upon lower in another's footsteps, who has uncon | the recompense, scarcely for the praise and sciously left his own tracks for a season more the fame, though these naturally suggest conspicuous than those of his predecessor, themselves to his mind, as proper influences is made to pay, as an offense, for the passing that cheer him when he faints, and stimufavor of good fortune. Nor, even where late him to new exertions when he would the imitation is not apparent, but where the shrink back from very weariness. He canaim is inferior, will the results be finally not help but build! It is because of the otherwise. There may be an originality God working in his soul that he seeks to which is yet without a becoming purpose. raise a temple. His struggle to erect this To seek simply after the satisfaction of a list-structure betrays his secret sense of properless mood; to strive, in stimulating a feverish and morbid appetite, to minister to vicious tastes, to drowsy faculties, by temporary expedients in art, by clever surprises, by glittering but unsubstantial shows, the slight fetches of a talent that is capable of small exertions only, will not suffice long for the gratification of an intellectual people. It is, as we have urged already, in the design only, in the fresh classical conception of a vigorous imagination, bold, rich, free, generous, comprehensive and ingenious, that admiration becomes permanent, and reputation grows into that fixed condition which the world finally calls fame. The design of the builder must be first apparent; the grand outlines, the great bulk upheaved the plain, massive but with what wondrous symmetry of proportion; a maze, but with what adinirable simplicity of plan; showing, at a glance, the classical conception, the daring scheme, the appropriate thought, and that dependency of detail in all the parts upon the main idea, by which the mighty fabric of imagination and art is sustained and embellished. We must see in the work before us, not only that the builder himself knew what he was about, that he did not work blindly and at random; but we must be prepared to acknowledge, as we gaze, that his work is entirely his own; that his copy has not been set for him; that he has striven with a native birth, and struck his shaft into a hitherto unbroken soil with the vigor of an arm that obeyed an impulse equally noble and independent. We must behold that indubitable freshness in the conception, which we can liken to nothing already familiar to our fancies. We must see in the artist that eagerness of bent, that enthusiasm of mood, which proves his own conviction of a new discovery. And it must not be because we behold him, that he works. It must be because of a love for the labor, that he addresses himself to its execution. He builds neither for the shelter nor ties in the true and beautiful, which his own nature entertains, and which he seeks to symbolize and to evolve, as well as he may, and in the best materials, for the delight and satisfaction of others. The decorations of his temple have an equal significance. They declare for the tastes, as the fabric itself speaks for the religion of the artist. The sentiments, which are only so many passions informed by the affections and subdued to a spiritual delicacy by the active intervention of the soul, now busy themselves in embellishing the apartments. The chambers are to be furnished, the high saloon, the lofty portico, the altar-place and the niche. Music and the dance are to be present, to spell, with a seasonable soothing, the pauses between majestic lessons and affectionate discourse. Intellect must make itself felt, superior and winning, through some, if not all, of the human agencies. There must be eloquence, though it be that of the passions only. There should be song, though it speaks as freely the language of mere mirth and frivolity, as that of poetry and love; and we shall not quarrel with the scheme of enjoyment, which is made to minister in a temple meant for so various an audience, if art demeans herself in some lowlier forms, to pleasure and to persuade a class who are not yet worthy to penetrate the inner sanctuary. The muse that stoops to elevate, does not degrade her dignity by the temporary concession to the lowly and the mean. There will be a better life in consequence, more of an inner life, in the humanity which is thus plucked from its wallow by the offices of art, which will amply compensate for any reproach that might otherwise fall upon her temples, from the admission of those who have been hitherto thought unworthy. What we too frequently esteem as brutal, is nothing more than roughness; and we must not forget that the noblest fabric of art is still meant as a place of refuge for humanity. The cathedral loses none of its sacred character, because the vicious sometimes crawl along its aisles; and it lessens not the virtue in the offices of religion, because music is employed to appeal to the sensual nature. The heart is reached through the senses, when we should vainly appeal to the intellect; and we must be careful not to withhold from the stubborn the attractions of any influence, the proper employment of which may make them accessible to yet higher teachings. The sensual may still occupy a place within our temples-must be there, perhaps, so long as humanity is the simple occupant; but the sensual may be trained to be the minister of the ideal, and the spiritual man may have his regeneration on that hearthstone where the worst passions of the heart may have laid themselves down to sleep at nightfall It is a miserable error and a bigotry of the worst blindness, which presumes to repudiate the offices of art when they would minister to a better nature in the vicious heart of man. For, however rude and erring may be the rites in her temples, they are still calculated to elevate the aims of such as seek their ministration. The very office of art is to purify, and her agency is still that of the intellectual man. She still toils, whatever be her faults, in behalf of him who struggles-blinded it may be, and frequently overthrown in the attempt-to attain that better condition to which the races, without their own consciousness, are for ever addressing their endeavors. Genius, of whatever description, and however false, under perverse influences, to its high commission and eternal trusts, is still of an immortal and endowing nature. It is because of this redeeming security for humanity which it possesses, that it commands the world's eye, and in some degree the world's admiration, even when it most seems to practise against the world's happiness. It is in the conviction that we feel, that the great fabric, though sometimes prostituted to the business of the brothel, is nevertheless a temple where thousands drink in the influences of a purer and more grateful atmosphere than that to which they are ordinarily accustomed. However unclean the structure, we yet behold in its design and durableness the working of a rare and blessed divinity, the holiness of whose altars we must recognize, though the god himself may be in exile. It is for us, not to abandon the shrine be cause the profligate have expelled him from it; but to endeavor so to purify the temple, that we may persuade him back to the altar, which we hallow with a purer service. It is in this spirit that we are to employ the offices and the temples of every form of art, to make them clean and holy; not surrender them, because of their partial degradation, wholly to this foul route to which, with a nicer regard to our tastes than our faith and duty, we have too early and too easily yielded them. Let us, more wisely, with the strong sense and the enthusiastic spirit of Martin Luther, determine that the devil shall not possess himself of all the fine music! To yield him up all the agencies by which the heart of man may be touched, in his hours of care or weariness or relaxation, is surely to contribute wonderfully to the spread of Satan's dominion, and to increase, with woful odds against them, the toils of the saints, in their warfare for the Church of Christ. Such as we have endeavored to describe him is the Master of Fiction, and under such laws and motives will he bring forth his best performances. We have preferred setting forth his higher offices, and the more encouraging and elevating standards which enforcn and regulate his labors. All of these belong to poetry-the noblest fashion of human art, whether we regard it in its epic, its lyrical, or dramatic forms. The same standards applied to prose narrative-the romance or the novel-are as legitimately desirable ie these forms as in any other, by him who craves amusement and needs instruction. The aims of prose fiction are precisely those of poetry, simply contemplating another and a larger audience. Nay, the audience may be the very same. There are persons who care nothing for music,-who do not comprehend its happy harmonies, and those delicious flights of sound which, through a sensual medium, lift the soul to objects of divinest contemplation. Yet, to such persons, the same object is gained by other artists-the poet or the painter; and the spirit which the musician would deem utterly callous to all tender influences, is made to overflow with sympathy when appealed to through an agency with which its affinities are naturally strong. And he who is insensible to the intricate charms of poetry-"the measured file. and metrical array" of art-will yield himself very joyfully to the very lessons which he rejects in verse, if his teacher will employ susceptible of general use and employment a more simple and less ambitious medium. as any other. It is probable that the very Fortunately for the susceptibilities of the race, same class of persons who now denounce the Genius of Art, who addresses herself to its prose fiction would be equally hostile to exigencies, is of vast compass and wonderful poetry-nay, are confessedly hostile to it in flexibility. She adapts herself to all condi- its dramatic forms, and as anxious now to tions, and contrives a spell to make every exclude Shakspeare from use, as the more affection, in some degree, her own. Noth- discriminating moralist would be to suppress ing can stale her infinite variety; and, as her the prurient writings of Sue and Paul de purpose and destiny are universal conquest, Kock. Dull men, who are at the same time so she is empowered to adapt her ministry vain men, are always to be found, to whom to the condition of the individual, so that his the beautiful in art appears only like a false inner nature shall feel the touch of an influ- syren, glozing in the ears of the unwary, and ence by which his purification may begin. beguiling the ignorant from the secure paths. It is no less within her province to render They would have the young voyager seal up classical-in other words, to make appropriate his ears to any charming but their own; and and becoming-every form of utterance and the better to accomplish this object, they exhibition which will contribute in any inea- cloak their desires with shows of exterior sure to the attainment of her vital objects. morality, and, in the accents of the holiest This is the conclusive answer to all that one- mission, promote the objects of the worst. sided class of critics, who narrow the province Perhaps there is no worse foe to purity and of the classical either to the simply pre-religion than mere dulness. The dulness scriptive, or to that one single form of ex- which compels the attention of the young, pression to which their tastes or their studies when the heart is eager to go forth and be most incline them. They overlook entirely free in the sunshine, and in the pleasant the catholic nature of art, which accommo- atmosphere of birds and flowers, in process of dates its lessons, like any other schoolmaster, time becomes a tyranny which compels men to its several classes, and is careful to insinu- to seek in secret, and consequently with some ate its wishes through a new medium, when degree of shame, that very Being who was it finds itself stubbornly resisted in the old. dispatched to earth with the most beneAs there is no more good reason why a poem ficent commission of sympathy and love. should be compassed in twelve books and If you denounce prose fiction, such as we the Spenserian stanza, than in five acts and have indicated, a fiction which contemplates in the fashion of the drama,—so the plan of the highest objects of art, and which is susa romance in prose, in one, two, or three vol- ceptible of the noblest forms to which art umes, is not a whit less acceptable to the has ever yet given expression,-you must Genius of Classic Art, than if the same ma- equally denounce poetry and music. Its terials were wrought into heroics and tagged flexibilily, greater than either of these, is yet with the unnecessary but beautiful append- equally subject to arbitrary standards-standage of rhyme. We must insist upon this ards which exact equal obedience to certain the more, because of the lamentable bigotry principles of art, to say nothing of the laws of certain literary purists-to say nothing of of nature, inevitable in the case of all. That their ignorance in relation to this subject. its privileges are larger, does not render its Of course, we are not to be understood as exercise less proper or becoming. Its aims arguing in respect to the abuses of the may be quite as daring as those of poetry, popular novel, the low purposes to which its machinery as wild and wondrous, and it is put, and the inferior objects which are to employ a word the literalness of which too frequently aimed at in its composition. might almost forbid its use in this connection All forms of art, all doctrines, all faith and as impossible and visionary. It is not less custom-the offices of religion, the purest privileges of love and society-are, in like manner, subject to abuse, and not unfrequently employed thus for their own desecration and defeat. Our purpose is only to show that this particular form of fiction is quite as legitimate in its origin and quite as true because of its impossibles. It is a truth in the seed, to germinate hereafter; a truth of the spiritual nature; that superior mood by which we are so imperfectly yet impressively informed, and of which, at present, we have such vague and unsatisfying glimpses. Our cravings furnish sufficient arguments to L its establish the truthfulness of fiction, and to prove its legitimacy as an universal element of delight and desire, natural to the hopes and to the imagination of mankind. Fiction, indeed, is neither more nor less than probable truth under intenser conditions than ordinary. It is quite as properly the organ of religion, one of the aids of faith, as any prayer that ever ascended from bearded patriarch, or any praise of the devotee that ever borrowed the wings of song to cleave the vaulted roof of the temple in making way to heaven. It has been the frequent language of all religions. It is employed in the form of fable, and parable, and allegory, by Deity himself; and no more remarkable specimen of romance was ever framed for the wondering delight and instruction of man, than the noble drama embodied in the Scriptures which describes the cruel trials of the man of Uz! We say not these things with irreverence, but rather with an acute sense of the perfect propriety with which man may use those divinest forms of intellect which God has given him, and which have never been thought indecorously employed when celebrating the works, the glory, and the benevolence of God. That he should not degrade them to base uses, has been the leading motive of this essay. That modern fiction should incorporate a history of mortal loves and mortal disappointments; that it should be yielded up to a homely narrative of the thousand cares and vices that vex the wayward heart, and embitter its perverse struggles; that it should involve humiliating details of licentiousness and crime; that it should portray passion in the form of its most wilful exercise, and depict the hopeless and various miseries which flow from its indulgence; no more lessens the propriety of its claims to minister for the good and safety, the direction and the reproof of man, than do like events in the career of David, the man of such generous, but of so many wild and violent impulses, the murderer of Uriah, the ravisher of Bathsheba, the man who erred, and suffered, and atoned, as man is seldom found to do in the ordinary progress of an age. There, indeed, in that sacred and startling history, do we find a model romance, than which none more terribly pleasing and instructive could be found in the whole compass of romantic fiction. But even through the corruption springs the flower. The history of man on earth, what ever be his crimes and errors, if it be honestly written, nothing extenuate, and nothing overwrought, is always a religious history. It is the history of his training for another state; and, whether he makes proper progress or falters by the wayside, does not impair the value of the history in its influence on other men. In the one case, it were a lamp to guide; in the other, a beacon to forewarn. The hues of romance which it is made to wear, the purple lights and the soft attractive colors which constitute its atmosphere, and commend it to the heart which might shrink from the touch of a truth unskilfully applied,-do not diminish the value of the moral which it brings; do not lessen its healing attributes, or take from what is wholesome in the sting and bitter which it employs, to goad the slumbering conscience into sensibility. Nor is this atmosphere of poetry unreal or unnatural. It is the very atmosphere which marks the progress of passionate youth, and serves in some degree to retard the violence of the passions, when a more rigid morality has failed of its effect. Nor should it be urged against the arts of fiction that, for so long a season after youth has passed for ever, they bring back glimpses of its better hopes-its summer fancies-its skies without a cloud, and its songs without a murmur. Romance, in fact, would seem to be the handmaid whose affections are won by youth, that they should find a solace for it when youth is gone. She is employed to bring warmth to his bosom in age, even as the physical nature of the monarch-minstrel was kept in life by fresh contact with innocent girlhood. She is the restorer to the fancy of all that delicious atmosphere which hung about the heart in youth. She brings back to us all our first glowing and most generous conceptions; when the soul was least selfish, when the affections were most fond; ere strife had made the one callous, or frequent defeat and disappointment had rendered the other sour and suspicions. Beheld through her medium, there is nothing in life which is vulgar and degrading. All its fancies are pure, and show as luxuriantly as they are bright and fresh. It is not, indeed, through the fancies and the tastes that sin assails the heart. It is through the passions only, and in the utter absence of the faney, and those tastes which the fancy usually originates, that wild and vicious appetites inflame the lowlier nature, and give it an ascendency ( he rejects in verse, if his teach a more simple and less amb Fortunately for the susceptil the Genius of Art, who addr exigencies, is of vast comp flexibility. She adapts F tions, and contrives a s affection, in some degre ing can stale her infinit purpose and destiny: so she is empowered to the condition of t! inner nature shall fe ence by which his It is no less with classical-in other and becoming-e exhibition which sure to the att This is the conc sided class of er of the classic scriptive, or pression to w most inclin the catholi dates its le to its seve As ther the S in the a ro ume Ger teri wit ag th ་ the proper exercise, the relief ication of the soul. The phich art teaches, is the faith with ta begins; a faith which youth apt to forget, in the more earthy manhood; but which it is the gvocation of art, as tributary to still to re-inspire. It is in this way at is always young and original. Every ration discovers in her a new aspect. iforms, new guises, declare for her remacy over the monotonous and tamely urring aspects of ordinary time. It is cause heedless of this peculiar virtue in 22 constitution of this catholic Muse, that we find the critic of hackneyed judgment, grown too subservient to the customary to appreciate the fresh, resenting as a vice the assumption of new phases in the very Genius which he has worshipped under another form. He seems unwilling to believe that there * should be any longer a novelty in art, when there is no longer a freshness in his own des- nature. |