A Plea for Art [pp. 624-626]

part also of the whole man? Have they, any of things are a part of the inevitable history of man.
them, any apparatus for the education of that They are a part of his very nature. No state
part of the whole man? Can they hold out the of society can be perfect without them. A state
promise of readiness to educate the whole man of society entirely without them is very far from
while they have no such apparatus? Who but perfect, all that the love of Do-nothingism, or
God made the souls of the Artists, who poured the adoration of the clink of the Omnipotent
Beauty and Grandeur in such munificence and Dollar may say to the contrary notwithstanding.
magnificence upon the Acropolis at Athens? Pericles, Maecenas; and Cosmo de Medici were
Who else gave to Florence and to all succeeding not fools. They were not base, narrow spirits.
ages, the soul of Michael Angelo, yearning after, The world is not, this day, the worse that they
and creating all artistic beauty that man's soul have lived in and adorned it. There are feelcan know? Who made the souls of all those who ings over which art can exert a most potent inmade " the fairy halls" of the Etrurian Athens? fluence for good. Nothing else can exert that
Who gave the souls of those who have made influence. The want of it, in the absence of
even modern Rome "the City of the Soul"? art, must and does leave a drooping and defiAnd who indeed but that God whom she has cient character, individually and socially. On
sometimes declared to be a non-entity, kindled what just grounds could it be thought, by the
the taste and spirit which decorate (partly with coldest, hardest mind among us, that a~Acadeher own genius and partly by plunder) even that my of Music, Painting, Sculpture and Architectigress courtezan of cities, modern Paris? Why ture would be nonsense to-day, in Virginia or
then is this God-given impulse to be totally omit- any other of our States?
ted in our boasted systems of education for the But it may be said that Art wedded itself to
whole man? How can American education make the superstitions of a corrupt religion in mediepretension*to completeness while there is such val Europe, so that art had to be destroyed bea hiatus in it? There is hardly an educational fore superstition itself could be destroyed; that
instrumentality for that end, and for the male art has always been the nursing mother of susex, in our state. There is probably none of perstition; that the spiritual heroes of the sixmuch account in the United States. Unless in- teenth century found that the only way to oust
deed perspiration over Homer and Virgil; the the rooks was to pull down the rookeries. This
stealthy and snatched perusal of Shakspeare, may all be true. Perhaps it is. We will not
Byron, and Bulwer; the shilly-shally looking at defend Art at the expense of truth, freedom, or
pictures in rotundas, society-halls, or costly or- social purity. But the mischief complained of,
nithological toy-books, can be regarded as such -$ung not from art itself; but from the wedlock
an instrumentality. It may be replied that therm of art and superstition. That this is not a neis hardly such an instrumentality in connection cessary union, that pure religion and art can cowith a College or University in the world any- exist with mutual honor and advantage, that the
where. Be it so. In old countries there are very purest spirit of religion is consistent with
associations of individuals and families with the very noblest love of Beauty, the name of
their native places, for time to which neither the MILTON alone will sufficiently attest. The union
memory nor thLrecords of man run back. There of the church and the state produced very great
is history, deelmnchanting antiquity; and there evils at the very same time when these evils of
are galleries, cathedrals, courts, piazzas, rich art blended with superstition were felt. It is just
with the mature collected fruits of 4rt for many as logical and as wise, to say that there ought to
ages, which serve as both nurseries and refecto- be no church at all, or no state at all, because
ries or the Love of the Beautiful. Even if these these two, in unlawful wedlock, produced monthings were not so, Europe is no model for us. strous evils, as to say that there ought to be no
The bonds of local attachment are bursting upon art, because art blended with religion, produced
her shores. The "disjecta membra" are thick monstrous superstitions. The simple answer is:
on our shores. In new States, where social life let us have the church and the state, but not uniis yet too recent and too raw for the deeper ted;-let us have the religion and the art, but not
charms of the historic and poetic muses, where united; let us have the pure high art of an enroving locomotion and small attachment to house- lightened age, and not the sickly and corrupt art
hold gods is too much a peculiarity of the citi- of the dark ages. We can surely at length learn
zens, where the "restlessness and wild eudea- that the abuse of things, if not necessarily inciyour" of man's heart needs the oil of this sort dent to their use, is no just ground of their imof consecration, such instrumentalities are more peachment.
needed than in other States, and must prob- There is an incessant, and probably increasably depend more upon a connection with in- ing influx of European literature upon us. It
stitutions of learning for their existence. These comes preaching daily to open ears, things that
VOL. XV-79
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A Plea for Art.
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