his teaching, though he may not always convince. Impressionistic criticism, as with M. Anatole France or M. Jules Lemaître, does not even try to see the work "as in itself it really is," but is an account of the critic's own subjective reaction on it, a narrative of what he thought and felt in this chance corner of experience. With Walter Pater criticism becomes appreciation. A given work of art produces a distinctive impression and communicates a special and unique pleasure; this active power constitutes its beauty. So the function of the critic as Pater conceives it is "to distinguish, analyze, and separate from its adjuncts, the virtue by which a picture, a landscape, a fair personality in life or in a book, produces this special impression of beauty or pleasure, to indicate what the source of that impression is, and under what conditions it is experienced." The interpretative critic-represented in the practice of Pater-stands between a work of art and the appreciator as mediator and revealer. Each kind of criticism performs a certain office, and is of use within its own chosen sphere. To the layman, for his purposes of appreciation, that order of criticism will be most helpful which responds most closely and amply to his peculiar needs. A work of art may be regarded under several aspects, its quality of technical execution, its power of sensuous appeal, its historical importance; and to each one of these aspects some kind of criticism applies. The layman's reception of art includes all these considerations, but subordinates them to the total experience. His concern, therefore, is to define the service of criticism to appreciation. The analysis of a work of art resolves it into these elements. There is first of all the emotion which gives birth to the work and which the work is designed to express. The emotion, to become definite, gathers about an idea, conceived in the terms of its own medium, as form, or color and mass, or musical relations; and this artistic idea presents itself as the subject or motive of the work. The emotion and artistic idea, in order that they may be expressed and become communicable, embody themselves in material, as the marble of a statue, the pigment of a picture, the audible tones of a musical composition. This material form has the power to satisfy the mind and delight the senses. Through the channel of the senses and the mind the work reaches the feelings; and the aesthetic experience is complete. As art springs out of emotion, so it is to be received as emotion; and a work to be appreciated in its true spirit must be enjoyed. But to be completely enjoyed it must be understood. We must know what the artist was trying to express, and we must be able to 395 read his language; then we are prepared to take delight in the form and to respond to the emotion. To help us to understand a work of art in all the components that entered into the making of it is the function of historical study. Such study enables us to see the work from the artist's own point of view. A knowledge of its background, the conditions in which the artist wrought and his own attitude toward life, is the clue to his ideal; and by an understanding of the language it was possible for him to employ, we can measure the degree of expressiveness he was able to achieve. This study of the artist's purpose and of his methods is an exercise in explanation. The interpretation of art, for which we look to criticism, deals with the picture, the statue, the book, specifically in its relation to the appreciator. What is the special nature of the experience which the work communicates to us in terms of feeling? In so far as the medium itself is a source of pleasure, by what qualities of form has the work realized the conditions of beauty proper to it, delighting thus the senses and satisfying the mind? These are the questions which the critic, interpreting the work through the medium of his own temperament, seeks to answer. Theoretically, the best critic of art would be the artist himself. He above all other men should understand the subtle play of emotion and thought in which a work of art is conceived; and the artist rather than another should trace the intricacies and know the cunning of the magician processes by which the immaterial idea builds itself into visible actuality. In practice, however, the theory is not borne out by the fact. The artist as such is very little conscious of the workings of his spirit. He is creative rather than reflective, synthetic and not analytic. From his contact with nature and from his experience of life, out of which rises his generative emotion, he moves directly to the fashioning of expressive forms, without pausing on the way to scan too closely the "meaning" of his work. Mr. Bernard Shaw remarks that Ibsen, giving the rein to the creative impulse of his poetic nature, produced in "Brand" and "Peer Gynt" a "great puzzle for his intellect." Wagner, he says, "has expressly described how the intellectual activity which he brought to the analysis of his music dramas was in abeyance during their creation. Just so do we find Ibsen, after composing his two great dramatic poems, entering on a struggle to become intellectually conscious of what he had done." Moreover, the artist is in the very nature of things committed to one way of seeing. His view of life is limited by the trend of his own dominant and creative personality; what he gains in intensity and penetration of insight he loses in breadth. He is less quick to see beauty in another guise than that which his own imagination weaves for him; he is less receptive of other ways of envisaging the world. The ideal critic, on the contrary, is above everything else catholic and tolerant. It is his task to discover beauty in whatever form and to affirm it. By nature he is more sensitive than the ordinary man, by training he has directed the exercise of his powers toward their fullest scope, and by experience of art in its diverse manifestations he has certified his judgment and deepened his capacity to enjoy. The qualifications of an authentic critic are both temperament and scholarship. Mere temperament uncorrected by knowledge may 396 vibrate exquisitely when swept by the touch of a thing of beauty, but its music may be in a quite different key from the original motive. Criticism must relate itself to the objective fact; it should interpret and not transpose. Mere scholarship without temperament misses art at its centre, that art is the expression and communication of emotional experience; and the scholar in criticism may wander his leaden way down the by-paths of a sterile learning. To mediate between the artist and the appreciator, the critic must understand the artist and he must feel with the appreciator. He is at once the artist translated into simpler terms and the appreciator raised to a higher power of perception and response. The service of criticism to the layman is to furnish him a clue to the meaning of the work in hand, and by the critic's own response to its beauty to reveal its potency and charm. With technique as such the critic is not concerned. Technique is the business of the artist; only those who themselves practice an art are qualified to judge in matters of practice. The form is significant to the appreciator only so far as regards its expressiveness and beauty. It is not the function of the critic to tell the artist what his work should be; it is the critic's mission to reveal to the appreciator what the work is. That revelation will be accomplished in terms of the critic's own experience of the beauty of the work, an experience imaged forth in such phrases that the pleasure the work communicates is conveyed to his readers in its true quality and foil intensity. It is not enough to dogmatize as Ruskin dogmatizes, to bully the reader into a terrified acceptance. It is not enough to determine absolute values as Matthew Arnold seeks to do, to fix certain canons of intellectual judgment, and by the application of a formula as a touchstone, to decide that this work is excellent and that another is less good. Really serviceable criticism is that which notes the special and distinguishing quality of beauty in any work and helps the reader to live out that beauty in his own experience. These generalizations may be made more immediate and practical by examples. In illustration of the didactic manner in criticism I may cite a typical paragraph of Ruskin, chosen from his "Mornings in Florence." First, look at the two sepulchral slabs by which you are standing. That farther of the two from the west end is one of the most beautiful pieces of fourteenth-century sculpture in this world. . . . And now, here is a simple but most useful test of your capacity for understanding Florentine sculpture or painting. If you can see that the lines of that cap are both right, and lovely; that the choice of the folds is exquisite in its ornamental relations of line; and that the softness and ease of them is complete,-though only sketched with a few dark touches,-then you can understand Giotto's drawing, and Botticelli's;- Donatello's carving, and Luca's. But if you see nothing in this sculpture, you will see nothing in theirs, of theirs. Where they choose to imitate flesh, or silk, or to play any vulgar modern trick with marble-(and they often do)-whatever, in a word, is French, or American, or Cockney, in their work, you can see; but what is Florentine, and for ever great-unless you can see also the beauty of this old man in his citizen's cap,-you will see never. The earnest and docile though bewildered layman is intimidated into thinking that he sees it, whether he really does or not. But it is a question if the contemplation of the "beauty of this old man in his citizen's cap," however eager and serious the contemplation may be, 397 adds much to his experience; it may be doubted whether as a result of his effort toward the understanding of the rightness and loveliness of the lines of the cap and the exquisiteness of the choice of folds, which the critic has pointed out to him with threatening finger, he feels that life is a fuller and finer thing to live. An example of the intellectual estimate, the valuation by formulas, and the assignment of abstract rank, is this paragraph from Matthew Arnold's essay on Wordsworth. Wherever we meet with the successful balance, in Wordsworth, of profound truth of subject with profound truth of execution, he is unique. His best poems are those which most perfectly exhibit this balance. I have a warm admiration for "Laodameia" and for the great "Ode;" but if I am to tell the very truth, I find "Laodameia" not wholly free from something artificial, and the great "Ode" not wholly free from something declamatory. If I had to pick out poems of a kind most perfectly to show Wordsworth's unique power, I should rather choose poems such as "Michael," "The Fountain," "The Highland Reaper." And poems with the peculiar and unique beauty which distinguishes these, Wordsworth produced in considerable number; besides very many other poems of which the worth, although not so rare as the worth of these, is still exceedingly high. Thus does the judicial critic mete out his estimate by scale and measuring-rod. We are told dogmatically what is good and what is less good; but of distinctive quality and energizing life-giving virtues, not a word. The critic does not succeed in communicating to us anything of Wordsworth's special charm and power. We are informed, but we are left cold and unresponding. The didactic critic imposes his standard upon the layman. The judicial critic measures and awards. The appreciative critic does not attempt to teach or to judge; he makes possible to his reader an appreciation of the work of art simply by recreating in his own terms the complex of his emotions in its presence. Instead of declaring the work to be beautiful or excellent, he makes it beautiful in the very telling of what it means to him. As the artist interprets life, disclosing its depths and harmonies, so the appreciative critic in his turn interprets art, reconstituting the beauty of it in his own terms. Through his interpretation, the layman is enabled to enter more fully into the true spirit of the work and to share its beauty in his own experience. In contrast to the passage from Arnold is this paragraph from an essay on Wordsworth by Walter Pater. And so he has much for those who value highly the concentrated presentment of passion, who appraise men and women by their susceptibility to it, and art and poetry as they afford the spectacle of it. Breaking from time to time into the pensive spectacle of their daily toil, their occupations near to nature, come those great elementary feelings, lifting and solemnizing their language and giving it a natural music. The great, distinguishing passion came to Michael by the sheepfold, to Ruth by the wayside, adding these humble children of the furrow to the true aristocracy of passionate souls. In this respect, Wordsworth's work resembles most that of George Sand, in those of her novels which depict country life. With a penetrative pathos, which puts him in the same rank with the 398 masters of the sentiment of pity in literature, with Meinhold and Victor Hugo, he collects all the traces of vivid excitement which were to be found in that pastoral world-the girl who rung her father's knell; the unborn infant feeling about its mother's heart; the instinctive touches of children; the sorrows of the wild creatures, even-their homesickness, their strange yearnings; the tales of passionate regret that hang by a ruined farm-building, a heap of stones, a deserted sheepfold; that gay, false, adventurous, outer world, which breaks in from time to time to bewilder and deflower these quiet homes; not "passionate sorrow" only, for the overthrow of the soul's beauty, but the loss of, or carelessness for personal beauty even, in those whom men have wronged-their pathetic wanness; the sailor "who, in his heart, was half a shepherd on the stormy seas;" the wild woman teaching her child to pray for her betrayer; incidents like the making of the shepherd's staff, or that of the young boy laying the first stone of the sheepfold;-all the pathetic episodes of their humble existence, their longing, their wonder at fortune, their poor pathetic pleasures, like the pleasures of children, won so hardly in the struggle for bare existence; their yearning towards each other, in their darkened houses, or at their early toil. A sort of biblical depth and solemnity hangs over this strange, new, passionate, pastoral world, of which he first raised the image, and the reflection of which some of our best modern fiction has caught from him. Here is the clue to Wordsworth's meaning; and the special quality and power of his work, gathering amplitude and intensity as it plays across the critic's temperament, is reconstituted in other and illuminating images which communicate the emotion to us. The critic has felt more intimately than we the appeal of this poetry, and he kindles in us something of his own enthusiasm. So we return to Wordsworth for ourselves, more alert to divine his message, more susceptible to his spell, that he may work in us the magic of evocation. Criticism is of value to us as appreciators in so far as it serves to recreate in us the experience which the work was designed to convey. But criticism is not a short cut to enjoyment. We cannot take our pleasure at second hand. We must first come to the work freshly and realize our own impression of it; then afterwards we may turn to the critic for a further revelation. Criticism should not shape our opinion, but should stimulate appreciation, carrying us farther than we could go ourselves, but always in the same direction with our original impression. There is a kind of literary exercise, calling itself criticism, which takes a picture or a book as its point of departure and proceeds to create a work of art in its own right, attaching itself only in name to the work which it purports to criticise. "Who cares," exclaims a clever maker of epigrams, "whether Mr. Ruskin's views on Turner are sound or not? What does it matter? That mighty and majestic prose of his, so fervid and so fiery-coloured in its noble eloquence, so rich in its elaborate symphonic music, so sure and certain, at its best, in subtle choice of word and epithet, is at least as great a work of art as any of those wonderful sunsets that bleach or rot on their corrupted canvases in England's Gallery." A very good appreciation of Ruskin, this. But the answer is that such writing as is here attributed to Ruskin is magnificent: it may be art; but it is not true criticism. A work of art is not "impressive" merely, but "expressive" too. Criticism in its relation to the work itself has an objective base, and it must be steadied and authenticated by constant reference to the original feet. Criticism is not the source of our enjoyment but a medium of interpretation. 399 Before we turn to criticism, therefore, we must first, as Pater suggests, know our own impression as it really is, discriminate it, and realize it distinctly. Only so shall we escape becoming the dupe of some more aggressive personality. In our mental life suggestion plays an important and perhaps unrecognized part. In a certain frame of mind we can be persuaded into believing anything and into liking anything. When, under the influence of authority or fashion, we think we care for that which has no vital and consciously realized relation to our own experience, we are the victims of a kind of hypnotism, and there is little hope of our ultimate adjustment over against art. It is far better honestly to like an inferior work and know why we like it than to pretend to like a good one. In the latter case no real progress or development is possible, for we have no standards that can be regarded as final; we are swayed by the authority or influence which happens at that moment to be most powerful. In the former case we are at least started in the right direction. Year by year, according to the law of natural growth, we come to the end of the inferior work which up to that time has been able to minister to us, and we pass on to new and greater works that satisfy the demands of our deepening experience. It is sometimes asked if we ought not to try to like the best things in art. I should answer, the very greatest things we do not have to try to like; the accent of greatness is unmistakable, and greatness has a message for every one. As regards the lesser works, we ought to be willing to grow up. There was a time when I enjoyed "Robinson Crusoe" in words of one syllable. If I had tried then to like Mr. George Meredith, I should not really have enjoyed him, and I should have missed the fun of "Robinson Crusoe." Everything in its time and place. The lesser works have their use: they may be a starting-point for our entrance into life; and they furnish a basis of comparison by which we are enabled to realize the greatness of the truly great. We must value everything in its own kind, affirming what it is, and not regretting what it is not. But the prerequisite of all appreciation, without which our contact with art is a pastime or a pretense, is that we be honest with ourselves. In playing solitaire at least we ought not to cheat. So the layman must face the situation squarely and accept the responsibility of deciding finally for himself. On the way we may look to criticism to guide us to those works which are meant for us. In art as in the complex details of living, there is need of selection; and criticism helps toward that. In literature alone, to name but a single art, there is so much to be left unread which the length of our life would not otherwise permit us to escape, that we are grateful to the critic who aids us to omit gracefully and with success. But the most serviceable criticism is positive and not destructive. The lesser works may have a message for us, and it is that message in its distinctive quality which the critic should affirm. In the end, however, the use we make of criticism should not reduce itself to an unquestioning acceptance of authority. In the ceremonial of the Roman service, at the moment preceding the elevation of the Host, two acolytes enter the chancel, bearing candles, and kneel between the congregation and the ministrants at the altar; the tapers, suffusing the altar in their golden radiance, throw the dim figures of the priests into a greater gloom and mystery. So it happens that art often is enshrouded by the off-giving of those who would seem to illuminate it; and "dark with excess of light," the obscurity is intensified. The layman is told of the virginal poetry of early Italian painting; he is bidden to sit at the homely, substantial feast of the frank actuality of Dutch art; he listens in 400 puzzled wonder to the glorification of Velasquez and Goya; he reads in eloquent, glowing language of the splendor of Turner. He is more than half persuaded; but he does not quite understand. From this tangle of contending interests there seems for the moment to be no way out. It is assumed that the layman has no standard of his own; and he yields himself to the appeal which comes to him immediately at the instant. The next day, perhaps, brings a new interest or another judgment which runs counter to the old. Back and forth and back again, without purpose and without reason; it is only an endless recurrence of the conflict instead of development and progress. Taking all his estimates at second hand, so for his opinion even of a concert or a play he is at the mercy of a critic who may have dined badly. Some boy, caught young at the university and broken to miscellaneous tasks on a big newspaper, is sent to "do" a picture-exhibition, a concert, and the theatre in the same day. He is expected to "criticise" in an hour the work of a lifetime of struggle and effort and knowledge and thought and feeling. This is the guide of opinion and the foundation of artistic creed. I have stated the reduction to absurdity of the case for authority in criticism. If the layman who leans too heavily upon criticism comes to realize the hopelessness of his position and thinks the situation through to its necessary conclusion, he sees that the authority of criticism is not absolute, but varies with the powers and range of the individual critic, and that at the last he must find his standard within himself. There are, of course, certain standards of excellence recognized universally and certain principles of taste of universal validity; and to these standards and these principles must be referred our individual estimates for comparison and correction. Given a native sensibility to the worth of life and to the appeal of beauty, the justice of our estimate will be in proportion to the extent of our knowledge of life and of our contact with art. Our individual judgment, therefore, must be controlled by experience,-our momentary judgments by the sum of our own experience, and our total judgment by universal experience. In all sound criticism and right appreciation there must be a basis of disciplined taste. We must guard ourselves against whims and caprice, even our own. So the individual may not cut loose altogether from external standards. But these must be brought into relation to his personal needs and applied with reference to his own standard. Finally, for his own uses, the individual has the right to determine the meaning and value to him of any work of art in the measure that it links itself with his own actual or possible experience and becomes for him a revelation of fuller life. For beauty is the power possessed by objects to quicken us with a sense of larger personality; and art, whether the arts of form or of representation, is the material bodying forth of beauty as the artist has perceived it and the means by which his emotion in its presence is communicated. Upon this conception of beauty and this interpretation of the scope and function of art rests the justice of the personal estimate. VII BEAUTY AND COMMON LIFE 401 TO become sensitive to the meaning of color and form and sound as the artist employs them for expression, to feel a work of art in its relation to its background, to find in criticism enlightenment and guidance but not a substitute for one's own experience,- these are methods of approach to art. But the appreciator has yet to penetrate art's inmost secret. At the centre, as the motive of all his efforts to understand the language of art and the processes of technique, as the goal of historical study and the purpose of his recourse to criticism, stands the work itself with its power to attract and charm. Here is Millet's painting of the "Sower." In the actual presence of the picture the appreciator's experience is complex. Analysis resolves it into considerations of the material form of the work, involving its sensuous qualities and the processes of execution, considerations also of the subject of the picture, which gathers about itself many associations out of the beholder's own previous knowledge of life. But the clue to the final meaning of the work, its meaning both to the artist and to the appreciator, is contained in the answer to the question, Why did Millet paint this picture? And just what is it designed to express? Art is born out of emotion. Though the symbols it may employ to expression, the forms in which it may manifest itself, are infinitely various in range and character, essentially all art is one. A work of art is the material bodying forth of the artist's sense of a meaning in life which unfolds itself to him as harmony and to which his spirit responds accordantly. It may be a pattern he has conceived; or he adapts material to a new use in response to a new need: the artist is here a craftsman. He is stirred by the tone and incident of a landscape or by the force or charm of some personality: and he puts brush to canvas. He apprehends the complex rhythms of form: and the mobile clay takes shape under his fingers. He feels the significance of persons acting and reacting in their contact with one another: and he pens a novel or a drama. He is thrilled by the emotion attending the influx of a great idea; philosophy is touched with feeling: and the thinker becomes a poet. The discords of experience resolve themselves within him into harmonies: and he gives them out in triumphant harmonies of sound. The particular medium the artist chooses in which to express himself is incidental to the feeling to be conveyed. The stimulus to emotion which impels the artist to create and the essential content of his work is beauty. As beauty, then, is the very stuff and fibre of art, inextricably bound up with it, so in our effort to relate art to our experience we may seek to know something of the nature of beauty and its place in common life. During a visit in Philadelphia I was conducted by a member of the firm through the great Locomotive Works in that city. From the vast office, with its atmosphere of busy, concentrated quiet, punctuated by the clicking of many typewriters, I was led through doors and passages, and at length came upon the shrieking inferno of the shops. The uproar and din were maddening. Overhead, huge cranes were swinging great bulks of steel from one end of the cavernous shed to the other; vague figures were moving obscurely in the murk; the floor was piled and littered with heaps of iron-work of unimaginable shapes. After a time we made our way into another area where there was more quiet but no less confusion. I yelled to my guide, "Such a rumpus and row I never saw; it is chaos come again!" And he replied, "Why, to me it is all a perfect order. Everything is in its place. Every man has his special job and does it. I know the meaning and purpose of all those parts that seem to you to be thrown around in such a mess. If you 402 could follow the course of making from the draughting-rooms to the finishing-shop, if you could see the process at once as a whole, you would understand that it is all a complete harmony, every part working with every other part to a definite end." It was not I but my friend who had the truth of the matter. Where for me there was only chaos, for him was order. And the difference was that he had the clue which I had not. His sense of the meaning of the parts brought the scattering details into a final unity; and therein he found harmony and satisfaction. I went away much impressed by what I had seen. When I had collected my wits a little in the comparative calm of the streets, it occurred to me that the immense workshops were a symbol of man's life in the world. In the instant of experience all seems chaos. At close range, in direct contact with the facts and demands of every day, we feel how confusing and distracting it all is. Life is beating in upon us at every point; all our senses are assailed at once. Each new day brings its conflicting interests and obligations. Now, whether we are aware of it or not, our constant effort is, out of the great variety of experience pressing in upon us, to select such details as make to a definite purpose and end. Instinctively we grope toward and attract to us that which is special and proper to our individual development. Our progress is toward harmony. By the adjustment of new material to the shaping principle of our experience, the circle of our individual lives widens its circumference. We are able to bring more and more details into order, and correspondingly fuller and richer our life becomes. The mental perception of order in the parts gives the whole its significance. This quick grasp of the whole is like the click of the kaleidoscope which throws the tumbling, distorted bits into a design. The conduct of practical life on the mental plane is the process also of art on the plane of the emotions. Not only does experience offer itself to us as the subject of thought; our contact with the world is also the stimulus of feeling. In my account of the visit to the Locomotive Works I have set down but a part and not the sum of my reaction. After I had come away, I fell to thinking about what I had seen, and intellectually I deduced certain abstract principles with regard to unity and significance. But at the moment of experience itself I simply felt. I was overwhelmed by the sense of unloosened power. The very confusion of it all constituted the unity of impression. The emotion roused in me by the roar and riotous movement and the vast gloom torn by fitful yellow gleams from opened furnaces and shapes of glowing metal was the emotion appropriate to the experience of chaos. That I can find a single word by which to characterize it, is evidence that the moment had its harmony for me and consequent meaning. All the infinite universe external to us is everywhere and at every instant potentially the stimulus to emotion. But unless feeling is discriminated, it passes unregarded. When the emotion gathers itself into design, when the moment reveals within itself order and significance, then and not till then the emotion becomes substance for expression in forms of art. If I were able to phrase what I saw and what I felt in the Locomotive Works, so that by means of presenting what I saw I might communicate to another what I felt and so rouse in him the same emotion, I should be an artist. Whistler or Monet might picture for us the murk and mystery of this pregnant gloom. Wagner might sound for us the tumultuous, 403 weird emotions of this Niebelungen workshop of the twentieth century. Dante or Milton might phrase this inferno and pandemonium of modern industry and leave us stirred by the sense of power in the play of gigantic forces. Whether the medium be the painter's color, the musician's tones, or the poet's words, the purpose of the representation is fulfilled in so far as the work expresses the emotion which the artist has felt in the presence of this spectacle. He, the artist, more than I or another, has thrilled to its mystery, its tumult, its power. It is this effect, received as a unity of impression, that he wants to communicate. This power of the object over him, and consequently the content of his work, is beauty. In the experience of us all there are objects and situations which can stir us,-the twilight hour, a group of children at play, the spectacle of the great human crowd, it may be, or solitude under the stars, the works of man as vast cities or cunningly contrived machines, or perhaps it is the mighty, shifting panorama which nature unrolls for us at every instant of day and night, her endless pageant of color and light and shade and form. Out of them at the moment of our contact is unfolded a new significance; because of them life becomes for us larger, deeper. This power possessed by objects to rouse in us an emotion which comes with the realization of inner significance expressed in harmony is beauty. A brief analysis of the nature and action of beauty may help us in the understanding and appreciation of art, though the value to us of any explanation is to quicken us to a more vivid sensitiveness to the effect of beauty in the domain of actual experience of it. Because the world external to us, which manifests beauty, is received into consciousness by the senses, it is natural to seek our explanation in the processes involved in the functioning of our organism. Our existence as individual human beings is conditioned by our embodiment in matter. Without senses, without nerves and a brain, we should not be. Our feelings, which determine for us finally the value of experience, are the product of the excitement of our physical organism responding to stimulation. The rudimentary and most general feelings are pleasure and pain. All the complex and infinitely varied emotions that go to make up our conscious life are modifications of these two elementary reactions. The feeling of pleasure results when our organism "functions harmoniously with itself;" pain is the consequence of discord. In the words of a recent admirable statement of the psychologists' position: "When rhythm and melody and forms and colors give me pleasure, it is because the imitating impulses and movements that have arisen in me are such as suit, help, heighten my physical organization in general and in particular. . . . The basis, in short, of any aesthetic experience-poetry, music, painting and the rest- is beautiful through its harmony with the conditions offered by our senses, primarily of sight and hearing, and through the harmony of the suggestions and impulses it arouses with the whole organism." Beauty, then, according to the psychologists, is the quality inherent in things, the possession of which enables them to stimulate our organism to harmonious functioning. And the perception of beauty is a purely physiological reaction. This explanation, valid within its limits, seems to me to fall short of the whole truth. For it fails to reckon with that faculty and that entity within us whose existence we know but cannot explain,-the faculty we call mind, which operates as imagination, and the entity we recognize as spirit or soul. I mean the faculty which gives us the idea of God and the 404 consciousness of self, the faculty which apprehends relations and significance in material transcending their material embodiment. I mean the entity within us which expresses itself in love and aspiration and worship, the entity which is able to fuse with the harmony external to it in a larger unity. When I glance out upon a winter twilight drenching earth and sky with luminous blue, a sudden delight floods in upon me, gathering up all my senses in a surging billow of emotion, and my being pulses and vibrates in a beat of joy. Something within me goes out to meet the landscape; so far as I am at all conscious of the moment, I feel, There, that is what I am! This deep harmony of tone and mass is the expression of a fuller self toward which I yearn. My being thrills and dilates with the sensation of larger life. Then, after the joy has throbbed itself out and my reaction takes shape as consciousness, I set myself to consider the sources and the processes of my experience. I note that my eye has perceived color and form. My intellect, as I summon it into action, tells me that I am looking upon a scene in nature composed of material elements, as land and trees and water and atmosphere. My senses, operating through channels of matter, receive, and my brain registers, impressions of material objects. But this analysis, though defining the processes, does not quite explain my joy. I know that beyond all this, transcending my material sense-perception and transcending the actual material of the landscape, there is something in me and there is something in nature which meet and mingle and become one. Above all embodiment in matter, there is a plane on which I feel my community with the world external to me, recognizing that world to be an extension of my own personality, a plane on which I can identify myself with the thing outside of me in so far as it is the expression of what I am or may become. Between me and the external world there is a common term. The effect which nature has upon us is determined, not by the object itself alone and not by our individual mind and temperament alone, but by the meeting of the two, the community between the object and the spirit of man. When we find nature significant and expressive, it is because we make nature in some way a part of our own experience. The material of an object is perceived by the senses. We see that it is blue or green or brown; we may touch it and note that it is rough or smooth, hard or soft, warm or cold. But the expressiveness of the object, its value for the emotions, does not stop with its merely material qualities, but comes with our grasp of the "relations" which it embodies; and these relations, transmitted through material by the senses, are apprehended by the mind. There are, of course, elementary data of sense-perception, such as color and sound. It may be that I prefer red to yellow because my eye is so constituted as to function harmoniously with a rate of vibration represented by 450 billions per second, and discordantly with a rate of vibration represented by 526 billions per second. So also with tones of a given pitch. But though simple color and simple sound have each the power to please the senses, yet in actual experience neither color nor sound is perceived abstractly, apart from its embodiment in form. Color is felt as the property of some concrete object, as the crimson of a rose, the dye of some fabric or garment, the blue of the sky, which, though we know it to be the infinite extension of atmosphere and ether, we nevertheless conceive as a dome, with curvature and the definite boundary of the horizon. Sound in and of itself has pitch and timbre, qualities of pure sensation; but even with the perception of sound the element of form enters in, for we hear it with a consciousness of its duration-long or short-or of its relation to other sounds, heard or imagined. 405 Our perceptions, therefore, give us forms. Now form implies relation, the reference of one part to the other parts in the composition of the whole. And relation carries with it the possibilities of harmony or discord, of unity or disorder. Before an object can be regarded as beautiful it must give out a unity of impression. This unity does not reside in the object itself, but is effected by the mind which perceives it. In looking at a checkerboard I may see it as an aggregation of white squares set off by black, or as black squares relieved by white. I may read it as a series of horizontals, or of verticals, or of diagonals, according as I attend to it. The design of the checker-board is not an absolute and fixed quantity inherent in the object itself, but is capable of a various interpretation according to the relative emphasis given to the parts by the perceiving mind. So with all objects in nature. The twilight landscape which stirred me may have been quite without interest or meaning to the man at my side; or, if he responded to it at all, his feelings may have been of a different order and quality than mine. Where I felt a deep and intimate solemnity in the landscape, he might have received the twilight as chill and forbidding. Beauty, then, which consists in harmonious relation, does not lie in nature objectively, but is constituted by the perception in man's constructive imagination of a harmony and consequent significance drawn out of natural forms. It is, in Emerson's phrase, "the integrity of impression made by manifold natural objects." And Emerson says further, "The charming landscape which I saw this morning is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet." The mere pleasurable excitement of the senses is hardly to be called beauty. An object to be beautiful must express a harmony of relations and hence a meaning,-a meaning which goes beyond sense-perception and does not stop with the intellect, but reaches the spirit. Psychologists tell us that "a curved line is pleasing because the eye is so hung as best to move in it." Pleasing, yes; but not beautiful. And precisely herein is illustrated the distinction. A life wearied with an undulating uniformity of days will find beauty less in the curve than in the zigzag, because the sight of the broken line brings to the spirit suggestions of change and adventure. A supine temper finds shock, excitement, and a meaning in the vertical. Yet the significance of forms is not determined necessarily by contrasts. A quiet spirit sees its own expression, a harmony of self with external form, in the even lines and flat spaces of some Dutch etching. Or a vigorous, hardy mind takes fresh stimulus and courage from the swirling clouds of Turner or the wind-torn landscapes of Constable. An object is beautiful, not because of the physical ease with which the eye follows its outlines, but in so far as it has the power to communicate to us the feeling of larger life, to express and complete for us a harmony within our emotional experience. Our senses report to us the material world; we see, we hear, we touch and taste and smell. But we recognize also that nature has a value for the emotions; it can delight and thrill and uplift, taking us out of ourselves and carrying us beyond the confines of the little circle of our daily use and wont. As I look from my window I see against the sky a pear tree, radiant with blossom, an explosion of light and sensation. Its green and white, steeped in sunshine and quivering out of rain-washed depths of blue, are good to behold. 406 But for me, as my spirit goes out to meet it, the tree is spring! In this I do not mean to characterize a process of intellectual deduction,-that as blossoms come in the spring, so the flowering of the tree is evidence that spring is here. I mean that by its color and form, all its outward loveliness, the tree communicates to me the spirit of the new birth of the year. In myself I feel and live the spring. My joy in the tree, therefore, does not end with the sight of its gray trunk and interwoven branches and its gleaming play of leaves: there my joy only begins, and it comes to its fulfillment as I feel the life of the tree to be an expression and extension of the life that is in me. My physical organism responds harmoniously in rhythm with the form of the tree, and so far the tree is pleasing. But, finally, a form is beautiful because it is expressive. "Beauty," said Millet, "does not consist merely in the shape or coloring of a face. It lies in the general effect of the form, in suitable and appropriate action. . . . When I paint a mother, I shall try and make her beautiful simply by the look she bends upon her child. Beauty is expression." Beauty works its effect through significance, a significance which is not always to be phrased in words, but is felt; conveyed by the senses, it at last reaches the emotions. Where the spirit of man comes into harmony with a harmony external to it, there is beauty. The elements of beauty are design, wholeness, and significance. Significance proceeds out of wholeness or unity of impression; and unity is made possible by design. Whatever the flower into which it may ultimately expand, beauty has its roots in fitness and utility; design in this case is constituted by the adaptation of the means to the end. The owner of a saw-mill wanted a support made for a shafting. Indicating a general idea of what he desired, he applied to one of his workmen, a man of intelligence and skill in his craft, but without a conventional education. The man constructed the support, a triangular framework contrived to receive the shafting at the apex; where there was no stress within the triangle, he cut away the timber, thus eliminating all surplusage of material. When the owner saw the finished product he said to his workman, "Well, John, that is a really beautiful thing you have made there." And the man replied, "I don't know anything about the beauty of it, but I know it's strong!" The end to be reached was a support which should be strong. The strong support was felt to be beautiful, for its lines and masses were apprehended as right. Had the man, with the "little learning" that is dangerous, attempted embellishment or applied ornament, he would have spoiled the effect; for ornateness would have been out of place. The perfect fitness of means to end, without defect and without excess, constituted its beauty; and its beauty was perceived aesthetically, as a quality inherent in the form, a quality which apart from the practical serviceableness of the contrivance was capable of communicating pleasure. So in general, when the inherent needs of the work give shape to the structure or contrivance, the resulting form is in so far forth beautiful. The early "horseless carriages," in which a form intended for one use was grafted upon a different purpose, were very ugly. Today the motor-car, evolved out of structural needs, a thing complete in and for itself, has in its lines and coherence of composition certain elements of beauty. In his "Song of Speed," Henley has demonstrated that the motorcar, mechanical, modern, useful, may even be material for poetry. That the useful is not always perceived as beautiful is due to the fact that the design which has shaped the work must be regarded apart from the material serviceableness of the object itself. Beauty consists not in the actual material, but in the unity of relations which the object embodies. We appreciate the art involved in the 407 making of the first lock and key only as we look beyond the merely practical usefulness of the device and so apprehend the harmony of relations effected through its construction. As the lock and key serve to fasten the door, they are useful; they are beautiful as they manifest design and we feel their harmony. Beauty is removed from practical life, not because it is unrelated to life,-just the reverse of that is true,-but because the enjoyment of beauty is disinterested. The detachment involved in appreciation is a detachment from material. The appreciator may seem to be a looker-on at life, in that he does not act but simply feels. But his spirit is correspondingly alert. In the measure that he is released from servitude to material he gives free play to his emotion. Although beauty is founded upon design, design is not the whole of beauty. Not all objects which exhibit equal integrity of design are equally beautiful. The beauty of a work of art is determined by the degree of emotion which impelled its creation and by the degree in which the work itself is able to communicate the emotion immediately. The feeling which entered into the making of the first lock and key was simply the inventor's desire for such a device, his desire being the feeling which accompanied his consciousness of his need. At the other extreme is the emotion such as attended Michelangelo's vision of his "David" and urged his hand as he set his chisel to the unshaped waiting block. And so all the way between. Many pictures are executed in a wholly mechanical spirit, as so much manufacture; and they exhibit correspondingly little beauty. Many useful things, as a candle-stick, a pair of andirons, a chair, are wrought in the spirit of art; into them goes something of the maker's joy in his work; they become the expression of his emotion: and they are so far beautiful. It is asserted that Millet's "Angelus" is a greater picture than the painting entitled "War" by Franz Stuck, because "the idea of peasants telling their beads is more beautiful than the idea of a ruthless destroyer only in so far as it is morally higher." The moral value as such has very little to do with it. It is a question of emotion. If Stuck were to put on canvas his idea of peasants at prayer and if Millet had phrased in pictorial terms his feeling about war, there is little doubt that Millet's painting would be the more telling and beautiful. The degree of beauty is fixed by the depth of the man's insight into life and the corresponding intensity of his emotion. Beauty is not limited to one class of object or experience and excluded from another. A chair may be beautiful, although turned to common use; a picture is not beautiful necessarily because it is a picture. "Nothing out of its place is good, nothing in its place is bad," says Whitman, Whistler speaks of art as "seeking and finding the beautiful in all conditions and in all times, as did her high priest, Rembrandt, when he saw picturesque grandeur and noble dignity in the Jews' quarter of Amsterdam, and lamented not that its inhabitants were not Greeks." The beautiful must exhibit an integrity of relations within itself, and it must be in integral relation with its surroundings. The standard of beauty varies with every age, with every nation, indeed with every individual. As beauty is not in the object itself, but is in the mind which integrates the relations which the object manifests, so our appreciation of beauty is determined by our individuality. And individuality is the resultant of many forces. The self, inexplicable in essence, is the product of inheritance, and is modified by environment and training. More than we realize, our judgment is qualified by tradition and habit and even fashion. Because men 408 have been familiar for so many centuries with the idea that sculpture should find its vehicle in white marble, the knowledge that Greek marbles originally were painted comes with something of a shock; and for the moment they have difficulty in persuading themselves that a Parthenon frieze colored could possibly be beautiful. Until within comparatively recent years the French have regarded Shakespeare as a barbarian. The heroic couplet, which was the last word in poetical expression in the age of Queen Anne, we consider to-day as little more than a mechanical jingle. Last year's fashions in dress, which seemed at the time to have their merits, are this year amusingly grotesque. In our judgment of beauty, therefore, allowance must be made for standards which merely are imposed upon us from without. It is necessary to distinguish between a formula and the reality. As far as possible we should seek to come into "original relation" with the universe, freshly for ourselves. So we must return upon our individual consciousness, and thus determine what is vitally significant to us. For the man who would appreciate beauty, it is not a question between this or that "school" in art, whether the truth lies with the classicists or the romanticists; it is not a question of this or that subject or method to the exclusion of all others. Beauty may be anywhere or everywhere. It is our task and joy to find it, wherever it may be. And we shall find it, if we are able to recognize it and we hold ourselves responsive to its multitudinous appeal. The conception of beauty which limits its manifestation to one kind of experience is so far false and leads to mischievous acceptances and narrowing rejections. We mistake the pretty for the beautiful and so fail of the true value of beauty; we are blind to the significance which all nature and all life, in the lowest and commonest as in the highest and rarest, hold within them. "If beauty," says Hamerton, "were the only province of art, neither painters nor etchers would find anything to occupy them in the foul stream that washes the London wharfs." By beauty here is meant the merely agreeable. Pleasing the river may not be, to the ordinary man; but for the poet and the painter, those to whom it is given to see with the inner eye, the "foul stream" and its wharfs may be lighted with mysterious and tender beauty. "Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This city now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning. . . . . . Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still!" 409 And Whistler, by the witchery of his brush and his needle, has transmuted the confusion and sordidness and filth of this Thames-side into exquisite emotion. The essence of beauty is harmony, but that harmony is not to be reduced to rule and measure. In the very chaos of the Locomotive Works we may feel beauty; in the thrill which they communicate we receive access of power and we are, more largely, more universally. The harmony which is beauty is that unity or integrity of impression by force of which we are able to feel significance and the relation of the object to our own experience. It is an error to suppose that beauty must be racked on a procrustean bed of formula. Such false conceptions result in sham art. To create a work which shall be beautiful it is not necessary to "smooth, inlay, and clip, and fit." Beauty is not imposed upon material from without, according to a recipe; it is drawn out from within by the integrating power of imagination. Art is not artificiality. Art is the expression of vital emotion and essential significance. The beauty of architecture, for example, consists not in applied ornament but in structural fitness and adaptability, and grows out of the inherent needs of the work. The cathedral-builders of old time did not set themselves to create a "work of art." They wanted a church; and it was a church they built. It is we who, perceiving the rightness of their achievement, pronounce it to be beautiful. Beauty is not manufactured, but grows; it cannot be laid on as ornament. Beauty is born out of the contact of the spirit of man with natural forms, that contact which gives to objects their significance. The recognition of the true nature of beauty may change for us the face of the world. Some things are universally regarded as beautiful because their appeal is universal. There are passions, joys, aspirations, common to all the race; and the forms which objectify these emotions are beautiful universally. We can all enter into the feelings that gather about a group of children dancing round a Maypole in the Park; but in the murk and din and demoniacal activity of the Locomotive Works the appeal is not so obvious. The stupendous workshops become beautiful to me as my being merges into harmony with them and dilates with the emotion of intenser and fuller life. The Sistine Madonna is generally regarded as beautiful. But what is the beauty in the unspeakable witch on the canvas of Frans Hals? Harmony of color and of composition is employed by Raphael in the rendering of a figure and in the expression of an emotion both of which relate themselves to the veneration of mankind. Maternity, Christian or pagan, divine or human, evokes its universal tribute of feeling. On Raphael's canvas complete harmony is made visible; and the beauty of the picture for us is measured by its power to stir us. In the painting by Frans Hals the subject represented is in itself not pleasing. The technical execution of the picture is masterly. But our delight goes beyond any enjoyment of the skill here exhibited, goes beyond even the satisfaction of the senses in its color and composition. What the picture expresses is not merely the visible aspect of this woman, but the painter's own sympathy and appreciation. He saw a beauty in ugliness, a beauty to which we were blind, for he felt the significance of her life, the eternal rightness to herself of what she was. His joy in this inner harmony has transfigured the object and made it beautiful. Beauty penetrates deeper than grace and comeliness; it is not confined to the pretty and agreeable. Indeed, beauty is not always immediately pleasant, but is received often with pain. The emotion of pleasure, which is regarded as the necessary concomitant of beauty, ensues as we are able to merge ourselves in the experience and so come to feel its ultimate harmony. What is commonly accepted as ugly, as shocking or 410 sordid, becomes beautiful for us so soon as we apprehend its inner significance. Judged by the canons of formal beauty, the sky-line of New York city, seen from the North River, is ugly and distressing. But the responsive spirit, reaching ever outward into new forms of feeling, can thrill at sight of those Titanic structures out-topping the Palisades themselves, thrusting their squareness adventurously into the smoke-grayed air, and telling the triumph of man's mind over the forces of nature in this fulfillment of the needs of irrepressible activity, this expression of tremendous actuality and life. Not that the reaction is so definitely formulated in the moment of experience; but this is something of what is felt. The discovery of such a harmony is the entrance into fuller living. So it is that the boundaries of beauty enlarge with the expansion of the individual spirit. To extend the boundaries of beauty by the revelation of new harmonies is the function of art. With the ordinary man, the plane of feeling, which is the basis of appreciation, is below the plane of his attention as he moves through life from day to day. As a clock may be ticking in the room quite unheeded, and then suddenly we hear it because our attention is called to it; so only that emotion really counts to us as experience which comes to our cognizance. When once the ordinary man is made aware of the underlying plane of feeling, the whole realm of appreciation is opened to him by his recognition of the possibilities of beauty which life may hold. Consciously to recognize that forces are operating which lie behind the surface aspect of things is to open ourselves to the play of these forces. With persons in whom intellect is dominant and the controlling power, the primary need is to understand; and for such, first to know is to be helped finally to feel. To comprehend that there is a soul in every fact and that within material objects reside meanings for the spirit, or beauty, is to be made more sensitive to their influence. With the artist, however, the case is different. At the moment of creation he is little conscious of the purport of the work to which he sets his hand. He is not concerned, as we have been, with the "why" of beauty; from the concrete directly to the concrete is his progress. Life comes to him not as thought but as emotion. He is moved by actual immediate contact with the world about him,-by the sight of a landscape, by the mood of an hour or place, by the power of some personality; it may be, too, a welter of recollected sensations and impressions that plays upon his spirit. The resultant emotion, not reasoned about but nevertheless directed to a definite end, takes shape in external concrete forms which are works of art. Just because he is so quick to feel the emotional value of life he is an artist; and much of his power as an artist derives from the concreteness of his emotion. The artist is the creative mind, creative in this sense, that in the outward shows of things he feels their inward and true relations, and by new combinations of material elements he reëmbodies his feeling in forms whose message is addressed to the spirit. The reason why Millet painted the "Sower" was that he felt the beauty of this peasant figure interpreted as significance and life. And it is this significance and life, in which we are made to share, that his picture is designed to express. Experience comes to us in fragments; the surface of the world throws back to us but broken glimpses. In the perspective of a lifetime the fragments flow together into order, and we dimly see the purpose of our being here; in moments of illumination and deeper insight a glimpse may disclose a sudden harmony, and the brief segment of nature's circle becomes beautiful. For then is revealed the shaping principle. Within the fact, behind the 411 surface, are apprehended the relations of which the fact and the surface are the expression. The rhythm thus discovered wakens an accordant rhythm in the spirit of man. The moment gives out its meaning as man and nature merge together in the inclusive harmony. If the human spirit were infinite in comprehension, we should receive all things as beautiful, for we should apprehend their rightness and their harmony. To our finite perception, however, design is not always evident, for it is overlaid and confounded with other elements which are not at the moment fused. Just here is the office of art. For art presents a harmony liberated from all admixture of conflicting details and purged of all accidents, thus rendering the single meaning salient. To compel disorder into order and so reveal new beauty is the achievement of the artist. The world is commonplace or fraught with divinest meanings, according as we see it so. To art we turn for revelation, knowing that ideals of beauty may be many and that beauty may manifest itself in many forms. VIII THE ARTS OF FORM THE maker of the first bowl moulds the plastic clay into the shape best adapted to its purpose, a vessel to hold water, from which he can drink easily; the half-globe rather than the cube affords the greatest holding capacity with the least expenditure of material. He finds now that the form itself-over and above the practical serviceableness of the bowl-gives him pleasure. With a pointed stick or bit of flint he traces in the yielding surface a flowing line or an ordered series of dots or crosses, allowing free play to his fancy and invention. The design does not resemble anything else, nor does it relate itself to any object external to the maker; it has no meaning apart from the pleasure which it gave him as he conceived and traced it, and the pleasure it now gives him to look at it. To another man who sees the bowl, its form and its decoration afford likewise a double pleasure: there is first the satisfaction of senses and mind in the contemplation of harmonious form and rhythmic pattern; and second, there is communicated to him a feeling of the maker's delight in his handiwork, and sympathetically and imaginatively the beholder realizes that delight in his own experience. I am walking with a friend along a road which climbs a wooded hillside. A few steps bring us to the top and the edge of a clearing. There, suddenly a sweep of country is rolled out before us. A quick intake of the breath, and then the cry, "Ah!" Consciousness surges back over me, and turning to my friend, I exclaim, "See the line of those hills over there across the tender sky and those clouds tumbling above them; see how the hills dip down into the meadows; look at the lovely group of willows along the bank of the river, how graciously they come in, and then that wash of purple light over everything!" My simple cry, "Ah!" was the expression of emotion, the unconscious, involuntary expression; it was not art. It did not formulate my emotion definitely, and although it was an expression of emotion, it had no power to communicate the special quality of it. So soon, however, as I composed the elements in the landscape, which stimulated my 412 emotion, into a distinct and coherent whole and by means of that I tried to convey to my friend something of what I was feeling, my expression tended to become art. My medium of expression happened to be words. If I had been alone and wanted to take home with me a record of my impression of the landscape, a pencil-sketch of the little composition might have served to indicate the sources of my feeling and to suggest its quality. Whether in words or in line and mass, my work would be in a rudimentary form a work of representative art. The objective fact of the landscape which I point out to my friend engages his interest; his pleasure derives from those aspects of it which my emotion emphasizes and which constitute its beauty; and something of the same emotion that I felt he realizes in his own experience. The impulse to expression which fulfills itself in a work of art is directed in general by one of two motives,-the motive of representation and the motive of pure form. These two motives are coexistent with human activity itself. The earliest vestiges of prehistoric races and the remains of the remotest civilizations are witnesses of man's desire to imitate and record, and also of his pleasure in harmony of form. Certain caves in France, inhabited by man some thousands of years before history begins, have yielded up reindeer horns and bones, carved with reliefs and engraved with drawings of mammoths, reindeer, and fish. On the walls and roofs of these caves are paintings in bright colors of animals, rendered with correctness and animation. Flint axes of a still remoter epoch "are carved with great dexterity by means of small chips flaked off the stone, and show a regularity of outline which testifies to the delight of primitive man in symmetry."[*] Burial mounds, of unknown antiquity, and the rude stone monuments such as Stonehenge and the dolmens of Brittany and Wales, emerging out of prehistoric dawns, are evidence of man's striving after architectural unity in design and harmony of proportion. [*] S. Reinach, The Story of Art throughout the Ages, chapter i. The existence of these two separate motives which impel creation, man's desire to imitate and his delight in harmony, gives rise to a division of the arts into two general classes, namely, the representative arts and the arts of pure form. The representative arts comprise painting and sculpture, and literature in its manifestations of the drama, fiction, and dramatic and descriptive poetry. These arts draw their subjects from nature and human life, from the world external to the artist. The arts of form comprise architecture and music, and that limitless range of human activities in design and pattern-making for embellishment-including also the whole category of "useful arts"-which may be subsumed under the comprehensive term decoration. In these arts the "subject" is selfconstituted and does not derive its significance from its likeness to any object external to it; the form itself is the subject. Lyric poetry stands midway between the two classes. It is the expression of "inner states" but it externalizes itself in terms of the outer world. It has a core of thought, and it employs images from nature which can be visualized, and it recalls sounds whose echo can be wakened in imaginative memory. "Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings, And Phoebus 'gins arise, His steeds to water at those springs 413 On chaliced flowers that lies; And winking Mary-buds begin To ope their golden eyes; With everything that pretty bin, My lady sweet, arise! Arise, arise!" The intellectual and sensuous elements which lyric poetry embodies are finally submerged under the waves of emotional stimulus which flow from the form as form. Such poetry does not depend upon the fact of representation for its meaning; the very form itself, as in music, is its medium of communicating the emotion. Art, therefore, to phrase the same matter in slightly different terms, has a subjective and an objective aspect. In the one case, the artist projects his feeling into the forms which he himself creates; in the other case, the forms external to him, as nature and human life, inspire the emotion, and these external forms the artist reproduces, with of course the necessary modifications, as the symbol and means of expression of his emotion. The distinction between the representative arts and the arts of form is not ultimate, nor does it exclude one class wholly from the other; it defines a general tendency and serves to mark certain differences in original motive and in the way in which the two kinds of work may be received and appreciated. In actual works of art themselves, though they differ as to origin and function, the line of division cannot be sharply drawn. The dance may be an art of form or a representative art according as it embodies the rhythms of pure movement or as it numerically figures forth dramatic ideas. Painting, as in the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel and the wall paintings of Tintoretto and Veronese in the Ducal Palace of Venice, may be employed in the service of decoration. Decoration, as in architectural sculpture and in patterns for carpets and wall-coverings, often draws its motives from nature, such as leaves, flowers, fruits, and animals; but when the function of the work is decorative and not representative, the naturalistic and graphic character of the subject is subordinated to the purposes of abstract and formal design. A picture, on the other hand, which is frankly representative in purpose, must submit its composition and colorharmony to the requirements of unity in design; in a sense it must make a pattern. And a statue, as the "Victory of Samothrace," bases its ultimate appeal, not upon the fact of representation, but upon complete, rhythmic, beautiful form. To the appreciator the arts of form carry a twofold significance. There is first the pleasure which derives from the contemplation and reception of a harmony of pure form, including harmony of color, of line, and of flat design as well as form in the round, a pleasure of the senses and the mind. Second, works of art in this category, as they are the expression for the artist of his emotion, become therefore the manifestation to the appreciator and means of communication of that emotion. Man's delight in order, in unity, in harmony, rhythm, and balance, is inborn. The possession of these qualities by an object constitutes its form. Form, in the sense of unity and totality of relations, is not to be confounded with mere regularity. It may assume all degrees of divergence from geometric precision, all degrees of variety, ranging from the 414 visual perfectness of the Parthenon to the sublime and triumphant inconsequence of the sky-line of New York city. It may manifest all degrees of complexity from a cup to a cathedral or from "Home, Sweet Home" to Tschaikowski's "Pathetic Symphony." Whatever the elements and the incidents, our sense of order in the parts and of singleness of impression endows the object with its form. The form as we apprehend it of an object constitutes its beauty, its capability to arouse and to delight. Because of the essential make-up of man's mind and spirit, powers that are innate and determined by forces still beyond the scope of analysis, the perception of a harmony of relations, which is beauty, is attended with pleasure, a pleasure that is felt and cannot be explained. This inborn, inexplicable delight is at once the origin of the arts of form and the basis of our appreciation. Each art, as the fashioning of objects of use, as decoration, architecture, and music, is governed by its own intrinsic, inherent laws and rests its appeal upon man's pleasure in form. There is no standard external to the laws of the art itself by which to judge the rightness and the beauty of the individual work. In the arts of use and in decoration and architecture, the beauty of a work, as the beauty of a chair, as in the ordering and appointments of a room, as the beauty of a temple, a theatre, a dwelling, derives primarily from the fitness of the object to its function, and finally from the rhythm of its lines and the harmony of its masses and proportions,-its total form. A chair which cannot be sat in may be interesting and agreeable to look at, but it is not truly beautiful; for then it is not a chair but a curiosity, a bijou, and a superfluity; to be beautiful it must be first of all frankly and practically a chair. A living-room which cannot be lived in with comfort and restfulness and peace of mind is not a living-room, but a museum or a concentrated department store; at best it is only an inclosed space. A beautiful building declares its function and use, satisfies us with the logic and coherence of its parts, and delights us with its reticence or its boldness, its simplicity or its inventiveness, in fine, its personality, as expressed in its parts and their confluence into an ordered, self-contained, and self-sufficing whole. Music, using sound for its material, is a pattern-weaving in tones. The power of music to satisfy and delight resides in the sensuous value of its material and in the character of its pattern as form, the balance and contrast of tonal relations, the folding and unfolding of themes, their development and progress to the final compelling unity-in-variety which constitutes its form and which in its own inherent and self-sufficing way is made the expression of the composer's emotion and musical idea. Lyric poetry is the fitting of rhythmic, melodious, colored words to the emotion within, to the point where the very form itself becomes the meaning, and the essence and mystery of the song are in the singing. Beauty is harmony materialized; it is emotion ordered and made visible, audible, tangible. If in the arts of form we seek further a standard of truth, their truth is not found in their relation to any external verity, but is determined by their correspondence with inner experience. In the category of the arts of form the single work is to be received in its entirety and integrity as form. The whole, however, may be resolved into its parts, and the individual details may be interesting in themselves. Thus into decorative patterns are introduced elements of meaning which attach themselves to the world and experience external to the artist. Many ornamental motives, like the zigzag and the egg-and-dart, for example, had originally a symbolic value. Sometimes they are drawn from primitive structures and 415 fabrics, as the checker-board pattern, with its likeness to the plaitings of rush mattings, and the volute and spiral ornaments, which recall the curves and involutions of wattle and wicker work. Again, decoration may employ in its service details that in themselves are genuinely representative art. The frieze of the Parthenon shows in relief a procession of men and women and horses and chariots and animals. The sculptures of Gothic churches represent men and women, and the carvings of mouldings, capitals, and traceries are based on naturalistic motives, taking their designs from leaves and flowers. The essential function of ornament is to emphasize form and not to obscure it, though nowadays in machine-made things a kind of pseudo-embellishment is laid on to distract attention from the badness and meaninglessness of the form; in true decoration the representative elements are subordinated to the formal character of the whole. The representative interest may be enjoyed separately and in detail; but finally the graphic purpose yields to the decorative, and the details take their place as parts of the total design. Thus a Gothic cathedral conveys its complete and true impression first and last as form. Midway we may set ourselves to a reading of the details. The figure of this saint on the jamb or the archivolt of the portal is expressive of such simple piety and enthusiasm! In this group on the tympanum what animation and spirit! This moulding of leaves and blossoms is cut with such loving fidelity and exquisite feeling for natural truth! But at the last the separate members fulfill their appointed office as they reveal the supreme function of the living total form. Music, too, in some of its manifestations, as in song, the opera, and programme music, has a representative and illustrative character. In Chopin's "Funeral March" we hear the tolling of church bells, and it is easy to visualize the slow, straggling file of mourners following the bier; the composition here has a definite objective base drawn from external fact, and the "idea" is not exclusively musical, but admits an infusion of pictorial and literary elements. In listening to the love duet of the second act of "Tristan," although the lovers are before us in actual presence on the stage, I find myself involuntarily closing my eyes, for the music is so personal and so spiritualized, it is in and of itself so intensely the realization of the emotion, that the objective presentment of it by the actors becomes unnecessary and is almost an intrusion. The representative, figurative element in music may be an added interest, but its appeal is intellectual; if as we hear the "Funeral March," we say to ourselves, This is so and so, and, Here they do this or that, we are thinking rather than feeling. Music is the immediate expression of emotion communicated immediately; and the composition will not perfectly satisfy unless it is music, compelling all relations of melody, harmony, and rhythm into a supreme and triumphant order. Whereas the representative arts are based upon objective fact, drawing their "subjects" from nature and life external to the artist; in decoration, in architecture, and in music the artist creates his own forms as the projection of his emotion and the means of its expression. Richard Wagner, referring to the composition of his "Tristan," writes: "Here, in perfect trustfulness, I plunged into the inner depth of soul events, and from out this inmost centre of the world I fearlessly built up its outer form. . . . Life and death, the whole import and existence of the outer world, here hang on nothing but the inner movements of the soul. The whole affecting Action comes about for the reason only that the inmost soul demands it, and steps to light with the very shape foretokened in the inner 416 shrine." The form, thus self-constituted, has the power to delight us, and the work is at the same time the expression of emotion. The arts of form please us with the pleasure that attends the perception of formal beauty; but this pleasure docs not exhaust their capability to minister to us. What differentiates art from manufacture is the element of personal expression. Born out of need, whether the need be physical or spiritual, fulfilling the urge to expression, a work of art embodies its maker's delight in creating. Correspondingly, beyond our immediate enjoyment of the work as form, we feel something of what the man felt who was impelled to create it. His handiwork, his pattern, his composition, becomes the means of communicating to us his emotional experience. Obviously the significance of any work is determined primarily by the intensity and scope of emotion which has prompted it. The creation of works of art involves all degrees of intention, from the hut in the wilderness rudely thrown together, whose purpose was shelter, to a Gothic cathedral, in its multitudinousness eloquent of man's worship and aspiration. The man who moulded the first bowl, adapting its form as closely as possible to its use and shaping its proportions for his own pleasure to satisfy his sense of harmony and rhythm, differs from the builders of the Parthenon only in the degree of intensity of his inspiring emotion and in the measure of his controlling thought. The beauty of accomplished form of cathedral and of temple is compelling; and we may forget that they rose out of need. Both hut and bowl are immediately useful, and their beauty is not so evident,-that little touch of feeling which wakens a response in us. But in their adaptation to their function they become significant; the satisfaction which accompanies expression is communicated to us as we apprehend in the work the creator's intention and we realize in ourselves what the creation of it meant to him as the fulfillment of his need and the utterance of his emotion. So the expressive power of an individual work is conditioned originally by the amount of feeling that enters into the making of it. Every phrase of a Beethoven symphony is saturated with emotion, and the work leads us into depths and up to heights of universal experience, disclosing to us tortuous ways and infinite vistas of the possibilities of human feeling. A simple earthen jug may bear the impress of loving fingers, and the crudely turned form may be eloquent of the caress of its maker. So we come to value even in the humblest objects of use this autographic character, which is the gate of entrance into the experience of the men who fashioned them. Every maker strives toward perfection, the completest realization of his ideal within his power of execution. But the very shortcomings of his work are significant as expressive of what he felt and was groping after; they are so significant that by a curious perversion, machinery, which in our civilized day has supplanted the craftsman, tries by mechanical means to reproduce the roughness and supposed imperfections of hand work. Music is the consummate art, in which the form and the content are one and inextricable; its medium is the purest, least alloyed means of expression of instant emotion. Architecture, in its harmonies and rhythms, the gathering up of details into the balanced and perfect whole, partakes of the nature of music. But the arts of use and decoration also have their message for the spirit. There is no object fashioned by the hand of man so humble that it may not embody a true thought and a sincere delight. There is no pattern or design so simple and so crude that it may not be the overflow of some human spirit, a mind and heart touched to expression. 417 IX REPRESENTATION BEFORE me is a little bowl of old Satsuma. As I look at it there wakens in me a responsive rhythm, and involuntarily my fingers move as if to caress its suave and lovely lines. The rich gold and mingled mellow browns of its surface pattern intricately woven are a gracious harmony and a delight. Gradually, as I continue to look on it, a feeling is communicated to me of the maker's own joy in his work; and the bowl, its harmonies and rhythms, and all that it expresses, become part of me. There it is, complete in itself, gathering up and containing within itself the entire experience. My thoughts, sensations, feelings do not go beyond the bowl. Another time I am standing in the hall of the Academy in Florence. At the end of the corridor towers a superb form. I see that it is the figure of a youth. His left hand holds a sling drawn across his shoulder; his right arm hangs by his side, his hand grasping a pebble close to his thigh; calm and confident, his head erect, his strength held in leash waiting to be loosed, he fronts the oncoming of the foe. The statue is the presentation of noble form, and it wakens in me an accordant rhythm; I feel in myself something of what youthful courage, life, and conscious power mean. But my experience does not stop there. The statue is not only presentation but representation. It figures forth a youth, David, the Hebrew shepherd-boy, and he stands awaiting the Philistine. I have read his story, I have my own mental image of him, and about his personality cluster many thoughts. To what Michelangelo shows me I add what I already know. Recognition, memory, knowledge, facts and ideas, a whole store of associations allied with my previous experience, mingle with my instant emotion in its presence. The sculptor, unlike the potter, has not created his own form; the subject of his work exists outside of him in nature. He uses the subject for his own ends, but in his treatment of it he is bound by certain responsibilities to external truth. His work as it stands is not completely selfcontained, but is linked with the outer world; and my appreciation of it is affected by this reference to extrinsic fact. An artist is interested in some scene in nature or a personality or situation in human life; it moves him. As the object external to him is the stimulus of his emotion and is associated with it, so he uses the object as the symbol of his experience and means of expression of his emotion. Here, then, the feeling, to express which the work is created, gathers about a subject, which can be recognized intellectually, and the fact of the subject is received as in a measure separate from the feeling which flows from it. In a painting of a landscape, we recognize as the basis of the total experience the fact that it is a landscape, so much water and field and sky; and then we yield ourselves to the beauty of the landscape, the emotion with which the artist suffuses the material objects and so transfigures them. Into representative art, therefore, there enters an element not shared by the arts of pure form, the element of the subject, carrying with it considerations of objective truth and of likeness to external fact. Toward the understanding of the total scope of a picture or a statue, and by inference and application of the principles, toward 418 the understanding of literature as well, it may help us if we determine the relation of beauty to truth and the function and value of the subject in representative art. The final significance of a work of art is beauty, received as emotional experience. Nature becomes beautiful to us at the point where it manifests a harmony to which we feel ourselves attuned. At the moment of enjoyment we unconsciously project our personality into this harmony outside of us, identifying ourselves with it and finding it at that instant the expression of something toward which we reach and aspire. When we come consciously to reason about our experience, we see that the harmony external to us which we feel as the extension of ourselves does not stop with the actual material itself of nature, but emanates from it as the expression of nature's spirit. The harmony is a harmony of relations, made visible through material, and significant to us and beautiful in the measure that we respond to it. It is the beauty of the object, its significance for the spirit, that primarily moves the artist to expression. Why one landscape and not another impels him to render it upon his canvas is not to be explained. This impulse to immediate and concrete utterance is inspiration. And inspiration would seem to be a confluence of forces outside of the individual consciousness or will, focused at the instant into desire, which becomes the urge to creation. "The mind in creation," says Shelley, "is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power rises from within, like the colour of a flower which fades and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our natures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure." The artist does not say, "Lo, I will paint a landscape; let me find my subject!" The subject presents itself. There it is, by chance almost,-a sudden harmony before him, long low meadows stretching away to the dark hills, the late sun striking on the water, gold and green melting into a suffusing flush of purple light, a harmony of color and line and mass which his spirit leaps out to meet and with which it fuses in a larger unity. In the moment of contact all consciousness of self as a separate individuality is lost. Out of the union of the two principles, the spirit of man and the beauty of the object, is born the idea, which is to come to expression as a work of art. But the artist is a mind as well as a temperament. Experience is a swing of the pendulum between the momentary ecstasy of immediate contact and the subsequent reaction upon the moment, which is consciousness of it. In order to make his vision actual, the artist rises out of the domain of feeling into that of thought. The landscape has compelled him; it is now he who must compel the landscape. To the shaping of his work he must bring to bear all his conscious power of selection and organization and all his knowledge of the capabilities and resources of his means. Art springs out of emotion; painting is a science. The artist's command of his subject as the symbol of his idea derives from the stern and vigorous exercise of mind. The rightness of his composition is determined by a logic more flexible, perhaps, but no less exacting than the laws of geometry. By the flow of his line and the disposition of his masses, the artist must carry the eye of the beholder along the way he wants it to travel until it rests upon the point where he wants it to rest. There must be no leaks and no false directions; there must be the cosmos within the frame and nothing outside of it. The principles of perspective have been worked out with a precision 419 that entitles them to rank as a science. Color has its laws, which, again, science is able to formulate. These processes and formulas and laws are not the whole of art, but they have their place. The power to feel, the imaginative vision, and creative insight are not to be explained. But knowledge too, acquired learning and skill, plays its part, and to recognize its function and service is to be helped to a fuller understanding of the achievement of the artist. Gifted with a vibrant, sensitive temperament, endowed with discriminating and organizing power of mind, equipped with a knowledge of the science and the mechanics of his craft, and trained to skill in manual execution, the artist responds to the impulse of his inspiration. His subject is before him. But what is his subject? A scene in nature furnishes him the objective base of his picture, but properly his work is the expression of what he feels. A storm may convey to different men entirely different impressions. In its presence one man may feel himself overwhelmed with terror. These wild, black skies piling in upon him, the hilltops that seem to race through the clouds, the swaying, snapping trees, the earth caught up in the mad grasp of the tempest, may smite his soul with the pitilessness of nature and her inexorable blind power. Another thrills with joy in this cosmic struggle, the joy of conflict which he has known in his own life, the meeting of equal forces in fair fight, where the issue is still doubtful and victory will fall at last upon the strong, though it is not the final triumph but the present struggle that makes the joy. In rendering the "subject" upon his canvas, by the manipulation of composition and line and mass and color, he makes the storm ominous and terrible, or glorious, according as he feels. The import of his picture is not the natural fact of the storm itself, but its significance for the emotions. A work of representative art is the rendering of a unity of impression and harmony of relations which the artist has perceived and to which he has thrilled in the world external to him. He presents not the facts themselves but their spirit, that something which endows the facts with their significance and their power to stir him. As the meaning of nature to the beholder is determined by the effect it produces on his mind and temperament, so the artist, in the expression of this meaning, aims less at a statement of objective accuracy of exterior appearance than at producing a certain effect, the effect which is the equivalent of the meaning of nature to him. Thus the painter who sees beyond the merely intellectual and sensuous appeal of his subject and enters into its spirit, tries to render on his canvas, not the actual color of nature, but the sensation of color and its value for the emotions. With the material splendor of nature,-her inexhaustible lavish wealth of color, the glory of life which throbs through creation, the mystery of actual movement,-art cannot compete. For the hues and tones of nature, infinite in number and subtlety, the painter has only the few notes within the poor gamut of his palette. How can he quicken his dull paint with the life-beat of palpitating flesh, or the sculptor animate the rigid marble with the vibrations of vivid motion? But where nature is infinite in her range she is also scattering in her effects. By the concentration of divergent forces, art gains in intensity and directness of impression what it sacrifices in the scope of its material. Michelangelo uses as his subject David, the shepherd-boy; but the person, the mere name, does not signify. What his work embodies is triumphant youth, made visible and communicable. When Millet shows us the peasant, it is not what the peasant is feeling that the artist 420 represents, but what Millet felt about him. The same landscape will be rendered differently by different men. Each selects his details according to the interest of his eye and mind and feeling, and he brings them into a dominant harmony which stands to him for the meaning of the landscape. None of the pictures is an accurate statement of the facts as they are, off there in nature; all are true to the integrating inner vision. The superficial observer sees only the accidents, and he does not distinguish relative importance. The artist, with quicker sensibilities and a trained mind, analyzes, discovers the underlying principle, and then makes a synthesis which embodies only the essential; he seizes the distinctive aspect of the object and makes it salient. There may be, of course, purely descriptive representation, which is a faithful record of the facts of appearance as the painter sees them, without any feeling toward them; here he works as a scientist, not as an artist. Merely imitative painting falls short of artistic significance, for it embodies no meaning beyond the external fact. It is the expressiveness of the object that the true artist cares to represent; it is its expressiveness, its value for the emotions, that constitutes its beauty. To achieve beauty the representative artist bases his work upon the truth of nature. It is nature that supplies him with his motive,-some glimpse, some fragment, which reveals within itself a harmony. It may be a form, as a tree, a man, a mountain range, the race of clouds across the sky; it may be a color-harmony or "arrangement," in which color rather than form is the dominant interest, as with a landscape or an interior; it may be the effects of light, as the sunshine playing over golden haystacks, or the glint of light on metal, or the sheen of lovely fabrics. Out of the complex of interests and appeals which an object offers, what is the truth of the object? The truth of nature resides not in the accidents of surface but in the essential relations, of which the surface is the manifestation. A birch tree and an apple tree are growing side by side. Their roots strike down into the same soil, their branches are warmed by the same sun, wet by the same rains, and swept by the same winds. The birch tree is always lithe and gracious and feminine; the apple tree is always bent and sternly gnarled like the hand of an old man. The life-force which impels the tree to growth is distinctive to each kind. Within all natural objects, then, a crystal, a tree, a man, there is a shaping principle which determines their essential form. But no two individual apple trees are precisely alike; from the essential form of the tree there are divergences in the single manifestations. Though subject to accident and variation, however, every tree exhibits a characteristic, inviolate tendency, and remains true to the inner life-principle of its being. The "truth" of the apple tree is this distinctive, essential form, by virtue of which it is an apple tree and not some other kind, the form which underlies and allows for all individual variations. What the painter renders on his canvas is not the superficial accidents of some single tree, but by means of that, he seeks to image forth in color and form the tendency of all trees. The truth of an object presents itself to the imagination as design, for this organic, shaping principle of things, expressed in colored myriad forms throughout the endless pageantry of nature, is apprehended by the spirit of man as a harmony; and in the experience of the artist truth identifies itself with beauty. The distinction between the accidental surface of things and the significance that may be drawn out of them is exemplified by the difference between accuracy and truth in 421 representation. Accurate drawing is the faithful record of the facts of appearance as offered to the eye. Truth of drawing is the rendering in visible terms of the meaning and spirit of the object, the form which the object takes not simply for the eye but for the mind. A pencil sketch by Millet shows a man carrying in each hand a pail of water. The arms are drawn inaccurately, in that they are made too long. What Millet wanted to express, however, was not the physical shape of the arms, but the feeling of the burden under which the man was bending; and by lengthening the arms he has succeeded in conveying, as mere accuracy could not express it, the sensation of weight and muscular strain. In Hals' picture of the "Jester" the left hand is sketched in with a few swift strokes of the brush. But so, it "keeps its place" in relation to the whole; and it is more nearly right than if it had been made the centre of attention and had been drawn with the most meticulous precision. The hand is not accurate, but it is true. Similarly, size is an affair not of physical extent but of proportion. A figure six inches high may convey the same value as a figure six feet high, if the same proportions are observed. A statue is the presentation, not of the human body, but of the human form, and more than that, of what the form expresses. When I am talking with my friend I am aware of his physical presence detaching itself from the background of the room in which we are. But I feel in him something more. And that something more goes behind the details of his physical aspect. His eyes might be blue instead of brown, his nose crooked rather than straight; he might be maimed and disfigured by some mishap. These accidents would not change for me what is the reality. My friend is not his body, though it is by his body that he exists; the reality of my friend is what he essentially is, what he is of the spirit. A photograph of a man registers certain facts of his appearance at that moment. The eye and the mind of the artist discern the truth which underlies the surface; the artist feels his sitter not as a face and a figure, a mere body, but as a personality; and the portrait expresses a man. As grasped by our finite minds, there are partial truths and degrees of truth. There are, for example, the facts of outer appearance, modified in our reception of them by what we know as distinct from what we really see. Thus a tree against the background of hill or sky seems to have a greater projection and relief than is actually presented to the eye, because we know the tree is round. Manet's "Girl with a Parrot," which appears to the ordinary man to be too flat, is more true to reality than any portrait that "seems to come out of its frame." Habitually in our observation of objects about us, we note only so much as serves our practical ends; and this is the most superficial, least essential aspect. Projection is a partial truth, and to it many painters sacrifice other and higher truths. Manet, recovering the "innocence of the eye" and faithful to it, has penetrated the secrets and won the truth of light. Botticelli saw the world as sonorous undulations of exquisite line; and his subtly implicated, evanescent patterns of line movement, "incorrect" as they may be superficially in drawing, caress the eye as music finds and satisfies the soul. When such is his power over us, it is difficult to say that Botticelli had not some measure of the truth. The world of the Venetians sang full-sounding harmonies of glorious color. Velasquez saw everything laved around with a flood of silver quiet atmosphere. All in their own way have found and shown to us a truth. To render what he has seen and felt in the essence and meaning of it, the artist seeks to disengage the shaping principle of the particular aspect of truth, which has impressed 422 him, from all accidents in its manifestation. To make this dominant character salient beyond irrelevant circumstance, art works by selection. Art is necessarily a compromise. It isolates some elements and sacrifices others; but it is none the less true on that account. The mere material of the object is more or less fixed, but the relations which the object embodies are capable of many combinations and adjustments, according to the mind and temperament of the individual artist who is moved by it. All art is in a certain sense abstraction; all art in a measure idealizes. It is abstraction in the sense that it presents the intrinsic and distinctive qualities of things, purged of accident. Art does not compete with nature; it is a statement of the spirit and intention of nature in the artist's own terms. The test of the work is not apparent and superficial likeness, but truth. Art idealizes in the measure that it disengages the truth. In this aspect of it the work is ideal as distinct from merely actual. There is a practice in art which draws its standard of beauty, its ideal, not from nature but from other art, and which seeks to "improve nature" by the combination of arbitrarily chosen elements and by the modification of natural truth to fit a preconceived formula. The Eclectics of Bologna, in the seventeenth century, sought to combine Raphael's perfection of drawing and composition, Michelangelo's sublimity and his mastery of the figure, and Correggio's sweet sentiment and his supremacy in the rendering of light and shade, fondly supposing thus that the sum of excellent parts is equivalent to an excellence of the whole. This is false idealism. The Greeks carried their research for certain truths of the human form to the point of perfection and complete realization. The truth of the Greeks was mistaken by the pseudoclassicists and misapplied. Thus Delacroix exclaimed ironically, "In order to present an ideal head of a negro, our teachers make him resemble as far as possible the profile of Antinöus, and then say, 'We have done our utmost; if, nevertheless, we fail to make the negro beautiful, then we ought not to introduce into our pictures such a freak of nature, the squat nose and thick lips, which are so unendurable to the eyes.'" True idealism treats everything after its own kind, making it more intensely itself than it is in the play of nature; the athlete is more heroically an athlete, the negro more vividly a negro. True idealism seeks to express the tendency by virtue of which an object is what it is. The abstraction which art effects is not an unreality but a higher reality. It is not the mere type, that art presents, for the type as such does not exist in nature. The individual is not lost but affirmed by this reference to the inner principle of its being. A good portrait has in it an element of caricature; the difference between portraiture and caricature is the difference between emphasis and exaggeration. Art is not the falsification of nature, but the fuller realization of it. It is the interpretation of nature's truth, the translation of it, divined by the artist, into simpler terms to be read and understood by those of less original insight. The deeper the penetration into the life-force and shaping principle of nature, the greater is the measure of truth. In representative art the truth of nature is the work's objective base. What the artist finally expresses is the relation of the object to his own experience. A work of art is the statement of the artist's insight into nature, moulded and suffused by the emotion attending his perception. Of the object, he uses that aspect and that degree of truth which serve him for the expression of his feeling toward it. What is called "realism" is one order of truth, one way of seeing. "Impressionism" is another order of truth. "Idealism" is still 423 another. But all three elements blend in varying proportion in any work. Even the realist, who "paints what he sees," has his ideal, which is the effect he sets himself to produce by his picture, and he paints according to his impression. He renders not the object itself but his mental image of it; and that image is the result of his way of seeing and feeling, his habit of mind, his interest, and his store of memories. The idealist must base his work upon some kind of reality, or it is a monstrosity; he is obliged to refer to the external world for his symbols. The impressionist, who concerns himself with the play of light over surfaces in nature, is seeking for truth, and he cares to paint at all because that play of light, seemingly so momentary and so merely sensuous, has a value for his spirit of which he may or may not be wholly conscious; and these shifting effects are the realization of his ideal. Unwitting at the moment of contact itself of the significance that afterwards is to flow articulately from his work, the artist, in the presence of his object, knows only that he is impelled to render it. As faithfully as possible he tries to record what he sees, conscious simply that what he sees gives him delight. His vision wakens his feeling, and then by reaction his feeling determines his vision, controlling and directing his selection of the details of aspect. When Velasquez, engaged on a portrait of the king, saw the maids of honor graciously attending on the little princess, he did not set about producing a picture, as an end in itself. In the relation of these figures to one another and to the background of the deep and high-vaulted chamber in which they were standing, each object and plane of distance receiving its just amount of light and fusing in the unity of total impression, were revealed to him the wonder and the mystery of nature's magic of light. This is what he tried to render. His revelation of natural truth, wrung from nature's inmost latencies and shown to us triumphantly, becomes a thing of beauty. So the differences among the various "schools" in art are after all largely differences of emphasis. The choice of subject or motive, the angle from which it is viewed, and the method of handling, all are determined by the artist's kind of interest; and that interest results from what the man is essentially by inheritance and individual character, and what he is moulded into by environment, training, and experience. It may happen that the external object imposes itself in its integrity upon the artist's mind and temperament, and he tries to express it, colored inevitably by his feeling toward it, in all faithfulness to the feet as he sees it. Millet said, "I should never paint anything that was not the result of an impression received from the aspect of nature, whether in landscape or figures." Millet painted what he saw, but he painted it as only he saw it. Or again it happens that an artist imposes his feeling upon nature. Thus Burne-Jones said, "I mean by a picture a beautiful romantic dream of something that never was, never will be-in a light better than any that ever shone-in a land no one can define or remember, only desire." Whether true to nature or true to the creative inner vision, the work of both men embodies truth. Sometimes an artist effaces entirely his own individuality, as in Greek sculpture and Gothic architecture, and the mere name of the creator does not signify. George Frederick Watts is reported to have said, "If I were asked to choose whether I would like to do something good, as the world judges popular art, and receive personally great credit for it, or, as an alternative, to produce something which should rank with the very best, taking a place with the art of Pheidias or Titian, with the highest poetry and the most elevating music, and remain unknown as the perpetrator of the work, I should choose the latter." Sidney Lanier wrote, "It is of little consequence whether I fail; the I in the matter 424 is small business. . . . Let my name perish,-the poetry is good poetry and the music is good music, and beauty dieth not, and the heart that needs it will find it." Or on the contrary, a work may bear dominantly, even aggressively, the impress of the distinctive individuality of its creator, as with Carlyle's prose and Browning's poetry. Whistler seems at times to delight less in the beauty of his subject than in the exercise of his own power of refinement. Where another man's art is personal, as with Velasquez or Frans Hals, Whistler's art becomes egotistical. He does not say, "Lo, how mysterious is this dusk river-side, how tenderly serene this mother, how wistful and mighty is this prophet-seer!" He exclaims rather, "Note how subtly I, Whistler, have seen. Rejoice with me in my powers of vision and of execution." There is no single method of seeing, no one formula of expression and handling. The truth both of nature and of art is great and infinitely various. For art, like nature, is organic, allowing for endless modifications, while remaining true to the inner principle of its being. The judgment of truth is a delicate business. To test the truth of a work of art by reference to the truth of nature is to presuppose that our power of perception is equal to the artist's power, and that our knowledge of the object represented is equal to his knowledge of it. The ordinary man's habitual contact with the world is practical, and his knowledge of natural fact, based upon the most superficial aspect of it and used for practical purposes, tends to falsify his vision. The artist's contact with the world, in his capacity as artist, is one of feeling; he values life, not for its material rewards and satisfactions, but for what it brings to him of emotional experience. The ordinary man uses nature for his own workaday ends. The artist loves nature, and through his love he understands her. His knowledge of natural fact, instead of falsifying his vision, reinforces it. He studies the workings of nature's laws as manifested in concrete phenomena around him,-the movement of storms, the growth of trees, the effects of light,-penetrating their inmost secrets, that he may make them more efficient instruments of expression. He uses his understanding of anatomy, of earth-structure, of the laws of color, as the means to a fuller and juster interpretation. As he receives the truth of nature with reverence and joy, so he transmutes truth into beauty. An artist's interest in the truth of nature is not the scientist's interest, an intellectual concern with knowledge for the sake of knowledge. The artist receives nature's revelation of herself with emotion. The deeper he penetrates into her hidden ways, the greater becomes her power to stir him. The artist values his "subject," therefore, as the stimulus of emotion and as the symbol by means of which he expresses his emotion and communicates it. The value of the subject to the appreciator, however, is not immediately clear. It is not easy for us to receive the subject purely as the artist shows it to us and independently of our own knowledge of it. About it already gather innumerable associations, physical, practical, intellectual, sentimental, and emotional, all of them or any of them, which result from our previous contact with it in actual life. Here is a portrait of Carlyle. I cannot help regarding the picture first of all from the point of view of its likeness to the original. This is a person with whom I am acquainted, an individual, by name Carlyle. And my reaction on the picture is determined, not by what the artist has to say about a great personality interpreted through the medium of color and form, but by what I already know about Carlyle. Or here a painting shows me a landscape with which 425 I am familiar. Then instead of trying to discover in the picture what the artist has seen in the landscape and felt in its presence, letting it speak to me in its own language, I allow my thoughts to wander from the canvas, and I enjoy the landscape in terms of my own knowledge and remembrance of it. The artist's work becomes simply a point of departure, whereas it should be not only the beginning but also the end and fulfillment of the complete experience. What is, then, we may ask, the relation of the fact of the subject to the beauty and final message of the work? The pleasure which attends the recognition of the subject is a legitimate element in our enjoyment of art. But the work should yield a delight beyond our original delight in the subject as it exists in nature. The significance of a work of representative art depends not upon the subject in and of itself, but upon what the artist has to say about it. A rose may be made to reveal the cosmos; a mountain range or cloud-swept spaces of the upper air may be niggled into meanness. The ugly in practical life may be transfigured by the artist's touch into supreme beauty. "Il faut pouvoir faire servir le trivial à l'expression du sublime, c'est la vraie force," said one who was able to invest a humble figure with august dignity. Millet's peasants reveal more of godlike majesty than all the array of personages in the pantheon of post-Raphaelite Italy and the classic school of France. Upon his subject the artist bases that harmony of relations which constitutes the beauty and significance of his work. Brought thus into a harmony, the object represented is made more vivid, more intensely itself, than it is in nature, with the result that we receive from the representation a heightened sense of reality and of extended personality. The importance of the subject, therefore, is measured by the opportunity it affords the artist, and with him his appreciators, to share in the beauty of nature and life. A picture should not "standout" from its frame, but should go back into it, reaching even into infinity. Our own associations attaching to the subject lose themselves as they blend with the artist's revelation of the fuller beauty of his object; and finally all becomes merged in the emotional experience. Eliminating the transient and accidental, a work of art presents the essential and eternal. Art appeals not to the intellect and the reason, but to the imagination and the emotions. The single work, therefore, is concrete and immediate. But universal in its scope, it transcends the particularities of limited place and individual name. We must distinguish between the abstractly typical and the universal. The representative artist does not conceive an abstraction and then seek to find a symbol for it. That is the method of allegory, where spring, for example, is figured as a young woman scattering flowers. Allegory is decorative rather than representative in intention. The artist receives his inspiration and stimulus from some actual concrete bit of nature, a woodland wrapt in tender mists of green, a meadow gold and softly white with blossoms, a shimmering gauze of sun touched air, moist and vibrating, enfolding it. That is what he paints. But he paints it so that it is spring, and instinct with the spirit of all springs. Michelangelo does not intellectually conceive youth and then carve a statue. Some boy has revealed to him the beauty of his young strength, and the sculptor moves to immediate expression. He calls his statue David, but the white form radiates the rhythm and glory of all youth. And as we realize youth in ourselves, more poignantly, more abundantly, the mere name of the boy does not matter. The fact that the portrait shows us Carlyle is an incident. Carlyle 426 is the "subject" of the picture, but its meaning is the twilight of a mighty, indomitable mind, made visible and communicable. His work is done; the hour of quiet is given, and he finds rest. Into this moment, eternal in its significance, into this mood, universal in its appeal, we enter, to realize it in ourselves. The subject of picture or statue is but the means; the end is life. Objective fact is transmuted into living truth. Art is the manifestation of a higher reality than we alone have been able to know. It begins with the particular and then transcends it, admitting us to share in the beauty of the world, the cosmic harmony of universal experience. X THE PERSONAL ESTIMATE ART starts from life and in the end comes back to it. Art is born out of the stirring of the artist's spirit in response to his need of expression, and it reaches its fulfillment in the spirit of the appreciator as it answers his need of wider and deeper experience. Midway on its course from spirit to spirit it traverses devious paths. The emotion out of which art springs and of which it is the expression is controlled and directed by the shaping force of mind, and it embodies itself in material form. This material form, by virtue of its qualities, has the power to delight our senses; the skill which went into the fashioning of it, so far as we can recognize the processes of execution, gives us pleasure; the harmony which the work of art must manifest satisfies the mind and makes it possible for us to link the emotion with our own experience. These paths which a work of art traverses in its course from its origin to its fulfillment I have tried to follow in their ramifications, and I have tried to trace them to their issue in appreciation. Some lovers of art may linger on the way and rest content with the distance they have come, without pressing forward to the end. A work of art is complex in its appeal; and it is possible to stop with one or another of its elements. Thus we may receive the work intellectually, recognizing its subject, and turning the artist's emotion into our thought and translating it from his medium of color and form or sound into our own medium of words. Here is a portrait of Carlyle; and Carlyle we know as an author and as a man. This landscape is from the Palisades, where we have roamed in leisure hours. Before us is a statue of Zeus, whom our classical reading has made a reality to us. This symphony gathers about a day in the country, suggesting an incident in our own experience of which we have pleasant remembrances. Intellectually, also, we enjoy the evidence of the artist's skill which the work exhibits. Or we may pass beyond the simple exercise of the intellect, and with a refinement of perception we may take a sensuous delight in the qualities of the material in which the work is embodied. This portrait is a subtle harmony of color and exquisite adjustment of line and mass. The luminous night which enwraps the Palisades is a solemn mighty chord. The white rhythm of this statue caresses the eye that follows it. This symphony is an intricate and wonderful wavepattern upon a sea of billowing sound in which the listener immerses himself 427 voluptuously. The essential significance of a work of art is not to be received apart from its form, but the form is more than merely sensuous in its appeal. Finally, therefore, the color and the composition of the portrait are but the point of meeting where we touch in energizing contact a powerful personality. Our spirit goes out into the night of these Palisades and dilates into immensity. This statue is Olympian majesty made visible, and in its presence we feel that we too are august. The symphony is a resolution of the struggle of our own tangled lives, a purification, and the experience of joy. Art is the expression of experience, whether the experience enacts itself within the spirit of the artist or derives from his contact with the external world. So by the same token, art is finally to be received as experience. The ultimate meaning of a work of art to the appreciator is what it wakens in him of emotion. It is the artist's business, by the manipulation of his materials and his elements, by the choice of motive and the rendering, by the note and pitch of his color, the ordering of his line, the disposition of his masses, to compel the direction of the emotion; he must not allow the solemnity and awe with which his night invests the Palisades to be mistaken by the beholder for terror or for mere obscurity. But the quality and the intensity of the emotion depend upon the temper of the appreciator's sensibilities and the depth and range of his experience of life. Art is not fixed and invariable in its effect. "Vanity Fair" is a great novel. One man may read it for the sake of the story, and in his amusement and interest in following the succession of incident, he may for a while forget himself. A possible use to put one's reading to; yet for that man the book is not art. Another may be entertained by the spectacle of the persons as they exhibit themselves in Thackeray's pages, much as he might stop a moment on the curbstone and watch a group of children at play in the street. Here he is a looker-on, holding himself aloof; and for him, again, the book is not art. Still a third may find in "Vanity Fair" a record of the customs and manners of English people at the beginning of the nineteenth century; and he adds this much to his stock of information. Still for him the book is not art. Not one of the three has touched in vital contact the essential meaning of "Vanity Fair." But the man who sees in the incidents of the book a situation possible in his own life, who identifies himself with the personages and acts out with them their adventures, who feels that he actually knows Rawdon Crawley and Becky Sharp, Jo Sedley, Dobbin, and Amelia, and understands their character and personality better here than in the actual world about him by force of Thackeray's greater insight and power of portraiture, who sees in English manners here represented the interpretation of his own surroundings, so that as a result of it all, his own experience becomes richer for his having lived out the life of the fictitious persons, his own acquaintances have revealed themselves more fully, his own life becomes more intelligible,-for him at last the book is a work of art. So any work may be a mirror which simply reflects the world as we know it; it may be a point of departure, from which tangentially we construct an experience of our own: it is truly art only in the degree that it is revelation. A work of art, therefore, is to be received by the individual appreciator as an added emotional experience. It appeals to him at all because in some way it relates itself to his own life; and its value to him is determined by the measure in which it carries him out into wider ranges of feeling. There are works whose absolute greatness he recognizes but yet which do not happen at the moment to find him. Constable comes to him as 428 immensely satisfying; Turner, though an object of great intellectual interest, leaves him cold. He knows Velasquez to be supreme among painters, but he turns away to stand before Frans Hals, whose quick, sure strokes call such very human beings into actuality and rouse his spirit to the fullest response. Why is it that of two works of equal depth of insight into life, of equal scope of feeling, of the same excellence of technical accomplishment, one has an appeal and a message for him and not the other? What is the bridge of transition between the work and the spirit of the appreciator by which the subtle connection is established? It comes back to a matter of harmony. Experience presents itself to us in fragments; and in so far as the parts are scattering and unrelated, it is not easy for us to guess the purpose of our being here. But so soon as details, which by virtue of some selecting principle are related to one another, gather themselves into a whole, chaos is resolved into order, and this whole becomes significant, intelligible, and beautiful. Instinctively we are seeking, each in his own way, to bring the fragments of experience into order; and that order stands to each of us for what we are, for our individual personality, the self. We define thus our selecting principle, by which we receive some incidents of experience as related to our development and we reject others as not related to it. Thus the individual life achieves its integrity, its unity and significance. This, too, is the process of art. A landscape in nature is capable of a various, interpretation. By bringing its details into order and unity, the artist creates its beauty. His perception of the harmony which his imagination compels out of the landscape is attended with emotion, and the emotion flows outward to expression in a form which is itself harmonious. This form is a work of art. Art, therefore, is the harmonizing of experience. Appreciation is an act of fusion and identification. In spirit we become the thing presented by the work of art and we merge with it in a larger unity. The individual harmony which a work of art manifests becomes significant to us as we can make it an harmonious part of our own experience and as it carries us in the direction of our development. But how to determine, each man for himself, what is the direction of our development? A life becomes significant to itself so soon as it is conscious of its purpose, and it becomes harmonious as it makes all the details of experience subserve that purpose. The purpose of the individual life, so far as we can guess it, seems to be that the life shall be as complete as possible, that it shall fulfill itself and provide through its offspring for its continuance. It is true that no life is isolated; as every atom throughout the universe is bound to every other atom by subtlest filaments of influence, so each human life stands related to all other lives. But the man best pays his debt of service to others who makes the most of that which is given him to work with; and that is his own personality. We must begin at the centre and work outwards. My concern is with my own justice. If I worry because my friend or another is not just, I not only do not make him more just, but I also fail of the highest justice I can achieve, which is my own. We must be true to ourselves. We help one another not by precept but by being; and what we are communicates itself. As physical life propagates and thus continues itself, so personality is transmitted in unconscious innumerable ways. The step and carriage of the body, the glance of the eye, the work of our hands, our silences no less than our speech, all express what we are. As everything follows upon what we are, so our responsibility is to be, to be 429 ourselves completely, perfectly. A tender shoot pushes its way out of the soil into light and air, and with the years it grows into a tree. The tree bears fruit, which contains the seed of new manifestations of itself. The fruit falls to the ground and rots, providing thus the aliment for the seed out of which other trees are to spring. From seed to seed the life of the tree is a cycle, without beginning and without end. At no one point in the cycle can we say, Here is the purpose of the tree. Incidentally the tree may minister to the needs and comfort and pleasure of man. The tree delights him to look upon it; its branches shade him from the noonday sun; its trunk and limbs can be hewn down and turned to heat and shelter; its fruit is good to eat. The primary purpose of the fruit, however, is not to furnish food to man, but to provide the envelope for the transmission of its seed and the continuance of its own life. Seen in its cosmic bearing and scope, the purpose of the tree is to be a tree, as fit, as strong, as beautiful, as complete, as tree-like, as it can be. The leaf precedes the flower and may be thought on that account to be inferior to it in the scale of development. If a leaf pines and withers in regret that it is not a flower, it not only does not become a flower, but it fails of being a good leaf. Everything in its place and after its own kind. In so far as it is perfectly itself, a leaf, a blossom, a tree, a man, does it contribute to the well-being of others. Man has subdued all things under his feet and turned them to his own uses. By force of mind he is the strongest creature, but it is not to be inferred that he is therefore the aim and end of all creation. Like everything else, he has his place; like everything else he has the right to live his own life, triumphing over the weaker and in his turn going down before a mightier when the mightier shall come; like everything else he is but a part in the universal whole. Only a part; but as we recognize our relation to other parts and through them our connection with the whole, our sense of the value of the individual life becomes infinitely extended. We must get into the rhythm, keeping step with the beat of the universal life and finding there our place, our destiny, the meaning of our being here, and joy. The goods which men set before themselves as an end are but by-products after all. If we pursue happiness we overtake it not. If we do what our hands find to do, devotedly and with our might, then, some day, if we happen to stop and make question of it, we discover that happiness is already there, in us, with us, and around us. The aim of a man's life in the world, as it would seem, is to be perfectly a man, and his end is to fulfill himself; as part of this fulfillment of himself, he provides for the continuance of his life in other lives, and transmitting his character and influence, he enriches other lives because of what he is. The purpose of seeing is that we may see more, and the eye is ever striving to increase its power; the health of the eye is growth. The purpose of life is more life, individual in the measure that it lies within a man's power to develop it, but cosmic in its sources and its influence. As the harmony which a work of art presents finds a place in that harmony of experience and outward-reaching desire which constitutes our personality, art becomes for us an entrance into more life. In the large, art is a means of development. But as any work embraces diverse elements and is capable of a various appeal, it may be asked in what sense the appreciation of art is related to education and culture. Before we can answer the question intelligently, we must know what we mean by our terms. By many people 430 education is regarded as they regard any material possession, to be classed with fashionable clothes, a fine house, a carriage and pair, or touring-car, or steam yacht, as the credential and card of entrée to what is called good society. Culture is a kind of ornamental furniture, maintained to impress visitors. Of course we ourselves do not think so, but we know people who do. Nor do we believe-as some believe-that education is simply a means of gaining a more considerable livelihood. It is pathetic to see young men in college struggling in desperate, uncomplaining sacrifice to obtain an education, and all the while mistaking the end of their effort. Not all the deeds of daring in a university course are enacted on the athletic field; the men I am thinking of do not have their pictures published in the newspapers,-the unrecorded heroisms of college life are very moving to those who know. But the tragedy I have in mind is this-for tragedy consists not in sacrifice itself but in needless and futile sacrifice-that some of these young men suppose there is a magic virtue in education for its own sake, that it is the open-sesame to all the wealth and beauty of life. With insufficient ability to start with, they are preparing to be unfit professional men, when they might be excellent artisans. The knowledge of books is in no sense the whole story nor the only means of education. In devotion to some craft or in the intelligent conduct of some business they might find the true education, which is the conscious discipline of one's powers. The man who can do things, whether with his hands or with his brain, provided intelligence govern the exercise of hand and brain, and who finds happiness in his work because it is the expression of himself, is an educated man. The end of education is the building of personality, the making of human power, and its fruit is wisdom. Wisdom, however, does not consist in the most extensive knowledge of facts. Oftentimes information overweights a man and snuffs out what personal force there might otherwise have been. On the futility of mere learning there is abundant testimony. Walt Whitman, as we might expect from his passion for the vital and the human, has said: "You must not know too much and be too precise and scientific about birds and trees and flowers and watercraft. A certain free margin, perhaps ignorance, credulity, helps your enjoyment of these things and of the sentiment of feather'd, wooded, river or marine nature generally. I repeat it-don't want to know too exactly or the reasons why." Even Ruskin, whose learning was extensive and various, bears witness to the same effect. He notes "the diminution which my knowledge of the Alps had made in my impression of them, and the way in which investigation of strata and structure reduces all mountain sublimity to mere debris and wall-building." In the same spirit he planned an essay on the Uses of Ignorance. From the midst of his labors in Venice he wrote: "I am sure that people who work out subjects thoroughly are disagreeable wretches. One only feels as one should when one doesn't know much about the matter." In other words, we are not to let our knowledge come between us and our power to feel. In thus seeming to assail education I am not seeking to subvert or destroy; I want simply to adjust the emphasis. The really wise man is he who knows how to make life yield him its utmost of true satisfaction and furnish him the largest scope for the use of his powers and the expression of himself. In this sense a newsboy in the streets may be wiser than a university professor, in that one may be the master of his life and the other may be the servant of his information. Education should have for its end the training of capacities and powers, the discipline and control of the intelligence, the quickening of the sympathies, the development of the 431 ability to live. No man is superior to his fellows because of the fact of his education. His education profits him only in so far as it makes him more of a man, more responsive because his own emotions have been more deeply stirred, more tolerant because his wider range has revealed more that is good, more generous to give of his own life and service because he has more generously received. It is not what we know nor what we have that marks our worth, but what we are. No man, however fortunate and well-circumstanced he may be, can afford to thank God that he is not as other men are. In so far as his education tends to withdraw him from life and from contact with his fellows of whatever station, in so far as it fosters in him the consciousness of class, so far it is an evil. Education should lead us not to judge lives different from our own, but to try to understand and, to appreciate. The educated man, above all others, should thank God that there are diversity of gifts and so many kinds of good. Art is a means of culture, but art rightly understood and received. Art does not aim to teach. It may teach incidentally, tangentially to its circle, but instruction, either intellectual or ethical, is not its purpose. It fulfills itself in the spirit of the appreciator as it enables him in its presence to become something that otherwise he had not been. It is not enough to be told things; we must make trial of them and live them out in our own experience before they become true for us. As appreciation is not knowledge but feeling, so we must live our art. It is well to have near us some work that we want to be like. We get its fullest message only as we identify ourselves with it. If we are willing to be thought ignorant and to live our lives as seems good to us, I believe it is better to go the whole way with a few things that can minister to us abundantly and so come to the end of them, than to touch in superficial contact a great many lesser works. The lesser works have their place; and so far as they can carry us beyond the point where we are, they can serve us. In a hurried touch-and-go, however, there is danger of scattering; whereas true appreciation takes time, for it is less an act than a whole attitude of mind. This is an age of handbooks and short cuts. But there is no substitute for life. If for one reason or another the opportunity to realize art in terms of life is not accorded us, it is better to accept the situation quite frankly and happily, and not try to cheat ourselves with the semblance. But if it is indeed the reality, then we maybe content with the minutes of experience, though we are denied the hours or the years. "The messages of great poems," says Whitman, "to each man and woman are, Come to us on equal terms; only then can you understand us." The power of response must be in us, and that power is the fruit of experience. The only mystery of art is the mystery of all life itself. In nature the artist finds the manifestation of a larger self toward which he aspires, and this is what his work expresses. Alone with his spirit, he cries to us for that intimate mystic companionship which is appreciation, and our response gives back the echo of his cry. He reaches out across the distance to touch other and kindred spirits and draw them to himself. Says the poet,- "Thou reader throbbest life and pride and love the same as I, Therefore for thee the following chants." We appreciate the artist's work as in it we live again and doubly. 432 Thus art links itself with life. The message of art to the individual defines itself according to his individual needs. Life rises with each man, to him a new opportunity and a new destiny. We create our own world; and life means to us what we are in ourselves. In art we are seeking to find ourselves expressed more fully. The works that we care for, if we consider it a moment, are the works we understand; and we understand them because they phrase for us our own experience. Life and the truth of life are relative. Truth is not in the object but in our relation to it. What is true for me may or may not be true for another. This much is true for me, namely, whatever tallies with my experience and reveals to me more of the underlying purpose of the universe. We are all, each in his own way, seeking the meaning of life; and that meaning is special and personal to the individual, each man deciding for himself. By selection here, by rejection there, we are trying to work toward harmony. The details of life become increasingly complex with the years, but living grows simpler because we gradually fix a selecting and unifying principle. When we have truly found ourselves, we come to feel that the external incidents do not signify; which chance happens, whether this or that, is indifferent. It is the spirit in which the life is lived that determines its quality and value. The perception of purpose in the parts brings them into order and gives them meaning. A man's life is an expanding circle, the circumference of which is drawn around an order or interplay and adjustment of part with part. Whatever lies without the circle does not pertain to the individual-as yet. So soon as any experience reveals its meaning to us and we feel that it takes its place in our life, then it belongs to us. Whatever serves to bring details, before scattering and unrelated, into order, is for that moment true. Art has a message for us as it tallies with what we already know about life; and, quickening our perceptions, disclosing depths of feeling, it carries us into new ranges of experience. In this attitude toward life lies the justice of the personal estimate. The individual is finally his own authority. To find truth we return upon our own consciousness, and we seek thus to define our "original relation" to the universal order. So as one stands before the works of the Italian painters and sculptors, for example, in the endeavor rightly to appreciate what they have achieved, one may ask: How much of life has this artist to express to me, of life as I know it or can know it? Has the painter through these forms, however crude or however accomplished, uttered what he genuinely and for himself thought and felt? The measure of these pictures for me is the degree of reality, of vital feeling, which they transmit. Whether it be spring or divine maternity or the beauty of a pagan idea, which Botticelli renders, the same power is there, the same sense of gracious life. Whether it be Credi's naïve womanhood, or Titian's abounding, glorious women and calm and forceful men, or Delia Robbia's joyous children and Donatello's sprites, the same great meaning is expressed, the same appreciation of the goodness and beauty of all life. This beauty is for me, here, to-day. In the experience of a man who thinks and feels, there is a time when his imagination turns toward the past. At the moment, as the world closes in about him, his spirit, dulled by the attrition of daily use and wont, is unable to discern the beauty and significance of the present life around him. For a time his imagination finds abundant nourishment in the mighty past. Many spirits are content there to remain. But life is of the present. To live greatly is to live now, inspired by the past, corrected and encouraged by it, impelled by "forward-looking thoughts'" and providing for the future, but living in to-day. Life is neither remembrance nor 433 anticipation, neither regret nor deferment, but present realization. Often one feels in a gallery that the people are more significant than the pictures. Two lovers furtively holding hands and stopping before a canvas to press closer together, shoulder to shoulder; a young girl erect and firm, conscious of her young womanhood and rejoicing in it, radiating youth and life; an old man, whose years are behind him yet whose interest reveals his eager welcome of new experience, unconsciously rebuking the jaded and indifferent: here is reality. Before it the pictures seem to recede and become dimmed. Our appreciation of these things makes the significance of it all. Only in so far as art can communicate this sensation, this same impression of the beauty and present reality of life, has it a meaning for us. The painter must have registered his appreciation of immediate reality and must impart that to us until it becomes, heightened and intensified, our own. The secret of successful living lies in compelling the details of our surroundings to our own ends. Michelangelo lived his life; Leonardo lived his; neither could be the other. A man must paint the life that he knows, the experience into which he enters. So we must live our lives immediately and newly. We have penetrated the ultimate mystery of art when we realize the inseparable oneness of art with life. Art is a call to fuller living. Its real service is to increase our capacity for experience. The pictures, the music, the books, which profit us are those which, when we have done with them, make us feel that we have lived by just so much. Often we purchase experience with enthusiasm; we become wise at the expense of our power to enjoy. What we need in relation to art is not more knowledge but greater capability of feeling, not the acquisition of more facts but the increased power to interpret facts and to apply them to life. In appreciation it is not what we know about a work of art, it is not even what we actually see before us, that constitutes its significance, but what in its presence we are able to feel. The paradox that nature imitates art has in it this much of truth, that art is the revelation of the possibilities of life, and we try to make these possibilities actual in our own experience. Art is not an escape from life and a refuge; it is a challenge and reënforcement. Its action is not to make us less conscious but more; in it we are not to lose ourselves but to find ourselves more truly and more fully. Its effect is to help us to a larger and juster appreciation of the beauty and worth of nature and of life. Art is within the range of every man who holds himself open to its appeal. But art is not the final thing. It is a means to an end; its end is personality. There are exalted moments in the experience of us all which we feel to be finer than any art. Then we do not need to turn to painting, music, literature, for our satisfaction. We are living. Art is aid and inspiration, but its fulfillment and end is life. "We live," says Wordsworth, "by admiration, hope, and love." Admiration is wonder and worship, a sense of the mystery and the beauty of life as we know it now, and thankfulness for it, and joy. Hope is the vision of things to be. And love is the supreme enfolding unity that makes all one. Art is life at its best, but life is the greatest of the arts,-life harmonious, deep in feeling, big in sympathy, the life that is appreciation, responsiveness, and love. 434 11 Walter Benjamin The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction ―Our fine arts were developed, their types and uses were established, in times very different from the present, by men whose power of action upon things was insignificant in comparison with ours. But the amazing growth of our techniques, the adaptability and precision they have attained, the ideas and habits they are creating, make it a certainty that profound changes are impending in the ancient craft of the Beautiful. In all the arts there is a physical component which can no longer be considered or treated as it used to be, which cannot remain unaffected by our modern knowledge and power. For the last twenty years neither matter nor space nor time has been what it was from time immemorial. We must expect great innovations to transform the entire technique of the arts, thereby affecting artistic invention itself and perhaps even bringing about an amazing change in our very notion of art.‖ Paul Valéry, Pièces sur L'Art, 1931 Le Conquete de l'ubiquite Preface When Marx undertook his critique of the capitalistic mode of production, this mode was in its infancy. Marx directed his efforts in such a way as to give them prognostic value. He went back to the basic conditions underlying capitalistic production and through his presentation showed what could be expected of capitalism in the future. The result was that one could expect it not only to exploit the proletariat with increasing intensity, but ultimately to create conditions which would make it possible to abolish capitalism itself. The transformation of the superstructure, which takes place far more slowly than that of the substructure, has taken more than half a century to manifest in all areas of culture the change in the conditions of production. Only today can it be indicated what form this has taken. Certain prognostic requirements should be met by these statements. However, theses about the art of the proletariat after its assumption of power or about the art of a classless society would have less bearing on these demands than theses about the developmental tendencies of art under present conditions of production. Their dialectic is no less noticeable in the superstructure than in the economy. It would therefore be wrong to underestimate the value of such theses as a weapon. They brush aside a number of outmoded concepts, such as creativity and genius, eternal value and mystery – concepts whose uncontrolled (and at present almost uncontrollable) application would lead to a processing of data in the Fascist sense. The concepts which are introduced into the theory of art in what follows differ from the more familiar terms in that they are completely useless for the purposes of Fascism. They are, on the other hand, useful for the formulation of revolutionary demands in the politics of art. 435 I In principle a work of art has always been reproducible. Man-made artifacts could always be imitated by men. Replicas were made by pupils in practice of their craft, by masters for diffusing their works, and, finally, by third parties in the pursuit of gain. Mechanical reproduction of a work of art, however, represents something new. Historically, it advanced intermittently and in leaps at long intervals, but with accelerated intensity. The Greeks knew only two procedures of technically reproducing works of art: founding and stamping. Bronzes, terra cottas, and coins were the only art works which they could produce in quantity. All others were unique and could not be mechanically reproduced. With the woodcut graphic art became mechanically reproducible for the first time, long before script became reproducible by print. The enormous changes which printing, the mechanical reproduction of writing, has brought about in literature are a familiar story. However, within the phenomenon which we are here examining from the perspective of world history, print is merely a special, though particularly important, case. During the Middle Ages engraving and etching were added to the woodcut; at the beginning of the nineteenth century lithography made its appearance. With lithography the technique of reproduction reached an essentially new stage. This much more direct process was distinguished by the tracing of the design on a stone rather than its incision on a block of wood or its etching on a copperplate and permitted graphic art for the first time to put its products on the market, not only in large numbers as hitherto, but also in daily changing forms. Lithography enabled graphic art to illustrate everyday life, and it began to keep pace with printing. But only a few decades after its invention, lithography was surpassed by photography. For the first time in the process of pictorial reproduction, photography freed the hand of the most important artistic functions which henceforth devolved only upon the eye looking into a lens. Since the eye perceives more swiftly than the hand can draw, the process of pictorial reproduction was accelerated so enormously that it could keep pace with speech. A film operator shooting a scene in the studio captures the images at the speed of an actor's speech. Just as lithography virtually implied the illustrated newspaper, so did photography foreshadow the sound film. The technical reproduction of sound was tackled at the end of the last century. These convergent endeavors made predictable a situation which Paul Valery pointed up in this sentence: ―Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign.‖ Around 1900 technical reproduction had reached a standard that not only permitted it to reproduce all transmitted works of art and thus to cause the most profound change in their impact upon the public; it also had captured a place of its own among the artistic processes. For the study of this standard nothing is more revealing than the nature of the repercussions that these two different manifestations – the reproduction of works of art and the art of the film – have had on art in its traditional form. II 436 Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence. This includes the changes which it may have suffered in physical condition over the years as well as the various changes in its ownership. The traces of the first can be revealed only by chemical or physical analyses which it is impossible to perform on a reproduction; changes of ownership are subject to a tradition which must be traced from the situation of the original. The presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity. Chemical analyses of the patina of a bronze can help to establish this, as does the proof that a given manuscript of the Middle Ages stems from an archive of the fifteenth century. The whole sphere of authenticity is outside technical – and, of course, not only technical – reproducibility. Confronted with its manual reproduction, which was usually branded as a forgery, the original preserved all its authority; not so vis-à-vis technical reproduction. The reason is twofold. First, process reproduction is more independent of the original than manual reproduction. For example, in photography, process reproduction can bring out those aspects of the original that are unattainable to the naked eye yet accessible to the lens, which is adjustable and chooses its angle at will. And photographic reproduction, with the aid of certain processes, such as enlargement or slow motion, can capture images which escape natural vision. Secondly, technical reproduction can put the copy of the original into situations which would be out of reach for the original itself. Above all, it enables the original to meet the beholder halfway, be it in the form of a photograph or a phonograph record. The cathedral leaves its locale to be received in the studio of a lover of art; the choral production, performed in an auditorium or in the open air, resounds in the drawing room. The situations into which the product of mechanical reproduction can be brought may not touch the actual work of art, yet the quality of its presence is always depreciated. This holds not only for the art work but also, for instance, for a landscape which passes in review before the spectator in a movie. In the case of the art object, a most sensitive nucleus – namely, its authenticity – is interfered with whereas no natural object is vulnerable on that score. The authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced. Since the historical testimony rests on the authenticity, the former, too, is jeopardized by reproduction when substantive duration ceases to matter. And what is really jeopardized when the historical testimony is affected is the authority of the object. One might subsume the eliminated element in the term ―aura‖ and go on to say: that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art. This is a symptomatic process whose significance points beyond the realm of art. One might generalize by saying: the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced. These two 437 processes lead to a tremendous shattering of tradition which is the obverse of the contemporary crisis and renewal of mankind. Both processes are intimately connected with the contemporary mass movements. Their most powerful agent is the film. Its social significance, particularly in its most positive form, is inconceivable without its destructive, cathartic aspect, that is, the liquidation of the traditional value of the cultural heritage. This phenomenon is most palpable in the great historical films. It extends to ever new positions. In 1927 Abel Gance exclaimed enthusiastically: ―Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Beethoven will make films... all legends, all mythologies and all myths, all founders of religion, and the very religions... await their exposed resurrection, and the heroes crowd each other at the gate.‖ Presumably without intending it, he issued an invitation to a far-reaching liquidation. III During long periods of history, the mode of human sense perception changes with humanity's entire mode of existence. The manner in which human sense perception is organized, the medium in which it is accomplished, is determined not only by nature but by historical circumstances as well. The fifth century, with its great shifts of population, saw the birth of the late Roman art industry and the Vienna Genesis, and there developed not only an art different from that of antiquity but also a new kind of perception. The scholars of the Viennese school, Riegl and Wickhoff, who resisted the weight of classical tradition under which these later art forms had been buried, were the first to draw conclusions from them concerning the organization of perception at the time. However far-reaching their insight, these scholars limited themselves to showing the significant, formal hallmark which characterized perception in late Roman times. They did not attempt – and, perhaps, saw no way – to show the social transformations expressed by these changes of perception. The conditions for an analogous insight are more favorable in the present. And if changes in the medium of contemporary perception can be comprehended as decay of the aura, it is possible to show its social causes. The concept of aura which was proposed above with reference to historical objects may usefully be illustrated with reference to the aura of natural ones. We define the aura of the latter as the unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it may be. If, while resting on a summer afternoon, you follow with your eyes a mountain range on the horizon or a branch which casts its shadow over you, you experience the aura of those mountains, of that branch. This image makes it easy to comprehend the social bases of the contemporary decay of the aura. It rests on two circumstances, both of which are related to the increasing significance of the masses in contemporary life. Namely, the desire of contemporary masses to bring things ―closer‖ spatially and humanly, which is just as ardent as their bent toward overcoming the uniqueness of every reality by accepting its reproduction. Every day the urge grows stronger to get hold of an object at very close range by way of its likeness, its reproduction. Unmistakably, reproduction as offered by picture magazines and newsreels differs from the image seen by the unarmed eye. Uniqueness and permanence are as closely linked in the latter as are transitoriness and 438 reproducibility in the former. To pry an object from its shell, to destroy its aura, is the mark of a perception whose ―sense of the universal equality of things‖ has increased to such a degree that it extracts it even from a unique object by means of reproduction. Thus is manifested in the field of perception what in the theoretical sphere is noticeable in the increasing importance of statistics. The adjustment of reality to the masses and of the masses to reality is a process of unlimited scope, as much for thinking as for perception. IV The uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from its being imbedded in the fabric of tradition. This tradition itself is thoroughly alive and extremely changeable. An ancient statue of Venus, for example, stood in a different traditional context with the Greeks, who made it an object of veneration, than with the clerics of the Middle Ages, who viewed it as an ominous idol. Both of them, however, were equally confronted with its uniqueness, that is, its aura. Originally the contextual integration of art in tradition found its expression in the cult. We know that the earliest art works originated in the service of a ritual – first the magical, then the religious kind. It is significant that the existence of the work of art with reference to its aura is never entirely separated from its ritual function. In other words, the unique value of the ―authentic‖ work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its original use value. This ritualistic basis, however remote, is still recognizable as secularized ritual even in the most profane forms of the cult of beauty. The secular cult of beauty, developed during the Renaissance and prevailing for three centuries, clearly showed that ritualistic basis in its decline and the first deep crisis which befell it. With the advent of the first truly revolutionary means of reproduction, photography, simultaneously with the rise of socialism, art sensed the approaching crisis which has become evident a century later. At the time, art reacted with the doctrine of l'art pour l'art, that is, with a theology of art. This gave rise to what might be called a negative theology in the form of the idea of ―pure‖ art, which not only denied any social function of art but also any categorizing by subject matter. (In poetry, Mallarme was the first to take this position.) An analysis of art in the age of mechanical reproduction must do justice to these relationships, for they lead us to an all-important insight: for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the ―authentic‖ print makes no sense. But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice – politics. V Works of art are received and valued on different planes. Two polar types stand out; with one, the accent is on the cult value; with the other, on the exhibition value of the work. Artistic production begins with ceremonial objects destined to serve in a cult. One may assume that what mattered was their existence, not their being on view. The elk portrayed by the man of the Stone Age on the walls of his cave was an instrument of magic. He did 439 expose it to his fellow men, but in the main it was meant for the spirits. Today the cult value would seem to demand that the work of art remain hidden. Certain statues of gods are accessible only to the priest in the cella; certain Madonnas remain covered nearly all year round; certain sculptures on medieval cathedrals are invisible to the spectator on ground level. With the emancipation of the various art practices from ritual go increasing opportunities for the exhibition of their products. It is easier to exhibit a portrait bust that can be sent here and there than to exhibit the statue of a divinity that has its fixed place in the interior of a temple. The same holds for the painting as against the mosaic or fresco that preceded it. And even though the public presentability of a mass originally may have been just as great as that of a symphony, the latter originated at the moment when its public presentability promised to surpass that of the mass. With the different methods of technical reproduction of a work of art, its fitness for exhibition increased to such an extent that the quantitative shift between its two poles turned into a qualitative transformation of its nature. This is comparable to the situation of the work of art in prehistoric times when, by the absolute emphasis on its cult value, it was, first and foremost, an instrument of magic. Only later did it come to be recognized as a work of art. In the same way today, by the absolute emphasis on its exhibition value the work of art becomes a creation with entirely new functions, among which the one we are conscious of, the artistic function, later may be recognized as incidental. This much is certain: today photography and the film are the most serviceable exemplifications of this new function. VI In photography, exhibition value begins to displace cult value all along the line. But cult value does not give way without resistance. It retires into an ultimate retrenchment: the human countenance. It is no accident that the portrait was the focal point of early photography. The cult of remembrance of loved ones, absent or dead, offers a last refuge for the cult value of the picture. For the last time the aura emanates from the early photographs in the fleeting expression of a human face. This is what constitutes their melancholy, incomparable beauty. But as man withdraws from the photographic image, the exhibition value for the first time shows its superiority to the ritual value. To have pinpointed this new stage constitutes the incomparable significance of Atget, who, around 1900, took photographs of deserted Paris streets. It has quite justly been said of him that he photographed them like scenes of crime. The scene of a crime, too, is deserted; it is photographed for the purpose of establishing evidence. With Atget, photographs become standard evidence for historical occurrences, and acquire a hidden political significance. They demand a specific kind of approach; free-floating contemplation is not appropriate to them. They stir the viewer; he feels challenged by them in a new way. At the same time picture magazines begin to put up signposts for him, right ones or wrong ones, no matter. For the first time, captions have become obligatory. And it is clear that they have an altogether different character than the title of a painting. The directives which the captions give to those looking at pictures in illustrated magazines soon become even more explicit and more imperative in the film where the meaning of each single picture appears to be prescribed by the sequence of all preceding ones. 440 VII The nineteenth-century dispute as to the artistic value of painting versus photography today seems devious and confused. This does not diminish its importance, however; if anything, it underlines it. The dispute was in fact the symptom of a historical transformation the universal impact of which was not realized by either of the rivals. When the age of mechanical reproduction separated art from its basis in cult, the semblance of its autonomy disappeared forever. The resulting change in the function of art transcended the perspective of the century; for a long time it even escaped that of the twentieth century, which experienced the development of the film. Earlier much futile thought had been devoted to the question of whether photography is an art. The primary question – whether the very invention of photography had not transformed the entire nature of art – was not raised. Soon the film theoreticians asked the same ill-considered question with regard to the film. But the difficulties which photography caused traditional aesthetics were mere child's play as compared to those raised by the film. Whence the insensitive and forced character of early theories of the film. Abel Gance, for instance, compares the film with hieroglyphs: ―Here, by a remarkable regression, we have come back to the level of expression of the Egyptians ... Pictorial language has not yet matured because our eyes have not yet adjusted to it. There is as yet insufficient respect for, insufficient cult of, what it expresses.‖ Or, in the words of Séverin-Mars: ―What art has been granted a dream more poetical and more real at the same time! Approached in this fashion the film might represent an incomparable means of expression. Only the most high-minded persons, in the most perfect and mysterious moments of their lives, should be allowed to enter its ambience.‖ Alexandre Arnoux concludes his fantasy about the silent film with the question: ―Do not all the bold descriptions we have given amount to the definition of prayer?‖ It is instructive to note how their desire to class the film among the ―arts‖ forces these theoreticians to read ritual elements into it – with a striking lack of discretion. Yet when these speculations were published, films like L'Opinion publique and The Gold Rush had already appeared. This, however, did not keep Abel Gance from adducing hieroglyphs for purposes of comparison, nor Séverin-Mars from speaking of the film as one might speak of paintings by Fra Angelico. Characteristically, even today ultrareactionary authors give the film a similar contextual significance – if not an outright sacred one, then at least a supernatural one. Commenting on Max Reinhardt's film version of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Werfel states that undoubtedly it was the sterile copying of the exterior world with its streets, interiors, railroad stations, restaurants, motorcars, and beaches which until now had obstructed the elevation of the film to the realm of art. ―The film has not yet realized its true meaning, its real possibilities ... these consist in its unique faculty to express by natural means and with incomparable persuasiveness all that is fairylike, marvelous, supernatural.‖ VIII The artistic performance of a stage actor is definitely presented to the public by the actor in person; that of the screen actor, however, is presented by a camera, with a twofold consequence. The camera that presents the performance of the film actor to the public need not respect the performance as an integral whole. Guided by the cameraman, the camera continually changes its position with respect to the performance. The sequence of 441 positional views which the editor composes from the material supplied him constitutes the completed film. It comprises certain factors of movement which are in reality those of the camera, not to mention special camera angles, close-ups, etc. Hence, the performance of the actor is subjected to a series of optical tests. This is the first consequence of the fact that the actor's performance is presented by means of a camera. Also, the film actor lacks the opportunity of the stage actor to adjust to the audience during his performance, since he does not present his performance to the audience in person. This permits the audience to take the position of a critic, without experiencing any personal contact with the actor. The audience's identification with the actor is really an identification with the camera. Consequently the audience takes the position of the camera; its approach is that of testing. This is not the approach to which cult values may be exposed. IX For the film, what matters primarily is that the actor represents himself to the public before the camera, rather than representing someone else. One of the first to sense the actor's metamorphosis by this form of testing was Pirandello. Though his remarks on the subject in his novel Si Gira were limited to the negative aspects of the question and to the silent film only, this hardly impairs their validity. For in this respect, the sound film did not change anything essential. What matters is that the part is acted not for an audience but for a mechanical contrivance – in the case of the sound film, for two of them. ―The film actor,‖ wrote Pirandello, ―feels as if in exile – exiled not only from the stage but also from himself. With a vague sense of discomfort he feels inexplicable emptiness: his body loses its corporeality, it evaporates, it is deprived of reality, life, voice, and the noises caused by his moving about, in order to be changed into a mute image, flickering an instant on the screen, then vanishing into silence .... The projector will play with his shadow before the public, and he himself must be content to play before the camera.‖ This situation might also be characterized as follows: for the first time – and this is the effect of the film – man has to operate with his whole living person, yet forgoing its aura. For aura is tied to his presence; there can be no replica of it. The aura which, on the stage, emanates from Macbeth, cannot be separated for the spectators from that of the actor. However, the singularity of the shot in the studio is that the camera is substituted for the public. Consequently, the aura that envelops the actor vanishes, and with it the aura of the figure he portrays. It is not surprising that it should be a dramatist such as Pirandello who, in characterizing the film, inadvertently touches on the very crisis in which we see the theater. Any thorough study proves that there is indeed no greater contrast than that of the stage play to a work of art that is completely subject to or, like the film, founded in, mechanical reproduction. Experts have long recognized that in the film ―the greatest effects are almost always obtained by  acting' as little as possible ... ‖ In 1932 Rudolf Arnheim saw ―the latest trend ... in treating the actor as a stage prop chosen for its characteristics and... inserted at the proper place.‖ With this idea something else is closely connected. The stage actor identifies himself with the character of his role. The film actor very often is denied this opportunity. His creation is by no means all of a piece; it is composed of many separate performances. Besides certain fortuitous considerations, such as cost of studio, availability of fellow players, décor, etc., there are elementary necessities of 442 equipment that split the actor's work into a series of mountable episodes. In particular, lighting and its installation require the presentation of an event that, on the screen, unfolds as a rapid and unified scene, in a sequence of separate shootings which may take hours at the studio; not to mention more obvious montage. Thus a jump from the window can be shot in the studio as a jump from a scaffold, and the ensuing flight, if need be, can be shot weeks later when outdoor scenes are taken. Far more paradoxical cases can easily be construed. Let us assume that an actor is supposed to be startled by a knock at the door. If his reaction is not satisfactory, the director can resort to an expedient: when the actor happens to be at the studio again he has a shot fired behind him without his being forewarned of it. The frightened reaction can be shot now and be cut into the screen version. Nothing more strikingly shows that art has left the realm of the ―beautiful semblance‖ which, so far, had been taken to be the only sphere where art could thrive. X The feeling of strangeness that overcomes the actor before the camera, as Pirandello describes it, is basically of the same kind as the estrangement felt before one's own image in the mirror. But now the reflected image has become separable, transportable. And where is it transported? Before the public. Never for a moment does the screen actor cease to be conscious of this fact. While facing the camera he knows that ultimately he will face the public, the consumers who constitute the market. This market, where he offers not only his labor but also his whole self, his heart and soul, is beyond his reach. During the shooting he has as little contact with it as any article made in a factory. This may contribute to that oppression, that new anxiety which, according to Pirandello, grips the actor before the camera. The film responds to the shriveling of the aura with an artificial build-up of the ―personality‖ outside the studio. The cult of the movie star, fostered by the money of the film industry, preserves not the unique aura of the person but the ―spell of the personality,‖ the phony spell of a commodity. So long as the moviemakers' capital sets the fashion, as a rule no other revolutionary merit can be accredited to today's film than the promotion of a revolutionary criticism of traditional concepts of art. We do not deny that in some cases today's films can also promote revolutionary criticism of social conditions, even of the distribution of property. However, our present study is no more specifically concerned with this than is the film production of Western Europe. It is inherent in the technique of the film as well as that of sports that everybody who witnesses its accomplishments is somewhat of an expert. This is obvious to anyone listening to a group of newspaper boys leaning on their bicycles and discussing the outcome of a bicycle race. It is not for nothing that newspaper publishers arrange races for their delivery boys. These arouse great interest among the participants, for the victor has an opportunity to rise from delivery boy to professional racer. Similarly, the newsreel offers everyone the opportunity to rise from passer-by to movie extra. In this way any man might even find himself part of a work of art, as witness Vertov's Three Songs About Lenin or Ivens' Borinage. Any man today can lay claim to being filmed. This claim can best be elucidated by a comparative look at the historical situation of contemporary literature. 443 For centuries a small number of writers were confronted by many thousands of readers. This changed toward the end of the last century. With the increasing extension of the press, which kept placing new political, religious, scientific, professional, and local organs before the readers, an increasing number of readers became writers – at first, occasional ones. It began with the daily press opening to its readers space for ―letters to the editor.‖ And today there is hardly a gainfully employed European who could not, in principle, find an opportunity to publish somewhere or other comments on his work, grievances, documentary reports, or that sort of thing. Thus, the distinction between author and public is about to lose its basic character. The difference becomes merely functional; it may vary from case to case. At any moment the reader is ready to turn into a writer. As expert, which he had to become willy-nilly in an extremely specialized work process, even if only in some minor respect, the reader gains access to authorship. In the Soviet Union work itself is given a voice. To present it verbally is part of a man's ability to perform the work. Literary license is now founded on polytechnic rather than specialized training and thus becomes common property. All this can easily be applied to the film, where transitions that in literature took centuries have come about in a decade. In cinematic practice, particularly in Russia, this changeover has partially become established reality. Some of the players whom we meet in Russian films are not actors in our sense but people who portray themselves and primarily in their own work process. In Western Europe the capitalistic exploitation of the film denies consideration to modern man's legitimate claim to being reproduced. Under these circumstances the film industry is trying hard to spur the interest of the masses through illusion-promoting spectacles and dubious speculations. XI The shooting of a film, especially of a sound film, affords a spectacle unimaginable anywhere at any time before this. It presents a process in which it is impossible to assign to a spectator a viewpoint which would exclude from the actual scene such extraneous accessories as camera equipment, lighting machinery, staff assistants, etc. – unless his eye were on a line parallel with the lens. This circumstance, more than any other, renders superficial and insignificant any possible similarity between a scene in the studio and one on the stage. In the theater one is well aware of the place from which the play cannot immediately be detected as illusionary. There is no such place for the movie scene that is being shot. Its illusionary nature is that of the second degree, the result of cutting. That is to say, in the studio the mechanical equipment has penetrated so deeply into reality that its pure aspect freed from the foreign substance of equipment is the result of a special procedure, namely, the shooting by the specially adjusted camera and the mounting of the shot together with other similar ones. The equipment-free aspect of reality here has become the height of artifice; the sight of immediate reality has become an orchid in the land of technology. Even more revealing is the comparison of these circumstances, which differ so much from those of the theater, with the situation in painting. Here the question is: How does the cameraman compare with the painter? To answer this we take recourse to an analogy with a surgical operation. The surgeon represents the polar opposite of the magician. The 444 magician heals a sick person by the laying on of hands; the surgeon cuts into the patient's body. The magician maintains the natural distance between the patient and himself; though he reduces it very slightly by the laying on of hands, he greatly increases it by virtue of his authority. The surgeon does exactly the reverse; he greatly diminishes the distance between himself and the patient by penetrating into the patient's body, and increases it but little by the caution with which his hand moves among the organs. In short, in contrast to the magician who is still hidden in the medical practitioner – the surgeon at the decisive moment abstains from facing the patient man to man; rather, it is through the operation that he penetrates into him. Magician and surgeon compare to painter and cameraman. The painter maintains in his work a natural distance from reality, the cameraman penetrates deeply into its web. There is a tremendous difference between the pictures they obtain. That of the painter is a total one, that of the cameraman consists of multiple fragments which are assembled under a new law. Thus, for contemporary man the representation of reality by the film is incomparably more significant than that of the painter, since it offers, precisely because of the thoroughgoing permeation of reality with mechanical equipment, an aspect of reality which is free of all equipment. And that is what one is entitled to ask from a work of art. XII Mechanical reproduction of art changes the reaction of the masses toward art. The reactionary attitude toward a Picasso painting changes into the progressive reaction toward a Chaplin movie. The progressive reaction is characterized by the direct, intimate fusion of visual and emotional enjoyment with the orientation of the expert. Such fusion is of great social significance. The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion. With regard to the screen, the critical and the receptive attitudes of the public coincide. The decisive reason for this is that individual reactions are predetermined by the mass audience response they are about to produce, and this is nowhere more pronounced than in the film. The moment these responses become manifest they control each other. Again, the comparison with painting is fruitful. A painting has always had an excellent chance to be viewed by one person or by a few. The simultaneous contemplation of paintings by a large public, such as developed in the nineteenth century, is an early symptom of the crisis of painting, a crisis which was by no means occasioned exclusively by photography but rather in a relatively independent manner by the appeal of art works to the masses. Painting simply is in no position to present an object for simultaneous collective experience, as it was possible for architecture at all times, for the epic poem in the past, and for the movie today. Although this circumstance in itself should not lead one to conclusions about the social role of painting, it does constitute a serious threat as soon as painting, under special conditions and, as it were, against its nature, is confronted directly by the masses. In the churches and monasteries of the Middle Ages and at the princely courts up to the end of the eighteenth century, a collective reception of paintings did not occur simultaneously, but by graduated and hierarchized mediation. The change that has 445 come about is an expression of the particular conflict in which painting was implicated by the mechanical reproducibility of paintings. Although paintings began to be publicly exhibited in galleries and salons, there was no way for the masses to organize and control themselves in their reception. Thus the same public which responds in a progressive manner toward a grotesque film is bound to respond in a reactionary manner to surrealism. XIII The characteristics of the film lie not only in the manner in which man presents himself to mechanical equipment but also in the manner in which, by means of this apparatus, man can represent his environment. A glance at occupational psychology illustrates the testing capacity of the equipment. Psychoanalysis illustrates it in a different perspective. The film has enriched our field of perception with methods which can be illustrated by those of Freudian theory. Fifty years ago, a slip of the tongue passed more or less unnoticed. Only exceptionally may such a slip have revealed dimensions of depth in a conversation which had seemed to be taking its course on the surface. Since the Psychopathology of Everyday Life things have changed. This book isolated and made analyzable things which had heretofore floated along unnoticed in the broad stream of perception. For the entire spectrum of optical, and now also acoustical, perception the film has brought about a similar deepening of apperception. It is only an obverse of this fact that behavior items shown in a movie can be analyzed much more precisely and from more points of view than those presented on paintings or on the stage. As compared with painting, filmed behavior lends itself more readily to analysis because of its incomparably more precise statements of the situation. In comparison with the stage scene, the filmed behavior item lends itself more readily to analysis because it can be isolated more easily. This circumstance derives its chief importance from its tendency to promote the mutual penetration of art and science. Actually, of a screened behavior item which is neatly brought out in a certain situation, like a muscle of a body, it is difficult to say which is more fascinating, its artistic value or its value for science. To demonstrate the identity of the artistic and scientific uses of photography which heretofore usually were separated will be one of the revolutionary functions of the film. By close-ups of the things around us, by focusing on hidden details of familiar objects, by exploring common place milieus under the ingenious guidance of the camera, the film, on the one hand, extends our comprehension of the necessities which rule our lives; on the other hand, it manages to assure us of an immense and unexpected field of action. Our taverns and our metropolitan streets, our offices and furnished rooms, our railroad stations and our factories appeared to have us locked up hopelessly. Then came the film and burst this prison-world asunder by the dynamite of the tenth of a second, so that now, in the midst of its far-flung ruins and debris, we calmly and adventurously go traveling. With the close-up, space expands; with slow motion, movement is extended. The enlargement of a snapshot does not simply render more precise what in any case was visible, though unclear: it reveals entirely new structural formations of the subject. So, too, slow motion not only presents familiar qualities of movement but reveals in them entirely unknown ones ―which, far from looking like retarded rapid movements, give the effect of singularly gliding, floating, supernatural motions.‖ Evidently a different nature 446 opens itself to the camera than opens to the naked eye – if only because an unconsciously penetrated space is substituted for a space consciously explored by man. Even if one has a general knowledge of the way people walk, one knows nothing of a person's posture during the fractional second of a stride. The act of reaching for a lighter or a spoon is familiar routine, yet we hardly know what really goes on between hand and metal, not to mention how this fluctuates with our moods. Here the camera intervenes with the resources of its lowerings and liftings, its interruptions and isolations, it extensions and accelerations, its enlargements and reductions. The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses. XIV One of the foremost tasks of art has always been the creation of a demand which could be fully satisfied only later. The history of every art form shows critical epochs in which a certain art form aspires to effects which could be fully obtained only with a changed technical standard, that is to say, in a new art form. The extravagances and crudities of art which thus appear, particularly in the so-called decadent epochs, actually arise from the nucleus of its richest historical energies. In recent years, such barbarisms were abundant in Dadaism. It is only now that its impulse becomes discernible: Dadaism attempted to create by pictorial – and literary – means the effects which the public today seeks in the film. Every fundamentally new, pioneering creation of demands will carry beyond its goal. Dadaism did so to the extent that it sacrificed the market values which are so characteristic of the film in favor of higher ambitions – though of course it was not conscious of such intentions as here described. The Dadaists attached much less importance to the sales value of their work than to its usefulness for contemplative immersion. The studied degradation of their material was not the least of their means to achieve this uselessness. Their poems are ―word salad‖ containing obscenities and every imaginable waste product of language. The same is true of their paintings, on which they mounted buttons and tickets. What they intended and achieved was a relentless destruction of the aura of their creations, which they branded as reproductions with the very means of production. Before a painting of Arp's or a poem by August Stramm it is impossible to take time for contemplation and evaluation as one would before a canvas of Derain's or a poem by Rilke. In the decline of middle-class society, contemplation became a school for asocial behavior; it was countered by distraction as a variant of social conduct. Dadaistic activities actually assured a rather vehement distraction by making works of art the center of scandal. One requirement was foremost: to outrage the public. From an alluring appearance or persuasive structure of sound the work of art of the Dadaists became an instrument of ballistics. It hit the spectator like a bullet, it happened to him, thus acquiring a tactile quality. It promoted a demand for the film, the distracting element of which is also primarily tactile, being based on changes of place and focus which periodically assail the spectator. Let us compare the screen on which a film unfolds with the canvas of a painting. The painting invites the spectator to contemplation; before it the spectator can abandon himself to his associations. Before the movie frame he 447 cannot do so. No sooner has his eye grasped a scene than it is already changed. It cannot be arrested. Duhamel, who detests the film and knows nothing of its significance, though something of its structure, notes this circumstance as follows: ―I can no longer think what I want to think. My thoughts have been replaced by moving images.‖ The spectator's process of association in view of these images is indeed interrupted by their constant, sudden change. This constitutes the shock effect of the film, which, like all shocks, should be cushioned by heightened presence of mind. By means of its technical structure, the film has taken the physical shock effect out of the wrappers in which Dadaism had, as it were, kept it inside the moral shock effect. XV The mass is a matrix from which all traditional behavior toward works of art issues today in a new form. Quantity has been transmuted into quality. The greatly increased mass of participants has produced a change in the mode of participation. The fact that the new mode of participation first appeared in a disreputable form must not confuse the spectator. Yet some people have launched spirited attacks against precisely this superficial aspect. Among these, Duhamel has expressed himself in the most radical manner. What he objects to most is the kind of participation which the movie elicits from the masses. Duhamel calls the movie ―a pastime for helots, a diversion for uneducated, wretched, worn-out creatures who are consumed by their worries a spectacle which requires no concentration and presupposes no intelligence which kindles no light in the heart and awakens no hope other than the ridiculous one of someday becoming a  star' in Los Angeles.‖ Clearly, this is at bottom the same ancient lament that the masses seek distraction whereas art demands concentration from the spectator. That is a commonplace. The question remains whether it provides a platform for the analysis of the film. A closer look is needed here. Distraction and concentration form polar opposites which may be stated as follows: A man who concentrates before a work of art is absorbed by it. He enters into this work of art the way legend tells of the Chinese painter when he viewed his finished painting. In contrast, the distracted mass absorbs the work of art. This is most obvious with regard to buildings. Architecture has always represented the prototype of a work of art the reception of which is consummated by a collectivity in a state of distraction. The laws of its reception are most instructive. Buildings have been man's companions since primeval times. Many art forms have developed and perished. Tragedy begins with the Greeks, is extinguished with them, and after centuries its ―rules‖ only are revived. The epic poem, which had its origin in the youth of nations, expires in Europe at the end of the Renaissance. Panel painting is a creation of the Middle Ages, and nothing guarantees its uninterrupted existence. But the human need for shelter is lasting. Architecture has never been idle. Its history is more ancient than that of any other art, and its claim to being a living force has significance in every attempt to comprehend the relationship of the masses to art. Buildings are appropriated in a twofold manner: by use and by perception – or rather, by touch and sight. Such appropriation cannot be understood in terms of the attentive concentration of a tourist before a famous building. On the tactile side there is no counterpart to 448 contemplation on the optical side. Tactile appropriation is accomplished not so much by attention as by habit. As regards architecture, habit determines to a large extent even optical reception. The latter, too, occurs much less through rapt attention than by noticing the object in incidental fashion. This mode of appropriation, developed with reference to architecture, in certain circumstances acquires canonical value. For the tasks which face the human apparatus of perception at the turning points of history cannot be solved by optical means, that is, by contemplation, alone. They are mastered gradually by habit, under the guidance of tactile appropriation. The distracted person, too, can form habits. More, the ability to master certain tasks in a state of distraction proves that their solution has become a matter of habit. Distraction as provided by art presents a covert control of the extent to which new tasks have become soluble by apperception. Since, moreover, individuals are tempted to avoid such tasks, art will tackle the most difficult and most important ones where it is able to mobilize the masses. Today it does so in the film. Reception in a state of distraction, which is increasing noticeably in all fields of art and is symptomatic of profound changes in apperception, finds in the film its true means of exercise. The film with its shock effect meets this mode of reception halfway. The film makes the cult value recede into the background not only by putting the public in the position of the critic, but also by the fact that at the movies this position requires no attention. The public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one. Epilogue The growing proletarianization of modern man and the increasing formation of masses are two aspects of the same process. Fascism attempts to organize the newly created proletarian masses without affecting the property structure which the masses strive to eliminate. Fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves. The masses have a right to change property relations; Fascism seeks to give them an expression while preserving property. The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life. The violation of the masses, whom Fascism, with its Führer cult, forces to their knees, has its counterpart in the violation of an apparatus which is pressed into the production of ritual values. All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war. War and war only can set a goal for mass movements on the largest scale while respecting the traditional property system. This is the political formula for the situation. The technological formula may be stated as follows: Only war makes it possible to mobilize all of today's technical resources while maintaining the property system. It goes without saying that the Fascist apotheosis of war does not employ such arguments. Still, Marinetti says in his manifesto on the Ethiopian colonial war: ―For twenty-seven years we Futurists have rebelled against the branding of war as antiaesthetic ... Accordingly we state:... War is beautiful because it establishes man's dominion over the subjugated machinery by means of gas masks, terrifying megaphones, flame throwers, and small tanks. War is beautiful because it initiates the dreamt-of metalization of the human body. War is beautiful because it enriches a flowering meadow 449 with the fiery orchids of machine guns. War is beautiful because it combines the gunfire, the cannonades, the cease-fire, the scents, and the stench of putrefaction into a symphony. War is beautiful because it creates new architecture, like that of the big tanks, the geometrical formation flights, the smoke spirals from burning villages, and many others ... Poets and artists of Futurism! ... remember these principles of an aesthetics of war so that your struggle for a new literature and a new graphic art ... may be illumined by them!‖ This manifesto has the virtue of clarity. Its formulations deserve to be accepted by dialecticians. To the latter, the aesthetics of today's war appears as follows: If the natural utilization of productive forces is impeded by the property system, the increase in technical devices, in speed, and in the sources of energy will press for an unnatural utilization, and this is found in war. The destructiveness of war furnishes proof that society has not been mature enough to incorporate technology as its organ, that technology has not been sufficiently developed to cope with the elemental forces of society. The horrible features of imperialistic warfare are attributable to the discrepancy between the tremendous means of production and their inadequate utilization in the process of production – in other words, to unemployment and the lack of markets. Imperialistic war is a rebellion of technology which collects, in the form of ―human material,‖ the claims to which society has denied its natural materrial. Instead of draining rivers, society directs a human stream into a bed of trenches; instead of dropping seeds from airplanes, it drops incendiary bombs over cities; and through gas warfare the aura is abolished in a new way. ―Fiat ars – pereat mundus‖, says Fascism, and, as Marinetti admits, expects war to supply the artistic gratification of a sense perception that has been changed by technology. This is evidently the consummation of ―l'art pour l'art.‖ Mankind, which in Homer's time was an object of contemplation for the Olympian gods, now is one for itself. Its self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order. This is the situation of politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic. Communism responds by politicizing art. 450 12 Francis Donald Klingender Marxism and Modern Art: An Approach to Social Realism Realism: Lenin Plekhanov adopted the standpoint of aesthetic relativism because, as Lunacharski pointed out, he regarded historical materialism primarily as the scientific method of interpreting the world. In reasserting the essential significance of Marxism as a guide to action, Lenin resolved the contradictions which had crept into Plekhanov's exposition. For the artist, too, an aesthetic standard is a guide to action, and not a neutral platform for the contemplation of the past. The standard he adopts is relative, because conditioned by the circumstances of his time and class. But is it impossible to conceive of a standard which, though relative, cannot also have objective validity? In his Notes on Dialectics Lenin wrote:  The distinction between subjectivism (scepticism, sophistry, etc.) and dialectics, incidentally, is that in (objective) dialectics the difference between the relative and the absolute is itself relative. For objective dialectics there is an absolute even within the relative. For subjectivism and sophistry the relative is only relative and excludes the absolute.' In applying this principle to the theory of knowledge Lenin reasserts that existence, including social existence, is unconditional, absolute, and he examines what relation the relative truths, discovered by science and verified by their practical application, bear to this unconditional, absolute truth.  From the standpoint of modern materialism, i.e. Marxism,' Lenin writes,  the limits of approximation of our knowledge to the objective, absolute truth are historically conditional, but the existence of such truth is unconditional, and the fact that we are approaching nearer to it is also unconditional. The contours of the picture are historically conditional, but the fact that this picture depicts an objectively existing model is unconditional. When and under what circumstances we reached, in our knowledge of the existing nature of things, the discovery of alizarin in coal tar or the discovery of electrons in the atom is historically conditional; but that every such discovery is an advance of ―absolutely objective knowledge‖ is unconditional. In a word, every ideology is historically conditional, but it is unconditionally true that to every scientific ideology (as distinct, for instance, from religious ideology) there corresponds an objective truth, absolute nature.' 451 And Lenin adds:  Human thought then by its nature is capable of giving, and does give, absolute truth, which is compounded of the sum-total of relative truths. Each step in the development of science adds new grains to the sum of absolute truth, but the limits of the truth of each scientific proposition are relative, now expanding, now shrinking with the growth of knowledge.' Such is Lenin's conception of relative and absolute truth as applied to the scientific reflection of reality. Does it similarly apply to its artistic reflection? It is evident that art differs in certain important respects from science. Lenin points out that to every scientific discovery which is verified by practice there corresponds an objective truth, absolute nature; this is not the case with every work of art. There are many works, and, indeed, whole styles of art, with their corresponding relative value scales, which are more or less divorced from objective reality and which reflect the religious or idealist dreams of humanity, rather than its scientific search for truth. Nevertheless, the extent to which a work of art does reflect an objective truth (and in our conception of objective truth we must include its projection into the future, i.e. the possible tasks which history sets mankind) undoubtedly provides an objective, absolute standard, verifiable by experience, which can be applied to the evaluation not only of individual works of art but also of its various relative standards. In the second place, even where it does reflect reality, art differs from science in the manner of its reflection and also in the manner in which its separate relative reflections of truth combine to form a cumulative and ever closer approximation to the absolute. Scientific knowledge consists of the sum-total of concrete, experimentally verified, discoveries which have been made up to a given time and which scientific theory seeks to correlate in a more or less consistent picture of the world. With the further advance of discovery this general picture is sooner or later invalidated and many of the facts previously ascertained may assume an entirely new meaning. In other words, as science advances its successive theories become obsolete, while their concrete kernel is absorbed in the ever expanding approximation to truth. It is different with art. The work of art is an indivisible whole, and it survives as a whole. It is true that it may mean many different things to those who admire it at different periods. But its power to inspire resides at all times in its imaginative unity. Nor is it invalidated by the further advance of art. For long periods at a time men may be blind to its significance, but if it is a truly great work (or even a crude copy of a great work that has been lost) its beauty will sooner or later be rediscovered. The history of art is full of such moments of  re-birth', such dialectical leaps in the trend of taste, when long neglected works dating from the distant past suddenly acquire a tremendous influence on aesthetic life. 452 This peculiar quality of art which makes each individual work significant as a unity may also be demonstrated in another way. Whereas it is a waste of effort – unfortunately all too frequent in the present chaotic state of science – for several scientists to make the same discovery, several artists working simultaneously or successively on the same theme will produce entirely different results, and mankind will be enriched by each. Hence the cumulative approximation of science to objective truth differs in kind from the cumulative reflection of reality by art. The former is an intellectual generalization, ever expanding and continually changing as the progress of discoveries  adds new grains to the sum of absolute truth'; the latter is an imaginative reflection of reality in its infinite diversity, built up, like reality itself, through the interplay of its individual images. Thus we are led back to Chernyshevski's conception of the artistic image as a unity of the particular and the general, and it is in the light of this conception that we must examine the significance of Lenin's theory of relative and absolute truth for the problem of aesthetic value. Bearing in mind Lenin's statement that  for dialectics the absolute is also to be found in the relative', let us turn to his explanation of the various ways in which the unity of the particular and the general can be said to exist. Even a simple proposition, such as  the leaves of the tree are green', implies that  the particular is the general':  consequently,' Lenin writes,  opposites (the particular as opposed to the general) are identical: the particular exists only in that connection which leads to the general. The general exists only in the particular and through the particular. Every particular is (in one way or another) a general. Every general is (a fragment, or an aspect, or an essence of) a particular. Every general comprises all particular objects merely approximately. Every particular is an incomplete part of the general, and so forth, and so on. Every particular is bound by thousands of threads and nuances with other kinds of particulars (objects, phenomena, processes), etc. There are found here already the elements, the germinal conception of necessity of objective connection in nature, etc. The contingent and the necessary, appearance and essence are already existent here. For in saying, ―John is a man, the poodle is a dog, this is a leaf of a tree, etc.,‖ we disregard a series of characteristics as contingent; we separate the essential from the apparent, and put one in opposition to the other.' It is thus that the particular fragment of reality which is reflected in the artistic image is linked  by thousands of threads and nuances' with all other particulars and becomes a symbol of the  necessity of objective connection in nature'. But Lenin also points out:  The unity (the coincidence, identity, resultant force) of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, and relative. The struggle of the mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, as movement and evolution are.' We may therefore expand and amplify Chernyshevski's conception of a work of art as a unity of the particular and the general, the significance of which is proportional to the 453 comprehensiveness and truthfulness with which it reflects reality, by the following propositions: (1) A work of art is satisfying because in it the artist has fixed that fleeting, conditional and relative unity of opposites in which the particular is identical with the general. But a work of art is significant only if that relative unity of opposites at the same time contains and reflects the struggle of those same, mutually exclusive, opposites which is absolute, as movement, evolution and life are. Hence a work of art must stimulate at the same time as it satisfies. While revealing the unity of opposites, it must at the same time reveal the transient and merely relative nature of that unity, thus driving the spectator onward in the ceaseless struggle for an even greater, more profound and comprehensive unity. A work of art which lulls the creative faculties, which drugs and deflects men from the struggle of life, is unconditionally bad. (2) In a sense it is true that every work of art reflects some aspect of reality, for illusions, dreams and mystifications are also a part of existence. But a work which reflects only such illusions and mystifications is obviously much more restricted in its significance than another work which resembles a scientific discovery in that to it there corresponds an objective truth. The former image is purely relative; the latter is a relative truth which contains a  grain of the absolute'. The significance of the former is transient; it ceases to inspire as soon as men cease to believe in the illusions which it reflects. The latter retains its significance as long as the objective truth which it reflects remains important for society. The significance of the former does not extend beyond the sphere of consciousness (and of false consciousness at that); the latter links consciousness  by thousands of threads and nuances' with objective reality. Hence the extent of the relationships contained in and revealed by the particular image of a work of art, the specific weight of the objective, absolute truth which is contained within its relative truth, provides an objective, unconditional and absolute standard for the evaluation of art. (3) Marxist theory applies a dual standard to the evaluation of art; it first appreciates a given work in terms of its own relative standard which is conditioned by its period and by the social class whose outlook it reflects; but it also applies to that work the absolute test whether its relative value contains a kernel of objective truth. How this dual standard works may be illustrated by applying it to some of the artists mentioned in the course of this essay. The poems in which Tennyson transported the Victorians from the  cankering cares of daily life' and the  confusion of their philosophies'  to some entirely new field of existence, some place of rest', are perfect, if judged by the relative standard of Victorian middle class taste. They are far better, in terms of that standard, than most of the poems which his less distinguished contemporaries contributed to the Victorian  keepsakes' and  annuals'. But they have ceased to have any meaning for us today, indeed they arouse our antipathy, because they are the complete expression of Victorian cant. Judged by the standard of objective truth 454 they are unconditionally bad, because they evade the issues which were set to the poet by life. This is not true, however, of those other poems in which Tennyson's true emotions break through the surface of assumed complacency. Judged by their own relative standard these poems seem to us today as perfect as the former type (although a careful study of contemporary criticism may reveal that the Victorians themselves were by no means always of the same opinion). Yet these poems can still stir us today, because the haunting fear and the perplexities focussed in them are a genuine, if confused, reflection of the realities which Tennyson's other poems ignore. Thus Tennyson's poems fall into two main categories. Both reflect the relative standard of the Victorian middle class, both are perfect in terms of that standard. But the significance of the first group is purely relative, conditional and transient – so transient, in fact, that it has already vanished (except, of course, for the historian) ; while the significance of the second group survives, because their relative value contained a substratum of objective reality, a grain of the absolute. The relative standard of appreciation exemplified by Tennyson's poems was only one of several standards existing at the time. What Tennyson himself thought of one of these other standards may be seen from the following lines which Mr. Harold Nicolson has rescued from the oblivion of the Collected Works:  Authors – essayist, atheist, novelist, realist, rhymester, play your part, Paint the mortal shame of nature with the living lines of Art. Rip your brothers' vices open, strip your own foul passions bare; Down with Reticence, down with Reverence – forward – naked – let them stare. Feed the budding rose of boyhood with the drainage of your sewer; Send the drain into the fountain, lest the stream should issue pure. Set the maiden fancies wallowing in the troughs of Zolaism, - Forward, forward, ay and backward, downward too into the abysm.' Tennyson's aesthetic standards differed from those of Zola, as they did from those of Balzac or Shchedrin, because the theoretical positions taken up by these writers reflected the practical attitudes to life of much more progressive classes and strata of nineteenth century society. Hence their relative value scales are incompatible, and a consistent relativist should confess himself unable to compare the merits of their respective works. Nevertheless, we have no hesitation in assigning a far higher aesthetic value to the Comédie Humaine or to the Golovlyov Family or even to Zola's Rougon-Macquart cycle, than to Tennyson's best poems, because the works of Balzac and Shchedrin and Zola are far more profound reflections of objective truth than Tennyson's fragmentary and uncomprehending concessions to it. Turning to another period and medium we shall arrive at the same conclusion if we compare Tennyson with Hogarth. Hogarth, too, is more significant, his work is better art, if judged by the absolute standard of objective truth, than that of Tennyson or, say, of 455 Millais, to take a contemporary painter whose outlook resembled that of the Laureate. But it is interesting to note that Hogarth was also the pet aversion of Roger Fry. From his idealist standard of  pure form' – that relative standard of bourgeois decadence which he proclaimed as absolute – Fry was unable to appreciate the relative standard embodied in Hogarth's work, that is to say the fidelity and power with which Hogarth's images reflect the outlook of the great mass of the English people during the Walpole era. Still less was Fry able to recognize the objective truth contained in that relative standard. But what incensed Fry most of all was that  Hogarth, with his superficial common sense, his fundamental Philistinism' (!) turned  his back upon the cultured world and made an appeal, through his engravings, to a less sophisticated public', although he realized that  the only art that would attract them must tell a story with rather crude insistence'. Hence it was Fry's view that Hogarth's  influence on British art has been bad upon the whole. It has tended to sanction a disparagement of painting as a pure art – has tended to make artists think that they must justify themselves by conveying valuable, or important, or moral ideas'. In the light of these views it is not surprising that Fry was blind also to the specific quality of Hogarth's formal designs. He censures Hogarth's  uncertain grasp of plastic form', his lack of composition, his insensitive drawing, etc., without in the least suspecting that Hogarth's often highly complex and most carefully thought-out designs might obey special laws of their own. Thus Fry must fall back on  the silvery tonality' of Hogarth's sketches or the  fat, buttery quality of his pigment', when compelled to pay a grudging tribute to the outstanding figure in British art. At this stage it is necessary to point out that the test of relative and absolute truth must never be applied exclusively to the content of a given work of art. It follows from the essential quality of the artistic image as a unity of content and form, that the truth embodied in its content can only have aesthetic significance if it is expressed in a form which strikes the imagination, instead of appealing merely to the intellect. A work of art which carries its message straight into the feelings and emotions of men by virtue of its vivid, concrete imagery, has greater value than one which lacks this vital power, even though the intellectual content of the former work may be less profound, less comprehensive and more encumbered with illusions. What this means in concrete terms is shown by that masterly example of a Marxist appreciation which Lenin provided in his six articles on Tolstoi. The point at issue is defined in the sharpest possible way in the opening sentences of the first of these articles, Tolstoi, Mirror of the Russian Revolution:  To link the name of this great artist with the revolution which he manifestly did not understand, from which he manifestly kept aloof, may at first sight appear strange and far-fetched. Can that be called a mirror which, admittedly, gives an incorrect reflection of things?' Lenin then proceeds to show that, however faulty his interpretation of the revolution, Tolstoi was a great artist because he did reflect  at least some essential aspects' of his epoch. But that is only part of the answer. Even more significant, in the present context, than this profound axiom, is the passage in a later article, L. N. Tolstoi and the Modern 456 Labour Movement, in which Lenin defines the specific manner in which content and form are fused in Tolstoi's work:  Tolstoi's criticism is not new,' Lenin writes.  He has said nothing new, nothing which had not been said long ago both in European and Russian literature by those who were on the side of the toilers. But the peculiarity of Tolstoi's criticism and its historical significance consists in that he expressed with a power, of which only genius is capable, the crisis in the views of the widest masses of the people of Russia in the period mentioned, and of village, peasant Russia in particular. Tolstoi's criticism of modern customs differs from the criticism of these customs by the representatives of the modern labour movement in just the fact that Tolstoi adopted the point of view of the patriarchal, naive peasant; that Tolstoi transfers the latter's psychology into his criticism, his doctrine. The reason Tolstoi's criticism is charged with such feeling, passion, conviction, freshness, sincerity, fearlessness in the attempt ―to get at the roots,‖ find the real reason for the state of the masses, is that his criticism really expresses the crisis in the views of millions of peasants who had only been emancipated from serfdom to find that this new freedom means only new horrors of ruin, starvation, a homeless life among city ―sharps,‖ etc. Tolstoi reflects their mood so accurately that he brings into his doctrine their own naivete, their estrangement from politics, their mysticism, their desire to escape from the world, ―non-resistance to evil,‖ impotent anathemas of capitalism and the ―power of money.‖ The protest of millions of peasants and their despair – that is what is fused into Tolstoi's doctrine.' Commenting on this passage in his article  Lenin and Literature', Lunacharski adds:  Two ideas must be distinguished in this quotation: Tolstoi reflects the frame of mind of those whom he expresses ―so faithfully‖ that it mars his own teaching from the ideological point of view, because his protest is interwoven with despair, as distinct from the labour movement, also full of protest but to which despair is alien. Such ―faithfulness,‖ is, of course, regrettable from the point of view of social content, from the point of view of revolutionary effectiveness, purity of influence. But this ―faithfulness‖ lends Tolstoi ―power of feeling, passion, conviction, freshness, sincerity, relentlessness,‖ and all this is, according to Lenin, Tolstoi's main merit – because ―Tolstoi's criticism is not new‖ – in other words, had Tolstoi given his criticism without this power of passion he would have added nothing to culture. In view, however, of the power of passion his ―criticism,‖ though ―not new,‖ proved to be ―a step forward in the art of all mankind.‖' There remains, finally, the problem which Plekhanov raised when he wrote, in commenting on Taine's definition of aesthetic relativism:  aesthetics – science – does not give us any theoretical basis, supporting ourselves on which we could say that Greek art merits admiration and Gothic art condemnation, or the reverse.' To deal with this problem it is necessary to distinguish the aesthetic principles represented by the relative standards of the various styles from the works of art actually produced more or less in accordance with those principles. The distinction between the 457 principle of a given style and the works actually produced in it is analogous to that between a philosophical or scientific system and the concrete discoveries made within the framework of that system. A principle or system which tends to deflect the artist or thinker from reality is unconditionally inferior to one which directs his energies towards objective truth. But one need only think of Hegel to realize that some of the greatest advances in human understanding have been made within the framework of a reactionary system of thought – or rather in spite of it. In other words, style in art, like system in philosophy or hypothesis in science, is historically conditioned, transitory and relative, but if we use the term in the wider sense of a period style (e.g. Greek, Gothic, etc.), there is not a single style in the history of art which has not produced some concrete advances towards the absolute. It is the task of scientific criticism to discover these concrete achievements of permanent significance within their relative and transitory shell. If the history of art is examined from this point of view, it will be found that there is a continuous tradition of realism which started with the dawn of art (e.g. in the palaeolithic cave paintings) and which will survive to its end, for it reflects the productive intercourse between man and nature which is the basis of life. At that important phase in the development of society, when mental labour was divided from material labour, there emerged another, secondary tradition of spiritualistic, religious or idealistic art. This, too, is continuous until it will vanish with the final negation of the division of labour – i.e. in a Communist world. [53] During this entire period of development, i.e. as long as society is divided into classes, the history of art is the history of the ceaseless struggle and mutual inter-penetration of these two traditions. At successive, though widely overlapping phases corresponding to specific stages in the development of society, both these traditions, and also the results of their interplay, assume the historical forms which we call the  Classical',  Gothic',  Baroque', etc., styles. A Marxist history of art should describe, first, the struggle which is absolute between these two opposite and mutually exclusive trends, and secondly, their fleeting, conditional and relative union, as manifested in the different styles and in each work of art, and it should explain both these aspects of art in terms of the social processes which they reflect. Marxist criticism consists in discovering the specific weight within each style, each artist and each single work of those elements which reflect objective truth in powerful and convincing imagery. But it should always be remembered that, unlike science which reduces reality to a blue-print or formula, the images of art reveal reality in its infinite diversity and many-sided richness. And it is in its infinite diversity and many-sided richness that art, too, must be appreciated. 458 13 Arthur Christopher Benson From: From a College Window VII ART I often wish that we had a more beautiful word than "art" for so beautiful a thing; it is in itself a snappish explosive word, like the cry of an angry animal; and it has, too, to bear the sad burden of its own misuse by affected people. Moreover, it stands for so many things, that one is never quite sure what the people who use it intend it to mean; some people use it in an abstract, some in a concrete sense; and it is unfortunate, too, in bearing, in certain usages, a nuance of unreality and scheming. What I mean by art, in its deepest and truest sense, is a certain perceptiveness, a power of seeing what is characteristic, coupled as a rule, in the artistic temperament, with a certain power of expression, an imaginative gift which can raise a large fabric out of slender resources, building a palace, like the Genie in the story of Aladdin, in a single night. The artistic temperament is commoner, I think, than is supposed. Most people find it difficult to believe in the existence of it, unless it is accompanied by certain fragile signs of its existence, such as water-colour drawing, or a tendency to strum on a piano. But, as a matter of fact, the possession of an artistic temperament, without the power of expression, is one of the commonest causes of unhappiness in the world. Who does not know those ill-regulated, fastidious people, who have a strong sense of their own significance and position, a sense which is not justified by any particular performance, who are contemptuous of others, critical, hard to satisfy, who have a general sense of disappointment and dreariness, a craving for recognition, and a feeling that they are not appreciated at their true worth? To such people, sensitive, ineffective, proud, every circumstance of life gives food for discontent. They have vague perceptions which they cannot translate into words or symbols. They find their work humdrum and unexciting, their relations with others tiresome; they think that under different circumstances and in other surroundings they might have played a braver part; they never realize that the root of their unhappiness lies in themselves; and, perhaps, it is merciful that they do not, for the fact that they can accumulate blame upon the conditions imposed on them by fate is the only thing that saves them from irreclaimable depression. Sometimes, again, the temperament exists with a certain power of expression, but without sufficient perseverance or hard technical merit to produce artistic successes; and thus we get the amateur. Sometimes it is the other way, and the technical power of production is developed beyond the inner perceptiveness; and this produces a species of dull soulless art, and the role of the professional artist. Very rarely one sees the outward and the inward combined, but then we get the humble, hopeful artist who lives for and in his work; he is humble because he cannot reach the perfection for which he strives; he is 459 hopeful because he gets nearer to it day by day. But, speaking generally, the temperament is not one that brings steady happiness; it brings with it moments of rapture, when some bright dream is being realized; but it brings with it also moments of deep depression, when dreams are silent, and the weary brain fears that the light is quenched. There are, indeed, instances of the equable disposition being found in connection with the artistic temper; such were Reynolds, Handel, Wordsworth. But the annals of art are crowded with the figures of those who have had to bear the doom of art, and have been denied the tranquil spirit. But besides all these, there are artistic temperaments which do not express themselves in any of the recognized mediums of art, but which apply their powers direct to life itself. I do not mean successful, professional people, who win their triumphs by a happy sanity and directness of view, to whom labour is congenial and success enjoyable; but I mean those who have a fine perception of quality in innumerable forms; who are interested in the salient points of others, who delight to enter into appropriate relations with those they meet, to whom life itself, its joys and sorrows, its gifts and its losses, has a certain romantic, beautiful, mysterious savour. Such people have a strong sense of the significance of their relations with others, they enjoy dealing with characters, with problems, with situations. Having both interest and sympathy, they get the best out of other people; they pierce through the conventional fence that so many of us erect as a protection against intrusion. Such people bring the same perception to bear on technical art. They enjoy books, art, music, without any envious desire to produce; they can enjoy the noble pleasure of admiring and praising. Again and again, in reading the lives of artists, one comes across traces of these wise and generous spirits, who have loved the society of artists, have understood them, and whose admiration has never been clouded by the least shadow of that jealousy which is the curse of most artistic natures. People without artistic sensibilities find the society of artists trying; because they see only their irritability, their vanity, their egotism, and cannot sympathize with the visions by which they are haunted. But those who can understand without jealousy, pass by the exacting vagaries of the artist with a gentle and tender compassion, and evoke what is sincere and generous and lovable, without any conscious effort. It is not, I think, often enough realized that the basis of the successful artistic temperament is a certain hardness combined with great superficial sensitiveness. Those who see the artistic nature swiftly and emotionally affected by a beautiful or a pathetic thing, who see that a thought, a line of poetry, a bar of music, a sketch, will evoke a thrill of feeling to which they cannot themselves aspire, are apt to think that such a spirit is necessarily fair and tender, and that it possesses unfathomable reserves of noble feeling. This is often a great mistake; far below the rapid current of changing and glittering emotion there often lies, in the artistic nature, a reserve, not of tenderness or depth, but of cold and critical calm. There are very few people who are highly developed in one faculty who do not pay for it in some other part of their natures. Below the emotion itself there sits enthroned a hard intellectual force, a power of appraising quality, a Rhadamanthine judgment. It is this hardness which has so often made artists such excellent men of business, so alert to strike favourable bargains. In those artists whose medium is words this hardness is not so often detected as it is in the case of other artists, for they have the 460 power of rhetoric, the power of luxuriously heightening impressions, indeed of imaginatively simulating a force which is in reality of a superficial nature. One of the greatest powers of great artists is that of hinting at an emotion which they have very possibly never intimately gauged. I have sometimes thought that this is in all probability the reason why women, with all their power of swift impression, of subtle intuition, have so seldom achieved the highest stations in art. It is, I think, because they seldom or never have that calm, strong egotism at the base of their natures, which men so constantly have, and which indeed seems almost a condition of attaining the highest success in art. The male artist can believe whole-heartedly and with entire absorption in the value of what he is doing, can realize it as the one end of his being, the object for which his life was given him. He can believe that all experience, all relations with others, all emotions, are and must be subservient to this one aim; they can deepen for him the channels in which his art flows; they can reveal and illustrate to him the significance of the world of which he is the interpreter. Such an aspiration can be a very high and holy thing; it can lead a man to live purely and laboriously, to make sacrifices, to endure hardness. But the altar on which the sacrifice is made, stands, when all is said and done, before the idol of self. With women, though, it is different. The deepest quality in their hearts is, one may gratefully say, an intense devotion to others, an unselfishness which is unconscious of itself; and thus their aim is to help, to encourage, to sympathize; and their artistic gifts are subordinated to a deeper purpose, the desire of giving and serving. One with such a passion in the heart is incapable of believing art to be the deepest thing in the world; it is to such an one more like the lily which floats upwards, to bloom on the surface of some dim pool, a thing exquisitely fair and symbolical of mysteries; but all growing out of the depths of life, and not a thing which is deeper and truer than life. It is useless to try to dive deeper than the secrets of personality and temperament. One must merely be grateful for the beauty which springs from them. We must reflect that the hard, vigorous, hammered quality, which is characteristic of the best art, can only be produced, in a mood of blind and unquestioning faith, by a temperament which believes that such production is its highest end. But one who stands a little apart from the artistic world, and yet ardently loves it, can see that, beautiful as is the dream of the artist, true and pure as his aspiration is, there is yet a deeper mystery of life still, of which art is nothing but a symbol and an evidence. Perhaps that very belief may of itself weaken a man's possibilities in art. But, for myself, I know that I regard the absorption in art as a terrible and strong temptation for one whose chief pleasure lies in the delight of expression, and who seems, in the zest of shaping a melodious sentence to express as perfectly and lucidly as possible the shape of the thought within, to touch the highest joy of which the spirit is capable. A thought, a scene of beauty comes home with an irresistible sense of power and meaning to the mind or eye; for God to have devised the pale liquid green of the enamelled evening sky, to have set the dark forms of trees against it, and to have hung a star in the thickening gloom-to have done this, and to see that it is good, seems, in certain moods, to be the dearest work of the Divine mind; and the desire to express it, to speak simply of the sight, and of the joy that it arouses, comes upon the mind with a sweet agony; an irresistible spell; life would seem to have been well spent if 461 one had only caught a few such imperishable ecstasies, and written them down in a record that might convey the same joy to others. But behind this rises the deeper conviction that this is not the end; that there are deeper and sweeter secrets in the heavenly treasure-house; and then comes in the shadow of a fear that, in yielding thus delightedly to these imperative joys, one is blinding the inner eye to the perception of the remoter and more divine truth. And then at last comes the conviction, in which it is possible alike to rest and to labour, that it is right to devote one's time and energy to presenting these rich emotions as perfectly as they can be presented, so long as one keeps open the further avenues of the soul, and believes that art is but one of the antechambers through which one must take one's faithful way, before the doors of the Presence itself can be flung wide. But whether one be of the happy number or not who have the haunting instinct for some special form of expression, one may learn at all events to deal with life in an artistic spirit. I do not at all mean by that that one should learn to overvalue the artistic side of life, to hold personal emotion to be a finer thing than unselfish usefulness. I mean rather that one should aim at the perception of quality, the quality of actions, the quality of thoughts, the quality of character; that one should not be misled by public opinion, that one should not consider the value of a man's thoughts to be affected by his social position; but that one should look out for and appreciate sense, vigour, faithfulness, kindness, rectitude, and originality, in however humble a sphere these qualities may be displayed. That one should fight hard against conventionality, that one should welcome beauty, both the beauty of natural things, as well as the beauty displayed in sincere and simple lives in every rank of life. I have heard conventional professional people, who thought they were giving utterance to manly and independent sentiments, speak slightingly of dukes and duchesses, as if the possession of high rank necessarily forfeited all claims to simplicity and true-heartedness. Such an attitude is as inartistic and offensive as for a duchess to think that fine courtesy and consideration could not be found among washerwomen. The truth is that beauty of character is just as common and just as uncommon among people of high rank as it is among bagmen; and the only just attitude to adopt is to approach all persons simply and directly on the grounds of our common humanity. One who does this will find simplicity, tenderness, and rectitude among persons of high rank; he will also find conventionality, meanness, and complacency among them; when he is brought into contact with bagmen, he will find bagmen of sincerity, directness, and delicacy, while he will also find pompous, complacent, and conventional bagmen. Of course the special circumstances of any life tend to develop certain innate faults of character into prominence; but it may safely be said that circumstances never develop a fault that is not naturally there; and, not to travel far for instances, I will only say that one of the most unaffected and humble-minded persons I have ever met was a duke, while one of the proudest and most affected Pharisees I ever encountered was a servant. It all depends upon a consciousness of values, a sense of proportion; the only way in which wealth and poverty, rank and insignificance, can affect a life, is in a certain degree of personal comfort; and it is one of the most elementary lessons that one can learn, that it is 462 not either wealth or poverty that can confer even comfort, but the sound constitution and the contented mind. What I would here plead is that the artistic sense, of which I have spoken, should be deliberately and consciously cultivated. It is not an easy thing to get rid of conventionality, if one has been brought up on conventional lines; but I know by personal experience that the mere desire for simplicity and sincerity can effect something. All persons engaged in education, whether formally or informally, whether as professed teachers or parents, ought to regard it as a sacred duty to cultivate this sense among the objects of their care. They ought to demand that all people, whether high or low, should be met with the same simple courtesy and consideration; they ought to train children both to speak their mind, and also to pay respect to the opinion of others; they ought not to insist upon obedience, without giving the reasons why it is desirable and necessary; they ought resolutely to avoid malicious gossip, but not the interested discussion of other personalities; they ought to follow, and to give, direct and simple motives for action, and to learn, if they do not know it, that it is from this simple and quiet independence of mind that the best blessings, the best happinesses come; above all, they ought to practise a real and perceptive sympathy, to allow for differences of character and taste, not to try so much to form children on the model of their own characters, as to encourage them to develop on their own lines. To do this completely needs wisdom, tact, and justice; but nothing can excuse us from attempting it. The reason why life is so often made into a dull and dreary business for ourselves and others, is that we accept some conventional standard of duty and rectitude, and heavily enforce it; we neglect the interest, the zest, the beauty of life. In my own career as an educator, I can truthfully say that when I arrived at some of the perceptions enunciated above, it made an immense difference to me. I saw that it was a mistake to coerce, to correct, to enforce; of course such things have to be done occasionally with wilful and perverse natures; but I realized, after I had gained some practice in dealing with boys, that generous and simple praise, outspoken encouragement, admiration, directness, could win victories that no amount of strictness or repression could win. I began to see that enthusiasm and interest were the contagious things, and that it was possible to sympathize genuinely with tastes which one did not share. Of course there were plenty of failures on my own part, failures of irritability, stupidity, and indolence; but I soon realized that these were failures; and, after all, in education it matters more which way one's face is set than how fast one proceeds! I seem, perhaps, to have strayed into the educational point of view; but it is only an instance of how the artistic method may be applied in a region which is believed by many to be remote from the region of art. The principle, after all, is a very clear one; it is that life can be made with a little effort into a beautiful thing; that the real ugliness of life consists not in its conditions, not in good or bad fortune, not in joy or sorrow, not in health or illness, but upon the perceptive attitude of mind which we can apply to all experiences. Everything that comes from the hand of God has the quality of which I am speaking; our business is to try to disentangle it from the prejudices, the false judgments, 463 the severities, the heavinesses, with which human nature tends to overlay it. Imagine a man oppressed by all the ills which humanity can suffer, by shame and disease and failure. Can it be denied, in the presence of the life of Christ, that it is yet possible to make out of such a situation a noble and a beautiful thing? And that is the supreme value of the example of Christ to the world, that He displayed, if I may so speak, the instinct which I have described in its absolute perfection. He met all humanity face to face, with perfect directness, perfect sympathy, perfect perception. He never ceased to protest, with shame and indignation, against the unhappinesses which men bring upon themselves, by the yielding to lower desires, by prejudice, by complacency; but He made allowance for weakness, and despaired of none; and in the presence of those darker and sadder afflictions of body and spirit, which it seems that God permits, if He does not authorize, He bore Himself with dignity, patience, and confidence; He proved that nothing was unbearable, but that the human spirit can face the worst calamities with an indomitable simplicity, which adorns it with an imperishable beauty, and proves it to be indeed divine. 464 14 Ethel D. Puffer The Psychology of Beauty PREFACE THE human being who thrills to the experience of beauty in nature and in art does not forever rest with that experience unquestioned. The day comes when he yearns to pierce the secret of his emotion, to discover what it is, and why, that has so stung him--to defend and to justify his transport to himself and to others. He seeks a reason for the faith that is in him. And so have arisen the speculative theories of the nature of beauty, on the one hand, and the studies of concrete beauty and our feelings about it, on the other. Speculative theory has taken its own way, however, as a part of philosophy, in relating the Beautiful to the other great concepts of the True and the Good; building up an architectonic of abstract ideas, far from the immediate facts and problems of the enjoyment of beauty. There has grown up, on the other hand, in the last years, a great literature of special studies in the facts of aesthetic production and enjoyment. Experiments with the aesthetic elements; investigations into the physiological psychology of aesthetic reactions; studies in the genesis and development of art forms, have multiplied apace. But these are still mere groups of facts for psychology; they have not been taken up into a single authoritative principle. Psychology cannot do justice to the imperative of beauty, by virtue of which, when we say "this is beautiful," we have a right to imply that the universe must agree with us. A synthesis of these tendencies in the study of beauty is needed, in which the results of modern psychology shall help to make intelligible a philosophical theory of beauty. The chief purpose of this book is to seek to effect such a union. A way of defining Beauty which grounds it in general principles, while allowing it to reach the concrete case, is set forth in the essay on the Nature of Beauty. The following chapters aim to expand, to test, and to confirm this central theory, by showing, partly by the aid of the aforesaid special studies, how it accounts for our pleasure in pictures, music, and literature. The whole field of beauty is thus brought under discussion; and therefore, though it nowhere seeks to be exhaustive in treatment, the book may fairly claim to be a more or less consistent and complete aesthetic theory, and hence to address itself to the student of aesthetics as well as to the general reader. The chapter on the Nature of Beauty, indeed, will doubtless be found by the latter somewhat technical, and should be omitted by all who definitely object to professional phraseology. The general conclusions of the book are sufficiently stated in the less abstract papers. Of the essays which compose the following volume, the first, third, and last are reprinted, in more or less revised form, from the "Atlantic Monthly" and the "International Monthly." Although written as independent papers, it is thought that they do not unduly repeat each other, but that they serve to verify, in each of the several realms of beauty, the truth of the central theory of the book. The various influences which have served to shape a work of this kind become evident in the reading; but I 465 cannot refrain from a word of thanks to the teachers whose inspiration and encouragement first made it possible. I owe much gratitude to Professor Mary A. Jordan and Professor H. Norman Gardiner of Smith College, who in literature and in philosophy first set me in the way of aesthetic interest and inquiry, and to Professor Hugo Munsterberg of Harvard University, whose philosophical theories and scientific guidance have largely influenced my thought. WELLESLEY COLLEGE, April 24, 1905. I CRITICISM AND AESTHETICS THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY I CRITICISM AND AESTHETICS IT is not so long ago that the field of literary criticism was divided into two opposing camps. France being the only country in the world where criticism is a serious matter, the battle waged most fiercely there, and doubtless greatly served to bring about the present general interest and understanding of the theoretical questions at issue. The combatants were, of course, the impressionistic and scientific schools of criticism, and particularly enlightening were the more or less recent controversies between MM. Anatole France and Jules Lemaitre as representatives of the first, and M. Brunetiere as the chief exponent of the second. They have planted their standards; and we see that they stand for tendencies in the critical activity of every nation. The ideal of the impressionist is to bring a new piece of literature into being in some exquisitely happy characterization,-to create a lyric of criticism out of the unique pleasure of an aesthetic hour. The stronghold of the scientist, on the other hand, is the doctrine of literary evolution, and his aim is to show the history of literature as the history of a process, and the work of literature as a product; to explain it from its preceding causes, and to detect thereby the general laws of literary metamorphosis. Such are the two great lines of modern criticism; their purposes and ideals stand diametrically opposed. Of late, however, there have not been wanting signs of a spirit of reconciliation, and of a tendency to concede the value, each in its own sphere, of different but complementary activities. Now and again the lion and the lamb have lain down together; one might almost say, on reading a delightful paper of Mr. Lewis E. Gates on Impressionism and Appreciation,<1> that the lamb had assimilated the lion. For the heir of all literary studies, according to Professor Gates, is the appreciative critic; and he it is who shall fulfill the true function of criticism. He is to consider the work of art in its historical setting and its psychological origin, "as a characteristic moment in the development of human spirit, and as a delicately transparent illustration of aesthetic law." But, "in regarding the work of art under all these aspects, his aim is, primarily, not to explain, and 466 not to judge or dogmatize, but to enjoy; to realize the manifold charms the work of art has gathered unto itself from all sources, and to interpret this charm imaginatively to the men of his own day and generation." <1> Atlantic Monthly, July, 1900. Thus it would seem that if the report of his personal reactions to a work of literary art is the intention of the impressionist, and its explanation that of the scientist, the purpose of the appreciative critic is fairly named as the illuminating and interpreting reproduction of that work, from material furnished by those other forms of critical activity. Must, then, the method of appreciation, as combining and reconciling the two opposed views, forthwith claim our adherence? To put to use all the devices of science and all the treasures of scholarship for the single end of imaginative interpretation, for the sake of giving with the original melody all the harmonies of subtle association and profound meaning the ages have added, is, indeed, a great undertaking. But is it as valuable as it is vast? M. Brunetiere has poured out his irony upon the critics who believe that their own reactions upon literature are anything to us in the presence of the works to which they have thrilled. May it not also be asked of the interpreter if its function is a necessary one? Do we require so much enlightenment, only to enjoy? Appreciative criticism is a salt to give the dull palate its full savor; but what literary epicure, what real boo-lover, will acknowledge his own need of it? If the whole aim of appreciative criticism is to reproduce in other arrangement the contents, expressed and implied, and the emotional value, original and derived, of a piece of literature, the value of the end, at least to the intelligent reader, is out of all proportion to the laboriousness of the means. Sing, reading's a joy! For me, I read. But a feeling of this kind is, after all, not a reason to be urged against the method. The real weakness of appreciative criticism lies elsewhere. It teaches us to enjoy; but are we to enjoy everything? Since its only aim is to reveal the "intricate implications" of a work of art; since it offers, and professes to offer, no literary judgments,--having indeed no explicit standard of literary value,--it must, at least on its own theory, take its objects of appreciation ready-made, so to speak, by popular acclaim. It possesses no criterion; it likes whate'er it looks on; and it can never tell us what we are not to like. That is unsatisfactory; and it is worse,-it is self-destructive. For, not being able to reject, appreciation cannot, in logic, choose the objects of its attention. But a method which cannot limit on its own principles the field within which it is to work is condemned from the beginning; it bears a fallacy at its core. In order to make criticism theoretically possible at all, the power to choose and reject, and so the pronouncing of judgment, must be an integral part of it. To such a task the critic may lend himself without arousing our antagonism. We have no pressing need to know the latent possibilities of emotion for us in a book or a poem; but whether it is excellent or the reverse, whether "we were right in being moved by it," we are indeed willing to hear, for we desire to justify the faith that is in us. If, then, the office of the judge be an essential part of the critical function, the appreciative critic, whatever his other merits,--and we shall examine them later,--fails at least of perfection. His scheme is not the ideal one; and we may turn back, in our search for it, to a closer view of those which his was to supersede. Impressionism, however, is at once out of the running; it has always vigorously repudiated the notion of the standard, and we know, therefore, that no more than appreciation can it choose its material and stand alone. But scientific criticism professes, at least, the true faith M. Brunetiere holds that his own method is the only one by which an impersonal and stable judgment can be rendered. The doctrine of the evolution of literary species is more or less explained in 467 naming it. Literary species, M. Brunetiere maintains, do exist. They develop and are transformed into others in a way more or less analogous to the evolution of natural types. It remains to see on what basis an objective judgment can be given. Although M. Brunetiere seems to make classification the disposal of a work in the hierarchy of species, and judgment the disposal of it in relation to others of its own species, he has never sharply distinguished between them; so that we shall not be wrong in taking his three principles of classification, scientific, moral, and aesthetic, as three principles by which he estimates the excellence of a work. His own examples, indeed, prove that to him a thing is already judged in being classified. The work of art is judged, then, by its relation to the type. Is this position tenable? I hold that, on the contrary, it precludes the possibility of a critical judgment; for the judgment of anything always means judgment with reference to the end for which is exists. A bad king is not the less a bad king for being a good father; and if his kingship is his essential function, he must be judged with reference to that alone. Now a piece of literature is, with reference to its end, first of all a work of art. It represents life and it enjoins morality, but it is only as a work of art that it attains consideration; that, in the words of M. Lemaitre, it "exists" for us at all. Its aim is beauty, and beauty is its excuse for being. The type belongs to natural history. The one principle at the basis of scientific criticism is, as we have seen, the conception of literary history as a process, and of the work of art as a product. The work of art is, then, a moment in a necessary succession, governed by laws of change and adaptation like those of natural evolution. But how can the conception of values enter here? Excellence can be attributed only to that which attains an ideal end; and a necessary succession has no end in itself. The "type," in this sense, is perfectly hollow. To say that the modern chrysanthemum is better than that of our forbears because it is more chrysanthemum-like is true only if we make the latter form the arbitrary standard of the chrysanthemum. If the horse of the Eocene age is inferior to the horse of to-day, it is because, on M. Brunetiere's principle, he is less horse-like. But who shall decide which is more like a horse, the original or the latter development? No species which is constituted by its own history can be said to have an end in itself, and can, therefore, have an excellence to which it shall attain. In short, good and bad can be applied to the moments in a necessary evolution only by imputing a fictitious superiority to the last term; and so one type cannot logically be preferred to another. As for the individual specimens, since the conception of the type does not admit the principle of excellence, conformity thereto means nothing. The work of art, on the other hand, as a thing of beauty, is an attainment of an ideal, not a product, and, from this point of view, is related not at all to the other terms of a succession, its causes and its effects, but only to the abstract principles of that beauty at which it aims. Strangely enough, the whole principle of this contention has been admitted by M. Brunetiere in a casual sentence, of which he does not appear to recognize the full significance. "We acknowledge, of course," he says, "that there is in criticism a certain difference from natural history, since we cannot eliminate the subjective element if the capacity works of art have of producing impressions on us makes a part of their definition. It is not in order to be eaten that the tree produces its fruit." But this is giving away his whole position! As little as the conformity of the fruit to its species has to do with our pleasure in eating it, just so little has the conformity of a literary work to its genre to do with the quality by virtue of which it is defined as art. The Greek temple is a product of Greek religion applied to geographical conditions. To 468 comprehend it as a type, we must know that it was an adaptation of the open hilltop to the purpose of the worship of images of the gods. But the most penetrating study of the slow moulding of this type will never reveal how and why just those proportions were chosen which make the joy and the despair of all beholders. Early Italian art was purely ecclesiastical in its origin. The exigencies of adaptation to altars, convent walls, or cathedral domes explain the choice of subjects, the composition, even perhaps the color schemes (as of frescoes, for instance); and yet all that makes a Giotto greater than a Pictor Ignotus is quite unaccounted for by these considerations. The quality of beauty is not evolved. All that comes under the category of material and practical purpose, of idea or of moral attitude, belongs to the succession, the evolution, the type But the defining characters of the work of art are independent of time. The temple, the fresco, and the symphony, in the moment they become objects of the critical judgment, become also qualities of beauty and transparent examples of its laws. If the true critical judgment, then, belongs to an order of ideas of which natural science can take no cognizance, the self-styled scientific criticism must show the strange paradox of ignoring the very qualities by virtue of which a given work has any value, or can come at all to be the object of aesthetic judgment. In two words, the world of beauty and the world of natural processes are incommensurable, and scientific criticism of literary art is a logical impossibility. But the citadel of scientific criticism has yet one more stronghold. Granted that beauty, as an abstract quality, is timeless; granted that, in the judgment of a piece of literary art, the standard of value is the canon of beauty, not the type; yet the old order changeth. Primitive and civilized man, the Hottentot and the Laplander, the Oriental and the Slav, have desired differing beauties. May it, then, still be said that although a given embodiment of beauty is to be judged with reference to the idea of beauty alone, yet the concrete ideal of beauty must wear the manacles of space and time,- that the metamorphoses of taste preclude the notion of an objective beauty? And if this is true, are we not thrown back again on questions of genesis and development, and a study of the evolution, not of particular types of art, but of general aesthetic feeling; and, in consequence, upon a form of criticism which is scientific in the sense of being based on succession, and not on absolute value? It is indeed true that the very possibility of a criticism which shall judge of aesthetic excellence must stand or fall with this other question of a beauty in itself, as an objective foundation for criticism. If there is an absolute beauty, it must be possible to work out a system of principles which shall embody its laws,--an aesthetic, in other words; and on the basis of that aesthetic to deliver a well-founded critical judgment. Is there, then, a beauty in itself? And if so, in what does it consist? We can approach such an aesthetic canon in two ways: from the standpoint of philosophy, which develops the idea of beauty as a factor in the system of our absolute values, side by side with the ideas of truth and of morality, or from the standpoint of empirical science. For our present purpose, we may confine ourselves to the empirical facts of psychology and physiology. When I feel the rhythm of poetry, or of perfect prose, which is, of course, in its own way, no less rhythmical, every sensation of sound sends through me a diffusive wave of nervous energy. I am the rhythm because I imitate it in myself. I march to noble music in all my veins, even though I may be sitting decorously by my own hearthstone; and when I sweep with my eyes the outlines of a great picture, the curve of a Greek vase, the arches of a cathedral, every line is lived over again in my own frame. And when rhythm and melody and forms and colors give 469 me pleasure, it is because the imitating impulses and movements that have arisen in me are such as suit, help, heighten my physical organization in general and in particular. It may seem somewhat trivial to say that a curved line is pleasing because the eye is so hung as to move best in it; but we may take it as one instance of the numberless conditions for healthy action which a beautiful form fulfills. A wellcomposed picture calls up in the spectator just such a balanced relation of impulses of attention and incipient movements as suits an organism which is also balanced--bilateral--in its own impulses to movement, and at the same time stable; and it is the correspondence of the suggested impulses with the natural movement that makes the composition good. Besides the pleasure from the tone relations,--which doubtless can be eventually reduced to something of the same kind,--it is the balance of nervous and muscular tensions and relaxations, of yearnings and satisfactions, which are the subjective side of the beauty of a strain of music. The basis, in short, of any aesthetic experience--poetry, music, painting, and the rest-is beautiful through its harmony with the conditions offered by our senses, primarily of sight and hearing, and through the harmony of the suggestions and impulses it arouses with the whole organism. But the sensuous beauty of art does not exhaust the aesthetic experience. What of the special emotions--the gayety or triumph, the sadness or peace or agitation--that hang about the work of art, and make, for many, the greater part of their delight in it? Those among these special emotions which belong to the subject-matter of a work--like our horror at the picture of an execution--need not here be discussed. To understand the rest we may venture for a moment into the realm of pure psychology. We are told by psychology that emotion is dependent on the organic excitations of any given idea. Thus fear at the sight of a bear is only the reverberation in consciousness of all nervous and vascular changes set up instinctively as a preparation for flight. Think away our bodily feelings, and we think away fear, too. And set up the bodily changes and the feeling of them, and we have the emotion that belongs to them even without the idea, as we may see in the unmotived panics that sometimes accompany certain heart disturbances. The same thing, on another level, is a familiar experience. A glass of wine makes merriment, simply by bringing about those organic states which are felt emotionally as cheerfulness. Now the application of all this to aesthetics is clear. All these tensions, relaxations,--bodily "imitations" of the form,--have each the emotional tone which belongs to it. And so if the music of a Strauss waltz makes us gay, and Handel's Largo serious, it is not because we are reminded of the ballroom or of the cathedral, but because the physical response to the stimulus of the music is itself the basis of the emotion. What makes the sense of peace in the atmosphere of the Low Countries? Only the tendency, on following those level lines of landscape, to assume ourselves the horizontal, and the restfulness which belongs to that posture. If the crimson of a picture by Bocklin, or the golden glow of a Giorgione, or the fantastic gleam of a Rembrandt speaks to me like a human voice, it is not because it expresses to me an idea, but because it impresses that sensibility which is deeper than ideas,--the region of the emotional response to color and to light. What is the beauty of the "Ulalume," or "Kubla Khan," or "Ueber allen Gipfeln"? It is the way in which the form in its exquisite fitness to our senses, and the emotion belonging to that particular form as organic reverberation therefrom, in its exquisite fitness to thought, create in us a delight quite unaccounted for by the ideas which they express. This is the essence of beauty,--the possession of a quality which excites the human organism to functioning harmonious with its own nature. 470 We can see in this definition the possibility of an aesthetic which shall have objective validity because founded in the eternal properties of human nature, while it yet allows us to understand that in the limits within which, by education and environment, the empirical man changes, his norms of beauty must vary, too. Ideas can change in interest and in value, but these energies lie much deeper than the idea, in the original constitution of mankind. They belong to the instinctive, involuntary part of our nature. They are changeless, just as the "eternal man" is changeless; and as the basis of aesthetic feeling they can be gathered into a system of laws which shall be subject to no essential metamorphosis. So long as we laugh when we are joyful, and weep when we are sick and sorry; so long as we flush with anger, or grow pale with fear, so long shall we thrill to a golden sunset, the cadence of an air, or the gloomy spaces of a cathedral. The study of these forms of harmonious functioning of the human organism has its roots, of course, in the science of psychology, but comes, nevertheless, to a different flower, because of the grafting on of the element of aesthetic value. It is the study of the disinterested human pleasures, and, although as yet scarcely well begun, capable of a most detailed and definitive treatment. This is not the character of those studies so casually alluded to by the author of "Impressionism and Appreciation," when he enjoins on the appreciative critic not to neglect the literature of aesthetics: "The characteristics of his [the artist's] temperament have been noted with the nicest loyalty; and particularly the play of his special faculty, the imagination, as this faculty through the use of sensations and images and moods and ideas creates a work of art, has been followed out with the utmost delicacy of observation." But these are not properly studies in aesthetics at all. To find out what is beautiful, and the reason for its being beautiful, is the aesthetic task; to analyze the workings of the poet's mind, as his conception grows and ramifies and brightens, is no part of it, because such a study takes no account of the aesthetic value of the process, but only of the process itself. The same fallacy lurks here, indeed, as in the confusion of the scientific critic between literary evolution and poetic achievement, and the test of the fallacy is this single fact: the psychological process in the development of a dramatic idea, for instance, is, and quite properly should be, from the point of view of such analysis, exactly the same for a Shakespeare and for the Hoyt of our American farces. The cause of the production of a work of art may indeed by found by tracing back the stream of thought; but the cause of its beauty is the desire and the sense of beauty in the human heart. If a given combination of lines and colors is beautiful, then the anticipation of the combination as beautiful is what has brought about its incarnation. The artist's attitude toward his vision of beauty, and the art lover's toward that vision realized, are the same. The only legitimate aesthetic analysis is, then, that of the relation between the aesthetic object and the lover of beauty, and all the studies in the psychology of invention--be it literary, scientific, or practical invention--have no right to the other name. Aesthetics, then, is the science of beauty. It will be developed as a system of laws expressing the relation between the object and aesthetic pleasure in it; or as a system of conditions to which the object, in order to be beautiful, must conform. It is hard to say where the task of the aesthetician ends, and that of the critic begins; and for the present, at least, they must often be commingled. But they are defined by their purposes: the end and aim of one is a system of principles; of the other, the disposal of a given work with reference to those principles; and when the science of aesthetics shall have taken shape, criticism will confine itself to the analysis of the work into its aesthetic elements, to the 471 explanation (by means of the laws already formulated) of its especial power in the realm of beauty, and to the judgment of its comparative aesthetic value. The other forms of critical activity will then find their true place as preliminaries or supplements to the essential function of criticism. The study of historical conditions, of authors' personal relations, of the literary "moment," will be means to show the work of art "as in itself it really is." Shall we then say that the method of appreciation, being an unusually exhaustive presentment of the object as in itself it really is, is therefore an indispensable preparation for the critical judgment? The modern appreciator, after the model limned by Professor Gates, was to strive to get, as it were, the aerial perspective of a masterpiece,--to present it as it looks across the blue depths of the years. This is without doubt a fascinating study; but it may be questioned if it does not darken the more important issue. For it is not the object as in itself it really is that we at last behold, but the object disguised in new and strange trappings. Such appreciation is to aesthetic criticism as the sentimental to the naive poet in Schiller's famous antithesis. The virtue of the sentimental genius is to complete by the elements which it derives from itself an otherwise defective object. So the aesthetic critic takes his natural need of beauty from the object; the appreciative critic seeks a further beauty outside of the object, in his own reflections and fancies about it. But if we care greatly for the associations of literature, we Are in danger of disregarding its quality. A vast deal of pretty sentiment may hang about and all but transmute the most prosaic object. A sedan chair, an old screen, a sundial,--to quote only Austin Dobson,--need not be lovely in themselves to serve as pegs to hang a poem on; and all the atmosphere of the eighteenth century may be wafted from a jar of potpourri. Read a lyric instead of a rose jar, and the rule holds as well. The man of feeling cannot but find all Ranelagh and Vauxhall in some icily regular effusion of the eighteenth century, and will take a deeper retrospective thrill from an old playbill than from the play itself. And since this is so,--since the interest in the overtones, the added value given by time, the value for us, is not necessarily related to the value as literature of the fundamental note,--to make the study of the overtones an essential part of criticism is to be guilty of the Pathetic Fallacy; that is, the falsification of the object by the intrusion of ourselves,--the typical sentimental crime. It seems to me, indeed, that instead of courting a sense for the aromatic in literature, the critic should rather guard himself against its insidious approaches. Disporting himself in such pleasures of the fancy, he finds it easy to believe, and to make us believe, that a piece of literature gains in intrinsic value from its power to stimulate his historical sense. The modern appreciative critic, in short, is too likely to be the dupe of his "sophisticated reverie,"--like an epicure who should not taste the meat for the sauces. A master work, once beautiful according to the great and general laws, never becomes, properly speaking, either more or less so. If a piece of art can take us with its own beauty, there is no point in superimposing upon it shades of sentiment; if it cannot so charm, all the rose-colored lights of this kind of appreciative criticism are unavailing. The "literary" treatment of art, as the "emotional" treatment of literature,--for that is what "appreciation" and "interpretation" really are,-can completely justify itself only as the crowning touch of a detailed aesthetic analysis of those "order of impression distinct in kind" which are the primary elements in our pleasure in the beautiful. It is the absence--and not only the absence, but the ignoring of the possibility--of such analysis which tempts one to rebel against such phrases as those of Professor Gates: "the splendid and victorious womanhood of Titian's Madonnas," "the 472 gentle and terrestrial grace of motherhood in those of Andrea del Sarto," the "sweetly ordered comeliness of Van Dyck's." One is moved to ask if the only difference between a Madonna of Titian and one of Andrea is a difference of temper, and if the important matter for the critic of art is the moral conception rather than the visible beauty. I cannot think of anything for which I would exchange the enchanting volumes of Walter Pater, and yet even he is not the ideal aesthetic critic whose duties he made clear. What he has done is to give us the most exquisite and delicate of interpretations. He has not failed to "disengage" the subtle and peculiar pleasure that each picture, each poem or personality, has in store for us; but of analysis and explanation of this pleasure--of which he speaks in the Introduction to "The Renaissance"--there is no more. In the first lines of his paper on Botticelli, the author asks, "What is the peculiar sensation which his work has the property of exciting in us?" And to what does he finally come? "The peculiar character of Botticelli is the result of a blending in him of a sympathy for humanity in its uncertain conditions...with his consciousness of the shadow upon it of the great things from which it sinks." But this is not aesthetic analysis! It is not even the record of a "peculiar sensation," but a complex intellectual interpretation. Where is the pleasure in the irrepressible outline, fascinating in its falseness,--in the strange color, like the taste of olives, of the Spring and the Pallas? So, also, his great passage on the Mona Lisa, his "Winckelmann," even his "Giorgione" itself, are merely wonderful delineations of the mood of response to the creations of the art in question. Such interpretation as we have from Pater is a priceless treasure, but it is none the less the final cornice, and not the corner stone of aesthetic criticism. The tendency to interpretation without any basis in aesthetic explanation is especially seen in the subject of our original discussion,-literature. It is indeed remarkable how scanty is the space given in contemporary criticism to the study of an author's means to those results which we ourselves experience. Does no one really care how it is done? Or are they all in the secret, and interested only in the temperament expressed or the aspect of life envisaged in a given work? One would have thought that as the painter turned critic in Fromentin at least to a certain extent sought out and dealt with the hidden workings of his art, so the romancer or the poet-critic might also have told off for us "the very pulse of the machine." The last word has not been said on the mysteries of the writer's art. We know, it may be, how the links of Shakespeare's magic chain of words are forged, but the same cannot be said of any other poet. We have studied Dante's philosophy and his ideal of love; but have we found out the secrets of his "inventive handling of rhythmical language"? If Flaubert is univerally acknowledged to have created a masterpiece in "Madame Bovary," should there not be an interest for criticism in following out, chapter by chapter, paragraph by paragraph, word by word, the meaning of what it is to be a masterpiece? But such seems not to be the case. Taine reconstructs the English temperament out of Fielding and Dickens; Matthew Arnold, although he deals more than others in first principles, never carries his analysis beyond the widest generalizations, like the requirement for "profound truth" and "high seriousness," for great poetry. And as we run the gamut of contemporary criticism, we find ever preoccupation with the personality of the writers and the ideas of their books. I recall only one example--the critical essays of Henry James--where the craftsman has dropped some hints on the ideals of the literary art; and even that, if I maybe allowed the bull, in his novels rather than in his essays, for in critical theory he is the most ardent of impressionists. Whatever the cause, we cannot but 473 allow the dearth of knowledge of, and interest in, the peculiar subject-matter of criticism,- the elements of beauty in a work of literature. But although the present body of criticism consists rather of preliminaries and supplements to what should be its real accomplishment, these should not therefore receive the less regard. The impressionist has set himself a definite task, and he has succeeded. If not the true critic, he is an artist in his own right, and he has something to say to the world. The scientific critic has taken all knowledge for his province; and although we hold that it has rushed in upon and swamped his distinctly critical function, so long as we may call him by his other name of natural historian of literature, we can only acknowledge his great achievements. For the appreciative critic we have less sympathy as yet, but the "development of the luxurious intricacy and the manifold implications of our enjoyment" may fully crown the edifice of aesthetic explanation and appraisal of the art of every age. But all these, we feel, do not fulfill the essential function; the Idea of Criticism is not here. What the idea of criticism is we have tried to work out: a judgment of a work of art on the basis of the laws of beauty. That such laws there are, that they exist directly in the relation between the material form and the suggested physical reactions, and that they are practically changeless, even as the human instincts are changeless, we have sought to show. And if there can be a science of the beautiful, then an objective judgment on the basis of the laws of the beautiful can be rendered. The true end of criticism, therefore, is to tell us whence and why the charm of a work of art: to disengage, to explain, to measure, and to certify it. And this explanation of charm, and this stamping it with the seal of approval, is possible by the help, and only by the help, of the science of aesthetics,--a science now only in its beginning, but greatly to be desired in its full development. How greatly to be desired we realize in divining that the present dearth of constructive and destructive criticism, of all, indeed, except interpretations and reports, is responsible for the modern mountains of machine-made literature. Will not the aesthetic critic be for us a new Hercules, to clear away the ever growing heap of formless things in book covers? If he will teach us only what great art means in literature; if he will give us never so little discussion of the first principles of beauty, and point the moral with some "selling books," he will at least have turned the flood. There are stories nowadays, but few novels, and plenty of spectacles, but no plays; and how should we know the difference, never having heard what a novel ought to be? But let the aesthetic critic give us a firm foundation for criticism, a real understanding of the conditions of literary art; let him teach us to know a novel or a play when we see it, and we shall not always mingle the wheat and the chaff. 474 15 Oscar Wilde From: Essays & Lectures THE RISE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM CHAPTER I HISTORICAL criticism nowhere occurs as an isolated fact in the civilisation or literature of any people. It is part of that complex working towards freedom which may be described as the revolt against authority. It is merely one facet of that speculative spirit of an innovation, which in the sphere of action produces democracy and revolution, and in that of thought is the parent of philosophy and physical science; and its importance as a factor of progress is based not so much on the results it attains, as on the tone of thought which it represents, and the method by which it works. Being thus the resultant of forces essentially revolutionary, it is not to be found in the ancient world among the material despotisms of Asia or the stationary civilisation of Egypt. The clay cylinders of Assyria and Babylon, the hieroglyphics of the pyramids, form not history but the material for history. The Chinese annals, ascending as they do to the barbarous forest life of the nation, are marked with a soberness of judgment, a freedom from invention, which is almost unparalleled in the writings of any people; but the protective spirit which is the characteristic of that people proved as fatal to their literature as to their commerce. Free criticism is as unknown as free trade. While as regards the Hindus, their acute, analytical and logical mind is directed rather to grammar, criticism and philosophy than to history or chronology. Indeed, in history their imagination seems to have run wild, legend and fact are so indissolubly mingled together that any attempt to separate them seems vain. If we except the identification of the Greek Sandracottus with the Indian Chandragupta, we have really no clue by which we can test the truth of their writings or examine their method of investigation. It is among the Hellenic branch of the Indo-Germanic race that history proper is to be found, as well as the spirit of historical criticism; among that wonderful offshoot of the primitive Aryans, whom we call by the name of Greeks and to whom, as has been well said, we owe all that moves in the world except the blind forces of nature. For, from the day when they left the chill table-lands of Tibet and journeyed, a nomad people, to AEgean shores, the characteristic of their nature has been the search for light, and the spirit of historical criticism is part of that wonderful Aufklarung or illumination of the intellect which seems to have burst on the Greek race like a great flood of light about the sixth century B.C. L'ESPRIT D'UN SIECLE NE NAIT PAS ET NE MEURT PAS E JOUR FIXE, and the first critic is perhaps as difficult to discover as the first man. It is from democracy that the spirit of criticism borrows its intolerance of dogmatic authority, from physical science the alluring analogies of law and order, from philosophy the conception of an essential unity underlying the complex manifestations of phenomena. It appears first rather as a changed attitude of mind than as a principle of 475 research, and its earliest influences are to be found in the sacred writings. For men begin to doubt in questions of religion first, and then in matters of more secular interest; and as regards the nature of the spirit of historical criticism itself in its ultimate development, it is not confined merely to the empirical method of ascertaining whether an event happened or not, but is concerned also with the investigation into the causes of events, the general relations which phenomena of life hold to one another, and in its ultimate development passes into the wider question of the philosophy of history. Now, while the workings of historical criticism in these two spheres of sacred and uninspired history are essentially manifestations of the same spirit, yet their methods are so different, the canons of evidence so entirely separate, and the motives in each case so unconnected, that it will be necessary for a clear estimation of the progress of Greek thought, that we should consider these two questions entirely apart from one another. I shall then in both cases take the succession of writers in their chronological order as representing the rational order not that the succession of time is always the succession of ideas, or that dialectics moves ever in the straight line in which Hegel conceives its advance. In Greek thought, as elsewhere, there are periods of stagnation and apparent retrogression, yet their intellectual development, not merely in the question of historical criticism, but in their art, their poetry and their philosophy, seems so essentially normal, so free from all disturbing external influences, so peculiarly rational, that in following in the footsteps of time we shall really be progressing in the order sanctioned by reason. CHAPTER II AT an early period in their intellectual development the Greeks reached that critical point in the history of every civilised nation, when speculative invades the domain of revealed truth, when the spiritual ideas of the people can no longer be satisfied by the lower, material conceptions of their inspired writers, and when men find it impossible to pour the new wine of free thought into the old bottles of a narrow and a trammelling creed. From their Aryan ancestors they had received the fatal legacy of a mythology stained with immoral and monstrous stories which strove to hide the rational order of nature in a chaos of miracles, and to mar by imputed wickedness the perfection of God's nature a very shirt of Nessos in which the Heracles of rationalism barely escaped annihilation. Now while undoubtedly the speculations of Thales, and the alluring analogies of law and order afforded by physical science, were most important forces in encouraging the rise of the spirit of scepticism, yet it was on its ethical side that the Greek mythology was chiefly open to attack. It is difficult to shake the popular belief in miracles, but no man will admit sin and immorality as attributes of the Ideal he worships; so the first symptoms of a new order of thought are shown in the passionate outcries of Xenophanes and Heraclitos against the evil things said by Homer of the sons of God; and in the story told of Pythagoras, how that he saw tortured in Hell the 'two founders of Greek theology,' we can recognise the rise of the Aufklarung as clearly as we see the Reformation foreshadowed in the INFERNO of Dante. Any honest belief, then, in the plain truth of these stories soon succumbed before the destructive effects of the A PRIORI ethical criticism of this school; but the orthodox party, as is its custom, found immediately a convenient shelter 476 under the aegis of the doctrine of metaphors and concealed meanings. To this allegorical school the tale of the fight around the walls of Troy was a mystery, behind which, as behind a veil, were hidden certain moral and physical truths. The contest between Athena and Ares was that eternal contest between rational thought and the brute force of ignorance; the arrows which rattled in the quiver of the 'Far Darter' were no longer the instruments of vengeance shot from the golden bow of the child of God, but the common rays of the sun, which was itself nothing but a mere inert mass of burning metal. Modern investigation, with the ruthlessness of Philistine analysis, has ultimately brought Helen of Troy down to a symbol of the dawn. There were Philistines among the Greeks also who saw in the [Greek text which cannot be reproduced] a mere metaphor for atmospheric power. Now while this tendency to look for metaphors and hidden meanings must be ranked as one of the germs of historical criticism, yet it was essentially unscientific. Its inherent weakness is clearly pointed out by Plato, who showed that while this theory will no doubt explain many of the current legends, yet, if it is to be appealed to at all, it must be as a universal principle; a position he is by no means prepared to admit. Like many other great principles it suffered from its disciples, and furnished its own refutation when the web of Penelope was analysed into a metaphor of the rules of formal logic, the warp representing the premises, and the woof the conclusion. Rejecting, then, the allegorical interpretation of the sacred writings as an essentially dangerous method, proving either too much or too little, Plato himself returns to the earlier mode of attack, and re-writes history with a didactic purpose, laying down certain ethical canons of historical criticism. God is good; God is just; God is true; God is without the common passions of men. These are the tests to which we are to bring the stories of the Greek religion. 'God predestines no men to ruin, nor sends destruction on innocent cities; He never walks the earth in strange disguise, nor has to mourn for the death of any well-beloved son. Away with the tears for Sarpedon, the lying dream sent to Agamemnon, and the story of the broken covenant!' (Plato, REPUBLIC, Book ii. 380; iii. 388, 391.) Similar ethical canons are applied to the accounts of the heroes of the days of old, and by the same A PRIORI principles Achilles is rescued from the charges of avarice and insolence in a passage which may be recited as the earliest instance of that 'whitewashing of great men,' as it has been called, which is so popular in our own day, when Catiline and Clodius are represented as honest and far-seeing politicians, when EINE EDLE UND GUTE NATUR is claimed for Tiberius, and Nero is rescued from his heritage of infamy as an accomplished DILETTANTE whose moral aberrations are more than excused by his exquisite artistic sense and charming tenor voice. But besides the allegorising principle of interpretation, and the ethical reconstruction of history, there was a third theory, which may be called the semi-historical, and which goes by the name of Euhemeros, though he was by no means the first to propound it. Appealing to a fictitious monument which he declared that he had discovered in the island of Panchaia, and which purported to be a column erected by Zeus, and detailing the incidents of his reign on earth, this shallow thinker attempted to show that the gods and heroes of ancient Greece were 'mere ordinary mortals, whose achievements had been a good deal exaggerated and misrepresented,' and that the proper canon of historical criticism as regards the treatment of myths was to rationalise the incredible, and to present the plausible residuum as actual truth. To him and his school, the centaurs, for instance, those mythical sons of the storm, strange links between the lives of men and animals, were merely some youths from the village of 477 Nephele in Thessaly, distinguished for their sporting tastes; the 'living harvest of panoplied knights,' which sprang so mystically from the dragon's teeth, a body of mercenary troops supported by the profits on a successful speculation in ivory; and Actaeon, an ordinary master of hounds, who, living before the days of subscription, was eaten out of house and home by the expenses of his kennel. Now, that under the glamour of myth and legend some substratum of historical fact may lie, is a proposition rendered extremely probable by the modern investigations into the workings of the mythopoeic spirit in post-Christian times. Charlemagne and Roland, St. Francis and William Tell, are none the less real personages because their histories are filled with much that is fictitious and incredible, but in all cases what is essentially necessary is some external corroboration, such as is afforded by the mention of Roland and Roncesvalles in the chronicles of England, or (in the sphere of Greek legend) by the excavations of Hissarlik. But to rob a mythical narrative of its kernel of supernatural elements, and to present the dry husk thus obtained as historical fact, is, as has been well said, to mistake entirely the true method of investigation and to identify plausibility with truth. And as regards the critical point urged by Palaiphatos, Strabo, and Polybius, that pure invention on Homer's part is inconceivable, we may without scruple allow it, for myths, like constitutions, grow gradually, and are not formed in a day. But between a poet's deliberate creation and historical accuracy there is a wide field of the mythopoeic faculty. This Euhemeristic theory was welcomed as an essentially philosophical and critical method by the unscientific Romans, to whom it was introduced by the poet Ennius, that pioneer of cosmopolitan Hellenicism, and it continued to characterise the tone of ancient thought on the question of the treatment of mythology till the rise of Christianity, when it was turned by such writers as Augustine and Minucius Felix into a formidable weapon of attack on Paganism. It was then abandoned by all those who still bent the knee to Athena or to Zeus, and a general return, aided by the philosophic mystics of Alexandria, to the allegorising principle of interpretation took place, as the only means of saving the deities of Olympus from the Titan assaults of the new Galilean God. In what vain defence, the statue of Mary set in the heart of the Pantheon can best tell us. Religions, however, may be absorbed, but they never are disproved, and the stories of the Greek mythology, spiritualised by the purifying influence of Christianity, reappear in many of the southern parts of Europe in our own day. The old fable that the Greek gods took service with the new religion under assumed names has more truth in it than the many care to discover. Having now traced the progress of historical criticism in the special treatment of myth and legend, I shall proceed to investigate the form in which the same spirit manifested itself as regards what one may term secular history and secular historians. The field traversed will be found to be in some respects the same, but the mental attitude, the spirit, the motive of investigation are all changed. There were heroes before the son of Atreus and historians before Herodotus, yet the latter is rightly hailed as the father of history, for in him we discover not merely the empirical connection of cause and effect, but that constant reference to Laws, which is the characteristic of the historian proper. For all history must be essentially universal; not in the sense of comprising all the synchronous events of the past time, but through the universality of the principles employed. And the great conceptions which unify the work of Herodotus are such as even modern thought has not yet rejected. The immediate government of the world by God, the nemesis and punishment which sin and pride invariably bring with them, the revealing of God's 478 purpose to His people by signs and omens, by miracles and by prophecy; these are to Herodotus the laws which govern the phenomena of history. He is essentially the type of supernatural historian; his eyes are ever strained to discern the Spirit of God moving over the face of the waters of life; he is more concerned with final than with efficient causes. Yet we can discern in him the rise of that HISTORIC SENSE which is the rational antecedent of the science of historical criticism, the [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], to use the words of a Greek writer, as opposed to that which comes either [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]. He has passed through the valley of faith and has caught a glimpse of the sunlit heights of Reason; but like all those who, while accepting the supernatural, yet attempt to apply the canons of rationalism, he is essentially inconsistent. For the better apprehension of the character of this historic sense in Herodotus it will be necessary to examine at some length the various forms of criticism in which it manifests itself. Such fabulous stories as that of the Phoenix, of the goatfooted men, of the headless beings with eyes in their breasts, of the men who slept six months in the year ([Greek text which cannot be reproduced]), of the wer-wolf of the Neuri, and the like, are entirely rejected by him as being opposed to the ordinary experience of life, and to those natural laws whose universal influence the early Greek physical philosophers had already made known to the world of thought. Other legends, such as the suckling of Cyrus by a bitch, or the feather-rain of northern Europe, are rationalised and explained into a woman's name and a fall of snow. The supernatural origin of the Scythian nation, from the union of Hercules and the monstrous Echidna, is set aside by him for the more probable account that they were a nomad tribe driven by the Massagetae from Asia; and he appeals to the local names of their country as proof of the fact that the Kimmerians were the original possessors. But in the case of Herodotus it will be more instructive to pass on from points like these to those questions of general probability, the true apprehension of which depends rather on a certain quality of mind than on any possibility of formulated rules, questions which form no unimportant part of scientific history; for it must be remembered always that the canons of historical criticism are essentially different from those of judicial evidence, for they cannot, like the latter, be made plain to every ordinary mind, but appeal to a certain historical faculty founded on the experience of life. Besides, the rules for the reception of evidence in courts of law are purely stationary, while the science of historical probability is essentially progressive, and changes with the advancing spirit of each age. Now, of all the speculative canons of historical criticism, none is more important than that which rests on psychological probability. Arguing from his knowledge of human nature, Herodotus rejects the presence of Helen within the walls of Troy. Had she been there, he says, Priam and his kinsmen would never have been so mad ([Greek text which cannot be reproduced]) as not to give her up, when they and their children and their city were in such peril (ii. 118); and as regards the authority of Homer, some incidental passages in his poem show that he knew of Helen's sojourn in Egypt during the siege, but selected the other story as being a more suitable motive for an epic. Similarly he does not believe that the Alcmaeonidae family, a family who had always been the haters of tyranny ([Greek text which cannot be reproduced]), and to whom, even more than to Harmodios and Aristogeiton, Athens owed its liberty, would ever have been so treacherous as to hold up a shield after the battle of Marathon as a signal for the Persian host to fall on the city. A shield, he acknowledges, was held up, but it could not possibly have been done by such friends of liberty as the 479 house of Alcmaeon; nor will he believe that a great king like Rhampsinitus would have sent his daughter [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]. Elsewhere he argues from more general considerations of probability; a Greek courtesan like Rhodopis would hardly have been rich enough to build a pyramid, and, besides, on chronological grounds the story is impossible (ii. 134). In another passage (ii. 63), after giving an account of the forcible entry of the priests of Ares into the chapel of the god's mother, which seems to have been a sort of religious faction fight where sticks were freely used ([Greek text which cannot be reproduced]), 'I feel sure,' he says, 'that many of them died from getting their heads broken, notwithstanding the assertions of the Egyptian priests to the contrary.' There is also something charmingly naive in the account he gives of the celebrated Greek swimmer who dived a distance of eighty stadia to give his countrymen warning of the Persian advance. 'If, however,' he says, 'I may offer an opinion on the subject, I would say that he came in a boat.' There is, of course, something a little trivial in some of the instances I have quoted; but in a writer like Herodotus, who stands on the borderland between faith and rationalism, one likes to note even the most minute instances of the rise of the critical and sceptical spirit of inquiry. How really strange, at base, it was with him may, I think, be shown by a reference to those passages where he applies rationalistic tests to matters connected with religion. He nowhere, indeed, grapples with the moral and scientific difficulties of the Greek Bible; and where he rejects as incredible the marvellous achievements of Hercules in Egypt, he does so on the express grounds that he had not yet been received among the gods, and so was still subject to the ordinary conditions of mortal life ([Greek text which cannot be reproduced]). Even within these limits, however, his religious conscience seems to have been troubled at such daring rationalism, and the passage (ii. 45) concludes with a pious hope that God will pardon him for having gone so far, the great rationalistic passage being, of course, that in which he rejects the mythical account of the foundation of Dodona. 'How can a dove speak with a human voice?' he asks, and rationalises the bird into a foreign princess. Similarly he seems more inclined to believe that the great storm at the beginning of the Persian War ceased from ordinary atmospheric causes, and not in consequence of the incantations of the MAGIANS. He calls Melampos, whom the majority of the Greeks looked on as an inspired prophet, 'a clever man who had acquired for himself the art of prophecy'; and as regards the miracle told of the AEginetan statues of the primeval deities of Damia and Auxesia, that they fell on their knees when the sacrilegious Athenians strove to carry them off, 'any one may believe it,' he says, 'who likes, but as for myself, I place no credence in the tale.' So much then for the rationalistic spirit of historical criticism, as far as it appears explicitly in the works of this great and philosophic writer; but for an adequate appreciation of his position we must also note how conscious he was of the value of documentary evidence, of the use of inscriptions, of the importance of the poets as throwing light on manners and customs as well as on historical incidents. No writer of any age has more vividly recognised the fact that history is a matter of evidence, and that it is as necessary for the historian to state his authority as it is to produce one's witnesses in a court of law. While, however, we can discern in Herodotus the rise of an historic sense, we must not blind ourselves to the large amount of instances where he receives supernatural influences as part of the ordinary forces of life. Compared to Thucydides, who succeeded him in the development of history, he appears almost like a mediaeval writer matched with a modern rationalist. For, contemporary though they were, between 480 these two authors there is an infinite chasm of thought. The essential difference of their methods may be best illustrated from those passages where they treat of the same subject. The execution of the Spartan heralds, Nicolaos and Aneristos, during the Peloponnesian War is regarded by Herodotus as one of the most supernatural instances of the workings of nemesis and the wrath of an outraged hero; while the lengthened siege and ultimate fall of Troy was brought about by the avenging hand of God desiring to manifest unto men the mighty penalties which always follow upon mighty sins. But Thucydides either sees not, or desires not to see, in either of these events the finger of Providence, or the punishment of wicked doers. The death of the heralds is merely an Athenian retaliation for similar outrages committed by the opposite side; the long agony of the ten years' siege is due merely to the want of a good commissariat in the Greek army; while the fall of the city is the result of a united military attack consequent on a good supply of provisions. Now, it is to be observed that in this latter passage, as well as elsewhere, Thucydides is in no sense of the word a sceptic as regards his attitude towards the truth of these ancient legends. Agamemnon and Atreus, Theseus and Eurystheus, even Minos, about whom Herodotus has some doubts, are to him as real personages as Alcibiades or Gylippus. The points in his historical criticism of the past are, first, his rejection of all extra-natural interference, and, secondly, the attributing to these ancient heroes the motives and modes of thought of his own day. The present was to him the key to the explanation of the past, as it was to the prediction of the future. Now, as regards his attitude towards the supernatural he is at one with modern science. We too know that, just as the primeval coalbeds reveal to us the traces of rain-drops and other atmospheric phenomena similar to those of our own day, so, in estimating the history of the past, the introduction of no force must be allowed whose workings we cannot observe among the phenomena around us. To lay down canons of ultra-historical credibility for the explanation of events which happen to have preceded us by a few thousand years, is as thoroughly unscientific as it is to intermingle preternatural in geological theories. Whatever the canons of art may be, no difficulty in history is so great as to warrant the introduction of a spirit of spirit [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], in the sense of a violation of the laws of nature. Upon the other point, however, Thucydides falls into an anachronism. To refuse to allow the workings of chivalrous and self-denying motives among the knights of the Trojan crusade, because he saw none in the faction-loving Athenian of his own day, is to show an entire ignorance of the various characteristics of human nature developing under different circumstances, and to deny to a primitive chieftain like Agamemnon that authority founded on opinion, to which we give the name of divine right, is to fall into an historical error quite as gross as attributing to Atreus the courting of the populace ([Greek text which cannot be reproduced]) with a view to the Mycenean throne. The general method of historical criticism pursued by Thucydides having been thus indicated, it remains to proceed more into detail as regards those particular points where he claims for himself a more rational method of estimating evidence than either the public or his predecessors possessed. 'So little pains,' he remarks, 'do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, satisfied with their preconceived opinions,' that the majority of the Greeks believe in a Pitanate cohort of the Spartan army and in a double vote being the prerogative of the Spartan kings, neither of which opinions has any foundation in fact. But the chief point on which he lays stress as evincing the 'uncritical way with which men receive legends, even the legends of their own country,' is the entire baselessness of 481 the common Athenian tradition in which Harmodios and Aristogeiton were represented as the patriotic liberators of Athens from the Peisistratid tyranny. So far, he points out, from the love of freedom being their motive, both of them were influenced by merely personal considerations, Aristogeiton being jealous of Hipparchos' attention to Harmodios, then a beautiful boy in the flower of Greek loveliness, while the latter's indignation was aroused by an insult offered to his sister by the prince. Their motives, then, were personal revenge, while the result of their conspiracy served only to rivet more tightly the chains of servitude which bound Athens to the Peisistratid house, for Hipparchos, whom they killed, was only the tyrant's younger brother, and not the tyrant himself. To prove his theory that Hippias was the elder, he appeals to the evidence afforded by a public inscription in which his name occurs immediately after that of his father, a point which he thinks shows that he was the eldest, and so the heir. This view he further corroborates by another inscription, on the altar of Apollo, which mentions the children of Hippias and not those of his brothers; 'for it was natural for the eldest to be married first'; and besides this, on the score of general probability he points out that, had Hippias been the younger, he would not have so easily obtained the tyranny on the death of Hipparchos. Now, what is important in Thucydides, as evinced in the treatment of legend generally, is not the results he arrived at, but the method by which he works. The first great rationalistic historian, he may be said to have paved the way for all those who followed after him, though it must always be remembered that, while the total absence in his pages of all the mystical paraphernalia of the supernatural theory of life is an advance in the progress of rationalism, and an era in scientific history, whose importance could never be over-estimated, yet we find along with it a total absence of any mention of those various social and economical forces which form such important factors in the evolution of the world, and to which Herodotus rightly gave great prominence in his immortal work. The history of Thucydides is essentially one-sided and incomplete. The intricate details of sieges and battles, subjects with which the historian proper has really nothing to do except so far as they may throw light on the spirit of the age, we would readily exchange for some notice of the condition of private society in Athens, or the influence and position of women. There is an advance in the method of historical criticism; there is an advance in the conception and motive of history itself; for in Thucydides we may discern that natural reaction against the intrusion of didactic and theological considerations into the sphere of the pure intellect, the spirit of which may be found in the Euripidean treatment of tragedy and the later schools of art, as well as in the Platonic conception of science. History, no doubt, has splendid lessons for our instruction, just as all good art comes to us as the herald of the noblest truth. But, to set before either the painter or the historian the inculcation of moral lessons as an aim to be consciously pursued, is to miss entirely the true motive and characteristic both of art and history, which is in the one case the creation of beauty, in the other the discovery of the laws of the evolution of progress: IL NE FAUT DEMANDER DE L'ART QUE L'ART, DU PASSE QUE LE PASSE. Herodotus wrote to illustrate the wonderful ways of Providence and the nemesis that falls on sin, and his work is a good example of the truth that nothing can dispense with criticism so much as a moral aim. Thucydides has no creed to preach, no doctrine to prove. He analyses the results which follow inevitably from certain antecedents, in order that on a recurrence of the same crisis men may know how to act. His object was to discover the laws of the past so as to serve as a light to 482 illumine the future. We must not confuse the recognition of the utility of history with any ideas of a didactic aim. Two points more in Thucydides remain for our consideration: his treatment of the rise of Greek civilisation, and of the primitive condition of Hellas, as well as the question how far can he be said really to have recognised the existence of laws regulating the complex phenomena of life. CHAPTER III THE investigation into the two great problems of the origin of society and the philosophy of history occupies such an important position in the evolution of Greek thought that, to obtain any clear view of the workings of the critical spirit, it will be necessary to trace at some length their rise and scientific development as evinced not merely in the works of historians proper, but also in the philosophical treatises of Plato and Aristotle. The important position which these two great thinkers occupy in the progress of historical criticism can hardly be overestimated. I do not mean merely as regards their treatment of the Greek Bible, and Plato's endeavours to purge sacred history of its immorality by the application of ethical canons at the time when Aristotle was beginning to undermine the basis of miracles by his scientific conception of law, but with reference to these two wider questions of the rise of civil institutions and the philosophy of history. And first, as regards the current theories of the primitive condition of society, there was a wide divergence of opinion in Hellenic society, just as there is now. For while the majority of the orthodox public, of whom Hesiod may be taken as the representative, looked back, as a great many of our own day still do, to a fabulous age of innocent happiness, a BELL' ETE DELL' AURO, where sin and death were unknown and men and women were like Gods, the foremost men of intellect such as Aristotle and Plato, AEschylus and many of the other poets (1) saw in primitive man 'a few small sparks of humanity preserved on the tops of mountains after some deluge,' 'without an idea of cities, governments or legislation,' 'living the lives of wild beasts in sunless caves,' 'their only law being the survival of the fittest.' And this, too, was the opinion of Thucydides, whose ARCHAEOLOGIA as it is contains a most valuable disquisition on the early condition of Hellas, which it will be necessary to examine at some length. Now, as regards the means employed generally by Thucydides for the elucidation of ancient history, I have already pointed out how that, while acknowledging that 'it is the tendency of every poet to exaggerate, as it is of every chronicler to seek to be attractive at the expense of truth; he yet assumes in the thoroughly euhemeristic way, that under the veil of myth and legend there does yet exist a rational basis of fact discoverable by the method of rejecting all supernatural interference as well as any extraordinary motives influencing the actors. It is in complete accordance with this spirit that he appeals, for instance, to the Homeric epithet of [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], as applied to Corinth, as a proof of the early commercial prosperity of that city; to the fact of the generic name HELLENES not occurring in the ILIAD as a corroboration of his theory of the essentially disunited character of the primitive Greek tribes; and he argues from the line 'O'er many islands and all Argos ruled,' as applied to Agamemnon, that his forces must have been partially 483 naval, 'for Agamemnon's was a continental power, and he could not have been master of any but the adjacent islands, and these would not be many but through the possession of a fleet.' Anticipating in some measure the comparative method of research, he argues from the fact of the more barbarous Greek tribes, such as the AEtolians and Acarnanians, still carrying arms in his own day, that this custom was the case originally over the whole country. 'The fact,' he says, 'that the people in these parts of Hellas are still living in the old way points to a time when the same mode of life was equally common to all.' Similarly, in another passage, he shows how a corroboration of his theory of the respectable character of piracy in ancient days is afforded by 'the honour with which some of the inhabitants of the continent still regard a successful marauder,' as well as by the fact that the question, 'Are you a pirate?' is a common feature of primitive society as shown in the poets; and finally, after observing how the old Greek custom of wearing belts in gymnastic contests still survived among the more uncivilised Asiatic tribes, he observes that there are many other points in which a likeness may be shown between the life of the primitive Hellenes and that of the barbarians to-day.' As regards the evidence afforded by ancient remains, while adducing as a proof of the insecure character of early Greek society the fact of their cities (2) being always built at some distance from the sea, yet he is careful to warn us, and the caution ought to be borne in mind by all archaeologists, that we have no right to conclude from the scanty remains of any city that its legendary greatness in primitive times was a mere exaggeration. 'We are not justified,' he says, 'in rejecting the tradition of the magnitude of the Trojan armament, because Mycenae and the other towns of that age seem to us small and insignificant. For, if Lacedaemon was to become desolate, any antiquarian judging merely from its ruins would be inclined to regard the tale of the Spartan hegemony as an idle myth; for the city is a mere collection of villages after the old fashion of Hellas, and has none of those splendid public buildings and temples which characterise Athens, and whose remains, in the case of the latter city, would be so marvellous as to lead the superficial observer into an exaggerated estimate of the Athenian power.' Nothing can be more scientific than the archaeological canons laid down, whose truth is strikingly illustrated to any one who has compared the waste fields of the Eurotas plain with the lordly monuments of the Athenian acropolis. (3) On the other hand, Thucydides is quite conscious of the value of the positive evidence afforded by archaeological remains. He appeals, for instance, to the character of the armour found in the Delian tombs and the peculiar mode of sepulture, as corroboration of his theory of the predominance of the Carian element among the primitive islanders, and to the concentration of all the temples either in the Acropolis, or in its immediate vicinity, to the name of [Greek text which cannot be reproduced] by which it was still known, and to the extraordinary sanctity of the spring of water there, as proof that the primitive city was originally confined to the citadel, and the district immediately beneath it (ii. 16). And lastly, in the very opening of his history, anticipating one of the most scientific of modern methods, he points out how in early states of civilisation immense fertility of the soil tends to favour the personal aggrandisement of individuals, and so to stop the normal progress of the country through 'the rise of factions, that endless source of ruin'; and also by the allurements it offers to a foreign invader, to necessitate a continual change of population, one immigration following on another. He exemplifies his theory by pointing to the endless political revolutions that characterised Arcadia, Thessaly and Boeotia, the three richest spots in 484 Greece, as well as by the negative instance of the undisturbed state in primitive time of Attica, which was always remarkable for the dryness and poverty of its soil. Now, while undoubtedly in these passages we may recognise the first anticipation of many of the most modern principles of research, we must remember how essentially limited is the range of the ARCHAEOLOGIA, and how no theory at all is offered on the wider questions of the general conditions of the rise and progress of humanity, a problem which is first scientifically discussed in the REPUBLIC of Plato. And at the outset it must be premised that, while the study of primitive man is an essentially inductive science, resting rather on the accumulation of evidence than on speculation, among the Greeks it was prosecuted rather on deductive principles. Thucydides did, indeed, avail himself of the opportunities afforded by the unequal development of civilisation in his own day in Greece, and in the places I have pointed out seems to have anticipated the comparative method. But we do not find later writers availing themselves of the wonderfully accurate and picturesque accounts given by Herodotus of the customs of savage tribes. To take one instance, which bears a good deal on modern questions, we find in the works of this great traveller the gradual and progressive steps in the development of the family life clearly manifested in the mere gregarious herding together of the Agathyrsi, their primitive kinsmanship through women in common, and the rise of a feeling of paternity from a state of polyandry. This tribe stood at that time on that borderland between umbilical relationship and the family which has been such a difficult point for modern anthropologists to find. The ancient authors, however, are unanimous in insisting that the family is the ultimate unit of society, though, as I have said, an inductive study of primitive races, or even the accounts given of them by Herodotus, would have shown them that the [Greek text which cannot be reproduced] of a personal household, to use Plato's expression, is really a most complex notion appearing always in a late stage of civilisation, along with recognition of private property and the rights of individualism. Philology also, which in the hands of modern investigators has proved such a splendid instrument of research, was in ancient days studied on principles too unscientific to be of much use. Herodotus points out that the word ERIDANOS is essentially Greek in character, that consequently the river supposed to run round the world is probably a mere Greek invention. His remarks, however, on language generally, as in the case of PIROMIS and the ending of the Persian names, show on what unsound basis his knowledge of language rested. In the BACCHAE of Euripides there is an extremely interesting passage in which the immoral stories of the Greek mythology are accounted for on the principle of that misunderstanding of words and metaphors to which modern science has given the name of a disease of language. In answer to the impious rationalism of Pentheus a sort of modern Philistine Teiresias, who may be termed the Max Muller of the Theban cycle, points out that the story of Dionysus being inclosed in Zeus' thigh really arose from the linguistic confusion between [Greek text which cannot be reproduced] and [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]. On the whole, however for I have quoted these two instances only to show the unscientific character of early philology we may say that this important instrument in recreating the history of the past was not really used by the ancients as a means of historical criticism. Nor did the ancients employ that other method, used to such advantage in our own day, by which in the symbolism and formulas of an advanced civilisation we can detect the unconscious survival of ancient customs: for, whereas in the sham capture of the bride at a marriage 485 feast, which was common in Wales till a recent time, we can discern the lingering reminiscence of the barbarous habit of exogamy, the ancient writers saw only the deliberate commemoration of an historical event. Aristotle does not tell us by what method he discovered that the Greeks used to buy their wives in primitive times, but, judging by his general principles, it was probably through some legend or myth on the subject which lasted to his own day, and not, as we would do, by arguing back from the marriage presents given to the bride and her relatives. (4) The origin of the common proverb 'worth so many beeves,' in which we discern the unconscious survival of a purely pastoral state of society before the use of metals was known, is ascribed by Plutarch to the fact of Theseus having coined money bearing a bull's head. Similarly, the Amathusian festival, in which a young man imitated the labours of a woman in travail, is regarded by him as a rite instituted in Ariadne's honour, and the Carian adoration of asparagus as a simple commemoration of the adventure of the nymph Perigune. In the first of these WE discern the beginning of agnation and kinsmanship through the father, which still lingers in the 'couvee' of New Zealand tribes: while the second is a relic of the totem and fetish worship of plants. Now, in entire opposition to this modern inductive principle of research stands the philosophic Plato, whose account of primitive man is entirely speculative and deductive. The origin of society he ascribes to necessity, the mother of all inventions, and imagines that individual man began deliberately to herd together on account of the advantages of the principle of division of labour and the rendering of mutual need. It must, however, be borne in mind that Plato's object in this whole passage in the REPUBLIC was, perhaps, not so much to analyse the conditions of early society as to illustrate the importance of the division of labour, the shibboleth of his political economy, by showing what a powerful factor it must have been in the most primitive as well as in the most complex states of society; just as in the LAWS he almost rewrites entirely the history of the Peloponnesus in order to prove the necessity of a balance of power. He surely, I mean, must have recognised himself how essentially incomplete his theory was in taking no account of the origin of family life, the position and influence of women, and other social questions, as well as in disregarding those deeper motives of religion, which are such important factors in early civilisation, and whose influence Aristotle seems to have clearly apprehended, when he says that the aim of primitive society was not merely life but the higher life, and that in the origin of society utility is not the sole motive, but that there is something spiritual in it if, at least, 'spiritual' will bring out the meaning of that complex expression [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]. Otherwise, the whole account in the REPUBLIC of primitive man will always remain as a warning against the intrusion of A PRIORI speculations in the domain appropriate to induction. Now, Aristotle's theory of the origin of society, like his philosophy of ethics, rests ultimately on the principle of final causes, not in the theological meaning of an aim or tendency imposed from without, but in the scientific sense of function corresponding to organ. 'Nature maketh no thing in vain' is the text of Aristotle in this as in other inquiries. Man being the only animal possessed of the power of rational speech is, he asserts, by nature intended to be social, more so than the bee or any other gregarious animal. He is [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], and the national tendency towards higher forms of perfection brings the 'armed savage who used to sell his wife' to the free independence of a free state, and to the [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], which was the test of true citizenship. The stages passed through 486 by humanity start with the family first as the ultimate unit. The conglomeration of families forms a village ruled by that patriarchal sway which is the oldest form of government in the world, as is shown by the fact that all men count it to be the constitution of heaven, and the villages are merged into the state, and here the progression stops. For Aristotle, like all Greek thinkers, found his ideal within the walls of the [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], yet perhaps in his remark that a united Greece would rule the world we may discern some anticipation of that 'federal union of free states into one consolidated empire' which, more than the [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], is to our eyes the ultimately perfect polity. How far Aristotle was justified in regarding the family as the ultimate unit, with the materials afforded to him by Greek literature, I have already noticed. Besides, Aristotle, I may remark, had he reflected on the meaning of that Athenian law which, while prohibiting marriage with a uterine sister, permitted it with a sister-german, or on the common tradition in Athens that before the time of Cecrops children bore their mothers' names, or on some of the Spartan regulations, could hardly have failed to see the universality of kinsmanship through women in early days, and the late appearance of monandry. Yet, while he missed this point, in common, it must be acknowledged, with many modern writers, such as Sir Henry Maine, it is essentially as an explorer of inductive instances that we recognise his improvement on Plato. The treatise [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], did it remain to us in its entirety, would have been one of the most valuable landmarks in the progress of historical criticism, and the first scientific treatise on the science of comparative politics. A few fragments still remain to us, in one of which we find Aristotle appealing to the authority of an ancient inscription on the 'Disk of Iphitus,' one of the most celebrated Greek antiquities, to corroborate his theory of the Lycurgean revival of the Olympian festival; while his enormous research is evinced in the elaborate explanation he gives of the historical origin of proverbs such as [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], of religious songs like the [Greek text which cannot be reproduced] of the Botticean virgins, or the praises of love and war. And, finally, it is to be observed how much wider than Plato's his theory of the origin of society is. They both rest on a psychological basis, but Aristotle's recognition of the capacity for progress and the tendency towards a higher life shows how much deeper his knowledge of human nature was. In imitation of these two philosophers, Polybius gives an account of the origin of society in the opening to his philosophy of history. Somewhat in the spirit of Plato, he imagines that after one of the cyclic deluges which sweep off mankind at stated periods and annihilate all pre-existing civilisation, the few surviving members of humanity coalesce for mutual protection, and, as in the case with ordinary animals, the one most remarkable for physical strength is elected king. In a short time, owing to the workings of sympathy and the desire of approbation, the moral qualities begin to make their appearance, and intellectual instead of bodily excellence becomes the qualification for sovereignty. Other points, as the rise of law and the like, are dwelt on in a somewhat modern spirit, and although Polybius seems not to have employed the inductive method of research in this question, or rather, I should say, of the hierarchical order of the rational progress of ideas in life, he is not far removed from what the laborious investigations of modern travellers have given us. And, indeed, as regards the working of the speculative faculty in the creation of history, it is in all respects marvellous how that the most truthful accounts of the passage from barbarism to civilisation in ancient 487 literature come from the works of poets. The elaborate researches of Mr. Tylor and Sir John Lubbock have done little more than verify the theories put forward in the PROMETHEUS BOUND and the DE NATURA RERUM; yet neither AEschylus nor Lucretias followed in the modern path, but rather attained to truth by a certain almost mystic power of creative imagination, such as we now seek to banish from science as a dangerous power, though to it science seems to owe many of its most splendid generalities. (5) Leaving then the question of the origin of society as treated by the ancients, I shall now turn to the other and the more important question of how far they may he said to have attained to what we call the philosophy of history. Now at the outset we must note that, while the conceptions of law and order have been universally received as the governing principles of the phenomena of nature in the sphere of physical science, yet their intrusion into the domain of history and the life of man has always been met with a strong opposition, on the ground of the incalculable nature of two great forces acting on human action, a certain causeless spontaneity which men call free will, and the extra-natural interference which they attribute as a constant attribute to God. Now, that there is a science of the apparently variable phenomena of history is a conception which WE have perhaps only recently begun to appreciate; yet, like all other great thoughts, it seems to have come to the Greek mind spontaneously, through a certain splendour of imagination, in the morning tide of their civilisation, before inductive research had armed them with the instruments of verification. For I think it is possible to discern in some of the mystic speculations of the early Greek thinkers that desire to discover what is that 'invariable existence of which there are variable states,' and to incorporate it in some one formula of law which may serve to explain the different manifestations of all organic bodies, MAN INCLUDED, which is the germ of the philosophy of history; the germ indeed of an idea of which it is not too much to say that on it any kind of historical criticism, worthy of the name, must ultimately rest. For the very first requisite for any scientific conception of history is the doctrine of uniform sequence: in other words, that certain events having happened, certain other events corresponding to them will happen also; that the past is the key of the future. Now at the birth of this great conception science, it is true, presided, yet religion it was which at the outset clothed it in its own garb, and familiarised men with it by appealing to their hearts first and then to their intellects; knowing that at the beginning of things it is through the moral nature, and not through the intellectual, that great truths are spread. So in Herodotus, who may be taken as a representative of the orthodox tone of thought, the idea of the uniform sequence of cause and effect appears under the theological aspect of Nemesis and Providence, which is really the scientific conception of law, only it is viewed from an ETHICAL standpoint. Now in Thucydides the philosophy of history rests on the probability, which the uniformity of human nature affords us, that the future will in the course of human things resemble the past, if not reproduce it. He appears to contemplate a recurrence of the phenomena of history as equally certain with a return of the epidemic of the Great Plague. Notwithstanding what German critics have written on the subject, we must beware of regarding this conception as a mere reproduction of that cyclic theory of events which sees in the world nothing but the regular rotation of Strophe and Antistrophe, in the eternal choir of life and death. For, in his remarks on the excesses of the Corcyrean Revolution, Thucydides distinctly rests his idea of the recurrence of history on the psychological grounds of the general sameness of mankind. 'The sufferings,' he says, 488 'which revolution entailed upon the cities were many and terrible, such as have occurred and always will occurs as long as human nature remains the same, though in a severer or milder form, and varying in their symptoms according to the variety of the particular cases. 'In peace and prosperity states and individuals have better sentiments, because they are not confronted with imperious necessities; but war takes away the easy supply of men's wants, and so proves a hard taskmaster, which brings most men's characters to a level with their fortunes.' CHAPTER IV IT is evident that here Thucydides is ready to admit the variety of manifestations which external causes bring about in their workings on the uniform character of the nature of man. Yet, after all is said, these are perhaps but very general statements: the ordinary effects of peace and war are dwelt on, but there is no real analysis of the immediate causes and general laws of the phenomena of life, nor does Thucydides seem to recognise the truth that if humanity proceeds in circles, the circles are always widening. Perhaps we may say that with him the philosophy of history is partly in the metaphysical stage, and see, in the progress of this idea from Herodotus to Polybius, the exemplification of the Comtian Law of the three stages of thought, the theological, the metaphysical, and the scientific: for truly out of the vagueness of theological mysticism this conception which we call the Philosophy of History was raised to a scientific principle, according to which the past was explained and the future predicted by reference to general laws. Now, just as the earliest account of the nature of the progress of humanity is to be found in Plato, so in him we find the first explicit attempt to found a universal philosophy of history upon wide rational grounds. Having created an ideally perfect state, the philosopher proceeds to give an elaborate theory of the complex causes which produce revolutions, of the moral effects of various forms of government and education, of the rise of the criminal classes and their connection with pauperism, and, in a word, to create history by the deductive method and to proceed from A PRIORI psychological principles to discover the governing laws of the apparent chaos of political life. There have been many attempts since Plato to deduce from a single philosophical principle all the phenomena which experience subsequently verifies for us. Fichte thought he could predict the worldplan from the idea of universal time. Hegel dreamed he had found the key to the mysteries of life in the development of freedom, and Krause in the categories of being. But the one scientific basis on which the true philosophy of history must rest is the complete knowledge of the laws of human nature in all its wants, its aspirations, its powers and its tendencies: and this great truth, which Thucydides may be said in some measure to have apprehended, was given to us first by Plato. Now, it cannot be accurately said of this philosopher that either his philosophy or his history is entirely and simply A PRIORI. ON EST DE SON SIECLE MEME QUAND ON Y PROTESTE, and so we find in him continual references to the Spartan mode of life, the Pythagorean system, the general characteristics of Greek tyrannies and Greek democracies. For while, in his account of the method of forming an ideal state, he says that the political artist is indeed to fix his gaze on the sun of abstract truth in the heavens of the pure reason, but is sometimes to turn to the realisation of the ideals on earth: yet, after all, the general 489 character of the Platonic method, which is what we are specially concerned with, is essentially deductive and A PRIORI. And he himself, in the building up of his Nephelococcygia, certainly starts with a [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], making a clean sweep of all history and all experience; and it was essentially as an A PRIORI theorist that he is criticised by Aristotle, as we shall see later. To proceed to closer details regarding the actual scheme of the laws of political revolutions as drawn out by Plato, we must first note that the primary cause of the decay of the ideal state is the general principle, common to the vegetable and animal worlds as well as to the world of history, that all created things are fated to decay a principle which, though expressed in the terms of a mere metaphysical abstraction, is yet perhaps in its essence scientific. For we too must hold that a continuous redistribution of matter and motion is the inevitable result of the nominal persistence of Force, and that perfect equilibrium is as impossible in politics as it certainly is in physics. The secondary causes which mar the perfection of the Platonic 'city of the sun' are to be found in the intellectual decay of the race consequent on injudicious marriages and in the Philistine elevation of physical achievements over mental culture; while the hierarchical succession of Timocracy and Oligarchy, Democracy and Tyranny, is dwelt on at great length and its causes analysed in a very dramatic and psychological manner, if not in that sanctioned by the actual order of history. And indeed it is apparent at first sight that the Platonic succession of states represents rather the succession of ideas in the philosophic mind than any historical succession of time. Aristotle meets the whole simply by an appeal to facts. If the theory of the periodic decay of all created things, he urges, be scientific, it must be universal, and so true of all the other states as well as of the ideal. Besides, a state usually changes into its contrary and not to the form next to it; so the ideal state would not change into Timocracy; while Oligarchy, more often than Tyranny, succeeds Democracy. Plato, besides, says nothing of what a Tyranny would change to. According to the cycle theory it ought to pass into the ideal state again, but as a fact one Tyranny is changed into another as at Sicyon, or into a Democracy as at Syracuse, or into an Aristocracy as at Carthage. The example of Sicily, too, shows that an Oligarchy is often followed by a Tyranny, as at Leontini and Gela. Besides, it is absurd to represent greed as the chief motive of decay, or to talk of avarice as the root of Oligarchy, when in nearly all true oligarchies money-making is forbidden by law. And finally the Platonic theory neglects the different kinds of democracies and of tyrannies. Now nothing can be more important than this passage in Aristotle's POLITICS (v. 12.), which may he said to mark an era in the evolution of historical criticism. For there is nothing on which Aristotle insists so strongly as that the generalisations from facts ought to be added to the data of the A PRIORI method a principle which we know to be true not merely of deductive speculative politics but of physics also: for are not the residual phenomena of chemists a valuable source of improvement in theory? His own method is essentially historical though by no means empirical. On the contrary, this far-seeing thinker, rightly styled IL MAESTRO DI COLOR CHE SANNO, may be said to have apprehended clearly that the true method is neither exclusively empirical nor exclusively speculative, but rather a union of both in the process called Analysis or the Interpretation of Facts, which has been defined as the application to facts of such general conceptions as may fix the important characteristics of the phenomena, and present them permanently in their true relations. He too was the first to point out, what even in our own day is incompletely appreciated, that 490 nature, including the development of man, is not full of incoherent episodes like a bad tragedy, that inconsistency and anomaly are as impossible in the moral as they are in the physical world, and that where the superficial observer thinks he sees a revolution the philosophical critic discerns merely the gradual and rational evolution of the inevitable results of certain antecedents. And while admitting the necessity of a psychological basis for the philosophy of history, he added to it the important truth that man, to be apprehended in his proper position in the universe as well as in his natural powers, must be studied from below in the hierarchical progression of higher function from the lower forms of life. The important maxim, that to obtain a clear conception of anything we must 'study it in its growth from the very beginning,' is formally set down in the opening of the POLITICS, where, indeed, we shall find the other characteristic features of the modern Evolutionary theory, such as the 'Differentiation of Function' and the 'Survival of the Fittest' explicitly set forth. What a valuable step this was in the improvement of the method of historical criticism it is needless to point out. By it, one may say, the true thread was given to guide one's steps through the bewildering labyrinth of facts. For history (to use terms with which Aristotle has made us familiar) may be looked at from two essentially different standpoints; either as a work of art whose [Greek text which cannot be reproduced] or final cause is external to it and imposed on it from without; or as an organism containing the law of its own development in itself, and working out its perfection merely by the fact of being what it is. Now, if we adopt the former, which we may style the theological view, we shall be in continual danger of tripping into the pitfall of some A PRIORI conclusion that bourne from which, it has been truly said, no traveller ever returns. The latter is the only scientific theory and was apprehended in its fulness by Aristotle, whose application of the inductive method to history, and whose employment of the evolutionary theory of humanity, show that he was conscious that the philosophy of history is nothing separate from the facts of history but is contained in them, and that the rational law of the complex phenomena of life, like the ideal in the world of thought, is to be reached through the facts, not superimposed on them - [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]. And finally, in estimating the enormous debt which the science of historical criticism owes to Aristotle, we must not pass over his attitude towards those two great difficulties in the formation of a philosophy of history on which I have touched above. I mean the assertion of extra-natural interference with the normal development of the world and of the incalculable influence exercised by the power of free will. Now, as regards the former, he may be said to have neglected it entirely. The special acts of providence proceeding from God's immediate government of the world, which Herodotus saw as mighty landmarks in history, would have been to him essentially disturbing elements in that universal reign of law, the extent of whose limitless empire he of all the great thinkers of antiquity was the first explicitly to recognise. Standing aloof from the popular religion as well as from the deeper conceptions of Herodotus and the Tragic School, he no longer thought of God as of one with fair limbs and treacherous face haunting wood and glade, nor would he see in him a jealous judge continually interfering in the world's history to bring the wicked to punishment and the proud to a fall. God to him was the incarnation of the pure Intellect, a being whose activity was the contemplation of his own perfection, one whom Philosophy might imitate but whom prayers could never move, to the sublime indifference of whose passionless wisdom what were the sons of men, their desires or their sins? While, as regards the other difficulty 491 and the formation of a philosophy of history, the conflict of free will with general laws appears first in Greek thought in the usual theological form in which all great ideas seem to be cradled at their birth. It was such legends as those of OEdipus and Adrastus, exemplifying the struggles of individual humanity against the overpowering force of circumstances and necessity, which gave to the early Greeks those same lessons which we of modern days draw, in somewhat less artistic fashion, from the study of statistics and the laws of physiology. In Aristotle, of course, there is no trace of supernatural influence. The Furies, which drive their victim into sin first and then punishment, are no longer 'viper-tressed goddesses with eyes and mouth aflame,' but those evil thoughts which harbour within the impure soul. In this, as in all other points, to arrive at Aristotle is to reach the pure atmosphere of scientific and modern thought. But while he rejected pure necessitarianism in its crude form as essentially a REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM of life, he was fully conscious of the fact that the will is not a mysterious and ultimate unit of force beyond which we cannot go and whose special characteristic is inconsistency, but a certain creative attitude of the mind which is, from the first, continually influenced by habits, education and circumstance; so absolutely modifiable, in a word, that the good and the bad man alike seem to lose the power of free will; for the one is morally unable to sin, the other physically incapacitated for reformation. And of the influence of climate and temperature in forming the nature of man (a conception perhaps pressed too far in modern days when the 'race theory' is supposed to be a sufficient explanation of the Hindoo, and the latitude and longitude of a country the best guide to its morals(6)) Aristotle is completely unaware. I do not allude to such smaller points as the oligarchical tendencies of a horse-breeding country and the democratic influence of the proximity of the sea (important though they are for the consideration of Greek history), but rather to those wider views in the seventh book of his POLITICS, where he attributes the happy union in the Greek character of intellectual attainments with the spirit of progress to the temperate climate they enjoyed, and points out how the extreme cold of the north dulls the mental faculties of its inhabitants and renders them incapable of social organisation or extended empire; while to the enervating heat of eastern countries was due that want of spirit and bravery which then, as now, was the characteristic of the population in that quarter of the globe. Thucydides has shown the causal connection between political revolutions and the fertility of the soil, but goes a step farther and points out the psychological influences on a people's character exercised by the various extremes of climate in both cases the first appearance of a most valuable form of historical criticism. To the development of Dialectic, as to God, intervals of time are of no account. From Plato and Aristotle we pass direct to Polybius. The progress of thought from the philosopher of the Academe to the Arcadian historian may be best illustrated by a comparison of the method by which each of the three writers, whom I have selected as the highest expression of the rationalism of his respective age, attained to his ideal state: for the latter conception may be in a measure regarded as representing the most spiritual principle which they could discern in history. Now, Plato created his on A PRIORI principles; Aristotle formed his by an analysis of existing constitutions; Polybius found his realised for him in the actual world of fact. Aristotle criticised the deductive speculations of Plato by means of inductive negative instances, but Polybius will not take the 'Cloud City' of the REPUBLIC into account at all. He compares it to an athlete who has never run on 'Constitution Hill,' to a statue so beautiful that it is entirely removed 492 from the ordinary conditions of humanity, and consequently from the canons of criticism. The Roman state had attained in his eyes, by means of the mutual counteraction of three opposing forces, (7) that stable equilibrium in politics which was the ideal of all the theoretical writers of antiquity. And in connection with this point it will be convenient to notice here how much truth there is contained in the accusation often brought against the ancients that they knew nothing of the idea of Progress, for the meaning of many of their speculations will be hidden from us if we do not try and comprehend first what their aim was, and secondly why it was so. Now, like all wide generalities, this statement is at least inaccurate. The prayer of Plato's ideal City - [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], might be written as a text over the door of the last Temple to Humanity raised by the disciples of Fourier and Saint-Simon, but it is certainly true that their ideal principle was order and permanence, not indefinite progress. For, setting aside the artistic prejudices which would have led the Greeks to reject this idea of unlimited improvement, we may note that the modern conception of progress rests partly on the new enthusiasm and worship of humanity, partly on the splendid hopes of material improvements in civilisation which applied science has held out to us, two influences from which ancient Greek thought seems to have been strangely free. For the Greeks marred the perfect humanism of the great men whom they worshipped, by imputing to them divinity and its supernatural powers; while their science was eminently speculative and often almost mystic in its character, aiming at culture and not utility, at higher spirituality and more intense reverence for law, rather than at the increased facilities of locomotion and the cheap production of common things about which our modern scientific school ceases not to boast. And lastly, and perhaps chiefly, we must remember that the 'plague spot of all Greek states,' as one of their own writers has called it, was the terrible insecurity to life and property which resulted from the factions and revolutions which ceased not to trouble Greece at all times, raising a spirit of fanaticism such as religion raised in the middle ages of Europe. These considerations, then, will enable us to understand first how it was that, radical and unscrupulous reformers as the Greek political theorists were, yet, their end once attained, no modern conservatives raised such outcry against the slightest innovation. Even acknowledged improvements in such things as the games of children or the modes of music were regarded by them with feelings of extreme apprehension as the herald of the DRAPEAU ROUGE of reform. And secondly, it will show us how it was that Polybius found his ideal in the commonwealth of Rome, and Aristotle, like Mr. Bright, in the middle classes. Polybius, however, is not content merely with pointing out his ideal state, but enters at considerable length into the question of those general laws whose consideration forms the chief essential of the philosophy of history. He starts by accepting the general principle that all things are fated to decay (which I noticed in the case of Plato), and that 'as iron produces rust and as wood breeds the animals that destroy it, so every state has in it the seeds of its own corruption.' He is not, however, content to rest there, but proceeds to deal with the more immediate causes of revolutions, which he says are twofold in nature, either external or internal. Now, the former, depending as they do on the synchronous conjunction of other events outside the sphere of scientific estimation, are from their very character incalculable; but the latter, though assuming many forms, always result from the over-great preponderance of any single element to the detriment of the others, the rational law lying at the base of all varieties of political changes being that stability can result only from the statical 493 equilibrium produced by the counteraction of opposing parts, since the more simple a constitution is the more it is insecure. Plato had pointed out before how the extreme liberty of a democracy always resulted in despotism, but Polybius analyses the law and shows the scientific principles on which it rests. The doctrine of the instability of pure constitutions forms an important era in the philosophy of history. Its special applicability to the politics of our own day has been illustrated in the rise of the great Napoleon, when the French state had lost those divisions of caste and prejudice, of landed aristocracy and moneyed interest, institutions in which the vulgar see only barriers to Liberty but which are indeed the only possible defences against the coming of that periodic Sirius of politics, the [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]. There is a principle which Tocqueville never wearies of explaining, and which has been subsumed by Mr. Herbert Spencer under that general law common to all organic bodies which we call the Instability of the Homogeneous. The various manifestations of this law, as shown in the normal, regular revolutions and evolutions of the different forms of government, (8) are expounded with great clearness by Polybius, who claimed for his theory, in the Thucydidean spirit, that it is a [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], not a mere [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], and that a knowledge of it will enable the impartial observer (9) to discover at any time what period of its constitutional evolution any particular state has already reached and into what form it will be next differentiated, though possibly the exact time of the changes may be more or less uncertain. (10) Now in this necessarily incomplete account of the laws of political revolutions as expounded by Polybius enough perhaps has been said to show what is his true position in the rational development of the 'Idea' which I have called the Philosophy of History, because it is the unifying of history. Seen darkly as it is through the glass of religion in the pages of Herodotus, more metaphysical than scientific with Thucydides, Plato strove to seize it by the eagleflight of speculation, to reach it with the eager grasp of a soul impatient of those slower and surer inductive methods which Aristotle, in his trenchant criticism of his greater master, showed were more brilliant than any vague theory, if the test of brilliancy is truth. What then is the position of Polybius? Does any new method remain for him? Polybius was one of those many men who are born too late to be original. To Thucydides belongs the honour of being the first in the history of Greek thought to discern the supreme calm of law and order underlying the fitful storms of life, and Plato and Aristotle each represents a great new principle. To Polybius belongs the office how noble an office he made it his writings show of making more explicit the ideas which were implicit in his predecessors, of showing that they were of wider applicability and perhaps of deeper meaning than they had seemed before, of examining with more minuteness the laws which they had discovered, and finally of pointing out more clearly than any one had done the range of science and the means it offered for analysing the present and predicting what was to come. His office thus was to gather up what they had left, to give their principles new life by a wider application. Polybius ends this great diapason of Greek thought. When the Philosophy of history appears next, as in Plutarch's tract on 'Why God's anger is delayed,' the pendulum of thought had swung back to where it began. His theory was introduced to the Romans under the cultured style of Cicero, and was welcomed by them as the philosophical panegyric of their state. The last notice of it in Latin literature is in the pages of Tacitus, who alludes to the stable polity formed out of these elements as a constitution easier to commend than to produce and in no case lasting. 494 Yet Polybius had seen the future with no uncertain eye, and had prophesied the rise of the Empire from the unbalanced power of the ochlocracy fifty years and more before there was joy in the Julian household over the birth of that boy who, born to power as the champion of the people, died wearing the purple of a king. No attitude of historical criticism is more important than the means by which the ancients attained to the philosophy of history. The principle of heredity can be exemplified in literature as well as in organic life: Aristotle, Plato and Polybius are the lineal ancestors of Fichte and Hegel, of Vico and Cousin, of Montesquieu and Tocqueville. As my aim is not to give an account of historians but to point out those great thinkers whose methods have furthered the advance of this spirit of historical criticism, I shall pass over those annalists and chroniclers who intervened between Thucydides and Polybius. Yet perhaps it may serve to throw new light on the real nature of this spirit and its intimate connection with all other forms of advanced thought if I give some estimate of the character and rise of those many influences prejudicial to the scientific study of history which cause such a wide gap between these two historians. Foremost among these is the growing influence of rhetoric and the Isocratean school, which seems to have regarded history as an arena for the display either of pathos or paradoxes, not a scientific investigation into laws. The new age is the age of style. The same spirit of exclusive attention to form which made Euripides often, like Swinburne, prefer music to meaning and melody to morality, which gave to the later Greek statues that refined effeminacy, that overstrained gracefulness of attitude, was felt in the sphere of history. The rules laid down for historical composition are those relating to the aesthetic value of digressions, the legality of employing more than one metaphor in the same sentence, and the like; and historians are ranked not by their power of estimating evidence but by the goodness of the Greek they write. I must note also the important influence on literature exercised by Alexander the Great; for while his travels encouraged the more accurate research of geography, the very splendour of his achievements seems to have brought history again into the sphere of romance. The appearance of all great men in the world is followed invariably by the rise of that mythopoeic spirit and that tendency to look for the marvellous, which is so fatal to true historical criticism. An Alexander, a Napoleon, a Francis of Assisi and a Mahomet are thought to be outside the limiting conditions of rational law, just as comets were supposed to be not very long ago. While the founding of that city of Alexandria, in which Western and Eastern thought met with such strange result to both, diverted the critical tendencies of the Greek spirit into questions of grammar, philology and the like, the narrow, artificial atmosphere of that University town (as we may call it) was fatal to the development of that independent and speculative spirit of research which strikes out new methods of inquiry, of which historical criticism is one. The Alexandrines combined a great love of learning with an ignorance of the true principles of research, an enthusiastic spirit for accumulating materials with a wonderful incapacity to use them. Not among the hot sands of Egypt, or the Sophists of Athens, but from the very heart of Greece rises the man of genius on whose influence in the evolution of the philosophy of history I have a short time ago dwelt. Born in the serene and pure air of the clear uplands of Arcadia, Polybius may be said to reproduce in his work the character of the place which gave him birth. For, of all the historians I do not say of antiquity but of all time none is more rationalistic than he, none more free from any belief in the 'visions and omens, the monstrous legends, the grovelling superstitions and unmanly craving for the supernatural' 495 ([Greek text that cannot be reproduced](11)) which he himself is compelled to notice as the characteristics of some of the historians who preceded him. Fortunate in the land which bore him, he was no less blessed in the wondrous time of his birth. For, representing in himself the spiritual supremacy of the Greek intellect and allied in bonds of chivalrous friendship to the world-conqueror of his day, he seems led as it were by the hand of Fate 'to comprehend,' as has been said, 'more clearly than the Romans themselves the historical position of Rome,' and to discern with greater insight than all other men could those two great resultants of ancient civilisation, the material empire of the city of the seven hills, and the intellectual sovereignty of Hellas. Before his own day, he says, (12) the events of the world were unconnected and separate and the histories confined to particular countries. Now, for the first time the universal empire of the Romans rendered a universal history possible. (13) This, then, is the august motive of his work: to trace the gradual rise of this Italian city from the day when the first legion crossed the narrow strait of Messina and landed on the fertile fields of Sicily to the time when Corinth in the East and Carthage in the West fell before the resistless wave of empire and the eagles of Rome passed on the wings of universal victory from Calpe and the Pillars of Hercules to Syria and the Nile. At the same time he recognised that the scheme of Rome's empire was worked out under the aegis of God's will. (14) For, as one of the Middle Age scribes most truly says, the [Greek text which cannot be reproduced] of Polybius is that power which we Christians call God; the second aim, as one may call it, of his history is to point out the rational and human and natural causes which brought this result, distinguishing, as we should say, between God's mediate and immediate government of the world. With any direct intervention of God in the normal development of Man, he will have nothing to do: still less with any idea of chance as a factor in the phenomena of life. Chance and miracles, he says, are mere expressions for our ignorance of rational causes. The spirit of rationalism which we recognised in Herodotus as a vague uncertain attitude and which appears in Thucydides as a consistent attitude of mind never argued about or even explained, is by Polybius analysed and formulated as the great instrument of historical research. Herodotus, while believing on principle in the supernatural, yet was sceptical at times. Thucydides simply ignored the supernatural. He did not discuss it, but he annihilated it by explaining history without it. Polybius enters at length into the whole question and explains its origin and the method of treating it. Herodotus would have believed in Scipio's dream. Thucydides would have ignored it entirely. Polybius explains it. He is the culmination of the rational progression of Dialectic. 'Nothing,' he says, 'shows a foolish mind more than the attempt to account for any phenomena on the principle of chance or supernatural intervention. History is a search for rational causes, and there is nothing in the world even those phenomena which seem to us the most remote from law and improbable which is not the logical and inevitable result of certain rational antecedents.' Some things, of course, are to be rejected A PRIORI without entering into the subject: 'As regards such miracles,' he says, (15) 'as that on a certain statue of Artemis rain or snow never falls though the statue stands in the open air, or that those who enter God's shrine in Arcadia lose their natural shadows, I cannot really be expected to argue upon the subject. For these things are not only utterly improbable but absolutely impossible.' 'For us to argue reasonably on an acknowledged absurdity is as vain a task as trying to catch water in a sieve; it is really to admit the possibility of the supernatural, which is the very point at issue.' What Polybius felt was that to admit the 496 possibility of a miracle is to annihilate the possibility of history: for just as scientific and chemical experiments would be either impossible or useless if exposed to the chance of continued interference on the part of some foreign body, so the laws and principles which govern history, the causes of phenomena, the evolution of progress, the whole science, in a word, of man's dealings with his own race and with nature, will remain a sealed book to him who admits the possibility of extra-natural interference. The stories of miracles, then, are to be rejected on A PRIORI rational grounds, but in the case of events which we know to have happened the scientific historian will not rest till he has discovered their natural causes which, for instance, in the case of the wonderful rise of the Roman Empire the most marvellous thing, Polybius says, which God ever brought about (16) are to be found in the excellence of their constitution ([Greek text which cannot be reproduced]), the wisdom of their advisers, their splendid military arrangements, and their superstition ([Greek text which cannot be reproduced]). For while Polybius regarded the revealed religion as, of course, objective reality of truth, (17) he laid great stress on its moral subjective influence, going, in one passage on the subject, even so far as almost to excuse the introduction of the supernatural in very small quantities into history on account of the extremely good effect it would have on pious people. But perhaps there is no passage in the whole of ancient and modern history which breathes such a manly and splendid spirit of rationalism as one preserved to us in the Vatican strange resting-place for it! in which he treats of the terrible decay of population which had fallen on his native land in his own day, and which by the general orthodox public was regarded as a special judgment of God sending childlessness on women as a punishment for the sins of the people. For it was a disaster quite without parallel in the history of the land, and entirely unforeseen by any of its political-economy writers who, on the contrary, were always anticipating that danger would arise from an excess of population overrunning its means of subsistence, and becoming unmanageable through its size. Polybius, however, will have nothing to do with either priest or worker of miracles in this matter. He will not even seek that 'sacred Heart of Greece,' Delphi, Apollo's shrine, whose inspiration even Thucydides admitted and before whose wisdom Socrates bowed. How foolish, he says, were the man who on this matter would pray to God. We must search for the rational causes, and the causes are seen to be clear, and the method of prevention also. He then proceeds to notice how all this arose from the general reluctance to marriage and to bearing the expense of educating a large family which resulted from the carelessness and avarice of the men of his day, and he explains on entirely rational principles the whole of this apparently supernatural judgment. Now, it is to be borne in mind that while his rejection of miracles as violation of inviolable laws is entirely A PRIORI for discussion of such a matter is, of course, impossible for a rational thinker yet his rejection of supernatural intervention rests entirely on the scientific grounds of the necessity of looking for natural causes. And he is quite logical in maintaining his position on these principles. For, where it is either difficult or impossible to assign any rational cause for phenomena, or to discover their laws, he acquiesces reluctantly in the alternative of admitting some extra-natural interference which his essentially scientific method of treating the matter has logically forced on him, approving, for instance, of prayers for rain, on the express ground that the laws of meteorology had not yet been ascertained. He would, of course, have been the first to welcome our modern discoveries in the matter. The passage in question is in every way one of the most interesting in his whole 497 work, not, of course, as signifying any inclination on his part to acquiesce in the supernatural, but because it shows how essentially logical and rational his method of argument was, and how candid and fair his mind. Having now examined Polybius's attitude towards the supernatural and the general ideas which guided his research, I will proceed to examine the method he pursued in his scientific investigation of the complex phenomena of life. For, as I have said before in the course of this essay, what is important in all great writers is not so much the results they arrive at as the methods they pursue. The increased knowledge of facts may alter any conclusion in history as in physical science, and the canons of speculative historical credibility must be acknowledged to appeal rather to that subjective attitude of mind which we call the historic sense than to any formulated objective rules. But a scientific method is a gain for all time, and the true if not the only progress of historical criticism consists in the improvement of the instruments of research. Now first, as regards his conception of history, I have already pointed out that it was to him essentially a search for causes, a problem to be solved, not a picture to be painted, a scientific investigation into laws and tendencies, not a mere romantic account of startling incident and wondrous adventure. Thucydides, in the opening of his great work, had sounded the first note of the scientific conception of history. 'The absence of romance in my pages,' he says, 'will, I fear, detract somewhat from its value, but I have written my work not to be the exploit of a passing hour but as the possession of all time.' (18) Polybius follows with words almost entirely similar. If, he says, we banish from history the consideration of causes, methods and motives ([Greek text which cannot be reproduced]), and refuse to consider how far the result of anything is its rational consequent, what is left is a mere [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], not a [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], an oratorical essay which may give pleasure for the moment, but which is entirely without any scientific value for the explanation of the future. Elsewhere he says that 'history robbed of the exposition of its causes and laws is a profitless thing, though it may allure a fool.' And all through his history the same point is put forward and exemplified in every fashion. So far for the conception of history. Now for the groundwork. As regards the character of the phenomena to be selected by the scientific investigator, Aristotle had laid down the general formula that nature should be studied in her normal manifestations. Polybius, true to his character of applying explicitly the principles implicit in the work of others, follows out the doctrine of Aristotle, and lays particular stress on the rational and undisturbed character of the development of the Roman constitution as affording special facilities for the discovery of the laws of its progress. Political revolutions result from causes either external or internal. The former are mere disturbing forces which lie outside the sphere of scientific calculation. It is the latter which are important for the establishing of principles and the elucidation of the sequences of rational evolution. He thus may be said to have anticipated one of the most important truths of the modern methods of investigation: I mean that principle which lays down that just as the study of physiology should precede the study of pathology, just as the laws of disease are best discovered by the phenomena presented in health, so the method of arriving at all great social and political truths is by the investigation of those cases where development has been normal, rational and undisturbed. The critical canon that the more a people has been interfered with, the more difficult it becomes to generalise the laws of its progress and to analyse the separate forces of its civilisation, is one the validity of which is now 498 generally recognised by those who pretend to a scientific treatment of all history: and while we have seen that Aristotle anticipated it in a general formula, to Polybius belongs the honour of being the first to apply it explicitly in the sphere of history. I have shown how to this great scientific historian the motive of his work was essentially the search for causes; and true to his analytical spirit he is careful to examine what a cause really is and in what part of the antecedents of any consequent it is to be looked for. To give an illustration: As regards the origin of the war with Perseus, some assigned as causes the expulsion of Abrupolis by Perseus, the expedition of the latter to Delphi, the plot against Eumenes and the seizure of the ambassadors in Boeotia; of these incidents the two former, Polybius points out, were merely the pretexts, the two latter merely the occasions of the war. The war was really a legacy left to Perseus by his father, who was determined to fight it out with Rome. (19) Here as elsewhere he is not originating any new idea. Thucydides had pointed out the difference between the real and the alleged cause, and the Aristotelian dictum about revolutions, [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], draws the distinction between cause and occasion with the brilliancy of an epigram. But the explicit and rational investigation of the difference between [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], and [Greek text which cannot be reproduced] was reserved for Polybius. No canon of historical criticism can be said to be of more real value than that involved in this distinction, and the overlooking of it has filled our histories with the contemptible accounts of the intrigues of courtiers and of kings and the petty plottings of backstairs influence particulars interesting, no doubt, to those who would ascribe the Reformation to Anne Boleyn's pretty face, the Persian war to the influence of a doctor or a curtainlecture from Atossa, or the French Revolution to Madame de Maintenon, but without any value for those who aim at any scientific treatment of history. But the question of method, to which I am compelled always to return, is not yet exhausted. There is another aspect in which it may be regarded, and I shall now proceed to treat of it. One of the greatest difficulties with which the modern historian has to contend is the enormous complexity of the facts which come under his notice: D'Alembert's suggestion that at the end of every century a selection of facts should be made and the rest burned (if it was really intended seriously) could not, of course, be entertained for a moment. A problem loses all its value when it becomes simplified, and the world would be all the poorer if the Sibyl of History burned her volumes. Besides, as Gibbon pointed out, 'a Montesquieu will detect in the most insignificant fact relations which the vulgar overlook.' Nor can the scientific investigator of history isolate the particular elements, which he desires to examine, from disturbing and extraneous causes, as the experimental chemist can do (though sometimes, as in the case of lunatic asylums and prisons, he is enabled to observe phenomena in a certain degree of isolation). So he is compelled either to use the deductive mode of arguing from general laws or to employ the method of abstraction, which gives a fictitious isolation to phenomena never so isolated in actual existence. And this is exactly what Polybius has done as well as Thucydides. For, as has been well remarked, there is in the works of these two writers a certain plastic unity of type and motive; whatever they write is penetrated through and through with a specific quality, a singleness and concentration of purpose, which we may contrast with the more comprehensive width as manifested not merely in the modern mind, but also in Herodotus. Thucydides, regarding society as influenced entirely by political motives, took no account of forces of a different nature, and consequently his results, like those of 499 most modern political economists, have to be modified largely (20) before they come to correspond with what we know was the actual state of fact. Similarly, Polybius will deal only with those forces which tended to bring the civilised world under the dominion of Rome (ix. 1), and in the Thucydidean spirit points out the want of picturesqueness and romance in his pages which is the result of the abstract method ([Greek text which cannot be reproduced]) being careful also to tell us that his rejection of all other forces is essentially deliberate and the result of a preconceived theory and by no means due to carelessness of any kind. Now, of the general value of the abstract method and the legality of its employment in the sphere of history, this is perhaps not the suitable occasion for any discussion. It is, however, in all ways worthy of note that Polybius is not merely conscious of, but dwells with particular weight on, the fact which is usually urged as the strongest objection to the employment of the abstract method I mean the conception of a society as a sort of human organism whose parts are indissolubly connected with one another and all affected when one member is in any way agitated. This conception of the organic nature of society appears first in Plato and Aristotle, who apply it to cities. Polybius, as his wont is, expands it to be a general characteristic of all history. It is an idea of the very highest importance, especially to a man like Polybius whose thoughts are continually turned towards the essential unity of history and the impossibility of isolation. Farther, as regards the particular method of investigating that group of phenomena obtained for him by the abstract method, he will adopt, he tells us, neither the purely deductive nor the purely inductive mode but the union of both. In other words, he formally adopts that method of analysis upon the importance of which I have dwelt before. And lastly, while, without doubt, enormous simplicity in the elements under consideration is the result of the employment of the abstract method, even within the limit thus obtained a certain selection must be made, and a selection involves a theory. For the facts of life cannot be tabulated with as great an ease as the colours of birds and insects can be tabulated. Now, Polybius points out that those phenomena particularly are to be dwelt on which may serve as a [Greek text which cannot be reproduced] or sample, and show the character of the tendencies of the age as clearly as 'a single drop from a full cask will be enough to disclose the nature of the whole contents.' This recognition of the importance of single facts, not in themselves but because of the spirit they represent, is extremely scientific; for we know that from the single bone, or tooth even, the anatomist can recreate entirely the skeleton of the primeval horse, and the botanist tell the character of the flora and fauna of a district from a single specimen. Regarding truth as 'the most divine thing in Nature,' the very 'eye and light of history without which it moves a blind thing,' Polybius spared no pains in the acquisition of historical materials or in the study of the sciences of politics and war, which he considered were so essential to the training of the scientific historian, and the labour he took is mirrored in the many ways in which he criticises other authorities. There is something, as a rule, slightly contemptible about ancient criticism. The modern idea of the critic as the interpreter, the expounder of the beauty and excellence of the work he selects, seems quite unknown. Nothing can be more captious or unfair, for instance, than the method by which Aristotle criticised the ideal state of Plato in his ethical works, and the passages quoted by Polybius from Timaeus show that the latter historian fully deserved the punning name given to him. But in Polybius there is, I think, little of that bitterness and pettiness of spirit which characterises most other writers, and an incidental 500 story he tells of his relations with one of the historians whom he criticised shows that he was a man of great courtesy and refinement of taste as, indeed, befitted one who had lived always in the society of those who were of great and noble birth. Now, as regards the character of the canons by which he criticises the works of other authors, in the majority of cases he employs simply his own geographical and military knowledge, showing, for instance, the impossibility in the accounts given of Nabis's march from Sparta simply by his acquaintance with the spots in question; or the inconsistency of those of the battle of Issus; or of the accounts given by Ephorus of the battles of Leuctra and Mantinea. In the latter case he says, if any one will take the trouble to measure out the ground of the site of the battle and then test the manoeuvres given, he will find how inaccurate the accounts are. In other cases he appeals to public documents, the importance of which he was always foremost in recognising; showing, for instance, by a document in the public archives of Rhodes how inaccurate were the accounts given of the battle of Lade by Zeno and Antisthenes. Or he appeals to psychological probability, rejecting, for instance, the scandalous stories told of Philip of Macedon, simply from the king's general greatness of character, and arguing that a boy so well educated and so respectably connected as Demochares (xii. 14) could never have been guilty of that of which evil rumour accused him. But the chief object of his literary censure is Timaeus, who had been unsparing of his strictures on others. The general point which he makes against him, impugning his accuracy as a historian, is that he derived his knowledge of history not from the dangerous perils of a life of action but in the secure indolence of a narrow scholastic life. There is, indeed, no point on which he is so vehement as this. 'A history,' he says, 'written in a library gives as lifeless and as inaccurate a picture of history as a painting which is copied not from a living animal but from a stuffed one.' There is more difference, he says in another place, between the history of an eye-witness and that of one whose knowledge comes from books, than there is between the scenes of real life and the fictitious landscapes of theatrical scenery. Besides this, he enters into somewhat elaborate detailed criticism of passages where he thought Timaeus was following a wrong method and perverting truth, passages which it will be worth while to examine in detail. Timaeus, from the fact of there being a Roman custom to shoot a warhorse on a stated day, argued back to the Trojan origin of that people. Polybius, on the other hand, points out that the inference is quite unwarrantable, because horse-sacrifices are ordinary institutions common to all barbarous tribes. Timaeus here, as was common with Greek writers, is arguing back from some custom of the present to an historical event in the past. Polybius really is employing the comparative method, showing how the custom was an ordinary step in the civilisation of every early people. In another place, (21) he shows how illogical is the scepticism of Timaeus as regards the existence of the Bull of Phalaris simply by appealing to the statue of the Bull, which was still to be seen in Carthage; pointing out how impossible it was, on any other theory except that it belonged to Phalaris, to account for the presence in Carthage of a bull of this peculiar character with a door between his shoulders. But one of the great points which he uses against this Sicilian historian is in reference to the question of the origin of the Locrian colony. In accordance with the received tradition on the subject, Aristotle had represented the Locrian colony as founded by some Parthenidae or slaves' children, as they were called, a statement which seems to have roused the indignation of Timaeus, who went to a good deal of trouble to confute this theory. He does so on the following 501 grounds:First of all, he points out that in the ancient days the Greeks had no slaves at all, so the mention of them in the matter is an anachronism; and next he declares that he was shown in the Greek city of Locris certain ancient inscriptions in which their relation to the Italian city was expressed in terms of the position between parent and child, which showed also that mutual rights of citizenship were accorded to each city. Besides this, he appeals to various questions of improbability as regards their international relationship, on which Polybius takes diametrically opposite grounds which hardly call for discussion. And in favour of his own view he urges two points more: first, that the Lacedaemonians being allowed furlough for the purpose of seeing their wives at home, it was unlikely that the Locrians should not have had the same privilege; and next, that the Italian Locrians knew nothing of the Aristotelian version and had, on the contrary, very severe laws against adulterers, runaway slaves and the like. Now, most of these questions rest on mere probability, which is always such a subjective canon that an appeal to it is rarely conclusive. I would note, however, as regards the inscriptions which, if genuine, would of course have settled the matter, that Polybius looks on them as a mere invention on the part of Timaeus, who, he remarks, gives no details about them, though, as a rule, he is over-anxious to give chapter and verse for everything. A somewhat more interesting point is that where he attacks Timaeus for the introduction of fictitious speeches into his narrative; for on this point Polybius seems to be far in advance of the opinions held by literary men on the subject not merely in his own day, but for centuries after. Herodotus had introduced speeches avowedly dramatic and fictitious. Thucydides states clearly that, where he was unable to find out what people really said, he put down what they ought to have said. Sallust alludes, it is true, to the fact of the speech he puts into the mouth of the tribune Memmius being essentially genuine, but the speeches given in the senate on the occasion of the Catilinarian conspiracy are very different from the same orations as they appear in Cicero. Livy makes his ancient Romans wrangle and chop logic with all the subtlety of a Hortensius or a Scaevola. And even in later days, when shorthand reporters attended the debates of the senate and a DAILY NEWS was published in Rome, we find that one of the most celebrated speeches in Tacitus (that in which the Emperor Claudius gives the Gauls their freedom) is shown, by an inscription discovered recently at Lugdunum, to be entirely fabulous. Upon the other hand, it must be borne in mind that these speeches were not intended to deceive; they were regarded merely as a certain dramatic element which it was allowable to introduce into history for the purpose of giving more life and reality to the narration, and were to be criticised, not as we should, by arguing how in an age before shorthand was known such a report was possible or how, in the failure of written documents, tradition could bring down such an accurate verbal account, but by the higher test of their psychological probability as regards the persons in whose mouths they are placed. An ancient historian in answer to modern criticism would say, probably, that these fictitious speeches were in reality more truthful than the actual ones, just as Aristotle claimed for poetry a higher degree of truth in comparison to history. The whole point is interesting as showing how far in advance of his age Polybius may be said to have been. The last scientific historian, it is possible to gather from his writings what he considered were the characteristics of the ideal writer of history; and no small light will be thrown on the progress of historical criticism if we strive to collect and analyse what in Polybius are more or less scattered expressions. The ideal historian must be contemporary with the events he describes, or removed from them by one generation 502 only. Where it is possible, he is to be an eye-witness of what he writes of; where that is out of his power he is to test all traditions and stories carefully and not to be ready to accept what is plausible in place of what is true. He is to be no bookworm living aloof from the experiences of the world in the artificial isolation of a university town, but a politician, a soldier, and a traveller, a man not merely of thought but of action, one who can do great things as well as write of them, who in the sphere of history could be what Byron and AEschylus were in the sphere of poetry, at once LE CHANTRE ET LE HEROS. He is to keep before his eyes the fact that chance is merely a synonym for our ignorance; that the reign of law pervades the domain of history as much as it does that of political science. He is to accustom himself to look on all occasions for rational and natural causes. And while he is to recognise the practical utility of the supernatural, in an educational point of view, he is not himself to indulge in such intellectual beating of the air as to admit the possibility of the violation of inviolable laws, or to argue in a sphere wherein argument is A PRIORI annihilated. He is to be free from all bias towards friend and country; he is to be courteous and gentle in criticism; he is not to regard history as a mere opportunity for splendid and tragic writing; nor is he to falsify truth for the sake of a paradox or an epigram. While acknowledging the importance of particular facts as samples of higher truths, he is to take a broad and general view of humanity. He is to deal with the whole race and with the world, not with particular tribes or separate countries. He is to bear in mind that the world is really an organism wherein no one part can be moved without the others being affected also. He is to distinguish between cause and occasion, between the influence of general laws and particular fancies, and he is to remember that the greatest lessons of the world are contained in history and that it is the historian's duty to manifest them so as to save nations from following those unwise policies which always lead to dishonour and ruin, and to teach individuals to apprehend by the intellectual culture of history those truths which else they would have to learn in the bitter school of experience, Now, as regards his theory of the necessity of the historian's being contemporary with the events he describes, so far as the historian is a mere narrator the remark is undoubtedly true. But to appreciate the harmony and rational position of the facts of a great epoch, to discover its laws, the causes which produced it and the effects which it generates, the scene must be viewed from a certain height and distance to be completely apprehended. A thoroughly contemporary historian such as Lord Clarendon or Thucydides is in reality part of the history he criticises; and, in the case of such contemporary historians as Fabius and Philistus, Polybius in compelled to acknowledge that they are misled by patriotic and other considerations. Against Polybius himself no such accusation can be made. He indeed of all men is able, as from some lofty tower, to discern the whole tendency of the ancient world, the triumph of Roman institutions and of Greek thought which is the last message of the old world and, in a more spiritual sense, has become the Gospel of the new. One thing indeed he did not see, or if he saw it, he thought but little of it how from the East there was spreading over the world, as a wave spreads, a spiritual inroad of new religions from the time when the Pessinuntine mother of the gods, a shapeless mass of stone, was brought to the eternal city by her holiest citizen, to the day when the ship CASTOR AND POLLUX stood in at Puteoli, and St. Paul turned his face towards martyrdom and victory at Rome. Polybius was able to predict, from his knowledge of the causes of revolutions and the tendencies of the various forms of governments, the uprising of that democratic tone of thought which, 503 as soon as a seed is sown in the murder of the Gracchi and the exile of Marius, culminated as all democratic movements do culminate, in the supreme authority of one man, the lordship of the world under the world's rightful lord, Caius Julius Caesar. This, indeed, he saw in no uncertain way. But the turning of all men's hearts to the East, the first glimmering of that splendid dawn which broke over the hills of Galilee and flooded the earth like wine, was hidden from his eyes. There are many points in the description of the ideal historian which one may compare to the picture which Plato has given us of the ideal philosopher. They are both 'spectators of all time and all existence.' Nothing is contemptible in their eyes, for all things have a meaning, and they both walk in august reasonableness before all men, conscious of the workings of God yet free from all terror of mendicant priest or vagrant miracle-worker. But the parallel ends here. For the one stands aloof from the world-storm of sleet and hail, his eyes fixed on distant and sunlit heights, loving knowledge for the sake of knowledge and wisdom for the joy of wisdom, while the other is an eager actor in the world ever seeking to apply his knowledge to useful things. Both equally desire truth, but the one because of its utility, the other for its beauty. The historian regards it as the rational principle of all true history, and no more. To the other it comes as an allpervading and mystic enthusiasm, 'like the desire of strong wine, the craving of ambition, the passionate love of what is beautiful.' Still, though we miss in the historian those higher and more spiritual qualities which the philosopher of the Academe alone of all men possessed, we must not blind ourselves to the merits of that great rationalist who seems to have anticipated the very latest words of modern science. Nor yet is he to be regarded merely in the narrow light in which he is estimated by most modern critics, as the explicit champion of rationalism and nothing more. For he is connected with another idea, the course of which is as the course of that great river of his native Arcadia which, springing from some arid and sun-bleached rock, gathers strength and beauty as it flows till it reaches the asphodel meadows of Olympia and the light and laughter of Ionian waters. For in him we can discern the first notes of that great cult of the seven-hilled city which made Virgil write his epic and Livy his history, which found in Dante its highest exponent, which dreamed of an Empire where the Emperor would care for the bodies and the Pope for the souls of men, and so has passed into the conception of God's spiritual empire and the universal brotherhood of man and widened into the huge ocean of universal thought as the Peneus loses itself in the sea. Polybius is the last scientific historian of Greece. The writer who seems fittingly to complete the progress of thought is a writer of biographies only. I will not here touch on Plutarch's employment of the inductive method as shown in his constant use of inscription and statue, of public document and building and the like, because it involves no new method. It is his attitude towards miracles of which I desire to treat. Plutarch is philosophic enough to see that in the sense of a violation of the laws of nature a miracle is impossible. It is absurd, he says, to imagine that the statue of a saint can speak, and that an inanimate object not possessing the vocal organs should be able to utter an articulate sound. Upon the other hand, he protests against science imagining that, by explaining the natural causes of things, it has explained away their transcendental meaning. 'When the tears on the cheek of some holy statue have been analysed into the moisture which certain temperatures produce on wood and marble, it yet by no means follows that they were not a sign of grief and mourning set there by God Himself.' When Lampon saw in the prodigy of the one-horned ram the omen of the supreme rule of Pericles, and when 504 Anaxagoras showed that the abnormal development was the rational resultant of the peculiar formation of the skull, the dreamer and the man of science were both right; it was the business of the latter to consider how the prodigy came about, of the former to show why it was so formed and what it so portended. The progression of thought is exemplified in all particulars. Herodotus had a glimmering sense of the impossibility of a violation of nature. Thucydides ignored the supernatural. Polybius rationalised it. Plutarch raises it to its mystical heights again, though he bases it on law. In a word, Plutarch felt that while science brings the supernatural down to the natural, yet ultimately all that is natural is really supernatural. To him, as to many of our own day, religion was that transcendental attitude of the mind which, contemplating a world resting on inviolable law, is yet comforted and seeks to worship God not in the violation but in the fulfilment of nature. It may seem paradoxical to quote in connection with the priest of Chaeronea such a pure rationalist as Mr. Herbert Spencer; yet when we read as the last message of modern science that 'when the equation of life has been reduced to its lowest terms the symbols are symbols still,' mere signs, that is, of that unknown reality which underlies all matter and all spirit, we may feel how over the wide strait of centuries thought calls to thought and how Plutarch has a higher position than is usually claimed for him in the progress of the Greek intellect. And, indeed, it seems that not merely the importance of Plutarch himself but also that of the land of his birth in the evolution of Greek civilisation has been passed over by modern critics. To us, indeed, the bare rock to which the Parthenon serves as a crown, and which lies between Colonus and Attica's violet hills, will always be the holiest spot in the land of Greece: and Delphi will come next, and then the meadows of Eurotas where that noble people lived who represented in Hellenic thought the reaction of the law of duty against the law of beauty, the opposition of conduct to culture. Yet, as one stands on the [Greek text which cannot be reproduced] of Cithaeron and looks out on the great double plain of Boeotia, the enormous importance of the division of Hellas comes to one's mind with great force. To the north are Orchomenus and the Minyan treasure-house, seat of those merchant princes of Phoenicia who brought to Greece the knowledge of letters and the art of working in gold. Thebes is at our feet with the gloom of the terrible legends of Greek tragedy still lingering about it, the birthplace of Pindar, the nurse of Epaminondas and the Sacred Band. And from out of the plain where 'Mars loved to dance,' rises the Muses' haunt, Helicon, by whose silver streams Corinna and Hesiod sang; while far away under the white aegis of those snowcapped mountains lies Chaeronea and the Lion plain where with vain chivalry the Greeks strove to check Macedon first and afterwards Rome; Chaeronea, where in the Martinmas summer of Greek civilisation Plutarch rose from the drear waste of a dying religion as the aftermath rises when the mowers think they have left the field bare. Greek philosophy began and ended in scepticism: the first and the last word of Greek history was Faith. Splendid thus in its death, like winter sunsets, the Greek religion passed away into the horror of night. For the Cimmerian darkness was at hand, and when the schools of Athens were closed and the statue of Athena broken, the Greek spirit passed from the gods and the history of its own land to the subtleties of defining the doctrine of the Trinity and the mystical attempts to bring Plato into harmony with Christ and to reconcile Gethsemane and the Sermon on the Mount with the Athenian prison and the discussion in the woods of Colonus. The Greek spirit slept for wellnigh a thousand years. When it woke again, like Antaeus it had gathered strength from the earth where it lay; like Apollo 505 it had lost none of its divinity through its long servitude. In the history of Roman thought we nowhere find any of those characteristics of the Greek Illumination which I have pointed out are the necessary concomitants of the rise of historical criticism. The conservative respect for tradition which made the Roman people delight in the ritual and formulas of law, and is as apparent in their politics as in their religion, was fatal to any rise of that spirit of revolt against authority the importance of which, as a factor in intellectual progress, we have already seen. The whitened tables of the Pontifices preserved carefully the records of the eclipses and other atmospherical phenomena, and what we call the art of verifying dates was known to them at an early time; but there was no spontaneous rise of physical science to suggest by its analogies of law and order a new method of research, nor any natural springing up of the questioning spirit of philosophy with its unification of all phenomena and all knowledge. At the very time when the whole tide of Eastern superstition was sweeping into the heart of the Capital the Senate banished the Greek philosophers from Rome. And of the three systems which did at length take some root in the city, those of Zeno and Epicurus were used merely as the rule for the ordering of life, while the dogmatic scepticism of Carneades, by its very principles, annihilated the possibility of argument and encouraged a perfect indifference to research. Nor were the Romans ever fortunate enough like the Greeks to have to face the incubus of any dogmatic system of legends and myths, the immoralities and absurdities of which might excite a revolutionary outbreak of sceptical criticism. For the Roman religion became as it were crystallised and isolated from progress at an early period of its evolution. Their gods remained mere abstractions of commonplace virtues or uninteresting personifications of the useful things of life. The old primitive creed was indeed always upheld as a state institution on account of the enormous facilities it offered for cheating in politics, but as a spiritual system of belief it was unanimously rejected at a very early period both by the common people and the educated classes, for the sensible reason that it was so extremely dull. The former took refuge in the mystic sensualities of the worship of Isis, the latter in the Stoical rules of life. The Romans classified their gods carefully in their order of precedence, analysed their genealogies in the laborious spirit of modern heraldry, fenced them round with a ritual as intricate as their law, but never quite cared enough about them to believe in them. So it was of no account with them when the philosophers announced that Minerva was merely memory. She had never been much else. Nor did they protest when Lucretius dared to say of Ceres and of Liber that they were only the corn of the field and the fruit of the vine. For they had never mourned for the daughter of Demeter in the asphodel meadows of Sicily, nor traversed the glades of Cithaeron with fawn-skin and with spear. This brief sketch of the condition of Roman thought will serve to prepare us for the almost total want of scientific historical criticism which we shall discern in their literature, and has, besides, afforded fresh corroboration of the conditions essential to the rise of this spirit, and of the modes of thought which it reflects and in which it is always to be found. Roman historical composition had its origin in the pontifical college of ecclesiastical lawyers, and preserved to its close the uncritical spirit which characterised its fountain-head. It possessed from the outset a most voluminous collection of the materials of history, which, however, produced merely antiquarians, not historians. It is so hard to use facts, so easy to accumulate them. Wearied of the dull monotony of the pontifical annals, which dwelt on little else but the rise and fall in provisions and the eclipses of the sun, Cato wrote out a history with his 506 own hand for the instruction of his child, to which he gave the name of Origines, and before his time some aristocratic families had written histories in Greek much in the same spirit in which the Germans of the eighteenth century used French as the literary language. But the first regular Roman historian is Sallust. Between the extravagant eulogies passed on this author by the French (such as De Closset), and Dr. Mommsen's view of him as merely a political pamphleteer, it is perhaps difficult to reach the VIA MEDIA of unbiassed appreciation. He has, at any rate, the credit of being a purely rationalistic historian, perhaps the only one in Roman literature. Cicero had a good many qualifications for a scientific historian, and (as he usually did) thought very highly of his own powers. On passages of ancient legend, however, he is rather unsatisfactory, for while he is too sensible to believe them he is too patriotic to reject them. And this is really the attitude of Livy, who claims for early Roman legend a certain uncritical homage from the rest of the subject world. His view in his history is that it is not worth while to examine the truth of these stories. In his hands the history of Rome unrolls before our eyes like some gorgeous tapestry, where victory succeeds victory, where triumph treads on the heels of triumph, and the line of heroes seems never to end. It is not till we pass behind the canvas and see the slight means by which the effect is produced that we apprehend the fact that like most picturesque writers Livy is an indifferent critic. As regards his attitude towards the credibility of early Roman history he is quite as conscious as we are of its mythical and unsound nature. He will not, for instance, decide whether the Horatii were Albans or Romans; who was the first dictator; how many tribunes there were, and the like. His method, as a rule, is merely to mention all the accounts and sometimes to decide in favour of the most probable, but usually not to decide at all. No canons of historical criticism will ever discover whether the Roman women interviewed the mother of Coriolanus of their own accord or at the suggestion of the senate; whether Remus was killed for jumping over his brother's wall or because they quarrelled about birds; whether the ambassadors found Cincinnatus ploughing or only mending a hedge. Livy suspends his judgment over these important facts and history when questioned on their truth is dumb. If he does select between two historians he chooses the one who is nearer to the facts he describes. But he is no critic, only a conscientious writer. It is mere vain waste to dwell on his critical powers, for they do not exist. In the case of Tacitus imagination has taken the place of history. The past lives again in his pages, but through no laborious criticism; rather through a dramatic and psychological faculty which he specially possessed. In the philosophy of history he has no belief. He can never make up his mind what to believe as regards God's government of the world. There is no method in him and none elsewhere in Roman literature. Nations may not have missions but they certainly have functions. And the function of ancient Italy was not merely to give us what is statical in our institutions and rational in our law, but to blend into one elemental creed the spiritual aspirations of Aryan and of Semite. Italy was not a pioneer in intellectual progress, nor a motive power in the evolution of thought. The owl of the goddess of Wisdom traversed over the whole land and found nowhere a resting-place. The dove, which is the bird of Christ, flew straight to the city of Rome and the new reign began. It was the fashion of early Italian painters to represent in mediaeval costume the soldiers who watched over the tomb of Christ, and this, which was the result of the frank anachronism of all true art, may serve to us as an allegory. For it was in vain that the Middle Ages strove to guard the buried spirit of 507 progress. When the dawn of the Greek spirit arose, the sepulchre was empty, the graveclothes laid aside. Humanity had risen from the dead. The study of Greek, it has been well said, implies the birth of criticism, comparison and research. At the opening of that education of modern by ancient thought which we call the Renaissance, it was the words of Aristotle which sent Columbus sailing to the New World, while a fragment of Pythagorean astronomy set Copernicus thinking on that train of reasoning which has revolutionised the whole position of our planet in the universe. Then it was seen that the only meaning of progress is a return to Greek modes of thought. The monkish hymns which obscured the pages of Greek manuscripts were blotted out, the splendours of a new method were unfolded to the world, and out of the melancholy sea of mediaevalism rose the free spirit of man in all that splendour of glad adolescence, when the bodily powers seem quickened by a new vitality, when the eye sees more clearly than its wont and the mind apprehends what was beforetime hidden from it. To herald the opening of the sixteenth century, from the little Venetian printing press came forth all the great authors of antiquity, each bearing on the title-page the words [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]; words which may serve to remind us with what wondrous prescience Polybius saw the world's fate when he foretold the material sovereignty of Roman institutions and exemplified in himself the intellectual empire of Greece. The course of the study of the spirit of historical criticism has not been a profitless investigation into modes and forms of thought now antiquated and of no account. The only spirit which is entirely removed from us is the mediaeval; the Greek spirit is essentially modern. The introduction of the comparative method of research which has forced history to disclose its secrets belongs in a measure to us. Ours, too, is a more scientific knowledge of philology and the method of survival. Nor did the ancients know anything of the doctrine of averages or of crucial instances, both of which methods have proved of such importance in modern criticism, the one adding a most important proof of the statical elements of history, and exemplifying the influences of all physical surroundings on the life of man; the other, as in the single instance of the Moulin Quignon skull, serving to create a whole new science of prehistoric archaeology and to bring us back to a time when man was coeval with the stone age, the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros. But, except these, we have added no new canon or method to the science of historical criticism. Across the drear waste of a thousand years the Greek and the modern spirit join hands. In the torch race which the Greek boys ran from the Cerameician field of death to the home of the goddess of Wisdom, not merely he who first reached the goal but he also who first started with the torch aflame received a prize. In the Lampadephoria of civilisation and free thought let us not forget to render due meed of honour to those who first lit that sacred flame, the increasing splendour of which lights our footsteps to the far-off divine event of the attainment of perfect truth. THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE OF ART AMONG the many debts which we owe to the supreme aesthetic faculty of Goethe is that he was the first to teach us to define beauty in terms the most concrete possible, to realise it, I mean, always in its special manifestations. So, in the lecture which I have the honour 508 to deliver before you, I will not try to give you any abstract definition of beauty any such universal formula for it as was sought for by the philosophy of the eighteenth century still less to communicate to you that which in its essence is incommunicable, the virtue by which a particular picture or poem affects us with a unique and special joy; but rather to point out to you the general ideas which characterise the great English Renaissance of Art in this century, to discover their source, as far as that is possible, and to estimate their future as far as that is possible. I call it our English Renaissance because it is indeed a sort of new birth of the spirit of man, like the great Italian Renaissance of the fifteenth century, in its desire for a more gracious and comely way of life, its passion for physical beauty, its exclusive attention to form, its seeking for new subjects for poetry, new forms of art, new intellectual and imaginative enjoyments: and I call it our romantic movement because it is our most recent expression of beauty. It has been described as a mere revival of Greek modes of thought, and again as a mere revival of mediaeval feeling. Rather I would say that to these forms of the human spirit it has added whatever of artistic value the intricacy and complexity and experience of modern life can give: taking from the one its clearness of vision and its sustained calm, from the other its variety of expression and the mystery of its vision. For what, as Goethe said, is the study of the ancients but a return to the real world (for that is what they did); and what, said Mazzini, is mediaevalism but individuality? It is really from the union of Hellenism, in its breadth, its sanity of purpose, its calm possession of beauty, with the adventive, the intensified individualism, the passionate colour of the romantic spirit, that springs the art of the nineteenth century in England, as from the marriage of Faust and Helen of Troy sprang the beautiful boy Euphorion. Such expressions as 'classical' and 'romantic' are, it is true, often apt to become the mere catchwords of schools. We must always remember that art has only one sentence to utter: there is for her only one high law, the law of form or harmony yet between the classical and romantic spirit we may say that there lies this difference at least, that the one deals with the type and the other with the exception. In the work produced under the modern romantic spirit it is no longer the permanent, the essential truths of life that are treated of; it is the momentary situation of the one, the momentary aspect of the other that art seeks to render. In sculpture, which is the type of one spirit, the subject predominates over the situation; in painting, which is the type of the other, the situation predominates over the subject. There are two spirits, then: the Hellenic spirit and the spirit of romance may be taken as forming the essential elements of our conscious intellectual tradition, of our permanent standard of taste. As regards their origin, in art as in politics there is but one origin for all revolutions, a desire on the part of man for a nobler form of life, for a freer method and opportunity of expression. Yet, I think that in estimating the sensuous and intellectual spirit which presides over our English Renaissance, any attempt to isolate it in any way from in the progress and movement and social life of the age that has produced it would be to rob it of its true vitality, possibly to mistake its true meaning. And in disengaging from the pursuits and passions of this crowded modern world those passions and pursuits which have to do with art and the love of art, we must take into account many great events of history which seem to be the most opposed to any such artistic feeling. Alien then from any wild, political passion, or from the harsh voice of a rude people in revolt, as our English Renaissance must seem, in its passionate cult of pure beauty, its flawless devotion to form, its exclusive and sensitive nature, it is to the French Revolution that we must look 509 for the most primary factor of its production, the first condition of its birth: that great Revolution of which we are all the children though the voices of some of us be often loud against it; that Revolution to which at a time when even such spirits as Coleridge and Wordsworth lost heart in England, noble messages of love blown across seas came from your young Republic. It is true that our modern sense of the continuity of history has shown us that neither in politics nor in nature are there revolutions ever but evolutions only, and that the prelude to that wild storm which swept over France in 1789 and made every king in Europe tremble for his throne, was first sounded in literature years before the Bastille fell and the Palace was taken. The way for those red scenes by Seine and Loire was paved by that critical spirit of Germany and England which accustomed men to bring all things to the test of reason or utility or both, while the discontent of the people in the streets of Paris was the echo that followed the life of Emile and of Werther. For Rousseau, by silent lake and mountain, had called humanity back to the golden age that still lies before us and preached a return to nature, in passionate eloquence whose music still lingers about our keen northern air. And Goethe and Scott had brought romance back again from the prison she had lain in for so many centuries and what is romance but humanity? Yet in the womb of the Revolution itself, and in the storm and terror of that wild time, tendencies were hidden away that the artistic Renaissance bent to her own service when the time came a scientific tendency first, which has borne in our own day a brood of somewhat noisy Titans, yet in the sphere of poetry has not been unproductive of good. I do not mean merely in its adding to enthusiasm that intellectual basis which in its strength, or that more obvious influence about which Wordsworth was thinking when he said very nobly that poetry was merely the impassioned expression in the face of science, and that when science would put on a form of flesh and blood the poet would lend his divine spirit to aid the transfiguration. Nor do I dwell much on the great cosmical emotion and deep pantheism of science to which Shelley has given its first and Swinburne its latest glory of song, but rather on its influence on the artistic spirit in preserving that close observation and the sense of limitation as well as of clearness of vision which are the characteristics of the real artist. The great and golden rule of art as well as of life, wrote William Blake, is that the more distinct, sharp and defined the boundary line, the more perfect is the work of art; and the less keen and sharp the greater is the evidence of weak imitation, plagiarism and bungling. 'Great inventors in all ages knew this Michael Angelo and Albert Durer are known by this and by this alone'; and another time he wrote, with all the simple directness of nineteenth-century prose, 'to generalise is to be an idiot.' And this love of definite conception, this clearness of vision, this artistic sense of limit, is the characteristic of all great work and poetry; of the vision of Homer as of the vision of Dante, of Keats and William Morris as of Chaucer and Theocritus. It lies at the base of all noble, realistic and romantic work as opposed to the colourless and empty abstractions of our own eighteenth-century poets and of the classical dramatists of France, or of the vague spiritualities of the German sentimental school: opposed, too, to that spirit of transcendentalism which also was root and flower itself of the great Revolution, underlying the impassioned contemplation of Wordsworth and giving wings and fire to the eaglelike flight of Shelley, and which in the sphere of philosophy, though displaced by the materialism and positiveness of our day, bequeathed two great schools of thought, the school of Newman to Oxford, the school of Emerson to America. Yet is this spirit of transcendentalism alien to the spirit of art. For the artist can 510 accept no sphere of life in exchange for life itself. For him there is no escape from the bondage of the earth: there is not even the desire of escape. He is indeed the only true realist: symbolism, which is the essence of the transcendental spirit, is alien to him. The metaphysical mind of Asia will create for itself the monstrous, many-breasted idol of Ephesus, but to the Greek, pure artist, that work is most instinct with spiritual life which conforms most clearly to the perfect facts of physical life. 'The storm of revolution,' as Andre Chenier said, 'blows out the torch of poetry.' It is not for some little time that the real influence of such a wild cataclysm of things is felt: at first the desire for equality seems to have produced personalities of more giant and Titan stature than the world had ever known before. Men heard the lyre of Byron and the legions of Napoleon; it was a period of measureless passions and of measureless despair; ambition, discontent, were the chords of life and art; the age was an age of revolt: a phase through which the human spirit must pass, but one in which it cannot rest. For the aim of culture is not rebellion but peace, the valley perilous where ignorant armies clash by night being no dwellingplace meet for her to whom the gods have assigned the fresh uplands and sunny heights and clear, untroubled air. And soon that desire for perfection, which lay at the base of the Revolution, found in a young English poet its most complete and flawless realisation. Phidias and the achievements of Greek art are foreshadowed in Homer: Dante prefigures for us the passion and colour and intensity of Italian painting: the modern love of landscape dates from Rousseau, and it is in Keats that one discerns the beginning of the artistic renaissance of England. Byron was a rebel and Shelley a dreamer; but in the calmness and clearness of his vision, his perfect self-control, his unerring sense of beauty and his recognition of a separate realm for the imagination, Keats was the pure and serene artist, the forerunner of the pre-Raphaelite school, and so of the great romantic movement of which I am to speak. Blake had indeed, before him, claimed for art a lofty, spiritual mission, and had striven to raise design to the ideal level of poetry and music, but the remoteness of his vision both in painting and poetry and the incompleteness of his technical powers had been adverse to any real influence. It is in Keats that the artistic spirit of this century first found its absolute incarnation. And these pre-Raphaelites, what were they? If you ask nine-tenths of the British public what is the meaning of the word aesthetics, they will tell you it is the French for affectation or the German for a dado; and if you inquire about the pre-Raphaelites you will hear something about an eccentric lot of young men to whom a sort of divine crookedness and holy awkwardness in drawing were the chief objects of art. To know nothing about their great men is one of the necessary elements of English education. As regards the pre-Raphaelites the story is simple enough. In the year 1847 a number of young men in London, poets and painters, passionate admirers of Keats all of them, formed the habit of meeting together for discussions on art, the result of such discussions being that the English Philistine public was roused suddenly from its ordinary apathy by hearing that there was in its midst a body of young men who had determined to revolutionise English painting and poetry. They called themselves the preRaphaelite Brotherhood. In England, then as now, it was enough for a man to try and produce any serious beautiful work to lose all his rights as a citizen; and besides this, the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood among whom the names of Dante Rossetti, Holman Hunt and Millais will be familiar to you had on their side three things that the English public never forgives: youth, power and enthusiasm. Satire, always as sterile as it in shameful and as impotent as it is insolent, paid them that usual 511 homage which mediocrity pays to genius doing, here as always, infinite harm to the public, blinding them to what is beautiful, teaching them that irreverence which is the source of all vileness and narrowness of life, but harming the artist not at all, rather confirming him in the perfect rightness of his work and ambition. For to disagree with threefourths of the British public on all points is one of the first elements of sanity, one of the deepest consolations in all moments of spiritual doubt. As regards the ideas these young men brought to the regeneration of English art, we may see at the base of their artistic creations a desire for a deeper spiritual value to be given to art as well as a more decorative value. Pre-Raphaelites they called themselves; not that they imitated the early Italian masters at all, but that in their work, as opposed to the facile abstractions of Raphael, they found a stronger realism of imagination, a more careful realism of technique, a vision at once more fervent and more vivid, an individuality more intimate and more intense. For it is not enough that a work of art should conform to the aesthetic demands of its age: there must be also about it, if it is to affect us with any permanent delight, the impress of a distinct individuality, an individuality remote from that of ordinary men, and coming near to us only by virtue of a certain newness and wonder in the work, and through channels whose very strangeness makes us more ready to give them welcome. LA PERSONNALITE, said one of the greatest of modem French critics, VOILE CE QUI NOUS SAUVERA. But above all things was it a return to Nature that formula which seems to suit so many and such diverse movements: they would draw and paint nothing but what they saw, they would try and imagine things as they really happened. Later there came to the old house by Blackfriars Bridge, where this young brotherhood used to meet and work, two young men from Oxford, Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris the latter substituting for the simpler realism of the early days a more exquisite spirit of choice, a more faultless devotion to beauty, a more intense seeking for perfection: a master of all exquisite design and of all spiritual vision. It is of the school of Florence rather than of that of Venice that he is kinsman, feeling that the close imitation of Nature is a disturbing element in imaginative art. The visible aspect of modern life disturbs him not; rather is it for him to render eternal all that is beautiful in Greek, Italian, and Celtic legend. To Morris we owe poetry whose perfect precision and clearness of word and vision has not been excelled in the literature of our country, and by the revival of the decorative arts he has given to our individualised romantic movement the social idea and the social factor also. But the revolution accomplished by this clique of young men, with Ruskin's faultless and fervent eloquence to help them, was not one of ideas merely but of execution, not one of conceptions but of creations. For the great eras in the history of the development of all the arts have been eras not of increased feeling or enthusiasm in feeling for art, but of new technical improvements primarily and specially. The discovery of marble quarries in the purple ravines of Pentelicus and on the little lowlying hills of the island of Paros gave to the Greeks the opportunity for that intensified vitality of action, that more sensuous and simple humanism, to which the Egyptian sculptor working laboriously in the hard porphyry and rose-coloured granite of the desert could not attain. The splendour of the Venetian school began with the introduction of the new oil medium for painting. The progress in modern music has been due to the invention of new instruments entirely, and in no way to an increased consciousness on the part of the musician of any wider social aim. The critic may try and trace the deferred resolutions of Beethoven to some sense of the incompleteness of the modern intellectual 512 spirit, but the artist would have answered, as one of them did afterwards, 'Let them pick out the fifths and leave us at peace.' And so it is in poetry also: all this love of curious French metres like the Ballade, the Villanelle, the Rondel; all this increased value laid on elaborate alliterations, and on curious words and refrains, such as you will find in Dante Rossetti and Swinburne, is merely the attempt to perfect flute and viol and trumpet through which the spirit of the age and the lips of the poet may blow the music of their many messages. And so it has been with this romantic movement of ours: it is a reaction against the empty conventional workmanship, the lax execution of previous poetry and painting, showing itself in the work of such men as Rossetti and Burne-Jones by a far greater splendour of colour, a far more intricate wonder of design than English imaginative art has shown before. In Rossetti's poetry and the poetry of Morris, Swinburne and Tennyson a perfect precision and choice of language, a style flawless and fearless, a seeking for all sweet and precious melodies and a sustaining consciousness of the musical value of each word are opposed to that value which is merely intellectual. In this respect they are one with the romantic movement of France of which not the least characteristic note was struck by Theophile Gautier's advice to the young poet to read his dictionary every day, as being the only book worth a poet's reading. While, then, the material of workmanship is being thus elaborated and discovered to have in itself incommunicable and eternal qualities of its own, qualities entirely satisfying to the poetic sense and not needing for their aesthetic effect any lofty intellectual vision, any deep criticism of life or even any passionate human emotion at all, the spirit and the method of the poet's working what people call his inspiration have not escaped the controlling influence of the artistic spirit. Not that the imagination has lost its wings, but we have accustomed ourselves to count their innumerable pulsations, to estimate their limitless strength, to govern their ungovernable freedom. To the Greeks this problem of the conditions of poetic production, and the places occupied by either spontaneity or selfconsciousness in any artistic work, had a peculiar fascination. We find it in the mysticism of Plato and in the rationalism of Aristotle. We find it later in the Italian Renaissance agitating the minds of such men as Leonardo da Vinci. Schiller tried to adjust the balance between form and feeling, and Goethe to estimate the position of selfconsciousness in art. Wordsworth's definition of poetry as 'emotion remembered in tranquillity' may be taken as an analysis of one of the stages through which all imaginative work has to pass; and in Keats's longing to be 'able to compose without this fever' (I quote from one of his letters), his desire to substitute for poetic ardour 'a more thoughtful and quiet power,' we may discern the most important moment in the evolution of that artistic life. The question made an early and strange appearance in your literature too; and I need not remind you how deeply the young poets of the French romantic movement were excited and stirred by Edgar Allan Poe's analysis of the workings of his own imagination in the creating of that supreme imaginative work which we know by the name of THE RAVEN. In the last century, when the intellectual and didactic element had intruded to such an extent into the kingdom which belongs to poetry, it was against the claims of the understanding that an artist like Goethe had to protest. 'The more incomprehensible to the understanding a poem is the better for it,' he said once, asserting the complete supremacy of the imagination in poetry as of reason in prose. But in this century it is rather against the claims of the emotional faculties, the claims of mere sentiment and feeling, that the artist must react. The simple utterance of joy is not poetry 513 any more than a mere personal cry of pain, and the real experiences of the artist are always those which do not find their direct expression but are gathered up and absorbed into some artistic form which seems, from such real experiences, to be the farthest removed and the most alien. 'The heart contains passion but the imagination alone contains poetry,' says Charles Baudelaire. This too was the lesson that Theophile Gautier, most subtle of all modern critics, most fascinating of all modern poets, was never tired of teaching - 'Everybody is affected by a sunrise or a sunset.' The absolute distinction of the artist is not his capacity to feel nature so much as his power of rendering it. The entire subordination of all intellectual and emotional faculties to the vital and informing poetic principle is the surest sign of the strength of our Renaissance. We have seen the artistic spirit working, first in the delightful and technical sphere of language, the sphere of expression as opposed to subject, then controlling the imagination of the poet in dealing with his subject. And now I would point out to you its operation in the choice of subject. The recognition of a separate realm for the artist, a consciousness of the absolute difference between the world of art and the world of real fact, between classic grace and absolute reality, forms not merely the essential element of any aesthetic charm but is the characteristic of all great imaginative work and of all great eras of artistic creation of the age of Phidias as of the age of Michael Angelo, of the age of Sophocles as of the age of Goethe. Art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises for us that which we desire. For to most of us the real life is the life we do not lead, and thus, remaining more true to the essence of its own perfection, more jealous of its own unattainable beauty, is less likely to forget form in feeling or to accept the passion of creation as any substitute for the beauty of the created thing. The artist is indeed the child of his own age, but the present will not be to him a whit more real than the past; for, like the philosopher of the Platonic vision, the poet is the spectator of all time and of all existence. For him no form is obsolete, no subject out of date; rather, whatever of life and passion the world has known, in desert of Judaea or in Arcadian valley, by the rivers of Troy or the rivers of Damascus, in the crowded and hideous streets of a modern city or by the pleasant ways of Camelot all lies before him like an open scroll, all is still instinct with beautiful life. He will take of it what is salutary for his own spirit, no more; choosing some facts and rejecting others with the calm artistic control of one who is in possession of the secret of beauty. There is indeed a poetical attitude to be adopted towards all things, but all things are not fit subjects for poetry. Into the secure and sacred house of Beauty the true artist will admit nothing that is harsh or disturbing, nothing that gives pain, nothing that is debatable, nothing about which men argue. He can steep himself, if he wishes, in the discussion of all the social problems of his day, poor-laws and local taxation, free trade and bimetallic currency, and the like; but when he writes on these subjects it will be, as Milton nobly expressed it, with his left hand, in prose and not in verse, in a pamphlet and not in a lyric. This exquisite spirit of artistic choice was not in Byron: Wordsworth had it not. In the work of both these men there is much that we have to reject, much that does not give us that sense of calm and perfect repose which should be the effect of all fine, imaginative work. But in Keats it seemed to have been incarnate, and in his lovely ODE ON A GRECIAN URN it found its most secure and faultless expression; in the pageant of the EARTHLY PARADISE and the knights and ladies of Burne-Jones it is the one dominant note. It is to no avail that the Muse of Poetry be 514 called, even by such a clarion note as Whitman's, to migrate from Greece and Ionia and to placard REMOVED and TO LET on the rocks of the snowy Parnassus. Calliope's call is not yet closed, nor are the epics of Asia ended; the Sphinx is not yet silent, nor the fountain of Castaly dry. For art is very life itself and knows nothing of death; she is absolute truth and takes no care of fact; she sees (as I remember Mr. Swinburne insisting on at dinner) that Achilles is even now more actual and real than Wellington, not merely more noble and interesting as a type and figure but more positive and real. Literature must rest always on a principle, and temporal considerations are no principle at all. For to the poet all times and places are one; the stuff he deals with is eternal and eternally the same: no theme is inept, no past or present preferable. The steam whistle will not affright him nor the flutes of Arcadia weary him: for him there is but one time, the artistic moment; but one law, the law of form; but one land, the land of Beauty a land removed indeed from the real world and yet more sensuous because more enduring; calm, yet with that calm which dwells in the faces of the Greek statues, the calm which comes not from the rejection but from the absorption of passion, the calm which despair and sorrow cannot disturb but intensify only. And so it comes that he who seems to stand most remote from his age is he who mirrors it best, because he has stripped life of what is accidental and transitory, stripped it of that 'mist of familiarity which makes life obscure to us.' Those strange, wild-eyed sibyls fixed eternally in the whirlwind of ecstasy, those mighty-limbed and Titan prophets, labouring with the secret of the earth and the burden of mystery, that guard and glorify the chapel of Pope Sixtus at Rome do they not tell us more of the real spirit of the Italian Renaissance, of the dream of Savonarola and of the sin of Borgia, than all the brawling boors and cooking women of Dutch art can teach us of the real spirit of the history of Holland? And so in our own day, also, the two most vital tendencies of the nineteenth century the democratic and pantheistic tendency and the tendency to value life for the sake of art found their most complete and perfect utterance in the poetry of Shelley and Keats who, to the blind eyes of their own time, seemed to be as wanderers in the wilderness, preachers of vague or unreal things. And I remember once, in talking to Mr. Burne-Jones about modern science, his saying to me, 'the more materialistic science becomes, the more angels shall I paint: their wings are my protest in favour of the immortality of the soul.' But these are the intellectual speculations that underlie art. Where in the arts themselves are we to find that breadth of human sympathy which is the condition of all noble work; where in the arts are we to look for what Mazzini would call the social ideas as opposed to the merely personal ideas? By virtue of what claim do I demand for the artist the love and loyalty of the men and women of the world? I think I can answer that. Whatever spiritual message an artist brings to his aid is a matter for his own soul. He may bring judgment like Michael Angelo or peace like Angelico; he may come with mourning like the great Athenian or with mirth like the singer of Sicily; nor is it for us to do aught but accept his teaching, knowing that we cannot smite the bitter lips of Leopardi into laughter or burden with our discontent Goethe's serene calm. But for warrant of its truth such message must have the flame of eloquence in the lips that speak it, splendour and glory in the vision that is its witness, being justified by one thing only the flawless beauty and perfect form of its expression: this indeed being the social idea, being the meaning of joy in art. Not laughter where none should laugh, nor the calling of peace where there is no peace; not in painting the subject ever, but the pictorial charm only, the wonder of its colour, the 515 satisfying beauty of its design. You have most of you seen, probably, that great masterpiece of Rubens which hangs in the gallery of Brussels, that swift and wonderful pageant of horse and rider arrested in its most exquisite and fiery moment when the winds are caught in crimson banner and the air lit by the gleam of armour and the flash of plume. Well, that is joy in art, though that golden hillside be trodden by the wounded feet of Christ and it is for the death of the Son of Man that that gorgeous cavalcade is passing. But this restless modern intellectual spirit of ours is not receptive enough of the sensuous element of art; and so the real influence of the arts is hidden from many of us: only a few, escaping from the tyranny of the soul, have learned the secret of those high hours when thought is not. And this indeed is the reason of the influence which Eastern art is having on us in Europe, and of the fascination of all Japanese work. While the Western world has been laying on art the intolerable burden of its own intellectual doubts and the spiritual tragedy of its own sorrows, the East has always kept true to art's primary and pictorial conditions. In judging of a beautiful statue the aesthetic faculty is absolutely and completely gratified by the splendid curves of those marble lips that are dumb to our complaint, the noble modelling of those limbs that are powerless to help us. In its primary aspect a painting has no more spiritual message or meaning than an exquisite fragment of Venetian glass or a blue tile from the wall of Damascus: it is a beautifully coloured surface, nothing more. The channels by which all noble imaginative work in painting should touch, and do touch the soul, are not those of the truths of life, nor metaphysical truths. But that pictorial charm which does not depend on any literary reminiscence for its effect on the one hand, nor is yet a mere result of communicable technical skill on the other, comes of a certain inventive and creative handling of colour. Nearly always in Dutch painting and often in the works of Giorgione or Titian, it is entirely independent of anything definitely poetical in the subject, a kind of form and choice in workmanship which is itself entirely satisfying, and is (as the Greeks would say) an end in itself. And so in poetry too, the real poetical quality, the joy of poetry, comes never from the subject but from an inventive handling of rhythmical language, from what Keats called the 'sensuous life of verse.' The element of song in the singing accompanied by the profound joy of motion, is so sweet that, while the incomplete lives of ordinary men bring no healing power with them, the thorncrown of the poet will blossom into roses for our pleasure; for our delight his despair will gild its own thorns, and his pain, like Adonis, be beautiful in its agony; and when the poet's heart breaks it will break in music. And health in art what is that? It has nothing to do with a sane criticism of life. There is more health in Baudelaire than there is in [Kingsley]. Health is the artist's recognition of the limitations of the form in which he works. It is the honour and the homage which he gives to the material he uses whether it be language with its glories, or marble or pigment with their glories knowing that the true brotherhood of the arts consists not in their borrowing one another's method, but in their producing, each of them by its own individual means, each of them by keeping its objective limits, the same unique artistic delight. The delight is like that given to us by music for music is the art in which form and matter are always one, the art whose subject cannot be separated from the method of its expression, the art which most completely realises the artistic ideal, and is the condition to which all the other arts are constantly aspiring. And criticism what place is that to have in our culture? Well, I think that the first duty of an art critic is to hold his tongue at all times, and upon all subjects: C'EST UN GRAND AVANTAGE 516 DE N'AVOIR RIEN FAIT, MAIS IL NE FAUT PAS EN ABUSER. It is only through the mystery of creation that one can gain any knowledge of the quality of created things. You have listened to PATIENCE for a hundred nights and you have heard me for one only. It will make, no doubt, that satire more piquant by knowing something about the subject of it, but you must not judge of aestheticism by the satire of Mr. Gilbert. As little should you judge of the strength and splendour of sun or sea by the dust that dances in the beam, or the bubble that breaks on the wave, as take your critic for any sane test of art. For the artists, like the Greek gods, are revealed only to one another, as Emerson says somewhere; their real value and place time only can show. In this respect also omnipotence is with the ages. The true critic addresses not the artist ever but the public only. His work lies with them. Art can never have any other claim but her own perfection: it is for the critic to create for art the social aim, too, by teaching the people the spirit in which they are to approach all artistic work, the love they are to give it, the lesson they are to draw from it. All these appeals to art to set herself more in harmony with modern progress and civilisation, and to make herself the mouthpiece for the voice of humanity, these appeals to art 'to have a mission,' are appeals which should be made to the public. The art which has fulfilled the conditions of beauty has fulfilled all conditions: it is for the critic to teach the people how to find in the calm of such art the highest expression of their own most stormy passions. 'I have no reverence,' said Keats, 'for the public, nor for anything in existence but the Eternal Being, the memory of great men and the principle of Beauty.' Such then is the principle which I believe to be guiding and underlying our English Renaissance, a Renaissance many-sided and wonderful, productive of strong ambitions and lofty personalities, yet for all its splendid achievements in poetry and in the decorative arts and in painting, for all the increased comeliness and grace of dress, and the furniture of houses and the like, not complete. For there can be no great sculpture without a beautiful national life, and the commercial spirit of England has killed that; no great drama without a noble national life, and the commercial spirit of England has killed that too. It is not that the flawless serenity of marble cannot bear the burden of the modern intellectual spirit, or become instinct with the fire of romantic passion the tomb of Duke Lorenzo and the chapel of the Medici show us that but it is that, as Theophile Gautier used to say, the visible world is dead, LE MONDE VISIBLE A DISPARU. Nor is it again that the novel has killed the play, as some critics would persuade us the romantic movement of France shows us that. The work of Balzac and of Hugo grew up side by side together; nay, more, were complementary to each other, though neither of them saw it. While all other forms of poetry may flourish in an ignoble age, the splendid individualism of the lyrist, fed by its own passion, and lit by its own power, may pass as a pillar of fire as well across the desert as across places that are pleasant. It is none the less glorious though no man follow it nay, by the greater sublimity of its loneliness it may be quickened into loftier utterance and intensified into clearer song. From the mean squalor of the sordid life that limits him, the dreamer or the idyllist may soar on poesy's viewless wings, may traverse with fawn-skin and spear the moonlit heights of Cithaeron though Faun and Bassarid dance there no more. Like Keats he may wander through the old-world forests of Latmos, or stand like Morris on the galley's deck with the Viking when king and galley have long since passed away. But the drama is the meeting-place of art and life; it deals, as Mazzini said, not merely with man, but with social man, with man in his relation to 517 God and to Humanity. It is the product of a period of great national united energy; it is impossible without a noble public, and belongs to such ages as the age of Elizabeth in London and of Pericles at Athens; it is part of such lofty moral and spiritual ardour as came to Greek after the defeat of the Persian fleet, and to Englishman after the wreck of the Armada of Spain. Shelley felt how incomplete our movement was in this respect, and has shown in one great tragedy by what terror and pity he would have purified our age; but in spite of THE CENCI the drama is one of the artistic forms through which the genius of the England of this century seeks in vain to find outlet and expression. He has had no worthy imitators. It is rather, perhaps, to you that we should turn to complete and perfect this great movement of ours, for there is something Hellenic in your air and world, something that has a quicker breath of the joy and power of Elizabeth's England about it than our ancient civilisation can give us. For you, at least, are young; 'no hungry generations tread you down,' and the past does not weary you with the intolerable burden of its memories nor mock you with the ruins of a beauty, the secret of whose creation you have lost. That very absence of tradition, which Mr. Ruskin thought would rob your rivers of their laughter and your flowers of their light, may be rather the source of your freedom and your strength. To speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insouciance of the movements of animals, and the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside, has been defined by one of your poets as a flawless triumph of art. It is a triumph which you above all nations may be destined to achieve. For the voices that have their dwelling in sea and mountain are not the chosen music of Liberty only; other messages are there in the wonder of wind-swept height and the majesty of silent deep messages that, if you will but listen to them, may yield you the splendour of some new imagination, the marvel of some new beauty. 'I foresee,' said Goethe, 'the dawn of a new literature which all people may claim as their own, for all have contributed to its foundation.' If, then, this is so, and if the materials for a civilisation as great as that of Europe lie all around you, what profit, you will ask me, will all this study of our poets and painters be to you? I might answer that the intellect can be engaged without direct didactic object on an artistic and historical problem; that the demand of the intellect is merely to feel itself alive; that nothing which has ever interested men or women can cease to be a fit subject for culture. I might remind you of what all Europe owes to the sorrow of a single Florentine in exile at Verona, or to the love of Petrarch by that little well in Southern France; nay, more, how even in this dull, materialistic age the simple expression of an old man's simple life, passed away from the clamour of great cities amid the lakes and misty hills of Cumberland, has opened out for England treasures of new joy compared with which the treasures of her luxury are as barren as the sea which she has made her highway, and as bitter as the fire which she would make her slave. But I think it will bring you something besides this, something that is the knowledge of real strength in art: not that you should imitate the works of these men; but their artistic spirit, their artistic attitude, I think you should absorb that. For in nations, as in individuals, if the passion for creation be not accompanied by the critical, the aesthetic faculty also, it will be sure to waste its strength aimlessly, failing perhaps in the artistic spirit of choice, or in the mistaking of feeling for form, or in the following of false ideals. For the various spiritual forms of the imagination have a natural affinity with certain sensuous forms of art and to discern the qualities of each art, to intensify as well its limitations as its powers of expression, is one of the aims that 518 culture sets before us. It is not an increased moral sense, an increased moral supervision that your literature needs. Indeed, one should never talk of a moral or an immoral poem poems are either well written or badly written, that is all. And, indeed, any element of morals or implied reference to a standard of good or evil in art is often a sign of a certain incompleteness of vision, often a note of discord in the harmony of an imaginative creation; for all good work aims at a purely artistic effect. 'We must be careful,' said Goethe, 'not to be always looking for culture merely in what is obviously moral. Everything that is great promotes civilisation as soon as we are aware of it.' But, as in your cities so in your literature, it is a permanent canon and standard of taste, an increased sensibility to beauty (if I may say so) that is lacking. All noble work is not national merely, but universal. The political independence of a nation must not be confused with any intellectual isolation. The spiritual freedom, indeed, your own generous lives and liberal air will give you. From us you will learn the classical restraint of form. For all great art is delicate art, roughness having very little to do with strength, and harshness very little to do with power. 'The artist,' as Mr. Swinburne says, 'must be perfectly articulate.' This limitation is for the artist perfect freedom: it is at once the origin and the sign of his strength. So that all the supreme masters of style Dante, Sophocles, Shakespeare are the supreme masters of spiritual and intellectual vision also. Love art for its own sake, and then all things that you need will be added to you. This devotion to beauty and to the creation of beautiful things is the test of all great civilised nations. Philosophy may teach us to bear with equanimity the misfortunes of our neighbours, and science resolve the moral sense into a secretion of sugar, but art is what makes the life of each citizen a sacrament and not a speculation, art is what makes the life of the whole race immortal. For beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, and creeds follow one another like the withered leaves of autumn; but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons and a possession for all eternity. Wars and the clash of armies and the meeting of men in battle by trampled field or leaguered city, and the rising of nations there must always be. But I think that art, by creating a common intellectual atmosphere between all countries, might if it could not overshadow the world with the silver wings of peace at least make men such brothers that they would not go out to slay one another for the whim or folly of some king or minister, as they do in Europe. Fraternity would come no more with the hands of Cain, nor Liberty betray freedom with the kiss of Anarchy; for national hatreds are always strongest where culture is lowest. 'How could I?' said Goethe, when reproached for not writing like Korner against the French. 'How could I, to whom barbarism and culture alone are of importance, hate a nation which is among the most cultivated of the earth, a nation to which I owe a great part of my own cultivation?' Mighty empires, too, there must always be as long as personal ambition and the spirit of the age are one, but art at least is the only empire which a nation's enemies cannot take from her by conquest, but which is taken by submission only. The sovereignty of Greece and Rome is not yet passed away, though the gods of the one be dead and the eagles of the other tired. And we in our Renaissance are seeking to create a sovereignty that will still be England's when her yellow leopards have grown weary of wars and the rose of her shield is crimsoned no more with the blood of battle; and you, too, absorbing into the generous heart of a great people this pervading artistic spirit, will create for yourselves such riches as you have never yet created, though your land be a network of railways and your cities 519 the harbours for the galleys of the world. I know, indeed, that the divine natural prescience of beauty which is the inalienable inheritance of Greek and Italian is not our inheritance. For such an informing and presiding spirit of art to shield us from all harsh and alien influences, we of the Northern races must turn rather to that strained selfconsciousness of our age which, as it is the key-note of all our romantic art, must be the source of all or nearly all our culture. I mean that intellectual curiosity of the nineteenth century which is always looking for the secret of the life that still lingers round old and bygone forms of culture. It takes from each what is serviceable for the modern spirit from Athens its wonder without its worship, from Venice its splendour without its sin. The same spirit is always analysing its own strength and its own weakness, counting what it owes to East and to West, to the olive-trees of Colonus and to the palm-trees of Lebanon, to Gethsemane and to the garden of Proserpine. And yet the truths of art cannot be taught: they are revealed only, revealed to natures which have made themselves receptive of all beautiful impressions by the study and worship of all beautiful things. And hence the enormous importance given to the decorative arts in our English Renaissance; hence all that marvel of design that comes from the hand of Edward BurneJones, all that weaving of tapestry and staining of glass, that beautiful working in clay and metal and wood which we owe to William Morris, the greatest handicraftsman we have had in England since the fourteenth century. So, in years to come there will be nothing in any man's house which has not given delight to its maker and does not give delight to its user. The children, like the children of Plato's perfect city, will grow up 'in a simple atmosphere of all fair things' I quote from the passage in the REPUBLIC - 'a simple atmosphere of all fair things, where beauty, which is the spirit of art, will come on eye and ear like a fresh breath of wind that brings health from a clear upland, and insensibly and gradually draw the child's soul into harmony with all knowledge and all wisdom, so that he will love what is beautiful and good, and hate what is evil and ugly (for they always go together) long before he knows the reason why; and then when reason comes will kiss her on the cheek as a friend.' That is what Plato thought decorative art could do for a nation, feeling that the secret not of philosophy merely but of all gracious existence might be externally hidden from any one whose youth had been passed in uncomely and vulgar surroundings, and that the beauty of form and colour even, as he says, in the meanest vessels of the house, will find its way into the inmost places of the soul and lead the boy naturally to look for that divine harmony of spiritual life of which art was to him the material symbol and warrant. Prelude indeed to all knowledge and all wisdom will this love of beautiful things be for us; yet there are times when wisdom becomes a burden and knowledge is one with sorrow: for as every body has its shadow so every soul has its scepticism. In such dread moments of discord and despair where should we, of this torn and troubled age, turn our steps if not to that secure house of beauty where there is always a little forgetfulness, always a great joy; to that CITTE DIVINA, as the old Italian heresy called it, the divine city where one can stand, though only for a brief moment, apart from the division and terror of the world and the choice of the world too? This is that CONSOLATION DES ARTS which is the key-note of Gautier's poetry, the secret of modern life foreshadowed as indeed what in our century is not? by Goethe. You remember what he said to the German people: 'Only have the courage,' he said, 'to give yourselves up to your impressions, allow yourselves to be delighted, moved, elevated, nay instructed, inspired for something great.' The courage 520 to give yourselves up to your impressions: yes, that is the secret of the artistic life for while art has been defined as an escape from the tyranny of the senses, it is an escape rather from the tyranny of the soul. But only to those who worship her above all things does she ever reveal her true treasure: else will she be as powerless to aid you as the mutilated Venus of the Louvre was before the romantic but sceptical nature of Heine. And indeed I think it would be impossible to overrate the gain that might follow if we had about us only what gave pleasure to the maker of it and gives pleasure to its user, that being the simplest of all rules about decoration. One thing, at least, I think it would do for us: there is no surer test of a great country than how near it stands to its own poets; but between the singers of our day and the workers to whom they would sing there seems to be an ever-widening and dividing chasm, a chasm which slander and mockery cannot traverse, but which is spanned by the luminous wings of love. And of such love I think that the abiding presence in our houses of noble imaginative work would be the surest seed and preparation. I do not mean merely as regards that direct literary expression of art by which, from the little red-and-black cruse of oil or wine, a Greek boy could learn of the lionlike splendour of Achilles, of the strength of Hector and the beauty of Paris and the wonder of Helen, long before he stood and listened in crowded market-place or in theatre of marble; or by which an Italian child of the fifteenth century could know of the chastity of Lucrece and the death of Camilla from carven doorway and from painted chest. For the good we get from art is not what we learn from it; it is what we become through it. Its real influence will be in giving the mind that enthusiasm which is the secret of Hellenism, accustoming it to demand from art all that art can do in rearranging the facts of common life for us whether it be by giving the most spiritual interpretation of one's own moments of highest passion or the most sensuous expression of those thoughts that are the farthest removed from sense; in accustoming it to love the things of the imagination for their own sake, and to desire beauty and grace in all things. For he who does not love art in all things does not love it at all, and he who does not need art in all things does not need it at all. I will not dwell here on what I am sure has delighted you all in our great Gothic cathedrals. I mean how the artist of that time, handicraftsman himself in stone or glass, found the best motives for his art, always ready for his hand and always beautiful, in the daily work of the artificers he saw around him as in those lovely windows of Chartres where the dyer dips in the vat and the potter sits at the wheel, and the weaver stands at the loom: real manufacturers these, workers with the hand, and entirely delightful to look at, not like the smug and vapid shopman of our time, who knows nothing of the web or vase he sells, except that he is charging you double its value and thinking you a fool for buying it. Nor can I but just note, in passing, the immense influence the decorative work of Greece and Italy had on its artists, the one teaching the sculptor that restraining influence of design which is the glory of the Parthenon, the other keeping painting always true to its primary, pictorial condition of noble colour which is the secret of the school of Venice; for I wish rather, in this lecture at least, to dwell on the effect that decorative art has on human life on its social not its purely artistic effect. There are two kinds of men in the world, two great creeds, two different forms of natures: men to whom the end of life is action, and men to whom the end of life is thought. As regards the latter, who seek for experience itself and not for the fruits of experience, who must burn always with one of the passions of this fiery-coloured world, who find life interesting not for its secret but for its situations, for its pulsations and not for its purpose; 521 the passion for beauty engendered by the decorative arts will be to them more satisfying than any political or religious enthusiasm, any enthusiasm for humanity, any ecstasy or sorrow for love. For art comes to one professing primarily to give nothing but the highest quality to one's moments, and for those moments' sake. So far for those to whom the end of life is thought. As regards the others, who hold that life is inseparable from labour, to them should this movement be specially dear: for, if our days are barren without industry, industry without art is barbarism. Hewers of wood and drawers of water there must be always indeed among us. Our modern machinery has not much lightened the labour of man after all: but at least let the pitcher that stands by the well be beautiful and surely the labour of the day will be lightened: let the wood be made receptive of some lovely form, some gracious design, and there will come no longer discontent but joy to the toiler. For what is decoration but the worker's expression of joy in his work? And not joy merely that is a great thing yet not enough but that opportunity of expressing his own individuality which, as it is the essence of all life, is the source of all art. 'I have tried,' I remember William Morris saying to me once, 'I have tried to make each of my workers an artist, and when I say an artist I mean a man.' For the worker then, handicraftsman of whatever kind he is, art is no longer to be a purple robe woven by a slave and thrown over the whitened body of a leprous king to hide and to adorn the sin of his luxury, but rather the beautiful and noble expression of a life that has in it something beautiful and noble. And so you must seek out your workman and give him, as far as possible, the right surroundings, for remember that the real test and virtue of a workman is not his earnestness nor his industry even, but his power of design merely; and that 'design is not the offspring of idle fancy: it is the studied result of accumulative observation and delightful habit.' All the teaching in the world is of no avail if you do not surround your workman with happy influences and with beautiful things. It is impossible for him to have right ideas about colour unless he sees the lovely colours of Nature unspoiled; impossible for him to supply beautiful incident and action unless he sees beautiful incident and action in the world about him. For to cultivate sympathy you must be among living things and thinking about them, and to cultivate admiration you must be among beautiful things and looking at them. 'The steel of Toledo and the silk of Genoa did but give strength to oppression and lustre to pride,' as Mr. Ruskin says; let it be for you to create an art that is made by the hands of the people for the joy of the people, to please the hearts of the people, too; an art that will be your expression of your delight in life. There is nothing 'in common life too mean, in common things too trivial to be ennobled by your touch'; nothing in life that art cannot sanctify. You have heard, I think, a few of you, of two flowers connected with the aesthetic movement in England, and said (I assure you, erroneously) to be the food of some aesthetic young men. Well, let me tell you that the reason we love the lily and the sunflower, in spite of what Mr. Gilbert may tell you, is not for any vegetable fashion at all. It is because these two lovely flowers are in England the two most perfect models of design, the most naturally adapted for decorative art the gaudy leonine beauty of the one and the precious loveliness of the other giving to the artist the most entire and perfect joy. And so with you: let there be no flower in your meadows that does not wreathe its tendrils around your pillows, no little leaf in your Titan forests that does not lend its form to design, no curving spray of wild rose or brier that does not live for ever in carven arch or window or marble, no bird in your air that is not giving the iridescent wonder of its colour, the exquisite curves of its 522 wings in flight, to make more precious the preciousness of simple adornment. We spend our days, each one of us, in looking for the secret of life. Well, the secret of life is in art. HOUSE DECORATION IN my last lecture I gave you something of the history of Art in England. I sought to trace the influence of the French Revolution upon its development. I said something of the song of Keats and the school of the pre-Raphaelites. But I do not want to shelter the movement, which I have called the English Renaissance, under any palladium however noble, or any name however revered. The roots of it have, indeed, to be sought for in things that have long passed away, and not, as some suppose, in the fancy of a few young men although I am not altogether sure that there is anything much better than the fancy of a few young men. When I appeared before you on a previous occasion, I had seen nothing of American art save the Doric columns and Corinthian chimney-pots visible on your Broadway and Fifth Avenue. Since then, I have been through your country to some fifty or sixty different cities, I think. I find that what your people need is not so much high imaginative art but that which hallows the vessels of everyday use. I suppose that the poet will sing and the artist will paint regardless whether the world praises or blames. He has his own world and is independent of his fellow-men. But the handicraftsman is dependent on your pleasure and opinion. He needs your encouragement and he must have beautiful surroundings. Your people love art but do not sufficiently honour the handicraftsman. Of course, those millionaires who can pillage Europe for their pleasure need have no care to encourage such; but I speak for those whose desire for beautiful things is larger than their means. I find that one great trouble all over is that your workmen are not given to noble designs. You cannot be indifferent to this, because Art is not something which you can take or leave. It is a necessity of human life. And what is the meaning of this beautiful decoration which we call art? In the first place, it means value to the workman and it means the pleasure which he must necessarily take in making a beautiful thing. The mark of all good art is not that the thing done is done exactly or finely, for machinery may do as much, but that it is worked out with the head and the workman's heart. I cannot impress the point too frequently that beautiful and rational designs are necessary in all work. I did not imagine, until I went into some of your simpler cities, that there was so much bad work done. I found, where I went, bad wall-papers horribly designed, and coloured carpets, and that old offender the horse-hair sofa, whose stolid look of indifference is always so depressing. I found meaningless chandeliers and machine-made furniture, generally of rosewood, which creaked dismally under the weight of the ubiquitous interviewer. I came across the small iron stove which they always persist in decorating with machine-made ornaments, and which is as great a bore as a wet day or any other particularly dreadful institution. When unusual extravagance was indulged in, it was garnished with two funeral urns. It must always be remembered that what is well and carefully made by an honest workman, after a rational design, increases in beauty and value as the years go on. The old furniture brought over by the Pilgrims, two hundred years ago, which I saw in New England, is just as good and 523 as beautiful to-day as it was when it first came here. Now, what you must do is to bring artists and handicraftsmen together. Handicraftsmen cannot live, certainly cannot thrive, without such companionship. Separate these two and you rob art of all spiritual motive. Having done this, you must place your workman in the midst of beautiful surroundings. The artist is not dependent on the visible and the tangible. He has his visions and his dreams to feed on. But the workman must see lovely forms as he goes to his work in the morning and returns at eventide. And, in connection with this, I want to assure you that noble and beautiful designs are never the result of idle fancy or purposeless daydreaming. They come only as the accumulation of habits of long and delightful observation. And yet such things may not be taught. Right ideas concerning them can certainly be obtained only by those who have been accustomed to rooms that are beautiful and colours that are satisfying. Perhaps one of the most difficult things for us to do is to choose a notable and joyous dress for men. There would be more joy in life if we were to accustom ourselves to use all the beautiful colours we can in fashioning our own clothes. The dress of the future, I think, will use drapery to a great extent and will abound with joyous colour. At present we have lost all nobility of dress and, in doing so, have almost annihilated the modern sculptor. And, in looking around at the figures which adorn our parks, one could almost wish that we had completely killed the noble art. To see the frock-coat of the drawing-room done in bronze, or the double waistcoat perpetuated in marble, adds a new horror to death. But indeed, in looking through the history of costume, seeking an answer to the questions we have propounded, there is little that is either beautiful or appropriate. One of the earliest forms is the Greek drapery which is exquisite for young girls. And then, I think we may be pardoned a little enthusiasm over the dress of the time of Charles I., so beautiful indeed, that in spite of its invention being with the Cavaliers it was copied by the Puritans. And the dress for the children of that time must not be passed over. It was a very golden age of the little ones. I do not think that they have ever looked so lovely as they do in the pictures of that time. The dress of the last century in England is also peculiarly gracious and graceful. There is nothing bizarre or strange about it, but it is full of harmony and beauty. In these days, when we have suffered dreadfully from the incursions of the modern milliner, we hear ladies boast that they do not wear a dress more than once. In the old days, when the dresses were decorated with beautiful designs and worked with exquisite embroidery, ladies rather took a pride in bringing out the garment and wearing it many times and handing it down to their daughters a process that would, I think, be quite appreciated by a modern husband when called upon to settle his wife's bills. And how shall men dress? Men say that they do not particularly care how they dress, and that it is little matter. I am bound to reply that I do not think that you do. In all my journeys through the country, the only well-dressed men that I saw and in saying this I earnestly deprecate the polished indignation of your Fifth Avenue dandies were the Western miners. Their widebrimmed hats, which shaded their faces from the sun and protected them from the rain, and the cloak, which is by far the most beautiful piece of drapery ever invented, may well be dwelt on with admiration. Their high boots, too, were sensible and practical. They wore only what was comfortable, and therefore beautiful. As I looked at them I could not help thinking with regret of the time when these picturesque miners would have made their fortunes and would go East to assume again all the abominations of modern fashionable attire. Indeed, so concerned was I that I made some of them promise that 524 when they again appeared in the more crowded scenes of Eastern civilisation they would still continue to wear their lovely costume. But I do not believe they will. Now, what America wants to-day is a school of rational art. Bad art is a great deal worse than no art at all. You must show your workmen specimens of good work so that they come to know what is simple and true and beautiful. To that end I would have you have a museum attached to these schools not one of those dreadful modern institutions where there is a stuffed and very dusty giraffe, and a case or two of fossils, but a place where there are gathered examples of art decoration from various periods and countries. Such a place is the South Kensington Museum in London, whereon we build greater hopes for the future than on any other one thing. There I go every Saturday night, when the museum is open later than usual, to see the handicraftsman, the wood-worker, the glass-blower and the worker in metals. And it is here that the man of refinement and culture comes face to face with the workman who ministers to his joy. He comes to know more of the nobility of the workman, and the workman, feeling the appreciation, comes to know more of the nobility of his work. You have too many white walls. More colour is wanted. You should have such men as Whistler among you to teach you the beauty and joy of colour. Take Mr. Whistler's 'Symphony in White,' which you no doubt have imagined to be something quite bizarre. It is nothing of the sort. Think of a cool grey sky flecked here and there with white clouds, a grey ocean and three wonderfully beautiful figures robed in white, leaning over the water and dropping white flowers from their fingers. Here is no extensive intellectual scheme to trouble you, and no metaphysics of which we have had quite enough in art. But if the simple and unaided colour strike the right keynote, the whole conception is made clear. I regard Mr. Whistler's famous Peacock Room as the finest thing in colour and art decoration which the world has known since Correggio painted that wonderful room in Italy where the little children are dancing on the walls. Mr. Whistler finished another room just before I came away a breakfast room in blue and yellow. The ceiling was a light blue, the cabinet-work and the furniture were of a yellow wood, the curtains at the windows were white and worked in yellow, and when the table was set for breakfast with dainty blue china nothing can be conceived at once so simple and so joyous. The fault which I have observed in most of your rooms is that there is apparent no definite scheme of colour. Everything is not attuned to a key-note as it should be. The apartments are crowded with pretty things which have no relation to one another. Again, your artists must decorate what is more simply useful. In your art schools I found no attempt to decorate such things as the vessels for water. I know of nothing uglier than the ordinary jug or pitcher. A museum could be filled with the different kinds of water vessels which are used in hot countries. Yet we continue to submit to the depressing jug with the handle all on one side. I do not see the wisdom of decorating dinner-plates with sunsets and soup-plates with moonlight scenes. I do not think it adds anything to the pleasure of the canvas-back duck to take it out of such glories. Besides, we do not want a soup-plate whose bottom seems to vanish in the distance. One feels neither safe nor comfortable under such conditions. In fact, I did not find in the art schools of the country that the difference was explained between decorative and imaginative art. The conditions of art should be simple. A great deal more depends upon the heart than upon the head. Appreciation of art is not secured by any elaborate scheme of learning. Art requires a good healthy atmosphere. The motives for art are still around about us as they were round about the ancients. And the subjects are also easily 525 found by the earnest sculptor and the painter. Nothing is more picturesque and graceful than a man at work. The artist who goes to the children's playground, watches them at their sport and sees the boy stoop to tie his shoe, will find the same themes that engaged the attention of the ancient Greeks, and such observation and the illustrations which follow will do much to correct that foolish impression that mental and physical beauty are always divorced. To you, more than perhaps to any other country, has Nature been generous in furnishing material for art workers to work in. You have marble quarries where the stone is more beautiful in colour than any the Greeks ever had for their beautiful work, and yet day after day I am confronted with the great building of some stupid man who has used the beautiful material as if it were not precious almost beyond speech. Marble should not be used save by noble workmen. There is nothing which gave me a greater sense of barrenness in travelling through the country than the entire absence of wood carving on your houses. Wood carving is the simplest of the decorative arts. In Switzerland the little barefooted boy beautifies the porch of his father's house with examples of skill in this direction. Why should not American boys do a great deal more and better than Swiss boys? There is nothing to my mind more coarse in conception and more vulgar in execution than modern jewellery. This is something that can easily be corrected. Something better should be made out of the beautiful gold which is stored up in your mountain hollows and strewn along your river beds. When I was at Leadville and reflected that all the shining silver that I saw coming from the mines would be made into ugly dollars, it made me sad. It should be made into something more permanent. The golden gates at Florence are as beautiful to-day as when Michael Angelo saw them. We should see more of the workman than we do. We should not be content to have the salesman stand between us the salesman who knows nothing of what he is selling save that he is charging a great deal too much for it. And watching the workman will teach that most important lesson the nobility of all rational workmanship. I said in my last lecture that art would create a new brotherhood among men by furnishing a universal language. I said that under its beneficent influences war might pass away. Thinking this, what place can I ascribe to art in our education? If children grow up among all fair and lovely things, they will grow to love beauty and detest ugliness before they know the reason why. If you go into a house where everything is coarse, you find things chipped and broken and unsightly. Nobody exercises any care. If everything is dainty and delicate, gentleness and refinement of manner are unconsciously acquired. When I was in San Francisco I used to visit the Chinese Quarter frequently. There I used to watch a great hulking Chinese workman at his task of digging, and used to see him every day drink his tea from a little cup as delicate in texture as the petal of a flower, whereas in all the grand hotels of the land, where thousands of dollars have been lavished on great gilt mirrors and gaudy columns, I have been given my coffee or my chocolate in cups an inch and a quarter thick. I think I have deserved something nicer. The art systems of the past have been devised by philosophers who looked upon human beings as obstructions. They have tried to educate boys' minds before they had any. How much better it would be in these early years to teach children to use their hands in the rational service of mankind. I would have a workshop attached to every school, and one hour a day given up to the teaching of simple decorative arts. It would be a golden hour to the children. And you would soon raise up a race of handicraftsmen who would transform the face of your country. I have seen only one such school in the United States, and this was in 526 Philadelphia and was founded by my friend Mr. Leyland. I stopped there yesterday and have brought some of the work here this afternoon to show you. Here are two disks of beaten brass: the designs on them are beautiful, the workmanship is simple, and the entire result is satisfactory. The work was done by a little boy twelve years old. This is a wooden bowl decorated by a little girl of thirteen. The design is lovely and the colouring delicate and pretty. Here you see a piece of beautiful wood carving accomplished by a little boy of nine. In such work as this, children learn sincerity in art. They learn to abhor the liar in art the man who paints wood to look like iron, or iron to look like stone. It is a practical school of morals. No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone. What we want is something spiritual added to life. Nothing is so ignoble that Art cannot sanctify it. ART AND THE HANDICRAFTSMAN PEOPLE often talk as if there was an opposition between what is beautiful and what is useful. There is no opposition to beauty except ugliness: all things are either beautiful or ugly, and utility will be always on the side of the beautiful thing, because beautiful decoration is always on the side of the beautiful thing, because beautiful decoration is always an expression of the use you put a thing to and the value placed on it. No workman will beautifully decorate bad work, nor can you possibly get good handicraftsmen or workmen without having beautiful designs. You should be quite sure of that. If you have poor and worthless designs in any craft or trade you will get poor and worthless workmen only, but the minute you have noble and beautiful designs, then you get men of power and intellect and feeling to work for you. By having good designs you have workmen who work not merely with their hands but with their hearts and heads too; otherwise you will get merely the fool or the loafer to work for you. That the beauty of life is a thing of no moment, I suppose few people would venture to assert. And yet most civilised people act as if it were of none, and in so doing are wronging both themselves and those that are to come after them. For that beauty which is meant by art is no mere accident of human life which people can take or leave, but a positive necessity of life if we are to live as nature meant us to, that is to say unless we are content to be less than men. Do not think that the commercial spirit which is the basis of your life and cities here is opposed to art. Who built the beautiful cities of the world but commercial men and commercial men only? Genoa built by its traders, Florence by its bankers, and Venice, most lovely of all, by its noble and honest merchants. I do not wish you, remember, 'to build a new Pisa,' nor to bring 'the life or the decorations of the thirteenth century back again.' 'The circumstances with which you must surround your workmen are those' of modern American life, 'because the designs you have now to ask for from your workmen are such as will make modern' American 'life beautiful.' The art we want is the art based on all the inventions of modern civilisation, and to suit all the needs of nineteenth-century life. Do you think, for instance, that we object to machinery? I tell 527 you we reverence it; we reverence it when it does its proper work, when it relieves man from ignoble and soulless labour, not when it seeks to do that which is valuable only when wrought by the hands and hearts of men. Let us have no machine-made ornament at all; it is all bad and worthless and ugly. And let us not mistake the means of civilisation for the end of civilisation; steam-engine, telephone and the like, are all wonderful, but remember that their value depends entirely on the noble uses we make of them, on the noble spirit in which we employ them, not on the things themselves. It is, no doubt, a great advantage to talk to a man at the Antipodes through a telephone; its advantage depends entirely on the value of what the two men have to say to one another. If one merely shrieks slander through a tube and the other whispers folly into a wire, do not think that anybody is very much benefited by the invention. The train that whirls an ordinary Englishman through Italy at the rate of forty miles an hour and finally sends him home without any memory of that lovely country but that he was cheated by a courier at Rome, or that he got a bad dinner at Verona, does not do him or civilisation much good. But that swift legion of fiery-footed engines that bore to the burning ruins of Chicago the loving help and generous treasure of the world was as noble and as beautiful as any golden troop of angels that ever fed the hungry and clothed the naked in the antique times. As beautiful, yes; all machinery may be beautiful when it is undecorated even. Do not seek to decorate it. We cannot but think all good machinery is graceful, also, the line of strength and the line of beauty being one. Give then, as I said, to your workmen of to-day the bright and noble surroundings that you can yourself create. Stately and simple architecture for your cities, bright and simple dress for your men and women; those are the conditions of a real artistic movement. For the artist is not concerned primarily with any theory of life but with life itself, with the joy and loveliness that should come daily on eye and ear for a beautiful external world. But the simplicity must not be barrenness nor the bright colour gaudy. For all beautiful colours are graduated colours, the colours that seem about to pass into one another's realm colour without tone being like music without harmony, mere discord. Barren architecture, the vulgar and glaring advertisements that desecrate not merely your cities but every rock and river that I have seen yet in America all this is not enough. A school of design we must have too in each city. It should be a stately and noble building, full of the best examples of the best art of the world. Furthermore, do not put your designers in a barren whitewashed room and bid them work in that depressing and colourless atmosphere as I have seen many of the American schools of design, but give them beautiful surroundings. Because you want to produce a permanent canon and standard of taste in your workman, he must have always by him and before him specimens of the best decorative art of the world, so that you can say to him: 'This is good work. Greek or Italian or Japanese wrought it so many years ago, but it is eternally young because eternally beautiful.' Work in this spirit and you will be sure to be right. Do not copy it, but work with the same love, the same reverence, the same freedom of imagination. You must teach him colour and design, how all beautiful colours are graduated colours and glaring colours the essence of vulgarity. Show him the quality of any beautiful work of nature like the rose, or any beautiful work of art like an Eastern carpet being merely the exquisite gradation of colour, one tone answering another like the answering chords of a symphony. Teach him how the true designer is not he who makes the design and then colours it, but he who designs in colour, creates in colour, thinks in colour too. Show him how the most 528 gorgeous stained-glass windows of Europe are filled with white glass, and the most gorgeous Eastern tapestry with toned colours the primary colours in both places being set in the white glass, and the tone colours like brilliant jewels set in dusky gold. And then as regards design, show him how the real designer will take first any given limited space, little disk of silver, it may be, like a Greek coin, or wide expanse of fretted ceiling or lordly wall as Tintoret chose at Venice (it does not matter which), and to this limited space the first condition of decoration being the limitation of the size of the material used he will give the effect of its being filled with beautiful decoration, filled with it as a golden cup will be filled with wine, so complete that you should not be able to take away anything from it or add anything to it. For from a good piece of design you can take away nothing, nor can you add anything to it, each little bit of design being as absolutely necessary and as vitally important to the whole effect as a note or chord of music is for a sonata of Beethoven. But I said the effect of its being so filled, because this, again, is of the essence of good design. With a simple spray of leaves and a bird in flight a Japanese artist will give you the impression that he has completely covered with lovely design the reed fan or lacquer cabinet at which he is working, merely because he knows the exact spot in which to place them. All good design depends on the texture of the utensil used and the use you wish to put it to. One of the first things I saw in an American school of design was a young lady painting a romantic moonlight landscape on a large round dish, and another young lady covering a set of dinner plates with a series of sunsets of the most remarkable colours. Let your ladies paint moonlight landscapes and sunsets, but do not let them paint them on dinner plates or dishes. Let them take canvas or paper for such work, but not clay or china. They are merely painting the wrong subjects on the wrong material, that is all. They have not been taught that every material and texture has certain qualities of its own. The design suitable for one is quite wrong for the other, just as the design which you should work on a flat tablecover ought to be quite different from the design you would work on a curtain, for the one will always be straight, the other broken into folds; and the use too one puts the object to should guide one in the choice of design. One does not want to eat one's terrapins off a romantic moonlight nor one's clams off a harrowing sunset. Glory of sun and moon, let them be wrought for us by our landscape artist and be on the walls of the rooms we sit in to remind us of the undying beauty of the sunsets that fade and die, but do not let us eat our soup off them and send them down to the kitchen twice a day to be washed and scrubbed by the handmaid. All these things are simple enough, yet nearly always forgotten. Your school of design here will teach your girls and your boys, your handicraftsmen of the future (for all your schools of art should be local schools, the schools of particular cities). We talk of the Italian school of painting, but there is no Italian school; there were the schools of each city. Every town in Italy, from Venice itself, queen of the sea, to the little hill fortress of Perugia, each had its own school of art, each different and all beautiful. So do not mind what art Philadelphia or New York is having, but make by the hands of your own citizens beautiful art for the joy of your own citizens, for you have here the primary elements of a great artistic movement. For, believe me, the conditions of art are much simpler than people imagine. For the noblest art one requires a clear healthy atmosphere, not polluted as the air of our English cities is by the smoke and grime and horridness which comes from open furnace and from factory chimney. You must have strong, sane, healthy physique among your men and women. Sickly or idle or melancholy people do 529 not do much in art. And lastly, you require a sense of individualism about each man and woman, for this is the essence of art a desire on the part of man to express himself in the noblest way possible. And this is the reason that the grandest art of the world always came from a republic: Athens, Venice, and Florence there were no kings there and so their art was as noble and simple as sincere. But if you want to know what kind of art the folly of kings will impose on a country look at the decorative art of France under the GRAND MONARQUE, under Louis the Fourteenth; the gaudy gilt furniture writhing under a sense of its own horror and ugliness, with a nymph smirking at every angle and a dragon mouthing on every claw. Unreal and monstrous art this, and fit only for such periwigged pomposities as the nobility of France at that time, but not at all fit for you or me. We do not want the rich to possess more beautiful things but the poor to create more beautiful things; for ever man is poor who cannot create. Nor shall the art which you and I need be merely a purple robe woven by a slave and thrown over the whitened body of some leprous king to adorn or to conceal the sin of his luxury, but rather shall it be the noble and beautiful expression of a people's noble and beautiful life. Art shall be again the most glorious of all the chords through which the spirit of a great nation finds its noblest utterance. All around you, I said, lie the conditions for a great artistic movement for every great art. Let us think of one of them; a sculptor, for instance. If a modern sculptor were to come and say, 'Very well, but where can one find subjects for sculpture out of men who wear frock-coats and chimney-pot hats?' I would tell him to go to the docks of a great city and watch the men loading or unloading the stately ships, working at wheel or windlass, hauling at rope or gangway. I have never watched a man do anything useful who has not been graceful at some moment of his labour: it is only the loafer and the idle saunterer who is as useless and uninteresting to the artist as he is to himself. I would ask the sculptor to go with me to any of your schools or universities, to the running ground and gymnasium, to watch the young men start for a race, hurling quoit or club, kneeling to tie their shoes before leaping, stepping from the boat or bending to the oar, and to carve them; and when he was weary of cities I would ask him to come to your fields and meadows to watch the reaper with his sickle and the cattle-driver with lifted lasso. For if a man cannot find the noblest motives for his art in such simple daily things as a woman drawing water from the well or a man leaning with his scythe, he will not find them anywhere at all. Gods and goddesses the Greek carved because he loved them; saint and king the Goth because he believed in them. But you, you do not care much for Greek gods and goddesses, and you are perfectly and entirely right; and you do not think much of kings either, and you are quite right. But what you do love are your own men and women, your own flowers and fields, your own hills and mountains, and these are what your art should represent to you. Ours has been the first movement which has brought the handicraftsman and the artist together, for remember that by separating the one from the other you do ruin to both; you rob the one of all spiritual motive and all imaginative joy, you isolate the other from all real technical perfection. The two greatest schools of art in the world, the sculptor at Athens and the school of painting at Venice, had their origin entirely in a long succession of simple and earnest handicraftsmen. It was the Greek potter who taught the sculptor that restraining influence of design which was the glory of the Parthenon; it was the Italian decorator of chests and household goods who kept Venetian painting always true to its primary pictorial condition of noble colour. For we should remember that all the arts are fine arts and all the arts decorative arts. The 530 greatest triumph of Italian painting was the decoration of a pope's chapel in Rome and the wall of a room in Venice. Michael Angelo wrought the one, and Tintoret, the dyer's son, the other. And the little 'Dutch landscape, which you put over your sideboard to-day, and between the windows to-morrow, is' no less a glorious 'piece of work than the extents of field and forest with which Benozzo has made green and beautiful the once melancholy arcade of the Campo Santo at Pisa,' as Ruskin says. Do not imitate the works of a nation, Greek or Japanese, Italian or English; but their artistic spirit of design and their artistic attitude to-day, their own world, you should absorb but imitate never, copy never. Unless you can make as beautiful a design in painted china or embroidered screen or beaten brass out of your American turkey as the Japanese does out of his grey silver-winged stork, you will never do anything. Let the Greek carve his lions and the Goth his dragons: buffalo and wild deer are the animals for you. Golden rod and aster and rose and all the flowers that cover your valleys in the spring and your hills in the autumn: let them be the flowers for your art. Not merely has Nature given you the noblest motives for a new school of decoration, but to you above all other countries has she given the utensils to work in. You have quarries of marble richer than Pentelicus, more varied than Paros, but do not build a great white square house of marble and think that it is beautiful, or that you are using marble nobly. If you build in marble you must either carve it into joyous decoration, like the lives of dancing children that adorn the marble castles of the Loire, or fill it with beautiful sculpture, frieze and pediment, as the Greeks did, or inlay it with other coloured marbles as they did in Venice. Otherwise you had better build in simple red brick as your Puritan fathers, with no pretence and with some beauty. Do not treat your marble as if it was ordinary stone and build a house of mere blocks of it. For it is indeed a precious stone, this marble of yours, and only workmen of nobility of invention and delicacy of hand should be allowed to touch it at all, carving it into noble statues or into beautiful decoration, or inlaying it with other coloured marbles: for 'the true colours of architecture are those of natural stone, and I would fain see them taken advantage of to the full. Every variety is here, from pale yellow to purple passing through orange, red, and brown, entirely at your command; nearly every kind of green and grey also is attainable, and with these and with pure white what harmony might you not achieve. Of stained and variegated stone the quantity is unlimited, the kinds innumerable. Were brighter colours required, let glass, and gold protected by glass, be used in mosaic, a kind of work as durable as the solid stone and incapable of losing its lustre by time. And let the painter's work be reserved for the shadowed loggia and inner chamber. 'This is the true and faithful way of building. Where this cannot be, the device of external colouring may indeed be employed without dishonour but it must be with the warning reflection that a time will come when such aids will pass away and when the building will be judged in its lifelessness, dying the death of the dolphin. Better the less bright, more enduring fabric. The transparent alabasters of San Miniato and the mosaics of Saint Mark's are more warmly filled and more brightly touched by every return of morning and evening, while the hues of the Gothic cathedrals have died like the iris out of the cloud, and the temples, whose azure and purple once flamed above the Grecian promontory, stand in their faded whiteness like snows which the sunset has left cold.' Ruskin , SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE, II. I do not know anything so perfectly commonplace in design as most modern jewellery. How easy for you to change that and to produce goldsmiths' work that would be a joy to all of us. The gold is ready for you in 531 unexhausted treasure, stored up in the mountain hollow or strewn on the river sand, and was not given to you merely for barren speculation. There should be some better record of it left in your history than the merchant's panic and the ruined home. We do not remember often enough how constantly the history of a great nation will live in and by its art. Only a few thin wreaths of beaten gold remain to tell us of the stately empire of Etruria; and, while from the streets of Florence the noble knight and haughty duke have long since passed away, the gates which the simple goldsmith Ghiberti made for their pleasure still guard their lovely house of baptism, worthy still of the praise of Michael Angelo who called them worthy to be the Gates of Paradise. Have then your school of design, search out your workmen and, when you find one who has delicacy of hand and that wonder of invention necessary for goldsmiths' work, do not leave him to toil in obscurity and dishonour and have a great glaring shop and two great glaring shop-boys in it (not to take your orders: they never do that; but to force you to buy something you do not want at all). When you want a thing wrought in gold, goblet or shield for the feast, necklace or wreath for the women, tell him what you like most in decoration, flower or wreath, bird in flight or hound in the chase, image of the woman you love or the friend you honour. Watch him as he beats out the gold into those thin plates delicate as the petals of a yellow rose, or draws it into the long wires like tangled sunbeams at dawn. Whoever that workman be, help him, cherish him, and you will have such lovely work from his hand as will be a joy to you for all time. This is the spirit of our movement in England, and this is the spirit in which we would wish you to work, making eternal by your art all that is noble in your men and women, stately in your lakes and mountains, beautiful in your own flowers and natural life. We want to see that you have nothing in your houses that has not been a joy to the man who made it, and is not a joy to those that use it. We want to see you create an art made by the hands of the people to please the hearts of the people too. Do you like this spirit or not? Do you think it simple and strong, noble in its aim, and beautiful in its result? I know you do. Folly and slander have their own way for a little time, but for a little time only. You now know what we mean: you will be able to estimate what is said of us its value and its motive. There should be a law that no ordinary newspaper should be allowed to write about art. The harm they do by their foolish and random writing it would be impossible to overestimate not to the artist but to the public, blinding them to all, but harming the artist not at all. Without them we would judge a man simply by his work; but at present the newspapers are trying hard to induce the public to judge a sculptor, for instance, never by his statues but by the way he treats his wife; a painter by the amount of his income and a poet by the colour of his neck-tie. I said there should be a law, but there is really no necessity for a new law: nothing could be easier than to bring the ordinary critic under the head of the criminal classes. But let us leave such an inartistic subject and return to beautiful and comely things, remembering that the art which would represent the spirit of modern newspapers would be exactly the art which you and I want to avoid grotesque art, malice mocking you from every gateway, slander sneering at you from every corner. Perhaps you may be surprised at my talking of labour and the workman. You have heard of me, I fear, through the medium of your somewhat imaginative newspapers as, if not a 'Japanese young man,' at least a young man to whom the rush and clamour and reality of the modern world were distasteful, and whose greatest difficulty in life was the difficulty of living up to the level of his blue china a paradox from which England has not yet 532 recovered. Well, let me tell you how it first came to me at all to create an artistic movement in England, a movement to show the rich what beautiful things they might enjoy and the poor what beautiful things they might create. One summer afternoon in Oxford - 'that sweet city with her dreaming spires,' lovely as Venice in its splendour, noble in its learning as Rome, down the long High Street that winds from tower to tower, past silent cloister and stately gateway, till it reaches that long, grey seven-arched bridge which Saint Mary used to guard (used to, I say, because they are now pulling it down to build a tramway and a light cast-iron bridge in its place, desecrating the loveliest city in England) well, we were coming down the street a troop of young men, some of them like myself only nineteen, going to river or tennis-court or cricket-field when Ruskin going up to lecture in cap and gown met us. He seemed troubled and prayed us to go back with him to his lecture, which a few of us did, and there he spoke to us not on art this time but on life, saying that it seemed to him to be wrong that all the best physique and strength of the young men in England should be spent aimlessly on cricket ground or river, without any result at all except that if one rowed well one got a pewter-pot, and if one made a good score, a cane-handled bat. He thought, he said, that we should be working at something that would do good to other people, at something by which we might show that in all labour there was something noble. Well, we were a good deal moved, and said we would do anything he wished. So he went out round Oxford and found two villages, Upper and Lower Hinksey, and between them there lay a great swamp, so that the villagers could not pass from one to the other without many miles of a round. And when we came back in winter he asked us to help him to make a road across this morass for these village people to use. So out we went, day after day, and learned how to lay levels and to break stones, and to wheel barrows along a plank a very difficult thing to do. And Ruskin worked with us in the mist and rain and mud of an Oxford winter, and our friends and our enemies came out and mocked us from the bank. We did not mind it much then, and we did not mind it afterwards at all, but worked away for two months at our road. And what became of the road? Well, like a bad lecture it ended abruptly in the middle of the swamp. Ruskin going away to Venice, when we came back for the next term there was no leader, and the 'diggers,' as they called us, fell asunder. And I felt that if there was enough spirit amongst the young men to go out to such work as road-making for the sake of a noble ideal of life, I could from them create an artistic movement that might change, as it has changed, the face of England. So I sought them out leader they would call me but there was no leader: we were all searchers only and we were bound to each other by noble friendship and by noble art. There was none of us idle: poets most of us, so ambitious were we: painters some of us, or workers in metal or modellers, determined that we would try and create for ourselves beautiful work: for the handicraftsman beautiful work, for those who love us poems and pictures, for those who love us not epigrams and paradoxes and scorn. Well, we have done something in England and we will do something more. Now, I do not want you, believe me, to ask your brilliant young men, your beautiful young girls, to go out and make a road on a swamp for any village in America, but I think you might each of you have some art to practise. We must have, as Emerson said, a mechanical craft for our culture, a basis for our higher accomplishments in the work of our hands the uselessness of most people's hands seems to me one of the most unpractical things. 'No separation from labour can be without some loss of power or truth to the seer,' says Emerson again. 533 The heroism which would make on us the impression of Epaminondas must be that of a domestic conqueror. The hero of the future is he who shall bravely and gracefully subdue this Gorgon of fashion and of convention. When you have chosen your own part, abide by it, and do not weakly try and reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common nor the common the heroic. Congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant and broken the monotony of a decorous age. And lastly, let us remember that art is the one thing which Death cannot harm. The little house at Concord may be desolate, but the wisdom of New England's Plato is not silenced nor the brilliancy of that Attic genius dimmed: the lips of Longfellow are still musical for us though his dust be turning into the flowers which he loved: and as it is with the greater artists, poet and philosopher and song-bird, so let it be with you. LECTURE TO ART STUDENTS IN the lecture which it is my privilege to deliver before you tonight I do not desire to give you any abstract definition of beauty at all. For we who are working in art cannot accept any theory of beauty in exchange for beauty itself, and, so far from desiring to isolate it in a formula appealing to the intellect, we, on the contrary, seek to materialise it in a form that gives joy to the soul through the senses. We want to create it, not to define it. The definition should follow the work: the work should not adapt itself to the definition. Nothing, indeed, is more dangerous to the young artist than any conception of ideal beauty: he is constantly led by it either into weak prettiness or lifeless abstraction: whereas to touch the ideal at all you must not strip it of vitality. You must find it in life and re-create it in art. While, then, on the one hand I do not desire to give you any philosophy of beauty for, what I want to-night is to investigate how we can create art, not how we can talk of it on the other hand, I do not wish to deal with anything like a history of English art. To begin with, such an expression as English art is a meaningless expression. One might just as well talk of English mathematics. Art is the science of beauty, and Mathematics the science of truth: there is no national school of either. Indeed, a national school is a provincial school, merely. Nor is there any such thing as a school of art even. There are merely artists, that is all. And as regards histories of art, they are quite valueless to you unless you are seeking the ostentatious oblivion of an art professorship. It is of no use to you to know the date of Perugino or the birthplace of Salvator Rosa: all that you should learn about art is to know a good picture when you see it, and a bad picture when you see it. As regards the date of the artist, all good work looks perfectly modern: a piece of Greek sculpture, a portrait of Velasquez they are always modern, always of our time. And as regards the nationality of the artist, art is not national but universal. As regards archaeology, then, avoid it altogether: archaeology is merely the science of making excuses for bad art; it is the rock on which many a young artist founders and shipwrecks; it is the abyss from which no artist, old or young, ever returns. Or, if he does return, he is so covered with the dust of ages and the mildew of time, that he is quite unrecognisable as an artist, and has to conceal himself for the rest of his days under the cap of a professor, or as a mere illustrator of ancient history. How 534 worthless archaeology is in art you can estimate by the fact of its being so popular. Popularity is the crown of laurel which the world puts on bad art. Whatever is popular is wrong. As I am not going to talk to you, then, about the philosophy of the beautiful, or the history of art, you will ask me what I am going to talk about. The subject of my lecture to-night is what makes an artist and what does the artist make; what are the relations of the artist to his surroundings, what is the education the artist should get, and what is the quality of a good work of art. Now, as regards the relations of the artist to his surroundings, by which I mean the age and country in which he is born. All good art, as I said before, has nothing to do with any particular century; but this universality is the quality of the work of art; the conditions that produce that quality are different. And what, I think, you should do is to realise completely your age in order completely to abstract yourself from it; remembering that if you are an artist at all, you will be not the mouthpiece of a century, but the master of eternity, that all art rests on a principle, and that mere temporal considerations are no principle at all; and that those who advise you to make your art representative of the nineteenth century are advising you to produce an art which your children, when you have them, will think old-fashioned. But you will tell me this is an inartistic age, and we are an inartistic people, and the artist suffers much in this nineteenth century of ours. Of course he does. I, of all men, am not going to deny that. But remember that there never has been an artistic age, or an artistic people, since the beginning of the world. The artist has always been, and will always be, an exquisite exception. There is no golden age of art; only artists who have produced what is more golden than gold. WHAT, you will say to me, the Greeks? were not they an artistic people? Well, the Greeks certainly not, but, perhaps, you mean the Athenians, the citizens of one out of a thousand cities. Do you think that they were an artistic people? Take them even at the time of their highest artistic development, the latter part of the fifth century before Christ, when they had the greatest poets and the greatest artists of the antique world, when the Parthenon rose in loveliness at the bidding of a Phidias, and the philosopher spake of wisdom in the shadow of the painted portico, and tragedy swept in the perfection of pageant and pathos across the marble of the stage. Were they an artistic people then? Not a bit of it. What is an artistic people but a people who love their artists and understand their art? The Athenians could do neither. How did they treat Phidias? To Phidias we owe the great era, not merely in Greek, but in all art I mean of the introduction of the use of the living model. And what would you say if all the English bishops, backed by the English people, came down from Exeter Hall to the Royal Academy one day and took off Sir Frederick Leighton in a prison van to Newgate on the charge of having allowed you to make use of the living model in your designs for sacred pictures? Would you not cry out against the barbarism and the Puritanism of such an idea? Would you not explain to them that the worst way to honour God is to dishonour man who is made in His image, and is the work of His hands; and, that if one wants to paint Christ one must take the most Christlike person one can find, and if one wants to paint the Madonna, the purest girl one knows? Would you not rush off and burn down Newgate, if necessary, and say that such a thing was without parallel in history? Without parallel? Well, that is exactly what the Athenians did. In the room of the Parthenon marbles, in the British Museum, you will see a marble shield on the wall. On it there are two figures; one of a man whose face is half hidden, the other of a man with the godlike lineaments of Pericles. For having done this, for having introduced into a bas relief, 535 taken from Greek sacred history, the image of the great statesman who was ruling Athens at the time, Phidias was flung into prison and there, in the common gaol of Athens, died, the supreme artist of the old world. And do you think that this was an exceptional case? The sign of a Philistine age is the cry of immorality against art, and this cry was raised by the Athenian people against every great poet and thinker of their day AEschylus, Euripides, Socrates. It was the same with Florence in the thirteenth century. Good handicrafts are due to guilds, not to the people. The moment the guilds lost their power and the people rushed in, beauty and honesty of work died. And so, never talk of an artistic people; there never has been such a thing. But, perhaps, you will tell me that the external beauty of the world has almost entirely passed away from us, that the artist dwells no longer in the midst of the lovely surroundings which, in ages past, were the natural inheritance of every one, and that art is very difficult in this unlovely town of ours, where, as you go to your work in the morning, or return from it at eventide, you have to pass through street after street of the most foolish and stupid architecture that the world has ever seen; architecture, where every lovely Greek form is desecrated and defiled, and every lovely Gothic form defiled and desecrated, reducing three-fourths of the London houses to being, merely, like square boxes of the vilest proportions, as gaunt as they are grimy, and as poor as they are pretentious the hall door always of the wrong colour, and the windows of the wrong size, and where, even when wearied of the houses you turn to contemplate the street itself, you have nothing to look at but chimney-pot hats, men with sandwich boards, vermilion letter-boxes, and do that even at the risk of being run over by an emerald-green omnibus. Is not art difficult, you will say to me, in such surroundings as these? Of course it is difficult, but then art was never easy; you yourselves would not wish it to be easy; and, besides, nothing is worth doing except what the world says is impossible. Still, you do not care to be answered merely by a paradox. What are the relations of the artist to the external world, and what is the result of the loss of beautiful surroundings to you, is one of the most important questions of modern art; and there is no point on which Mr. Ruskin so insists as that the decadence of art has come from the decadence of beautiful things; and that when the artist cannot feed his eye on beauty, beauty goes from his work. I remember in one of his lectures, after describing the sordid aspect of a great English city, he draws for us a picture of what were the artistic surroundings long ago. Think, he says, in words of perfect and picturesque imagery, whose beauty I can but feebly echo, think of what was the scene which presented itself, in his afternoon walk, to a designer of the Gothic school of Pisa Nino Pisano or any of his men (22): On each side of a bright river he saw rise a line of brighter palaces, arched and pillared, and inlaid with deep red porphyry, and with serpentine; along the quays before their gates were riding troops of knights, noble in face and form, dazzling in crest and shield; horse and man one labyrinth of quaint colour and gleaming light the purple, and silver, and scarlet fringes flowing over the strong limbs and clashing mall, like sea-waves over rocks at sunset. Opening on each side from the river were gardens, courts, and cloisters; long successions of white pillars among wreaths of vine; leaping of fountains through buds of pomegranate and orange: and still along the garden-paths, and under and through the crimson of the pomegranate shadows, moving slowly, groups of the fairest women that Italy ever saw fairest, because purest and thoughtfullest; trained in all high knowledge, as in all courteous art in dance, in song, in sweet wit, in lofty learning, in loftier courage, in loftiest love able alike to cheer, to 536 enchant, or save, the souls of men. Above all this scenery of perfect human life, rose dome and bell-tower, burning with white alabaster and gold: beyond dome and belltower the slopes of mighty hills hoary with olive; far in the north, above a purple sea of peaks of solemn Apennine, the clear, sharp-cloven Carrara mountains sent up their steadfast flames of marble summit into amber sky; the great sea itself, scorching with expanse of light, stretching from their feet to the Gorgonian isles; and over all these, ever present, near or far seen through the leaves of vine, or imaged with all its march of clouds in the Arno's stream, or set with its depth of blue close against the golden hair and burning cheek of lady and knight, that untroubled and sacred sky, which was to all men, in those days of innocent faith, indeed the unquestioned abode of spirits, as the earth was of men; and which opened straight through its gates of cloud and veils of dew into the awfulness of the eternal world; a heaven in which every cloud that passed was literally the chariot of an angel, and every ray of its Evening and Morning streamed from the throne of God. What think you of that for a school of design? And then look at the depressing, monotonous appearance of any modern city, the sombre dress of men and women, the meaningless and barren architecture, the colourless and dreadful surroundings. Without a beautiful national life, not sculpture merely, but all the arts will die. Well, as regards the religious feeling of the close of the passage, I do not think I need speak about that. Religion springs from religious feeling, art from artistic feeling: you never get one from the other; unless you have the right root you will not get the right flower; and, if a man sees in a cloud the chariot of an angel, he will probably paint it very unlike a cloud. But, as regards the general idea of the early part of that lovely bit of prose, is it really true that beautiful surroundings are necessary for the artist? I think not; I am sure not. Indeed, to me the most inartistic thing in this age of ours is not the indifference of the public to beautiful things, but the indifference of the artist to the things that are called ugly. For, to the real artist, nothing is beautiful or ugly in itself at all. With the facts of the object he has nothing to do, but with its appearance only, and appearance is a matter of light and shade, of masses, of position, and of value. Appearance is, in fact, a matter of effect merely, and it is with the effects of nature that you have to deal, not with the real condition of the object. What you, as painters, have to paint is not things as they are but things as they seem to be, not things as they are but things as they are not. No object is so ugly that, under certain conditions of light and shade, or proximity to other things, it will not look beautiful; no object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly. I believe that in every twenty-four hours what is beautiful looks ugly, and what is ugly looks beautiful, once. And, the commonplace character of so much of our English painting seems to me due to the fact that so many of our young artists look merely at what we may call 'ready-made beauty,' whereas you exist as artists not to copy beauty but to create it in your art, to wait and watch for it in nature. What would you say of a dramatist who would take nobody but virtuous people as characters in his play? Would you not say he was missing half of life? Well, of the young artist who paints nothing but beautiful things, I say he misses one half of the world. Do not wait for life to be picturesque, but try and see life under picturesque conditions. These conditions you can create for yourself in your studio, for they are merely conditions of light. In nature, you must wait for them, watch for them, choose them; and, if you wait and watch, come they will. In Gower Street at night you may see a letter-box that is picturesque: on the Thames Embankment you may see picturesque 537 policemen. Even Venice is not always beautiful, nor France. To paint what you see is a good rule in art, but to see what is worth painting is better. See life under pictorial conditions. It is better to live in a city of changeable weather than in a city of lovely surroundings. Now, having seen what makes the artist, and what the artist makes, who is the artist? There is a man living amongst us who unites in himself all the qualities of the noblest art, whose work is a joy for all time, who is, himself, a master of all time. That man is Mr. Whistler. * * * * * * * * But, you will say, modern dress, that is bad. If you cannot paint black cloth you could not have painted silken doublet. Ugly dress is better for art facts of vision, not of the object. What is a picture? Primarily, a picture is a beautifully coloured surface, merely, with no more spiritual message or meaning for you than an exquisite fragment of Venetian glass or a blue tile from the wall of Damascus. It is, primarily, a purely decorative thing, a delight to look at. All archaeological pictures that make you say 'How curious!' all sentimental pictures that make you say, 'How sad!' all historical pictures that make you say 'How interesting!' all pictures that do not immediately give you such artistic joy as to make you say 'How beautiful!' are bad pictures. * * * * * * * * We never know what an artist is going to do. Of course not. The artist is not a specialist. All such divisions as animal painters, landscape painters, painters of Scotch cattle in an English mist, painters of English cattle in a Scotch mist, racehorse painters, bull-terrier painters, all are shallow. If a man is an artist he can paint everything. The object of art is to stir the most divine and remote of the chords which make music in our soul; and colour is indeed, of itself a mystical presence on things, and tone a kind of sentinel. Am I pleading, then, for mere technique? No. As long as there are any signs of technique at all, the picture is unfinished. What is finish? A picture is finished when all traces of work, and of the means employed to bring about the result, have disappeared. In the case of handicraftsmen the weaver, the potter, the smith on their work are the traces of their hand. But it is not so with the painter; it is not so with the artist. Art should have no sentiment about it but its beauty, no technique except what you cannot observe. One should be able to say of a picture not that it is 'well painted,' but that it is 'not painted.' What is the difference between absolutely decorative art and a painting? Decorative art emphasises its material: imaginative art annihilates it. Tapestry shows its threads as part of its beauty: a picture annihilates its canvas: it shows nothing of it. Porcelain emphasises its glaze: water-colours reject the paper. A picture has no meaning but its beauty, no message but its joy. That is the first truth about art that you must never lose sight of. A picture is a purely decorative thing. 538 LONDON MODELS PROFESSIONAL models are a purely modern invention. To the Greeks, for instance, they were quite unknown. Mr. Mahaffy, it is true, tells us that Pericles used to present peacocks to the great ladies of Athenian society in order to induce them to sit to his friend Phidias, and we know that Polygnotus introduced into his picture of the Trojan women the face of Elpinice, the celebrated sister of the great Conservative leader of the day, but these GRANDES DAMES clearly do not come under our category. As for the old masters, they undoubtedly made constant studies from their pupils and apprentices, and even their religious pictures are full of the portraits of their friends and relations, but they do not seem to have had the inestimable advantage of the existence of a class of people whose sole profession is to pose. In fact the model, in our sense of the word, is the direct creation of Academic Schools. Every country now has its own models, except America. In New York, and even in Boston, a good model is so great a rarity that most of the artists are reduced to painting Niagara and millionaires. In Europe, however, it is different. Here we have plenty of models, and of every nationality. The Italian models are the best. The natural grace of their attitudes, as well as the wonderful picturesqueness of their colouring, makes them facile often too facile subjects for the painter's brush. The French models, though not so beautiful as the Italian, possess a quickness of intellectual sympathy, a capacity, in fact, of understanding the artist, which is quite remarkable. They have also a great command over the varieties of facial expression, are peculiarly dramatic, and can chatter the ARGOT of the ATELIER as cleverly as the critic of the GIL BLAS. The English models form a class entirely by themselves. They are not so picturesque as the Italian, nor so clever as the French, and they have absolutely no tradition, so to speak, of their order. Now and then some old veteran knocks at the studio door, and proposes to sit as Ajax defying the lightning, or as King Lear upon the blasted heath. One of them some time ago called on a popular painter who, happening at the moment to require his services, engaged him, and told him to begin by kneeling down in the attitude of prayer. 'Shall I be Biblical or Shakespearean, sir?' asked the veteran. 'Well Shakespearean,' answered the artist, wondering by what subtle nuance of expression the model would convey the difference. 'All right, sir,' said the professor of posing, and he solemnly knelt down and began to wink with his left eye! This class, however, is dying out. As a rule the model, nowadays, is a pretty girl, from about twelve to twenty-five years of age, who knows nothing about art, cares less, and is merely anxious to earn seven or eight shillings a day without much trouble. English models rarely look at a picture, and never venture on any aesthetic theories. In fact, they realise very completely Mr. Whistler's idea of the function of an art critic, for they pass no criticisms at all. They accept all schools of art with the grand catholicity of the auctioneer, and sit to a fantastic young impressionist as readily as to a learned and laborious academician. They are neither for the Whistlerites nor against them; the quarrel between the school of facts and the school of effects touches them not; idealistic and naturalistic are words that convey no meaning to their ears; they merely desire that the studio shall be warm, and the lunch hot, for all charming artists give their models lunch. As to what they are asked to do they are equally indifferent. On Monday they will don the rags of a beggar-girl for Mr. Pumper, whose pathetic pictures of modern life draw such tears from the public, and on Tuesday 539 they will pose in a peplum for Mr. Phoebus, who thinks that all really artistic subjects are necessarily B.C. They career gaily through all centuries and through all costumes, and, like actors, are interesting only when they are not themselves. They are extremely goodnatured, and very accommodating. 'What do you sit for?' said a young artist to a model who had sent him in her card (all models, by the way, have cards and a small black bag). 'Oh, for anything you like, sir,' said the girl, 'landscape if necessary!' Intellectually, it must be acknowledged, they are Philistines, but physically they are perfect at least some are. Though none of them can talk Greek, many can look Greek, which to a nineteenthcentury painter is naturally of great importance. If they are allowed, they chatter a great deal, but they never say anything. Their observations are the only BANALITES heard in Bohemia. However, though they cannot appreciate the artist as artist, they are quite ready to appreciate the artist as a man. They are very sensitive to kindness, respect and generosity. A beautiful model who had sat for two years to one of our most distinguished English painters, got engaged to a street vendor of penny ices. On her marriage the painter sent her a pretty wedding present, and received in return a nice letter of thanks with the following remarkable postscript: 'Never eat the green ices!' When they are tired a wise artist gives them a rest. Then they sit in a chair and read penny dreadfuls, till they are roused from the tragedy of literature to take their place again in the tragedy of art. A few of them smoke cigarettes. This, however, is regarded by the other models as showing a want of seriousness, and is not generally approved of. They are engaged by the day and by the half-day. The tariff is a shilling an hour, to which great artists usually add an omnibus fare. The two best things about them are their extraordinary prettiness, and their extreme respectability. As a class they are very well behaved, particularly those who sit for the figure, a fact which is curious or natural according to the view one takes of human nature. They usually marry well, and sometimes they marry the artist. For an artist to marry his model is as fatal as for a GOURMET to marry his cook: the one gets no sittings, and the other gets no dinners. On the whole the English female models are very naive, very natural, and very good-humoured. The virtues which the artist values most in them are prettiness and punctuality. Every sensible model consequently keeps a diary of her engagements, and dresses neatly. The bad season is, of course, the summer, when the artists are out of town. However, of late years some artists have engaged their models to follow them, and the wife of one of our most charming painters has often had three or four models under her charge in the country, so that the work of her husband and his friends should not be interrupted. In France the models migrate EN MASSE to the little seaport villages or forest hamlets where the painters congregate. The English models, however, wait patiently in London, as a rule, till the artists come back. Nearly all of them live with their parents, and help to support the house. They have every qualification for being immortalised in art except that of beautiful hands. The hands of the English model are nearly always coarse and red. As for the male models, there is the veteran whom we have mentioned above. He has all the traditions of the grand style, and is rapidly disappearing with the school he represents. An old man who talks about Fuseli is, of course, unendurable, and, besides, patriarchs have ceased to be fashionable subjects. Then there is the true Academy model. He is usually a man of thirty, rarely goodlooking, but a perfect miracle of muscles. In fact he is the apotheosis of anatomy, and is so conscious of his own splendour that he tells you of his tibia and his thorax, as if no one else had anything of the kind. Then come the Oriental models. The supply of these is 540 limited, but there are always about a dozen in London. They are very much sought after as they can remain immobile for hours, and generally possess lovely costumes. However, they have a very poor opinion of English art, which they regard as something between a vulgar personality and a commonplace photograph. Next we have the Italian youth who has come over specially to be a model, or takes to it when his organ is out of repair. He is often quite charming with his large melancholy eyes, his crisp hair, and his slim brown figure. It is true he eats garlic, but then he can stand like a faun and couch like a leopard, so he is forgiven. He is always full of pretty compliments, and has been known to have kind words of encouragement for even our greatest artists. As for the English lad of the same age, he never sits at all. Apparently he does not regard the career of a model as a serious profession. In any case he is rarely, if ever, to be got hold of. English boys, too, are difficult to find. Sometimes an ex-model who has a son will curl his hair, and wash his face, and bring him the round of the studios, all soap and shininess. The young school don't like him, but the older school do, and when he appears on the walls of the Royal Academy he is called THE INFANT SAMUEL. Occasionally also an artist catches a couple of GAMINS in the gutter and asks them to come to his studio. The first time they always appear, but after that they don't keep their appointments. They dislike sitting still, and have a strong and perhaps natural objection to looking pathetic. Besides, they are always under the impression that the artist is laughing at them. It is a sad fact, but there is no doubt that the poor are completely unconscious of their own picturesqueness. Those of them who can be induced to sit do so with the idea that the artist is merely a benevolent philanthropist who has chosen an eccentric method of distributing alms to the undeserving. Perhaps the School Board will teach the London GAMIN his own artistic value, and then they will be better models than they are now. One remarkable privilege belongs to the Academy model, that of extorting a sovereign from any newly elected Associate or R.A. They wait at Burlington House till the announcement is made, and then race to the hapless artist's house. The one who arrives first receives the money. They have of late been much troubled at the long distances they have had to run, and they look with disfavour on the election of artists who live at Hampstead or at Bedford Park, for it is considered a point of honour not to employ the underground railway, omnibuses, or any artificial means of locomotion. The race is to the swift. Besides the professional posers of the studio there are posers of the Row, the posers at afternoon teas, the posers in politics and the circus posers. All four classes are delightful, but only the last class is ever really decorative. Acrobats and gymnasts can give the young painter infinite suggestions, for they bring into their art an element of swiftness of motion and of constant change that the studio model necessarily lacks. What is interesting in these 'slaves of the ring' is that with them Beauty is an unconscious result not a conscious aim, the result in fact of the mathematical calculation of curves and distances, of absolute precision of eye, of the scientific knowledge of the equilibrium of forces, and of perfect physical training. A good acrobat is always graceful, though grace is never his object; he is graceful because he does what he has to do in the best way in which it can be done graceful because he is natural. If an ancient Greek were to come to life now, which considering the probable severity of his criticisms would be rather trying to our conceit, he would be found far oftener at the circus than at the theatre. A good circus is an oasis of Hellenism in a world that reads too much to be wise, and thinks too much to be beautiful. If it were not for the runningground at Eton, the towing-path at Oxford, the 541 Thames swimmingbaths, and the yearly circuses, humanity would forget the plastic perfection of its own form, and degenerate into a race of shortsighted professors and spectacled PRECIEUSES. Not that the circus proprietors are, as a rule, conscious of their high mission. Do they not bore us with the HAUTE ECOLE, and weary us with Shakespearean clowns? Still, at least, they give us acrobats, and the acrobat is an artist. The mere fact that he never speaks to the audience shows how well he appreciates the great truth that the aim of art is not to reveal personality but to please. The clown may be blatant, but the acrobat is always beautiful. He is an interesting combination of the spirit of Greek sculpture with the spangles of the modern costumier. He has even had his niche in the novels of our age, and if MANETTE SALOMON be the unmasking of the model, LES FRERES ZEMGANNO is the apotheosis of the acrobat. As regards the influence of the ordinary model on our English school of painting, it cannot be said that it is altogether good. It is, of course, an advantage for the young artist sitting in his studio to be able to isolate 'a little corner of life,' as the French say, from disturbing surroundings, and to study it under certain effects of light and shade. But this very isolation leads often to mere mannerism in the painter, and robs him of that broad acceptance of the general facts of life which is the very essence of art. Model-painting, in a word, while it may be the condition of art, is not by any means its aim. It is simply practice, not perfection. Its use trains the eye and the hand of the painter, its abuse produces in his work an effect of mere posing and prettiness. It is the secret of much of the artificiality of modern art, this constant posing of pretty people, and when art becomes artificial it becomes monotonous. Outside the little world of the studio, with its draperies and its BRIC-E-BRAC, lies the world of life with its infinite, its Shakespearean variety. We must, however, distinguish between the two kinds of models, those who sit for the figure and those who sit for the costume. The study of the first is always excellent, but the costume-model is becoming rather wearisome in modern pictures. It is really of very little use to dress up a London girl in Greek draperies and to paint her as a goddess. The robe may be the robe of Athens, but the face is usually the face of Brompton. Now and then, it is true, one comes across a model whose face is an exquisite anachronism, and who looks lovely and natural in the dress of any century but her own. This, however, is rather rare. As a rule models are absolutely DE NOTRE SIECLE, and should be painted as such. Unfortunately they are not, and, as a consequence, we are shown every year a series of scenes from fancy dress balls which are called historical pictures, but are little more than mediocre representations of modern people masquerading. In France they are wiser. The French painter uses the model simply for study; for the finished picture he goes direct to life. However, we must not blame the sitters for the shortcomings of the artists. The English models are a well-behaved and hard-working class, and if they are more interested in artists than in art, a large section of the public is in the same condition, and most of our modern exhibitions seem to justify its choice. POEMS IN PROSE THE ARTIST 542 ONE evening there came into his soul the desire to fashion an image of THE PLEASURE THAT ABIDETH FOR A MOMENT. And he went forth into the world to look for bronze. For he could think only in bronze. But all the bronze of the whole world had disappeared, nor anywhere in the whole world was there any bronze to be found, save only the bronze of the image of THE SORROW THAT ENDURETH FOR EVER. Now this image he had himself, and with his own hands, fashioned, and had set it on the tomb of the one thing he had loved in life. On the tomb of the dead thing he had most loved had he set this image of his own fashioning, that it might serve as a sign of the love of man that dieth not, and a symbol of the sorrow of man that endureth for ever. And in the whole world there was no other bronze save the bronze of this image. And he took the image he had fashioned, and set it in a great furnace, and gave it to the fire. And out of the bronze of the image of THE SORROW THAT ENDURETH FOR EVER he fashioned an image of THE PLEASURE THAT ABIDETH FOR A MOMENT. THE DOER OF GOOD It was night-time and He was alone. And He saw afar-off the walls of a round city and went towards the city. And when He came near He heard within the city the tread of the feet of joy, and the laughter of the mouth of gladness and the loud noise of many lutes. And He knocked at the gate and certain of the gate-keepers opened to Him. And He beheld a house that was of marble and had fair pillars of marble before it. The pillars were hung with garlands, and within and without there were torches of cedar. And He entered the house. And when He had passed through the hall of chalcedony and the hall of jasper, and reached the long hall of feasting, He saw lying on a couch of sea-purple one whose hair was crowned with red roses and whose lips were red with wine. And He went behind him and touched him on the shoulder and said to him, 'Why do you live like this?' And the young man turned round and recognised Him, and made answer and said, 'But I was a leper once, and you healed me. How else should I live?' And He passed out of the house and went again into the street. And after a little while He saw one whose face and raiment were painted and whose feet were shod with pearls. And behind her came, slowly as a hunter, a young man who wore a cloak of two colours. Now the face of the woman was as the fair face of an idol, and the eyes of the young man were bright with lust. And He followed swiftly and touched the hand of the young man and said to him, 'Why do you look at this woman and in such wise?' And the young man turned round and recognised Him and said, 'But I was blind once, and you gave me sight. At what else should I look?' And He ran forward and touched the painted raiment of the woman and said to her, 'Is there no other way in which to walk save the way of sin?' And the woman turned round and recognised Him, and laughed and said, 'But you forgave me my sins, and the way is a pleasant way.' And He passed out of the city. And when He had passed out of the city He saw seated by the roadside a young man who was weeping. And He went towards him and touched the long locks of his hair and said to him, 'Why are you weeping?' And the young man 543 looked up and recognised Him and made answer, 'But I was dead once, and you raised me from the dead. What else should I do but weep?' THE DISCIPLE When Narcissus died the pool of his pleasure changed from a cup of sweet waters into a cup of salt tears, and the Oreads came weeping through the woodland that they might sing to the pool and give it comfort. And when they saw that the pool had changed from a cup of sweet waters into a cup of salt tears, they loosened the green tresses of their hair and cried to the pool and said, 'We do not wonder that you should mourn in this manner for Narcissus, so beautiful was he.' 'But was Narcissus beautiful?' said the pool. 'Who should know that better than you?' answered the Oreads. 'Us did he ever pass by, but you he sought for, and would lie on your banks and look down at you, and in the mirror of your waters he would mirror his own beauty.' And the pool answered, 'But I loved Narcissus because, as he lay on my banks and looked down at me, in the mirror of his eyes I saw ever my own beauty mirrored.' THE MASTER Now when the darkness came over the earth Joseph of Arimathea, having lighted a torch of pinewood, passed down from the hill into the valley. For he had business in his own home. And kneeling on the flint stones of the Valley of Desolation he saw a young man who was naked and weeping. His hair was the colour of honey, and his body was as a white flower, but he had wounded his body with thorns and on his hair had he set ashes as a crown. And he who had great possessions said to the young man who was naked and weeping, 'I do not wonder that your sorrow is so great, for surely He was a just man.' And the young man answered, 'It is not for Him that I am weeping, but for myself. I too have changed water into wine, and I have healed the leper and given sight to the blind. I have walked upon the waters, and from the dwellers in the tombs I have cast out devils. I have fed the hungry in the desert where there was no food, and I have raised the dead from their narrow houses, and at my bidding, and before a great multitude, of people, a barren fig-tree withered away. All things that this man has done I have done also. And yet they have not crucified me.' THE HOUSE OF JUDGMENT And there was silence in the House of Judgment, and the Man came naked before God. And God opened the Book of the Life of the Man. And God said to the Man, 'Thy life 544 hath been evil, and thou hast shown cruelty to those who were in need of succour, and to those who lacked help thou hast been bitter and hard of heart. The poor called to thee and thou didst not hearken, and thine ears were closed to the cry of My afflicted. The inheritance of the fatherless thou didst take unto thyself, and thou didst send the foxes into the vineyard of thy neighbour's field. Thou didst take the bread of the children and give it to the dogs to eat, and My lepers who lived in the marshes, and were at peace and praised Me, thou didst drive forth on to the highways, and on Mine earth out of which I made thee thou didst spill innocent blood.' And the Man made answer and said, 'Even so did I.' And again God opened the Book of the Life of the Man. And God said to the Man, 'Thy life hath been evil, and the Beauty I have shown thou hast sought for, and the Good I have hidden thou didst pass by. The walls of thy chamber were painted with images, and from the bed of thine abominations thou didst rise up to the sound of flutes. Thou didst build seven altars to the sins I have suffered, and didst eat of the thing that may not be eaten, and the purple of thy raiment was broidered with the three signs of shame. Thine idols were neither of gold nor of silver that endure, but of flesh that dieth. Thou didst stain their hair with perfumes and put pomegranates in their hands. Thou didst stain their feet with saffron and spread carpets before them. With antimony thou didst stain their eyelids and their bodies thou didst smear with myrrh. Thou didst bow thyself to the ground before them, and the thrones of thine idols were set in the sun. Thou didst show to the sun thy shame and to the moon thy madness.' And the Man made answer and said, 'Even so did I.' And a third time God opened the Book of the Life of the Man. And God said to the Man, 'Evil hath been thy life, and with evil didst thou requite good, and with wrongdoing kindness. The hands that fed thee thou didst wound, and the breasts that gave thee suck thou didst despise. He who came to thee with water went away thirsting, and the outlawed men who hid thee in their tents at night thou didst betray before dawn. Thine enemy who spared thee thou didst snare in an ambush, and the friend who walked with thee thou didst sell for a price, and to those who brought thee Love thou didst ever give Lust in thy turn.' And the Man made answer and said, 'Even so did I.' And God closed the Book of the Life of the Man, and said, 'Surely I will send thee into Hell. Even into Hell will I send thee.' And the Man cried out, 'Thou canst not.' And God said to the Man, 'Wherefore can I not send thee to Hell, and for what reason?' 'Because in Hell have I always lived,' answered the Man. And there was silence in the House of Judgment. And after a space God spake, and said to the Man, 'Seeing that I may not send thee into Hell, surely I will send thee unto Heaven. Even unto Heaven will I send thee.' And the Man cried out, 'Thou canst not.' And God said to the Man, 'Wherefore can I not send thee unto Heaven, and for what reason?' 'Because never, and in no place, have I been able to imagine it,' answered the Man. And there was silence in the House of Judgment. THE TEACHER OF WISDOM From his childhood he had been as one filled with the perfect knowledge of God, and even while he was yet but a lad many of the saints, as well as certain holy women who dwelt in the free city of his birth, had been stirred to much wonder by the grave wisdom of his answers. And when his parents had given him the robe and the ring of manhood he kissed them, and left them and went out into the world, that he might speak to the world about God. For there were at that time many in the world who either knew not God at all, or had but an incomplete knowledge of Him, or worshipped the false gods who dwell in groves and have no care of their worshippers. And he set his face to the sun and journeyed, walking without sandals, as 545 he had seen the saints walk, and carrying at his girdle a leathern wallet and a little waterbottle of burnt clay. And as he walked along the highway he was full of the joy that comes from the perfect knowledge of God, and he sang praises unto God without ceasing; and after a time he reached a strange land in which there were many cities. And he passed through eleven cities. And some of these cities were in valleys, and others were by the banks of great rivers, and others were set on hills. And in each city he found a disciple who loved him and followed him, and a great multitude also of people followed him from each city, and the knowledge of God spread in the whole land, and many of the rulers were converted, and the priests of the temples in which there were idols found that half of their gain was gone, and when they beat upon their drums at noon none, or but a few, came with peacocks and with offerings of flesh as had been the custom of the land before his coming. Yet the more the people followed him, and the greater the number of his disciples, the greater became his sorrow. And he knew not why his sorrow was so great. For he spake ever about God, and out of the fulness of that perfect knowledge of God which God had Himself given to him. And one evening he passed out of the eleventh city, which was a city of Armenia, and his disciples and a great crowd of people followed after him; and he went up on to a mountain and sat down on a rock that was on the mountain, and his disciples stood round him, and the multitude knelt in the valley. And he bowed his head on his hands and wept, and said to his Soul, 'Why is it that I am full of sorrow and fear, and that each of my disciples is an enemy that walks in the noonday?' And his Soul answered him and said, 'God filled thee with the perfect knowledge of Himself, and thou hast given this knowledge away to others. The pearl of great price thou hast divided, and the vesture without seam thou hast parted asunder. He who giveth away wisdom robbeth himself. He is as one who giveth his treasure to a robber. Is not God wiser than thou art? Who art thou to give away the secret that God hath told thee? I was rich once, and thou hast made me poor. Once I saw God, and now thou hast hidden Him from me.' And he wept again, for he knew that his Soul spake truth to him, and that he had given to others the perfect knowledge of God, and that he was as one clinging to the skirts of God, and that his faith was leaving him by reason of the number of those who believed in him. And he said to himself, 'I will talk no more about God. He who giveth away wisdom robbeth himself.' And after the space of some hours his disciples came near him and bowed themselves to the ground and said, 'Master, talk to us about God, for thou hast the perfect knowledge of God, and no man save thee hath this knowledge.' And he answered them and said, 'I will talk to you about all other things that are in heaven and on earth, but about God I will not talk to you. Neither now, nor at any time, will I talk to you about God.' And they were wroth with him and said to him, 'Thou hast led us into the desert that we might hearken to thee. Wilt thou send us away hungry, and the great multitude that thou hast made to follow thee?' And he answered them and said, 'I will not talk to you about God.' And the multitude murmured against him and said to him, 'Thou hast led us into the desert, and hast given us no food to eat. Talk to us about God and it will suffice us.' But he answered them not a word. For he knew that if he spake to them about God he would give away his treasure. And his disciples went away sadly, and the multitude of people returned to their own homes. And many died on the way. And when he was alone he rose up and set his face to the moon, and journeyed for seven moons, speaking to no man nor making any answer. And when the seventh moon had waned he reached that desert which is the desert of the Great River. And 546 having found a cavern in which a Centaur had once dwelt, he took it for his place of dwelling, and made himself a mat of reeds on which to lie, and became a hermit. And every hour the Hermit praised God that He had suffered him to keep some knowledge of Him and of His wonderful greatness. Now, one evening, as the Hermit was seated before the cavern in which he had made his place of dwelling, he beheld a young man of evil and beautiful face who passed by in mean apparel and with empty hands. Every evening with empty hands the young man passed by, and every morning he returned with his hands full of purple and pearls. For he was a Robber and robbed the caravans of the merchants. And the Hermit looked at him and pitied him. But he spake not a word. For he knew that he who speaks a word loses his faith. And one morning, as the young man returned with his hands full of purple and pearls, he stopped and frowned and stamped his foot upon the sand, and said to the Hermit: 'Why do you look at me ever in this manner as I pass by? What is it that I see in your eyes? For no man has looked at me before in this manner. And the thing is a thorn and a trouble to me.' And the Hermit answered him and said, 'What you see in my eyes is pity. Pity is what looks out at you from my eyes.' And the young man laughed with scorn, and cried to the Hermit in a bitter voice, and said to him, 'I have purple and pearls in my hands, and you have but a mat of reeds on which to lie. What pity should you have for me? And for what reason have you this pity?' 'I have pity for you,' said the Hermit, 'because you have no knowledge of God.' 'Is this knowledge of God a precious thing?' asked the young man, and he came close to the mouth of the cavern. 'It is more precious than all the purple and the pearls of the world,' answered the Hermit. 'And have you got it?' said the young Robber, and he came closer still. 'Once, indeed,' answered the Hermit, 'I possessed the perfect knowledge of God. But in my foolishness I parted with it, and divided it amongst others. Yet even now is such knowledge as remains to me more precious than purple or pearls.' And when the young Robber heard this he threw away the purple and the pearls that he was bearing in his hands, and drawing a sharp sword of curved steel he said to the Hermit, 'Give me, forthwith this knowledge of God that you possess, or I will surely slay you. Wherefore should I not slay him who has a treasure greater than my treasure?' And the Hermit spread out his arms and said, 'Were it not better for me to go unto the uttermost courts of God and praise Him, than to live in the world and have no knowledge of Him? Slay me if that be your desire. But I will not give away my knowledge of God.' And the young Robber knelt down and besought him, but the Hermit would not talk to him about God, nor give him his Treasure, and the young Robber rose up and said to the Hermit, 'Be it as you will. As for myself, I will go to the City of the Seven Sins, that is but three days' journey from this place, and for my purple they will give me pleasure, and for my pearls they will sell me joy.' And he took up the purple and the pearls and went swiftly away. And the Hermit cried out and followed him and besought him. For the space of three days he followed the young Robber on the road and entreated him to return, nor to enter into the City of the Seven Sins. And ever and anon the young Robber looked back at the Hermit and called to him, and said, 'Will you give me this knowledge of God which is more precious than purple and pearls? If you will give me that, I will not enter the city.' And ever did the Hermit answer, 'All things that I have I will give thee, save that one thing only. For that thing it is not lawful for me to give away.' And in the twilight of the third day they came nigh to the great scarlet gates of the City of the Seven Sins. And from the city there came the sound of much laughter. And the young Robber laughed in 547 answer, and sought to knock at the gate. And as he did so the Hermit ran forward and caught him by the skirts of his raiment, and said to him: 'Stretch forth your hands, and set your arms around my neck, and put your ear close to my lips, and I will give you what remains to me of the knowledge of God.' And the young Robber stopped. And when the Hermit had given away his knowledge of God, he fell upon the ground and wept, and a great darkness hid from him the city and the young Robber, so that he saw them no more. And as he lay there weeping he was ware of One who was standing beside him; and He who was standing beside him had feet of brass and hair like fine wool. And He raised the Hermit up, and said to him: 'Before this time thou hadst the perfect knowledge of God. Now thou shalt have the perfect love of God. Wherefore art thou weeping?' And he kissed him. 548 16 John Addington Symonds Renaissance in Italy. Vol. 3. The Fine Arts PREFACE This third volume of my book on the "Renaissance in Italy" does not pretend to retrace the history of the Italian arts, but rather to define their relation to the main movement of Renaissance culture. Keeping this, the chief object of my whole work, steadily in view, I have tried to explain the dependence of the arts on mediaeval Christianity at their commencement, their gradual emancipation from ecclesiastical control, and their final attainment of freedom at the moment when the classical revival culminated. Not to notice the mediaeval period in this evolution would be impossible; since the revival of Sculpture and Painting at the end of the thirteenth century was among the earliest signs of that new intellectual birth to which we give the title of Renaissance. I have, therefore, had to deal at some length with stages in the development of Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting, which form a prelude to the proper age of my own history. In studying the architectural branch of the subject, I have had recourse to Fergusson's "Illustrated Handbook of Architecture," to Burckhardt's "Cicerone," to Grüner's "TerraCotta Buildings of North Italy," to Milizia's "Memorie degli Architetti," and to many illustrated works on single buildings in Rome, Tuscany, Lombardy, and Venice. For the history of Sculpture I have used Burckhardt's "Cicerone," and the two important works of Charles C. Perkins, entitled "Tuscan Sculptors," and "Italian Sculptors." Such books as "Le Tre Porte del Battistero di Firenze," Grüner's "Cathedral of Orvieto," and Lasinio's "Tabernacolo della Madonna d'Orsammichele" have been helpful by their illustrations. For the history of Painting I have made use principally of Vasari's "Vite de' più eccellenti Pittori," &c.c., in Le Monnier's edition of Crowe and Cavalcaselle's "History of Painting," of Burckhardt's "Cicerone," of Rosini's illustrated "Storia della Pittura Italiana," of Rio's "L'Art Chrétien," and of Henri Beyle's "Histoire de la Peinture en Italie." I should, however, far exceed the limits of a preface were I to make a list of all the books I have consulted with profit on the history of the arts in Italy. In this part of my work I feel that I owe less to reading than to observation. I am not aware of having mentioned any important building, statue, or picture which I have not had the opportunity of studying. What I have written in this volume about the monuments of Italian art has always been first noted face to face with the originals, and afterwards corrected, modified, or confirmed in the course of subsequent journeys to Italy. I know 549 that this method of composition, if it has the merit of freshness, entails some inequality of style and disproportion in the distribution of materials. In the final preparation of my work for press I have therefore endeavoured, as far as possible, to compensate this disadvantage by adhering to the main motive of my subject-the illustration of the Renaissance spirit as this was manifested in the Arts. I must add, in conclusion, that Chapters VII. and IX. and Appendix II. are in part reprinted from the "Westminster," the "Cornhill," and the "Contemporary." CLIFTON: March 1877. CHAPTER I--THE PROBLEM FOR THE FINE ARTS Art in Italy and Greece-The Leading Phase of Culture-AEsthetic Type of Literature- Painting the Supreme Italian Art-Its Task in the Renaissance-Christian and Classical Traditions-Sculpture for the Ancients-Painting for the Romance Nations-Mediaeval Faith and Superstition-The Promise of Painting-How far can the Figurative Arts express Christian Ideas?-Greek and Christian Religion-Plastic Art incapable of solving the Problem-A more Emotional Art needed-Place of Sculpture in the Renaissance-Painting and Christian Story-Humanization of Ecclesiastical Ideas by Art-Hostility of the Spirit of True Piety to Art-Compromises effected by the Church- Fra Bartolommeo's S. Sebastian-Irreconcilability of Art and Theology, Art and Philosophy-Recapitulation-Art in the end Paganises-Music-The Future of Painting after the Renaissance. It has been granted only to two nations, the Greeks and the Italians, and to the latter only at the time of the Renaissance, to invest every phase and variety of intellectual energy with the form of art. Nothing notable was produced in Italy between the thirteenth and the seventeenth centuries that did not bear the stamp and character of fine art. If the methods of science may be truly said to regulate our modes of thinking at the present time, it is no less true that, during the Renaissance, art exercised a like controlling influence. Not only was each department of the fine arts practised with singular success; not only was the national genius to a very large extent absorbed in painting, sculpture, and architecture; but the aesthetic impulse was more subtly and widely diffused than this alone would imply. It possessed the Italians in the very centre of their intellectual vitality, imposing its conditions on all the manifestations of their thought and feeling, so that even their shortcomings may be ascribed in a great measure to their inability to quit the aesthetic point of view. We see this in their literature. It is probable that none but artistic natures will ever render full justice to the poetry of the Renaissance. Critics endowed with a less lively sensibility to beauty of outline and to harmony of form than the Italians, complain that their poetry lacks substantial qualities; nor is it except by long familiarity with the plastic arts of their contemporaries that we come to understand the ground assumed by Ariosto and Poliziano. We then perceive that these poets were not so much unable as instinctively unwilling to go beyond a certain circle of effects. They subordinated their work to the 550 ideal of their age, and that ideal was one to which a painter rather than a poet might successfully aspire. A succession of pictures, harmoniously composed and delicately toned to please the mental eye, satisfied the taste of the Italians. But, however exquisite in design, rich in colour, and complete in execution this literary work may be, it strikes a Northern student as wanting in the highest elements of genius-sublimity of imagination, dramatic passion, energy and earnestness of purpose. In like manner, he finds it hard to appreciate those didactic compositions on trifling or prosaic themes, which delighted the Italians for the very reason that their workmanship surpassed their matter. These defects, as we judge them, are still more apparent in the graver branches of literature. In an essay or a treatise we do not so much care for well-balanced disposition of parts or beautifully rounded periods, though elegance may be thought essential to classic masterpieces, as for weighty matter and trenchant observations. Having the latter, we can dispense at need with the former. The Italians of the Renaissance, under the sway of the fine arts, sought after form, and satisfied themselves with rhetoric. Therefore we condemn their moral disquisitions and their criticisms as the flimsy playthings of intellectual voluptuaries. Yet the right way of doing justice to these stylistic trifles is to regard them as products of an all-embracing genius for art, in a people whose most serious enthusiasms were aesthetic. The speech of the Italians at that epoch, their social habits, their ideal of manners, their standard of morality, the estimate they formed of men, were alike conditioned and qualified by art. It was an age of splendid ceremonies and magnificent parade, when the furniture of houses, the armour of soldiers, the dress of citizens, the pomp of war, and the pageantry of festival were invariably and inevitably beautiful. On the meanest articles of domestic utility, cups and platters, door-panels and chimney-pieces, coverlets for beds and lids of linen-chests, a wealth of artistic invention was lavished by innumerable craftsmen, no less skilled in technical details than distinguished by rare taste. From the Pope upon S. Peter's chair to the clerks in a Florentine counting-house, every Italian was a judge of art. Art supplied the spiritual oxygen, without which the life of the Renaissance must have been atrophied. During that period of prodigious activity the entire nation seemed to be endowed with an instinct for the beautiful, and with the capacity for producing it in every conceivable form. As we travel through Italy at the present day, when "time, war, pillage, and purchase" have done their worst to denude the country of its treasures, we still marvel at the incomparable and countless beauties stored in every burgh and hamlet. Pacing the picture galleries of Northern Europe, the country seats of English nobles, and the palaces of Spain, the same reflection is still forced upon us: how could Italy have done what she achieved within so short a space of time? What must the houses and the churches once have been, from which these spoils were taken, but which still remain so rich in masterpieces? Psychologically to explain this universal capacity for the fine arts in the nation at this epoch, is perhaps impossible. Yet the fact remains, that he who would comprehend the Italians of the Renaissance must study their art, and cling fast to that Ariadne-thread throughout the labyrinthine windings of national character. He must learn to recognise that herein lay the sources of their intellectual strength as well as the secret of their intellectual weakness. It lies beyond the scope of this work to embrace in one inquiry the different forms of art in Italy, or to analyse the connection of the aesthetic instinct with the manifold 551 manifestations of the Renaissance. Even the narrower task to which I must confine myself, is too vast for the limits I am forced to impose upon its treatment. I intend to deal with Italian painting as the one complete product which remains from the achievements of this period, touching upon sculpture and architecture more superficially. Not only is painting the art in which the Italians among all the nations of the modern world stand unapproachably alone, but it is also the one that best enables us to gauge their genius at the time when they impressed their culture on the rest of Europe. In the history of the Italian intellect painting takes the same rank as that of sculpture in the Greek. Before beginning, however, to trace the course of Italian art, it will be necessary to discuss some preliminary questions, important for a right understanding of the relations assumed by painting to the thoughts of the Renaissance, and for explaining its superiority over the sister art of sculpture in that age. This I feel the more bound to do because it is my object in this volume to treat of art with special reference to the general culture of the nation. What, let us ask in the first place, was the task appointed for the fine arts on the threshold of the modern world? They had, before all things, to give form to the ideas evolved by Christianity, and to embody a class of emotions unknown to the ancients.[2] The inheritance of the Middle Ages had to be appropriated and expressed. In the course of performing this work, the painters helped to humanise religion, and revealed the dignity and beauty of the body of man. Next, in the fifteenth century, the riches of classic culture were discovered, and art was called upon to aid in the interpretation of the ancient to the modern mind. The problem was no longer simple. Christian and pagan traditions came into close contact, and contended for the empire of the newly liberated intellect. During this struggle the arts, true to their own principles, eliminated from both traditions the more strictly human elements, and expressed them in beautiful form to the imagination and the senses. The brush of the same painter depicted Bacchus wedding Ariadne and Mary fainting on the hill of Calvary. Careless of any peril to dogmatic orthodoxy, and undeterred by the dread of encouraging pagan sensuality, the artists wrought out their modern ideal of beauty in the double field of Christian and Hellenic legend. Before the force of painting was exhausted, it had thus traversed the whole cycle of thoughts and feelings that form the content of the modern mind. Throughout this performance, art proved itself a powerful co-agent in the emancipation of the intellect; the impartiality wherewith its methods were applied to subjects sacred and profane, the emphasis laid upon physical strength and beauty as good things and desirable, the subordination of classical and mediaeval myths to one aesthetic law of loveliness, all tended to withdraw attention from the differences between paganism and Christianity, and to fix it on the goodliness of that humanity wherein both find their harmony. This being in general the task assigned to art in the Renaissance, we may next inquire what constituted the specific quality of modern as distinguished from antique feeling, and why painting could not fail to take the first place among modern arts. In other words, how was it that, while sculpture was the characteristic fine art of antiquity, painting became the distinguishing fine art of the modern era? No true form of figurative art intervened between Greek sculpture and Italian painting. The latter took up the work of investing thought with sensible shape from the dead hands of the former. Nor had the tradition that connected art with religion been interrupted, although a new cycle of religious ideas had 552 been substituted for the old ones. The late Roman and Byzantine manners, through which the vital energies of the Athenian genius dwindled into barren formalism, still lingered, giving crude and lifeless form to Christian conceptions. But the thinking and feeling subject, meanwhile, had undergone a change so all-important that it now imperatively required fresh channels for its self-expression. It was destined to find these, not as of old in sculpture, but in painting. During the interval between the closing of the ancient and the opening of the modern age, the faith of Christians had attached itself to symbols and material objects little better than fetishes. The host, the relic, the wonder-working shrine, things endowed with a mysterious potency, evoked the yearning and the awe of medieval multitudes. To such concrete actualities the worshippers referred their sense of the invisible divinity. The earth of Jerusalem, the Holy Sepulchre, the House of Loreto, the Sudarium of Saint Veronica, aroused their deepest sentiments of aweful adoration. Like Thomas, they could not be contented with believing; they must also touch and handle. At the same time, in apparent contradistinction to this demand for things of sense as signs of super-sensual power, the claims of dogma on the intellect grew more imperious, and mysticism opened for the dreaming soul a realm of spiritual rapture. For the figurative arts there was no true place in either of these regions. Painting and sculpture were alike alien to the grosser superstitions, the scholastic subtleties, and the ecstatic trances of the Middle Ages; nor had they anything in common with the logic of theology. Votaries who kissed a fragment of the cross with passion, could have found but little to satisfy their ardour in pictures painted by a man of genius. A formless wooden idol, endowed with the virtue of curing disease, charmed the pilgrim more than a statue noticeable only for its beauty or its truth to life. We all know that wunderthätige Bilder sind meist nur schlechte Gemälde. In architecture alone, the mysticism of the Middle Ages, their vague but potent feelings of infinity, their yearning towards a deity invisible, but localised in holy things and places, found artistic outlet. Therefore architecture was essentially a medieval art. The rise of sculpture and painting indicated the quickening to life of new faculties, fresh intellectual interests, and a novel way of apprehending the old substance of religious feeling; for comprehension of these arts implies delight in things of beauty for their own sake, a sympathetic attitude towards the world of sense, a new freedom of the mind produced by the regeneration of society through love. The mediaeval faiths were still vivid when the first Italian painters began their work, and the sincere endeavour of these men was to set forth in beautiful and worthy form the truths of Christianity. The eyes of the worshipper should no longer have a mere stock or stone to contemplate: his imagination should be helped by the dramatic presentation of the scenes of sacred history, and his devotion be quickened by lively images of the passion of our Lord. Spirit should converse with spirit, through no veil of symbol, but through the transparent medium of art, itself instinct with inbreathed life and radiant with ideal beauty. The body and the soul, moreover, should be reconciled; and God's likeness should be once more acknowledged in the features and the limbs of man. Such was the promise of art; and this promise was in a great measure fulfilled by the painting of the fourteenth century. Men ceased to worship their God in the holiness of ugliness; and a great city called its street Glad on the birthday-festival of the first picture investing 553 religious emotion with aesthetic charm. But in making good the promise they had given, it was needful for the arts on the one hand to enter a region not wholly their own-the region of abstractions and of mystical conceptions; and on the other to create a world of sensuous delightfulness, wherein the spiritual element was materialised to the injury of its own essential quality. Spirit, indeed, spake to spirit, so far as the religious content was concerned; but flesh spake also to flesh in the aesthetic form. The incarnation promised by the arts involved a corresponding sensuousness. Heaven was brought down to earth, but at the cost of making men believe that earth itself was heavenly. At this point the subject of our inquiry naturally divides into two main questions. The first concerns the form of figurative art specially adapted to the requirements of religious thought in the fourteenth century. The second treats of the effect resulting both to art and religion from the expression of mystical and theological conceptions in plastic form. When we consider the nature of the ideas assimilated in the Middle Ages by the human mind, it is clear that art, in order to set them forth, demanded a language the Greeks had never greatly needed, and had therefore never fully learned. To over-estimate the difference from an aesthetic point of view between the religious notions of the Greeks and those which Christianity had made essential, would be difficult. Faith, hope, and charity; humility, endurance, suffering; the Resurrection and the Judgment; the Pall and the Redemption; Heaven and Hell; the height and depth of man's mixed nature; the drama of human destiny before the throne of God: into the sphere of thoughts like these, vivid and solemn, transcending the region of sense and corporeity, carrying the mind away to an ideal world, where the things of this earth obtained a new reality by virtue of their relation to an invisible and infinite Beyond, the modern arts in their infancy were thrust. There was nothing finite here or tangible, no gladness in the beauty of girlish foreheads or the swiftness of a young man's limbs, no simple idealisation of natural delightfulness. The human body, which the figurative arts must needs use as the vehicle of their expression, had ceased to have a value in and for itself, had ceased to be the true and adequate investiture of thoughts demanded from the artist. At best it could be taken only as the symbol of some inner meaning, the shrine of an indwelling spirit nobler than itself; just as a lamp of alabaster owes its beauty and its worth to the flame it more than half conceals, the light transmitted through its scarce transparent walls. In ancient art those moral and spiritual qualities which the Greeks recognised as truly human and therefore divine, allowed themselves to be incarnated in well-selected types of physical perfection. The deities of the Greek mythology were limited to the conditions of natural existence: they were men and women of a larger mould and freer personality; less complex, inasmuch as each completed some one attribute; less thwarted in activity, inasmuch as no limit was assigned to exercise of power. The passions and the faculties of man, analysed by unconscious psychology, and deified by religious fancy, were invested by sculpture with appropriate forms, the tact of the artist selecting corporeal qualities fitted to impersonate the special character of each divinity. Nor was it possible that, the gods and goddesses being what they were, exact analogues should not be found for them in idealised humanity. In a Greek statue there was enough soul to characterise the beauty of the body, to render her due meed of wisdom to Pallas, to distinguish the swiftness of 554 Hermes from the strength of Heracles, or to contrast the virginal grace of Artemis with the abundance of Aphrodite's charms. At the same time the spirituality that gave its character to each Greek deity, was not such that, even in thought, it could be dissociated from corporeal form. The Greeks thought their gods as incarnate persons; and all the artist had to see to, was that this incarnate personality should be impressive in his marble. Christianity, on the other hand, made the moral and spiritual nature of man all-essential. It sprang from an earlier religion, that judged it impious to give any form to God. The body and its terrestrial activity occupied but a subordinate position in its system. It was the life of the soul, separable from this frame of flesh, and destined to endure when earth and all that it contains had ended-a life that upon this planet was continued conflict and aspiring struggle-which the arts, insofar as they became its instrument, were called upon to illustrate. It was the worship of a Deity, all spirit, to be sought on no one sacred hill, to be adored in no transcendent shape, that they were bound to heighten. The most highly prized among the Christian virtues had no necessary connection with beauty of feature or strength of limb. Such beauty and such strength at any rate were accidental, not essential. A Greek faun could not but be graceful; a Greek hero was of necessity vigorous. But S. Stephen might be steadfast to the death without physical charm; S. Anthony might put to flight the devils of the flesh without muscular force. It is clear that the radiant physical perfection proper to the deities of Greek sculpture was not sufficient in this sphere. Again, the most stirring episodes of the Christian mythology involved pain and perturbation of the spirit; the victories of the Christian athletes were won in conflicts carried on within their hearts and souls-"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers," demoniac leaders of spiritual legions. It is, therefore, no less clear that the tranquillity and serenity of the Hellenic ideal, so necessary to consummate sculpture, was here out of place. How could the Last Judgment, that day of wrath, when every soul, however insignificant on earth, will play the first part for one moment in an awful tragedy, be properly expressed in plastic form, harmonious and pleasing? And supposing that the artist should abandon the attempt to exclude ugliness and discord, pain and confusion, from his representation of the Dies Irae, how could he succeed in setting forth by the sole medium of the human body the anxiety and anguish of the soul at such a time? The physical form, instead of being adequate to the ideas expressed, and therefore helpful to the artist, is a positive embarrassment, a source of weakness. The most powerful pictorial or sculpturesque delineation of the Judgment, when compared with the pangs inflicted on the spirit by a guilty conscience, pangs whereof words may render some account, but which can find no analogue in writhings of the limbs or face, must of necessity be found a failure. Still more impossible, if we pursue this train of thought into another region, is it for the figurative arts to approach the Christian conception of God in His omnipotence and unity. Christ Himself, the central figure of the Christian universe, the desired of all nations, in whom the Deity assumed a human form and dwelt with men, is no fit subject for such art at any rate as the Greeks had perfected. The fact of His incarnation brought Him indeed within the proper sphere of the fine arts; but the religious idea which He represents removed Him beyond the reach of sculpture. This is an all-important consideration. It is to this that our whole argument is tending. Therefore to enlarge upon this point will not be useless. 555 Christ is specially adored in His last act of love on Calvary; and how impossible it is to set that forth consistently with the requirements of strictly plastic art, may be gathered by comparing the passion of S. Bernard's Hymn to our Lord upon the Cross with all that Winckelmann and Hegel have so truly said about the restrained expression, dignified generality, and harmonious beauty essential to sculpture. It is the negation of tranquillity, the excess of feeling, the absence of comeliness, the contrast between visible weakness and invisible omnipotence, the physical humiliation voluntarily suffered by Him that "ruled over all the angels, that walked on the pavements of heaven, whose feet were clothed with stars"-it is all this that gives their force and pathos to these stanzas: Omnis vigor atque viror Hinc recessit; non admiror: Mors apparet in inspectu, Totus pendens in defectu, Attritus aegrâ macie. Sic affectus, sic despectus, Propter me sic interfectus, Peccatori tam indigno Cum amoris in te signo Appare clarâ facie. We have never heard that Pheidias or Praxiteles chose Prometheus upon Caucasus for the supreme display of his artistic skill; and even the anguish expressed in the group of the Laocoon is justly thought to violate the laws of antique sculpture. Yet here was a greater than Prometheus-one who had suffered more, and on whose suffering the salvation of the human race depended, to exclude whom from the sphere of representation in art was the same as confessing the utter impotence of art to grasp the vital thought of modern faith. It is clear that the muses of the new age had to haunt Calvary instead of Helicon, slaking their thirst at no Castalian spring, but at the fount of tears outpoured by all creation for a stricken God. What Hellas had achieved supplied no norm or method for the arts in this new service. From what has hitherto been advanced, we may assert with confidence that, if the arts were to play an important part in Christian culture, an art was imperatively demanded that should be at home in the sphere of intense feeling, that should treat the body as the interpreter and symbol of the soul, and should not shrink from pain and passion. How far 556 the fine arts were at all qualified to express the essential thoughts of Christianity-a doubt suggested in the foregoing paragraphs-and how far, through their proved inadequacy to perform this task completely, they weakened the hold of mediaeval faiths upon the modern mind, are questions to be raised hereafter. For the present it is enough to affirm that, least of all the arts, could sculpture, with its essential repose and its dependence on corporeal conditions, solve the problem. Sculpture had suited the requirements of Greek thought. It belonged by right to men who not unwillingly accepted the life of this world as final, and who worshipped in their deities the incarnate personality of man made perfect. But it could not express the cycle of Christian ideas. The desire of a better world, the fear of a worse; the sense of sin referred to physical appetites, and the corresponding mortification of the flesh; hope, ecstasy, and penitence and prayer; all these imply contempt or hatred for the body, suggest notions too spiritual to be conveyed by the rounded contours of beautiful limbs, too full of struggle for statuesque tranquillity. The new element needed a more elastic medium of expression. Motives more varied, gradations of sentiment more delicate, the fugitive and transient phases of emotion, the inner depths of consciousness, had somehow to be seized. It was here that painting asserted its supremacy. Painting is many degrees further removed than sculpture from dependence on the body in the fulness of its physical proportions. It touches our sensibilities by suggestions more indirect, more mobile, and more multiform. Colour and shadow, aërial perspective and complicated grouping, denied to sculpture, but within the proper realm of painting, have their own significance, their real relation to feelings vaguer, but not less potent, than those which find expression in the simple human form. To painting, again, belongs the play of feature, indicative of internal movement, through a whole gamut of modulations inapprehensible by sculpture. All that drapery by its partial concealment of the form it clothes, and landscape by its sympathies with human sentiment, may supply to enhance the passion of the spectator, pertains to painting. This art, therefore, owing to the greater variety of means at its disposal, and its greater adequacy to express emotion, became the paramount Italian art. To sculpture in the Renaissance, shorn of the divine right to create gods and heroes, was left the narrower field of decoration, portraiture, and sepulchral monuments. In the last of these departments it found the noblest scope for its activity; for beyond the grave, according to Christian belief, the account of the striving, hoping, and resisting soul is settled. The corpse upon the bier may bear the stamp of spiritual character impressed on it in life; but the spirit, with its struggle and its passion, has escaped as from a prison-house, and flown else-whither. The body of the dead man, for whom this world is over, and who sleeps in peace, awaiting resurrection, and thereby not wholly dead, around whose tomb watch sympathising angels or contemplative genii, was, therefore, the proper subject for the highest Christian sculpture. Here, if anywhere, the right emotion could be adequately expressed in stone, and the moulded form be made the symbol of repose, expectant of restored activity. The greatest sculptor of the modern age was essentially a poet of Death. Painting, then, for the reasons already assigned and insisted on, was the art demanded by the modern intellect upon its emergence from the stillness of the Middle Ages. The problem, however, even for the art of painting was not simple. The painters, following the masters of mosaic, began by setting forth the history, mythology, and legends of the 557 Christian Church in imagery freer and more beautiful than lay within the scope of treatment by Romanesque or Byzantine art. So far their task was comparatively easy; for the idyllic grace of maternal love in the Madonna, the pathetic incidents of martyrdom, the courage of confessors, the ecstasies of celestial joy in redeemed souls, the loveliness of a pure life in modest virgins, and the dramatic episodes of sacred story, furnish a multitude of motives admirably pictorial. There was, therefore, no great obstacle upon the threshold, so long as artists gave their willing service to the Church. Yet, looking back upon this phase of painting, we are able to perceive that already the adaptation of art to Christian dogma entailed concessions on both sides. Much, on the one hand, had to be omitted from the programme offered to artistic treatment, for the reason that the fine arts could not deal with it at all. Much, on the other hand, had to be expressed by means which painting in a state of perfect freedom would repudiate. Allegorical symbols, like Prudence with two faces, and painful episodes of agony and anguish, marred her work of beauty. There was consequently a double compromise, involving a double sacrifice of something precious. The faith suffered by having its mysteries brought into the light of day, incarnated in form, and humanised. Art suffered by being forced to render intellectual abstractions to the eye through figured symbols. As technical skill increased, and as beauty, the proper end of art, became more rightly understood, the painters found that their craft was worthy of being made an end in itself, and that the actualities of life observed around them had claims upon their genius no less weighty than dogmatic mysteries. The subjects they had striven at first to realise with all simplicity now became little better than vehicles for the display of sensuous beauty, science, and mundane pageantry. The human body received separate and independent study, as a thing in itself incomparably beautiful, commanding more powerful emotions by its magic than aught else that sways the soul. At the same time the external world, with all its wealth of animal and vegetable life, together with the works of human ingenuity in costly clothing and superb buildings, was seen to be in every detail worthy of most patient imitation. Anatomy and perspective taxed the understanding of the artist, whose whole force was no longer devoted to the task of bringing religious ideas within the limits of the representable. Next, when the classical revival came into play, the arts, in obedience to the spirit of the age, left the sphere of sacred subjects, and employed their full-grown faculties in the domain of myths and Pagan fancies. In this way painting may truly be said to have opened the new era of culture, and to have first manifested the freedom of the modern mind. When Luca Signorelli drew naked young men for a background to his picture of Madonna and the infant Christ, he created for the student a symbol of the attitude assumed by fine art in its liberty of outlook over the whole range of human interests. Standing before this picture in the Uffizzi, we feel that the Church, while hoping to adorn her cherished dogmas with aesthetic beauty, had encouraged a power antagonistic to her own, a power that liberated the spirit she sought to enthral, restoring to mankind the earthly paradise from which monasticism had expelled it. Not to diverge at this point, and to entertain the difficult problem of the relation of the fine arts to Christianity, would be to shrink from the most thorny question offered to the understanding by the history of the Renaissance. On the very threshold of the matter I am bound to affirm my conviction that the spiritual purists of all ages-the Jews, the 558 iconoclasts of Byzantium, Savonarola, and our Puritan ancestors-were justified in their mistrust of plastic art. The spirit of Christianity and the spirit of figurative art are opposed, not because such art is immoral, but because it cannot free itself from sensuous associations. It is always bringing us back to the dear life of earth, from which the faith would sever us. It is always reminding us of the body which piety bids us to forget. Painters and sculptors glorify that which saints and ascetics have mortified. The masterpieces of Titian and Correggio, for example, lead the soul away from compunction, away from penitence, away from worship even, to dwell on the delight of youthful faces, blooming colour, graceful movement, delicate emotion. Nor is this all: religious motives may be misused for what is worse than merely sensuous suggestiveness. The masterpieces of the Bolognese and Neapolitan painters, while they pretend to quicken compassion for martyrs in their agony, pander to a bestial blood-lust lurking in the darkest chambers of the soul. Therefore it is that piety, whether the piety of monastic Italy or of Puritan England, turns from these aesthetic triumphs as from something alien to itself. When the worshipper would fain ascend on wings of ecstasy to God, the infinite, ineffable, unrealised, how can he endure the contact of those splendid forms, in which the lust of the eye and the pride of life, professing to subserve devotion, remind him rudely of the goodliness of sensual existence? Art, by magnifying human beauty, contradicts these Pauline maxims: "For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain;" "Set your affections on things above, not on things on earth;" "Your life is hid with Christ in God." The sublimity and elevation it gives to carnal loveliness are themselves hostile to the spirit that holds no truce or compromise of traffic with the flesh. As displayed in its most perfect phases, in Greek sculpture and Venetian painting, art dignifies the actual mundane life of man; but Christ, in the language of uncompromising piety, means everything most alien to this mundane life-self-denial, abstinence from fleshly pleasure, the waiting for true bliss beyond the grave, seclusion even from social and domestic ties. "He that loveth father and mother more than me, is not worthy of me," "He that taketh not his cross and followeth me, is not worthy of me." It is needful to insist upon these extremest sentences of the New Testament, because upon them was based the religious practice of the Middle Ages, more sincere in their determination to fulfil the letter and embrace the spirit of the Gospel than any succeeding age has been. If, then, there really exists this antagonism between fine art glorifying human life and piety contemning it, how came it, we may ask, that even in the Middle Ages the Church hailed art as her coadjutor? The answer lies in this, that the Church has always compromised. The movement of the modern world, upon the close of the Middle Ages, offered the Church a compromise, which it would have been difficult to refuse, and in which she perceived art first no peril to her dogmas. When the conflict of the first few centuries of Christianity had ended in her triumph, she began to mediate between asceticism and the world. Intent on absorbing all existent elements of life and power, she conformed her system to the Roman type, established her service in basilicas and Pagan temples, adopted portions of the antique ritual, and converted local genii into saints. At the same time she utilised the spiritual forces of monasticism, and turned the mystic impulse of ecstatics to account. The Orders of the Preachers and the Begging Friars became her militia and police; the mystery of Christ's presence in the Eucharist was made an engine of the priesthood; the dreams of Paradise and Purgatory gave value to her 559 pardons, interdictions, jubilees, indulgences, and curses. In the Church the spirit of the cloister and the spirit of the world found neutral ground, and to the practical accommodation between these hostile elements she owed her wide supremacy. The Christianity she formed and propagated was different from that of the New Testament, inasmuch as it had taken up into itself a mass of mythological anthropomorphic elements. Thus transmuted and materialised, thus accepted by the vivid faith of an unquestioning populace, Christianity offered a proper medium for artistic activity. The whole first period of Italian painting was occupied with the endeavour to set forth in form and colour the popular conceptions of a faith at once unphilosophical and unspiritual, beautiful and fit for art by reason of the human elements it had assumed into its substance. It was natural, therefore, that the Church should show herself indulgent to the arts, which were effecting in their own sphere what she had previously accomplished, though purists and ascetics, holding fast by the original spirit of their creed, might remain irreconcilably antagonistic to their influence. The Reformation, on the contrary, rejecting the whole mass of compromises sanctioned by the Church, and returning to the elemental principles of the faith, was no less naturally opposed to fine arts, which, after giving sensuous form to Catholic mythology, had recently attained to liberty and brought again the gods of Greece. A single illustration might be selected from the annals of Italian painting to prove how difficult even the holiest-minded and most earnest painter found it to effect the proper junction between plastic beauty and pious feeling. Fra Bartolommeo, the disciple of Savonarola, painted a Sebastian in the cloister of S. Marco, where it remained until the Dominican confessors became aware, through the avowals of female penitents, that this picture was a stumbling-block and snare to souls. It was then removed, and what became of it we do not know for certain. Fra Bartolommeo undoubtedly intended this ideal portrait of the martyr to be edifying. S. Sebastian was to stand before the world as the young man, strong and beautiful, who endured to the end and won the crown of martyrdom. No other ideas but those of heroism, constancy, or faith were meant to be expressed; but the painter's art demanded that their expression should be eminently beautiful, and the beautiful body of the young man distracted attention from his spiritual virtues to his physical perfections. A similar maladjustment of the means of plastic art to the purposes of religion would have been impossible in Hellas, where the temples of Eros and of Phoebus stood side by side; but in Christian Florence the craftsman's skill sowed seeds of discord in the souls of the devout. This story is but a coarse instance of the separation between piety and plastic art. In truth, the difficulty of uniting them in such a way that the latter shall enforce the former, lies far deeper than its powers of illustration reach. Religion has its proper end in contemplation and in conduct. Art aims at presenting sensuous embodiment of thoughts and feelings with a view to intellectual enjoyment. Now, many thoughts are incapable of sensuous embodiment; they appear as abstractions to the philosophical intellect or as dogmas to the theological understanding. To effect an alliance between art and philosophy or art and theology in the specific region of either religion or speculation is, therefore, an impossibility. In like manner there are many feelings which cannot properly assume a sensuous form; and these are precisely religious feelings, in which the soul abandons 560 sense, and leaves the actual world behind, to seek her freedom in a spiritual region.[9] Yet, while we recognise the truth of this reasoning, it would be unscientific to maintain that, until they are brought into close and inconvenient contact, there is direct hostility between religion and the arts. The sphere of the two is separate; their aims are distinct; they must be allowed to perfect themselves, each after its own fashion. In the large philosophy of human nature, represented by Goethe's famous motto, there is room for both, because those who embrace it bend their natures neither wholly to the pietism of the cloister nor to the sensuality of art. They find the meeting-point of art and of religion in their own humanity, and perceive that the antagonism of the two begins when art is set to do work alien to its nature, and to minister to what it does not naturally serve. At the risk of repetition I must now resume the points I have attempted to establish in this chapter. As in ancient Greece, so also in Renaissance Italy, the fine arts assumed the first place in the intellectual culture of the nation. But the thought and feeling of the modern world required an aesthetic medium more capable of expressing emotion in its intensity, variety, and subtlety than sculpture. Therefore painting was the art of arts for Italy. Yet even painting, notwithstanding the range and wealth of its resources, could not deal with the motives of Christianity so successfully as sculpture with the myths of Paganism. The religion it interpreted transcended the actual conditions of humanity, while art is bound down by its nature to the limitations of the world we live in. The Church imagined art would help her; and within a certain sphere of subjects, by vividly depicting Scripture histories and the lives of saints, by creating new types of serene beauty and pure joy, by giving form to angelic beings, by interpreting Mariolatry in all its charm and pathos, and by rousing deep sympathy with our Lord in His Passion, painting lent efficient aid to piety. Yet painting had to omit the very pith and kernel of Christianity as conceived by devout, uncompromising purists. Nor did it do what the Church would have desired. Instead of riveting the fetters of ecclesiastical authority, instead of enforcing mysticism and asceticism, it really restored to humanity the sense of its own dignity and beauty, and helped to proved the untenability of the mediaeval standpoint; for art is essentially and uncontrollably free, and, what is more, is free precisely in that realm of sensuous delightfulness from which cloistral religion turns aside to seek her own ecstatic liberty of contemplation. The first step in the emancipation of the modern mind was taken thus by art, proclaiming to men the glad tidings of their goodliness and greatness in a world of manifold enjoyment created for their use. Whatever painting touched, became by that touch human; piety, at the lure of art, folded her soaring wings and rested on the genial earth. This the Church had not foreseen. Because the freedom of the human spirit expressed itself in painting only under visible images, and not, like heresy, in abstract sentences; because this art sufficed for Mariolatry and confirmed the cult of local saints; because its sensuousness was not at variance with a creed that had been deeply sensualised-the painters were allowed to run their course unchecked. Then came a second stage in their development of art. By placing the end of their endeavour in technical excellence and anatomical accuracy, they began to make representation an object in itself, independently of its spiritual significance. Next, under the influence of the classical revival, they brought home again the old powers of the earth-Aphrodite and Galatea and the Loves, 561 Adonis and Narcissus and the Graces, Phoebus and Daphne and Aurora, Pan and the Fauns, and the Nymphs of the woods and the waves. When these dead deities rose from their sepulchres to sway the hearts of men in the new age, it was found that something had been taken from their ancient bloom of innocence, something had been added of emotional intensity. Italian art recognised their claim to stand beside Madonna and the Saints in the Pantheon of humane culture; but the painters re-made them in accordance with the modern spirit. This slight touch of transformation proved that, though they were no longer objects of religious devotion, they still preserved a vital meaning for an altered age. Having personified for the antique world qualities which, though suppressed and ignored by militant and mediaeval Christianity, were strictly human, the Hellenic deities still signified those qualities for modern Europe, now at length re-fortified by contact with the ancient mind. For it is needful to remember that in all movements of the Renaissance we ever find a return in all sincerity and faith to the glory and gladness of nature, whether in the world without or in the soul of man. To apprehend that glory and that gladness with the pure and primitive perceptions of the early mythopoets, was not given to the men of the new world. Yet they did what in them lay, with senses sophisticated by many centuries of subtlest warping, to replace the first, free joy of kinship with primeval things. For the painters, far more than for the poets of the sixteenth century, it was possible to reproduce a thousand forms of beauty, each attesting to the delightfulness of physical existence, to the inalienable rights of natural desire, and to the participation of mankind in pleasures held in common by us with the powers of earth and sea and air. It is wonderful to watch the blending of elder and of younger forces in this process. The old gods lent a portion of their charm even to Christian mythology, and showered their beauty-bloom on saints who died renouncing them. Sodoma's Sebastian is but Hyacinth or Hylas, transpierced with arrows, so that pain and martyrdom add pathos to his poetry of youthfulness. Lionardo's S. John is a Faun of the forest, ivy-crowned and laughing, on whose lips the word "Repent" would be a gleeful paradox. For the painters of the full Renaissance, Roman martyrs and Olympian deities-the heroes of the Acta Sanctorum, and the heroes of Greek romance-were alike burghers of one spiritual city, the city of the beautiful and human. What exquisite and evanescent fragrance was educed from these apparently diverse blossoms by their interminglement and fusion-how the high-wrought sensibilities of the Christian were added to the clear and radiant fancies of the Greek, and how the frank sensuousness of the Pagan gave body and fulness to the floating wraiths of an ascetic faith-remains a miracle for those who, like our master Lionardo, love to scrutinise the secrets of twin natures and of double graces. There are not a few for whom the mystery is repellent, who shrink from it as from Hermaphroditus. These will always find something to pain them in the art of the Renaissance. Having co-ordinated the Christian and Pagan traditions in its work of beauty, painting could advance no farther. The stock of its sustaining motives was exhausted. A problem that preoccupied the minds of thinking men at this epoch was how to harmonise the two chief moments of human culture, the classical and the ecclesiastical. Without being as conscious of their hostility as we are, men felt that the Pagan ideal was opposed to the 562 Christian, and at the same time that a reconciliation had to be effected. Each had been worked out separately; but both were needed for the modern synthesis. All that aesthetic handling, in this region more precocious and more immediately fruitful than pure thought, could do towards mingling them, was done by the impartiality of the fine arts. Painting, in the work of Raphael, accomplished a more vital harmony than philosophy in the writings of Pico and Ficino. A new Catholicity, a cosmopolitan orthodoxy of the beautiful, was manifested in his pictures. It lay outside his power, or that of any other artist, to do more than to extract from both revelations the elements of plastic beauty they contained, and to show how freely he could use them for a common purpose. Nothing but the scientific method can in the long run enable us to reach that further point, outside both Christianity and Paganism, at which the classical ideal of a temperate and joyous natural life shall be restored to the conscience educated by the Gospel. This, perchance, is the religion, still unborn or undeveloped, whereof Joachim of Flora dimly prophesied when he said that the kingdom of the Father was past, the kingdom of the Son was passing, and the kingdom of the Spirit was to be. The essence of it is contained in the whole growth to usward of the human mind; and though a creed so highly intellectualised as that will be, can never receive adequate expression from the figurative arts, still the painting of the sixteenth century forms for it, as it were, a not unworthy vestibule. It does so, because it first succeeded in humanising the religion of the Middle Ages, in proclaiming the true value of antique paganism for the modern mind, and in making both subserve the purposes of free and unimpeded art. Meanwhile, at the moment when painting was about to be exhausted, a new art had arisen, for which it remained, within the aesthetic sphere, to achieve much that painting could not do. When the cycle of Christian ideas had been accomplished by the painters, and when the first passion for antiquity had been satisfied, it was given at last to Music to express the soul in all its manifold feeling and complexity of movement. In music we see the point of departure where art leaves the domain of myths, Christian as well as Pagan, and occupies itself with the emotional activity of man alone, and for its own sake. Melody and harmony, disconnected from words, are capable of receiving most varied interpretations, so that the same combinations of sound express the ecstasies of earthly and of heavenly love, conveying to the mind of the hearer only that element of pure passion which is the primitive and natural ground-material of either. They give distinct form to moods of feeling as yet undetermined; or, as the Italians put it, la musica è il lamento dell' amore o la preghiera a gli dei. This, combined with its independence of all corporeal conditions, fenders music the true exponent of the spirit in its freedom, and therefore the essentially modern art. For Painting, after the great work accomplished during the Renaissance, when the painters ran through the whole domain of thought within the scope of that age, there only remained portraiture, history, dramatic incident, landscape, genre, still life, and animals. In these spheres the art is still exercised, and much good work, undoubtedly, is annually produced by European painters. But painting has lost its hold upon the centre of our intellectual activity. It can no longer give form to the ideas that at the present epoch rule the modern world. These ideas are too abstract, too much a matter of the understanding, to be successfully handled by the figurative arts; and it cannot be too often or too 563 emphatically stated that these arts produce nothing really great and universal in relation to the spirit of their century, except by a process analogous to the mythopoetic. With conceptions incapable of being sensuously apprehended, with ideas that lose their value when they are incarnated, they have no power to deal. As meteors become luminous by traversing the grosser element of our terrestrial atmosphere, so the thoughts that art employs must needs immerse themselves in sensuousness. They must be of a nature to gain rather than to suffer by such immersion; and they must make a direct appeal to minds habitually apt to think in metaphors and myths. Of this sort are all religious ideas at a certain stage of their development, and this attitude at certain moments of history is adopted by the popular consciousness. We have so far outgrown it, have so completely exchanged mythology for curiosity, and metaphor for science, that the necessary conditions for great art are wanting. Our deepest thoughts about the world and God are incapable of personification by any aesthetic process; they never enter that atmosphere wherein alone they could become through fine art luminous. For the painter, who is the form-giver, they have ceased to be shining stars, and are seen as opaque stones; and though divinity be in them, it is a deity that refuses the investiture of form. 564 17 Leon Trotsky The Social Roots and the Social Function of Literature The quarrels about ―pure art‖ and about ―art with a tendency‖ took place between the liberals and the ―populists‖. They do not become us. Materialistic dialectics are above this; from the point of view of an objective historical process, art is always a social servant and historically utilitarian. It finds the necessary rhythm of words for dark and vague moods, it brings thought and feeling closer or contrasts them with one another, it enriches the spiritual experience of the individual and of the community, it refines feeling, makes it more flexible, more responsive, it enlarges the volume of thought in advance and not through the personal method of accumulated experience, it educates the individual, the social group, the class and the nation. And this it does quite independently of whether it appears in a given case under the flag of a  pure' or of a frankly tendentious art. In our Russian social development tendentiousness was the banner of the intelligentsia which sought contact with the people. The helpless intelligentsia, crushed by czarism and deprived of a cultural environment, sought support in the lower strata of society and tried to prove to the ―people‖ that it was thinking only of them, living only for them and that it loved them ―terribly.‖ And just as the populists who went to the people were ready to do without clean linen and without a comb and without a toothbrush, so the intelligentsia was ready to sacrifice the subtleties‖ of form in its art, in order to give the most direct and spontaneous expression to the sufferings and hopes of the oppressed. On the other hand, ―pure‖ art was the banner of the rising bourgeoisie, which could not openly declare its bourgeois character, and which at the same time tried to keep the intelligentsia in its service. The Marxist point of view is far removed from these tendencies, which were historically necessary, but which have become historically passe. Keeping on the plane of scientific investigation, Marxism seeks with the same assurance the social roots of the ―pure‖ as well as of the tendentious art. It does not at all ―incriminate‖ a poet with the thoughts and feelings which he expresses, but raises questions of a much more profound significance, namely, to which order of feelings does a given artistic work correspond in all its peculiarities? What are the social conditions of these thoughts and feelings? What place do they occupy in the historic development of a society and of a class? And, further, what literary heritage has entered into the elaboration of the new form? Under the influence of what historic impulse have the new complexes of feelings and thoughts broken through the shell which divides them from the sphere of poetic consciousness? The investigation may become complicated, detailed or individualised, but its fundamental idea will be that of the subsidiary role which art plays in the social process. 565 Each class has its own policy in art, that is, a system of presenting demands on art, which changes with time; for instance, the Maecenas-like protection of court and grand seigneur, the automatic relationship of supply and demand which is supplemented by complex methods of influencing the individual, and so forth, and so on. The social and even the personal dependence of art was not concealed, but was openly announced as long as art retained its court character. The wider, more popular, anonymous character of the rising bourgeoisie led, on the whole, to the theory of ―pure art,‖ though there were many deviations from this theory. As indicated above, the tendentious literature of the ―populist‖ intelligentsia was imbued with a class interest; the intelligentsia could not strengthen itself and could not conquer for itself a right to play a part in history without the support of the people. But in the revolutionary struggle, the class egotism of the intelligentsia was turned inside out, and in its left wing, it assumed the form of highest self-sacrifice. That is why the intelligentsia not only did not conceal art with a tendency, but proclaimed it, thus sacrificing art, just as it sacrificed many other things. Our Marxist conception of the objective social dependence and social utility of art, when translated into the language of politics, does not at all mean a desire to dominate art by means of decrees and orders. It is not true that we regard only that art as new and revolutionary which speaks of the worker, and it is nonsense to say that we demand that the poets should describe inevitably a factory chimney, or the uprising against capital! Of course the new art cannot but place the struggle of the proletariat in the center of its attention. But the plough of the new art is not limited to numbered strips. On the contrary, it must plough the entire field in all directions. Personal lyrics of the very smallest scope have an absolute right to exist within the new art. Moreover, the new man cannot be formed without a new lyric poetry. But to create it, the poet himself must feel the world in a new way. If Christ alone or Sabaoth himself bends over the poet's embraces (as in the case of Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Shkapskaya and others), then this only goes to prove how much behind the times his lyrics are and how socially and aesthetically inadequate they are for the new man. Even where such terminology is not a survival of experience so much as of words, it shows psychological inertia and therefore stands in contradiction to the consciousness of the new man. No one is going to prescribe themes to a poet or intends to prescribe them. Please write about anything you can think oft But allow the new class which considers itself, and with reason, called upon to build a new world, to say to you in any given case: It does not make new poets of you to translate the philosophy of life of the seventeenth century into the language of the acmeists. The form of art is, to a certain and very large degree, independent, but the artist who creates this form, and the spectator who is enjoying it, are not empty machines, one for creating form and the other for appreciating it. They are living people, with a crystallised psychology representing a certain unity, even if not entirely harmonious. This psychology is the result of social conditions. The creation and perception of art forms is one of the functions of this psychology. And no matter how wise the formalists, try to be, their whole conception is simply based upon the fact that they ignore the psychological unity of the social man, who creates and who consumes what has been created. 566 The proletariat has to have in art the expression of the new spiritual point of view which is just beginning to be formulated within him, and to which art must help him give form. This is not a state order, but a historic demand. Its strength lies in the objectivity of historic necessity. You cannot pass this by, nor escape its force ... Victor Shklovsky, who flits lightly from verbal formalism to the most subjective valuations, assumes a very uncompromising attitude towards the historico-materialistic theory of art. In a booklet which he published in Berlin, under the title of The March of the Horse, he formulates in the course of three small pages – brevity is a fundamental and, at any rate, an undoubted merit of Shklovsky – five (not four and not six, but five) exhaustive arguments against the materialist conception of art. Let us examine these arguments, because it won't harm us to take a look and see what kind of chaff is handed out as the last word in scientific thought (with the greatest variety of scientific references on these same three microscopic pages). ―If the environment and the relations of production,‖ says Shklovsky, ―influenced art, then would not the themes of art be tied to the places which would correspond to these relations? But themes are homeless.‖ Well, and how about butterflies? According to Darwin, they also  correspond' to definite relations, and yet they flit from place to place, just like an unweighted litterateur. It is not easy to understand why Marxism should be supposed to condemn themes to a condition of serfdom. The fact that different peoples and different classes of the same people make use of the same themes merely shows how limited the human imagination is, and how man tries to maintain an economy of energy in every kind of creation, even in the artistic. Every class tries to utilise, to the greatest possible degree, the material and spiritual heritage of another class. Shklovsky's argument could be easily transferred into the field of productive technique. From ancient times on, the wagon has been based on one and the same theme, namely, axles, wheels, and a shaft. However, the chariot of the Roman patrician was just as well adapted to his tastes and needs as was the carriage of Count Orlov, fitted out with inner comforts, to the tastes of this favourite of Catherine the Great. The wagon of the Russian peasant is adapted to the needs of his household, to the strength of his little horse, and to the peculiarities of the country road. The automobile, which is undoubtedly a product of the new technique, shows, nevertheless, the same  theme,' namely, four wheels on two axles. Yet every time peasant's horse shies in terror before the blinding lights of an automobile on the Russian road at night, a conflict of two cultures is reflected in the episode. ―If environment expressed itself in novels,‖ so runs the second argument, ―European science would not be breaking its head over the question of where the stories of A Thousand and One Nights were made, whether in Egypt, India, or Persia.‖ To say that man's environment, including the artist's, that is, the conditions of his education and life, find expression in his art also, does not mean to say that such expression has a precise geographic, ethnographic and statistical character. It is not at all surprising that it is 567 difficult to decide whether certain novels were made in Egypt, India or Persia, because the social conditions of these countries have much in common. But the very fact that European science is ―breaking its head‖ trying to solve this question from these novels themselves shows that these novels reflect an environment, even though unevenly. No one can jump beyond himself. Even the ravings of an insane person contain nothing that the sick man had not received before from the outside world. But it would be an insanity of another order to regard his ravings as the accurate reflection of an external world. Only an experienced and thoughtful psychiatrist, who knows the past of the patient, will be able to find the reflected and distorted bits of reality in the contents of his ravings. Artistic creation, of course, is not a raving, though it is also a deflection, a changing and a transformation of reality, in accordance with the peculiar laws of art. However fantastic art may be, it cannot have at its disposal any other material except that which is given to it by the world of three dimensions and by the narrower world of class society. Even when the artist creates heaven and hell, he merely transforms the experience of his own life into his phantasmagorias, almost to the point of his landlady's unpaid bill. ―If the features of class and caste are deposited in art,‖ continues Shklovsky, ―then how does it come that the various tales of the Great Russians about their nobleman are the same as their fairy tales about their priest?‖ In essence, this is merely a paraphrase of the first argument. Why cannot the fairy tales about the nobleman and about the priest be the same, and how does this contradict Marxism? The proclamations which are written by well-known Marxists not infrequently speak of landlords, capitalists, priests, generals and other exploiters. The landlord undoubtedly differs from the capitalist, but there are cases when they are considered under one head. Why, then, cannot folk art in certain cases treat the nobleman and the priest together, as the representatives of the classes which stand above the people and which plunder them? In the cartoons of Moor and of Deni, the priest often stands side by side with the landlord, without any damage to Marxism. ―If ethnographic traits were reflected in art,‖ Shklovsky goes on, ―the folklore about the peoples beyond the border would not be interchangeable and could not be told by any one folk about another.‖ As you see, there is no letting up here. Marxism does not maintain at all that ethnographic traits have an independent character. On the contrary, it emphasises the all-determining significance of natural and economic conditions in the formation of folklore. The similarity of conditions in the development of the herding and agricultural and primarily peasant peoples, and the similarity in the character of their mutual influence upon one another, cannot but lead to the creation of a similar folklore. And from the point of view of the question that interests us here, it makes absolutely no difference whether these homogeneous themes arose independently among different peoples, as the reflection of a life experience which was homogeneous in its fundamental traits and which was reflected through the homogeneous prism of a peasant imagination, or whether the seeds of these fairy tales were carried by a favourable wind from place to place, striking root wherever 568 the ground turned out to be favourable. It is very likely that, in reality, these methods were combined. And finally, as a separate argument – ―The reason (Marxism) is incorrect in the fifth place‖ – Shklovsky points to the theme of abduction which goes through Greek comedy and reaches Ostrovsky. In other words, our critic repeats, in a special form, his very first argument (as we see, even insofar as formal logic is concerned, all is not well with our formalist). Yes, themes migrate from people to people, from class to class, and even from author to author. This means only that the human imagination is economical. A new class does not begin to create all of culture from the beginning, but enters into possession of the past, assorts it, touches it up, rearranges it, and builds on it further. If there were no such utilisation of the  secondhand' wardrobe of the ages, historic processes would have no progress at all. If the theme of Ostrovsky's drama came to him through the Egyptians and through Greece, then the paper on which Ostrovsky developed his theme came to him as a development of the Egyptian papyrus through the Greek parchment. Let us take another and closer analogy: the fact that the critical methods of the Greek Sophists, who were the pure formalists of their day, have penetrated the theoretic consciousness of Shklovsky, does not in the least change the fact that Shklovsky himself is a very picturesque product of a definite social environment and of a definite age. Shklovsky's destruction of Marxism in five points reminds us very much of those articles which were published against Darwinism in the magazine The Orthodox Review in the good old days. If the doctrine of the origin of man from the monkey were true, wrote the learned Bishop Nikanor of Odessa thirty or forty years ago, then our grandfathers would have had distinct signs of a tail, or would have noticed such a characteristic in their grandfathers and grandmothers. Second, as everybody knows, monkeys can only give birth to monkeys ... Fifth, Darwinism is incorrect, because it contradicts formalism – I beg your pardon, I meant to say, the formal decisions of the universal church conferences. The advantage of the learned monk consisted, however, in the fact that he was a frank passéist and took his cue from the Apostle Paul and not from physics, chemistry or mathematics, as the futurist Shklovsky does. It is unquestionably true that the need for art is not created by economic conditions. But neither is the need for food created by economics. On the contrary, the need for food and warmth creates economics. It is very true that one cannot always go by the principles of Marxism in deciding whether to reject or to accept a work of art. A work of art should, in the first place, be judged by its own law, that is, by the law of art. But Marxism alone can explain why and how a given tendency in art has originated in a given period of history; in other words, who it was who made a demand for such an artistic form and not for another, and why. It would be childish to think that every class can entirely and fully create its own art from within itself, and, particularly, that the proletariat is capable of creating a new art by means of closed art guilds or circles, or by the Organisation for Proletarian Culture, etc. Generally speaking, the artistic work of man is continuous. Each new rising class places itself on the shoulders of its preceding one. But this continuity is dialectic, that is, it finds 569 itself by means of internal repulsions and breaks. New artistic needs or demands for new literary and artistic points of view are stimulated by economics, through the development of a new class, and minor stimuli are supplied by changes in the position of the class, under the influence of the growth of its wealth and cultural power. Artistic creation is always a complicated turning inside out of old forms, under the influence of new stimuli which originate outside of art. In this large sense of the word, art is a handmaiden. It is not a disembodied element feeding on itself, but a function of social man indissolubly tied to -his life and environment. And how characteristic it is – if one were to reduce every social superstition to its absurdity – that Shklovsky has come to the idea of art's absolute independence from the social environment at a period of Russian history when art has revealed with such utter frankness its spiritual, environmental and material dependence upon definite social classes, subclasses and groups! Materialism does not deny the significance of the element of form, either in logic, jurisprudence or art. Just as a system of jurisprudence can and must be judged by its internal logic and consistency, so art can and must be judged from the point of view of its achievements in form, because there can be no art without them. However, a juridical theory which attempted to establish the independence of law from social conditions would be defective at its very base. Its moving force lies in economics-in class contradictions. The law gives only a formal and an internally harmonised expression of these phenomena, not of their individual peculiarities, but of their general character, that is, of the elements that are repetitive and permanent in them. We can see now with a clarity which is rare in history how new law is made. It is not done by logical deduction, but by empirical measurement and by adjustment to the economic needs of the new ruling class. Literature, whose methods and processes have their roots far back in the most distant past and represent the accumulated experience of verbal craftsmanship, expresses the thoughts, feelings, moods, points of view and hopes of the new epoch and of its new class. One cannot jump beyond this. And there is no need of making the jump, at least, for those who are not serving an epoch already past nor a class which has already outlived itself. The methods of formal analysis are necessary, but insufficient. You may count up the alliterations in popular proverbs, classify metaphors, count up the number of vowels and consonants in a wedding song. It will undoubtedly enrich our knowledge of folk art, in one way or another; but if you don't know the peasant system of sowing, and the life that is based on it, if you don't know the part the scythe plays, and if you have not mastered the meaning of the church calendar to the peasant, of the time when the peasant marries, or when the peasant women give birth, you will have only understood the outer shell of folk art, but the kernel will not have been reached. The architectural scheme of the Cologne cathedral can be established by measuring the base and the height of its arches, by determining the three dimensions of its naves, the dimensions and the placement of the columns, etc. But without knowing what a medieval 570 city was like, what a guild was, or what was the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages, the Cologne cathedral will never be understood. The effort to set art free from life, to declare it a craft sufficient unto itself, devitalises and kills art. The very need of such an operation is an unmistakable symptom of intellectual decline. The analogy with the theological arguments against Darwinism which was made above may appear to the reader external and anecdotal. That may be true, to some extent. But a much deeper connection exists. The formalist theory inevitably reminds a Marxist who has done any reading at all of the familiar tunes of a very old philosophic melody. The jurists and the moralists (to recall at random the German Stammler, and our own subjectivist Mikhailovsky) tried to prove that morality and law could not be determined by economics, because economic life was unthinkable outside of juridical and ethical norms. True, the formalists of law and morals did not go so far as to assert the complete independence of law and ethics from economics. They recognised a certain complex mutual relationship of ―factors,‖ and these ―factors,‖ while influencing one another, retained the qualities of independent substances, coming no one knew whence. The assertion of complete independence of the aesthetic ―factor‖ from the influence of social conditions, as is made by Shklovsky, is an instance of specific hyperbole whose roots, by the way, lie in social conditions too; it is the megalomania of aesthetics turning our hard reality on its head. Apart from this peculiarity, the constructions of the formalists have the same kind of defective methodology that every other kind of idealism has. To a materialist, religion, law, morals and art represent separate aspects of one and the same process of social development. Though they differentiate themselves from their industrial basis, become complex, strengthen and develop their special characteristics in detail, politics, religion, law, ethics and aesthetics remain, nonetheless, functions of social man and obey the laws of his social organisation. The idealist, on the other hand, does not see a unified process of historic development which evolves the necessary organs and functions from within itself, but a crossing or combining and interacting of certain independent principles-the religious, political, juridical, aesthetic and ethical substances, which find their origin and explanation in themselves. The (dialectic) idealism of Hegel arranges these substances (which are the eternal categories) in some sequence by reducing them to a genetic unity. Regardless of the fact that this unity with Hegel is the absolute spirit, which divides itself in the process of its dialectic manifestation into various ―factors,‖ Hegel's system, because of its dialectic character, not because of its idealism, gives an idea of historic reality which is just as good as the idea of a man's hand that a glove gives when turned inside out. But the formalists (and their greatest genius was Kant) do not look at the dynamics of development, but at a cross section of it, on the day and at the hour of their own philosophic revelation. At the crossing of the line they reveal the complexity and multiplicity of the object (not of the process, because they do not think of processes). This complexity they analyse and classify. They give names to the elements, which are at once transformed into essences, into sub-absolutes, without father or mother; to wit, religion, politics, morals, law, art. Here we no longer have a glove of history turned 571 inside out, but the skin torn from the separate fingers, dried out to a degree of complete abstraction, and this hand of history turns out to be the product of the ―interaction‖ of the thumb, the index, the middle finger, and all the other ―factors.‖ The aesthetic ―factor‖ is the little finger, the smallest, but not the least beloved. In biology, vitalism is a variation of the same fetish of presenting the separate aspects of the world process, without understanding its inner relation. A creator is all that is lacking for a supersocial, absolute morality or aesthetics, or for a superphysical absolute ―vital force.‖ The multiplicity of independent factors, ―factors‖ without beginning or end, is nothing but a masked polytheism. Just as Kantian idealism represents historically a translation of Christianity into the language of rationalistic philosophy, so all the varieties of idealistic formalisation, either openly or secretly, lead to a god, as the cause of all causes. In comparison with the oligarchy of a dozen sub-absolutes of the idealistic philosophy, a single personal creator is already an element of order. Herein lies the deeper connection between the formalist refutations of Marxism and the theological refutations of Darwinism. The formalist school represents an abortive idealism applied to the question of art. The formalists show a fast ripening religiousness. They are followers of St. John. They believe that ―in the beginning was the Word.‖ But we believe that in the beginning was the deed. The word followed, as its phonetic shadow. 572 18 Leon Trotsky Communist Policy Toward Art It is untrue that revolutionary art can be created only by workers. Just because the revolution is a working-class revolution, it releases – to repeat what was said before – very little working-class energy for art. During the French Revolution, the greatest works which, directly or indirectly, reflected it, were created not by French artists, but by German, English, and others. The French bourgeoisie, which was directly concerned with making the revolution, could not give up a sufficient quantity of its strength to re-create and to perpetuate its imprint. This is still more true of the proletariat, which, though it has culture in politics, has little culture in art. The intelligentsia, aside from the advantages of its qualifications in form, has also the odious privilege of holding a passive political position, which is marked by a greater or lesser degree of hostility or friendliness towards the October Revolution. It is not surprising, then, that this contemplative intelligentsia is able to give, and does give, a better artistic reproduction of the revolution than the proletariat which has made the revolution, though the re-creations of the intelligentsia are somewhat off line. We know very well the political limitations, the instability and the unreliability of the fellow travellers. But if we should eliminate Pilnyak, with his The Naked Year, the ―Serapion Fraternity‖ with Vsevolod Ivanoy, Tikhonoy, and Polonskaya, if we should eliminate Mayakovsky and Eannin, is there anything that will remain for us but a few unpaid promissory notes of a future proletarian literature? Especially as Demyan Byedny, who cannot be counted among the fellow travellers and who, we hope, cannot be related from revolutionary literature, cannot be related to proletarian literature in the sense as defined by the manifesto of the Kuznitsa. What will remain then? Does that mean that the party, quite in opposition to its nature, occupies a purely eclectic position in the field of art? This argument, which seems so crushing, is, in reality, extremely childish. The Marxian method affords an opportunity to estimate the development of the new art, to trace all its sources, to help the most progressive tendencies by a critical illumination of the road, but it does not do more than that. Art must make its own way and by its own means. The Marxian methods are not the same as the artistic. The party leads the proletariat but not the historic processes of history. There are domains in which the party leads, directly and imperatively. There are domains in which it only cooperates. There are, finally, domains in which it only orients itself. The domain of art is not one in which the party is called upon to command. It can and must protect and help it, but it can only lead it indirectly. It can and must give the additional credit of its confidence to various art groups, which are striving sincerely to approach the 573 revolution and so help an artistic formulation of the revolution. And at any rate, the party cannot and will not take the position of a literary circle which is struggling and merely competing with other literary circles. The party stands guard over the historic interests of the working class in its entirety. Because it prepares consciously and step by step the ground for a new culture and therefore for a new art, it regards the literary fellow travellers not as the competitors of the writers of the working class, but as the real or potential helpers of the working class in the big work of reconstruction. The party understands the episodic character of the literary groups of a transition period and estimates them, not from the point of view of the class passports of the individual gentlemen literati, but from the point of view of the place which these groups occupy and can occupy in preparing a socialist culture. If it is not possible to determine the place of any given group today, then the party as a party will wait patiently and gracefully. Individual critics or readers may sympathise with one group or another in advance. The party, as a whole, protects the historic interests of the working class and must be more objective and wise. Its caution must be double-edged. If the party does not put its stamp of approval on the Kuznitsa, just because workers write for it, it does not, in advance, repel any given literary group, even from the intelligentsia, insofar as such a group tries to approach the revolution and tries to strengthen one of its links – a link is always a weak point – between the city and the village, or between the party member and the non-partisan, or between the intelligentsia and the workers. Does not such a policy mean, however, that the party is going to have an unprotected flank on the side of art? This is a great exaggeration. The party will repel the clearly poisonous, disintegrating tendencies of art and will guide itself by its political standards. It is true, however, that it is less protected on the flank of art than on the political front. But is this not true of science also? What are the metaphysicians of a purely proletarian science going to say about the theory of relativity? Can it be reconciled with materialism, or can it not? Has this question been decided? Where and when and by whom? It is clear to anyone, even to the uninitiated, that the work of our physiologist, Pavlov, is entirely along materialist lines. But what is one to say about the psychoanalytic theory of Freud? Can it be reconciled with materialism, as, for instance, Karl Radek thinks (and I also), or is it hostile to it? The same question can be put to all the new theories of atomic structure, etc., etc. It would be fine if a scientist would come along who could grasp all these new generalisations methodologically and introduce them into the dialectic materialist conception of the world. He could thus, at the same time, test the new theories and develop the dialectic method deeper. But I am very much afraid that this work – which is not like a newspaper or journalistic article, but a scientific and philosophic landmark, just as the Origin of Species and Capital – will not be created either today or tomorrow, or rather, if such an epoch-making book were created today, it would risk remaining uncut until the time when the proletariat will be able to lay aside its arms. But does not the work of culture-bearing, that is, the work of acquiring the ABC of preproletarian culture, presuppose criticism, selection and a class standard? Of course it does. But the standard is a political one and not an abstract cultural one. The political standard coincides with the cultural one only in the broad sense that the revolution creates 574 conditions for a new culture. But this does not mean that such a coinciding is secured in every given case. If the revolution has the right to destroy bridges and art monuments whenever necessary, it will stop still less from laying its hand on any tendency in art which, no matter how great its achievement in form, threatens to disintegrate the revolutionary environment or to arouse the internal forces of the revolution, that is, the proletariat, the peasantry and the intelligentsia, to a hostile opposition to one another. Our standard is, clearly, political, imperative and intolerant. But for this very reason, it must define the limits of its activity clearly. For a more precise expression of my meaning, I will say: we ought to have a watchful revolutionary censorship, and a broad and flexible policy in the field of art, free from petty partisan maliciousness ... When the futurists propose to throw overboard the old literature of individualism, not only because it has become antiquated in form, but because it contradicts the collectivist nature of the proletariat, they reveal a very inadequate understanding of the dialectic nature of the contradiction between individualism and collectivism. There are no abstract truths. There are different kinds of individualism. Because of too much individualism, a section of the pre-revolutionary intelligentsia threw itself into mysticism, but another section moved along the chaotic lines of futurism and, caught by the revolution – to their honour be it said – came nearer to the proletariat. But when they who came nearer because their teeth were set on edge by individualism carry their feeling over to the proletariat, they show themselves guilty of egocentrism, that is, of extreme individualism. The trouble is that the average proletarian is lacking in this very quality. In the mass, proletarian individuality has not been sufficiently formed and differentiated. It is just such heightening of the objective quality and the subjective consciousness of individuality that is the most valuable contribution of the cultural advance at the threshold of which we stand today. It is childish to think that bourgeois belles lettres can make a breach in class solidarity. What the worker will take from Shakespeare, Goethe, Pushkin, or Dostoyevsky will be a more complex idea of human personality, of its passions and feelings, a deeper and profounder understanding of its psychic forces and of the role of the subconscious, etc. In the final analysis, the worker will become richer. At the beginning, Gorky was imbued with the romantic individualism of the tramp. Nevertheless, he fed the early spring revolutionism of the proletariat on the eve of 1905, because he helped to awaken individuality in that class in which individuality, once awakened, seeks contact with other awakened individualities. The proletariat is in need of artistic food and education, but that does not mean to say that the proletariat is mere clay which artists, those that have gone and those that are still to come, can fashion in their own image and in their own likeness. Though the proletariat is spiritually, and therefore, artistically, very sensitive, it is uneducated aesthetically. It is hardly reasonable to think that it can simply begin at the point where the bourgeois intelligentsia left off on the eve of the catastrophe. Just as an individual passes biologically and psychologically through the history of the race and, to some extent, of the entire animal world in his development from the embryo, so, to a certain extent, must the overwhelming majority of a new class which has only recently come out of prehistoric life, pass through the entire history of artistic culture. This class 575 cannot begin the construction of a new culture without absorbing and assimilating the elements of the old cultures. This does not mean in the least that it is necessary to go through step by step, slowly and systematically, the entire past history of art. Insofar as it concerns a social class and not a biologic individual, the process of absorption and transformation has a freer and more conscious character. But a new class cannot move forward without regard to the most important landmarks of the past ... Revolutionary and Socialist Art There is no revolutionary art as yet. There are the elements of this art, there are hints and attempts at it, and, what is most important, there is the revolutionary man, who is forming the new generation in his own image and who is more and more in need of this art. How long will it take for such art to reveal itself clearly? It is difficult even to guess, because the process is intangible and incalculable, and we are limited to guesswork even when we try to time more tangible social processes. But why should not this art, at least its first big wave, come soon as the expression of the art of the young generation which was born in the revolution and which carries it on? Revolutionary art which inevitably reflects all the contradictions of a revolutionary social system, should not be confused with socialist art for which no basis has as yet been made. On the other hand, one must not forget that socialist art will grow out of the art of this transition period. In insisting on such a distinction, we are not at all guided by a pedantic consideration of an abstract program. Not for nothing did Engels speak of the socialist revolution as a leap from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom. The revolution itself is not as yet the kingdom of freedom. On the contrary, it is developing the features of ―necessity‖ to the greatest degree. Socialism will abolish class antagonisms, as well as classes, but the revolution carries the class struggle to its highest tension. During the period of revolution, only that literature which promotes the consolidation of the workers in their struggle against the exploiters is necessary and progressive. Revolutionary literature cannot but be imbued with a spirit of social hatred, which is a creative historic factor in an epoch of proletarian dictatorship. Under socialism, solidarity will be the basis of society. Literature and art will be tuned to a different key. All the emotions which we revolutionists, at the present time, feel apprehensive of naming – so much have they been worn thin by hypocrites and vulgarians – such as disinterested friendship, love for one's neighbour, sympathy, will be the mighty ringing chords of socialist poetry. However, does not an excess of solidarity, as the Nietzscheans fear, threaten to degenerate man into a sentimental, passive, herd animal? Not at all. The powerful force of competition which, in bourgeois society, has the character of market competition, will not disappear in a socialist society, but, to use the language of psychoanalysis, will be sublimated, that is, will assume a higher and more fertile form. There will be the struggle for one's opinion, for one's project, for one's taste. In the measure in which political struggles will be eliminated – and in a society where there will be no classes, there will be no such struggles – the liberated passions will be channelled into technique, into 576 construction which also includes art. Art then will become more general, will mature, will become tempered, and will become the most perfect method of the progressive building of life in every field. It will not be merely ―pretty‖ without relation to anything else. All forms of life, such as the cultivation of land, the planning of human habitations, the building of theatres, the methods of socially educating children, the solution of scientific problems, the creation of new styles, will vitally engross all and everybody. People will divide into ―parties‖ over the question of a new gigantic canal, or the distribution of oases in the Sahara (such a question will exist too), over the regulation of the weather and the climate, over a new theatre, over chemical hypotheses, over two competing tendencies in music, and over a best system of sports. Such parties will not be poisoned by the greed of class or caste. All will be equally interested in the success of the whole. The struggle will have a purely ideological character. It will have no running after profits, it will have nothing mean, no betrayals, no bribery, none of the things that form the soul of ―competition‖ in a society divided into classes. But this will in no way hinder the struggle from being absorbing, dramatic and passionate. And as all problems in a socialist society – the problems of life which formerly were solved spontaneously and automatically, and the problems of art which were in the custody of special priestly castes – will become the property of all people, one can say with certainty that collective interests and passions and individual competition will have the widest scope and the most unlimited opportunity. Art, therefore, will not suffer the lack of any such explosions of collective, nervous energy, and of such collective psychic impulses which make for the creation of new artistic tendencies and for changes in style. It will be the aesthetic schools around which ―parties‖ will collect, that is, associations of temperaments, of tastes and of moods. In a struggle so disinterested and tense, which will take place in a culture whose foundations are steadily rising, the human personality, with its invaluable basic trait of continual discontent, will grow and become polished at all its points. In truth, we have no reason to fear that there will be a decline of individuality or an impoverishment of art in a socialist society ... 577 19 Andre Malraux The Work of Art: Speech to the International Association of Writers for the Defense of Culture This Congress of ours has been held under the worst possible conditions. Through the cooperation of a few, and with almost no money. Just have a look at the press clippings on the bulletin-board at the door. From an occasional outburst of wrath, but above all, from the impressive silence, we are henceforth aware that this Congress exists. Yet, if it held no more than the possibility of giving as large an audience as possible to books which in their own countries are no longer able to find one, if it did no more than cement our union with a host of exiled comrades – a sense of solidarity which will be found expressed in its resolutions – this gathering would not be in vain. But it has another meaning than that. You read yesterday the speeches of the French Fascists. It is for each of us, then, as man and man, to take his place at the post of combat. But let us not, through an absurd preoccupation with the military aspect of things, underestimate that power of thought, which today makes it possible for our Balkan comrades, banned at home, to return home whether in French or in English, for the simple reason that this Congress has taken it upon itself to have their works translated. It is in the nature of Fascism to be a nation; it is ours to be a world. Much has been said here concerning the defense of culture; but it may be that the best thing about the Congress is the comprehension borne in upon us that the question is not to be put that way. Let me explain. When an artist of the Middle Ages carved a crucifix, when an Egyptian sculptor hewed out a funeral-mask, they were creating what we would term fetishes or holy images; they did not think of their carvings as art objects; they would not have been able to conceive of such a thing. A crucifix stood for the Christ, a funeral-mask for the dead; and the idea of their being some day brought together in the same museum, in order that we might study their lines and masses, would have struck their makers as nothing more or less than a profanation. In a locked case in the museum of Cairo, there are a number of statuettes. They are the earliest representations of man. Up to that time, there had been but the concept, a good deal easier to grasp, of the spiritual double, who abandoned man in sleep, before leaving him for good in the sleep of death. As I went through the museum, I caught sight of a visitor who was taking the measurements of these carvings; and 1 could not but think of how dumbfounded the one who made them would have been, had he been able to foresee that his work would end up as an artistic problem – such the outcome of that moment, some three thousand years before Christ, and somewhere in the 578 neighborhood of the Nile, when a nameless carver of images first took it upon himself to depict the human soul. Every work of art is created to satisfy a need, a need that is passionate enough to give it birth. Then the need withdraws from the art-work as blood from a body, and the mysterious process of transfiguration sets in. The art-work, thereupon, enters the realm of shades; and it is only our own need, our own passion which can summon it forth again. Until such a time, it is like a great, sightless statue, before which there passes a long drawn out procession of the blind. And the impulsion which shall bring one of the blind to the statue shall be sufficient to open both their eyes at once. We have but to go back a hundred years in order to find utterly ignored any number of works which today are among the most indispensable that we possess. Two hundred years, and we shall find the radiant, withered smile of Gothic become synonymous with the grin. A work of art is an object; but it is, in addition, an encounter with time; and I am aware, needless to say, that we have made the discovery of history. Works born of love may find their way to the store-loft or to the museum, which is scarcely a happier fate. Any work is dead, the moment love has ebbed. Nevertheless, there is a meaning to all this. Art, thought, poems, all the old dreams of mankind – if we have need of them in order to go on living, they have need of us that they may live again. Need of our passion, our longings – need of our will. They are not mere sticks of furniture, standing about for an inventory after the owner's death; rather, they are like those shades in the infernos of old, eagerly awaiting the approach of the living. Whether or not we mean to do so, we create them in creating ourselves. His very impulse to create leads Ronsard to resurrect Greece; Racine, Rome; Hugo, Rabelais; Corot, Vermeer. There is not a single great individual creation which is not enmeshed in the centuries, which does not trail after it the slumbering grandeurs of the past. Our inheritance is not handed down; it is one to be achieved. Writers of the West, we are engaged in a bitter struggle with that which is our own. Comrades of the Soviets, you did well to hold your Moscow Congress beneath the portraits of the great of old; but what we expect of that civilization of yours, which has safeguarded those masterpieces, through blood and famine and typhus, is something more than a mere show of reverence; we expect you once again to wrest from them a fresh and significant aspect. Down underneath our common volition, a thousand differences are at play. But that volition is; and when we shall be no longer anything more than historical phases of our time, when all those differences shall have disappeared in the fraternal embrace of death, we would still that the spirit which, in spite of all our weaknesses and all our bickerings, has brought us together here should be the thing which in the end will work a new metamorphosis on time's wrinkled visage. For every work of art becomes a symbol and a sign, but not always of the same thing. A work of art implies the possibility of a reincarnation. And the world of history can only 579 lose its meaning in the contemporary will of man. It is for each of us, in his own field and through his own efforts, and for the sake of all those who are engaged in a quest of themselves, to recreate the phantom heritage which lies about us, to open the eyes of all the sightless statues, to turn hopes into will and revolts into revolutions, and to shape thereby, out of the age-old sorrows of man, a new and glowing consciousness of humankind. 580 581 582