CHAPTER NINTH.

"MEMINI Virum excellentem ingenio et virtute ALBERTUM DURERUM pictorem dicere, se juvenem floridas et maxime varias picturas amasse seque admiratorem suorum operum valde lætatum esse, contemplantem hanc varietatem in sua aliqua pictura. Postea se senem cœpisse intueri NATURAM, et illius nativam faciem intueri conatum esse, eamque simplicitatem tunc intellexisse summum artis decus esse. Quam cum non prorsus adsequi posset, dicebat se jam non esse admiratorem operum suorum ut olim, sed sæpe gemere intuentem suas tabulas, et cogitantem de infirmitate sua."-Epistolæ PHILIPI MELANCHTHONIS, Ep. 47, apud Epistolas D. ERASMь, et P. M.

If we wanted, reader, a confirmation or illustration of Comte's theory, that all knowledge tends to a useful development, just as the flower tends to become a fruit, or as astrology tends to become astronomy, we might find it in the fact that the day has manifestly gone by when the mere belles-lettres scholar was accepted as authority in judging for a people. Nay, we are beginning to perceive, though slowly, that such men are not qualified to write even fair, well-balanced books of travel, and convey a correct idea of other people. Take up any work of the times, giving the impressions or expressions of any scholar, any popular writer, of his travels, and what do we find? Poetry, of course, and

scholarship; the Present judged by the Past-grand reminiscences and ingenious applications to existing men and circumstances. But who among these merely literary observers takes into every calculation that Industrial scientific element which is new to the world, new to history, and which is rapidly modifying social life, habits of reasoning, thought itself in every form? Of what avail is it to visit England with one's head filled with Shakspeare, Bacon, Milton, Newton, Chaucer, Hooker; yes, all the learning and wisdom of the past, if all one can do is to egotistically entertain readers and curiously watch what bits of antiquity still float here and there in manners and `customs? It is all very well, doubtless, but it is all mere blossoms. The growing want of the age is fruit. Not merely the tables and facts of Henry Buckle, not by any means only the contributions of the mere man of science, which are like fruit pared and dried for winter use; but the fruit in all its fresh maturity, beautiful and fragrant as the blossom, combining Past and Present. In short, it is no longer the astrologer whom we want, but the astronomer-and not the mere astronomer either, for to the judicious and truly elevated mind, astronomy, regarded from the stand point of the Beautiful alone, reveals infinitely more beauty and harmony than were ever presented by all the mysticism and dreams of sidereal prophets.

In their highest forms, Art and Science blend and become identical, just as the Good and Beautiful assimi

late, the more we trace them to their source in Truth. Every age has seen, and every age will see, art becoming more practical, yet really not less beautiful. Look over such books as those of Baptista Porta, Weckherus, Bishop Wilkins, or still better, Salverté, and learn how exclusively, in their infancy, steam, mechanics, in fact, every branch of natural philosophy, were devoted to illustrating the merely ornamental and fanciful—the jugglery of superstition, and all its dreams. Even architecture in early ages devoted all its force to producing artistic effect, indwelling comfort being a less than secondary consideration. Little by little Beauty has yielded to Use; or let me rather say, a lower stage of beauty has risen to what will be, when fully developed, a higher one. We are as yet so much under the theatrical influence of the past, that we cannot, dare not, regard the real as noble and beautiful, and we sneer at the practical as at something base. But wait a few years! So surely as my pen now traces these lines, so surely will the practical tendency of this age raise Man to an inconceivably higher and more liberal conception of beauty and art than he ever before entertained. There is nothing more beautiful than Truth, and Truth in this life is hidden in Nature and in man's real wants and capacities; not in Dreams.

I believe that all which we now call poetry and art will fall in with the realizing tendency of the age, with its practical onward march, and be raised to the ranks

of Science or of accurate knowledge. Germany has, in fact, well-nigh made a science of æsthetics, or at least established a basis of classification of all developments in art which future thinkers may carry out. And though we may not now see precisely how it will be that this commonplace, practical progress of steam and electricity, wash-tubs and clothes for the million, will end in being identified with a continual realization of beauty, pleasure and joyousness, it is at least certain that it will be so, and that only a narrow-minded clinging to forms fast wearing out, induces us to rant at this as the

"Wretchedest age, since Time began."

And though we cry out that Art is dead and Poetry no more, we may yet learn that there was infinitely more truth than Bacon himself dreamed of when he said: "That is the best part of beauty which a picture cannot express: no, nor the first sight of the life."

What is to be the Art of the Future?

To answer this question, we must ascertain what was the leading condition or principle under which that which we now call ART was formed, and ascertain whether it is still living though dormant, or whether an entirely new principle is not forming?

It is a matter worth remark, that at present those scholars who are thoroughly penetrated by the spirit of history, and who appreciate that each strongly-worked epoch, and that alone, has given the world a distinctive

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art and literature, are now all anxiously looking forward to a future which shall be brilliant in product. In all by-gone ages, men lived in their present. The Egyptians knew nothing which was not Egyptian; the Dutch painter of the sixteenth century remained firmly Dutch; in all these schools and styles there was no looking outside of nationality, of that which they literally were.

Now we see in architecture, in painting, in poetry, in every product of the kind, simply a gathering up and combining what others have done. Ask what is new in

pictures; we are shown the pre-Raphaelite imitations of Millais and Hunt. Look for novelties in architecture, and we find Norman or Gothic, or "Composite," or "Roman" edifices. The great merit of Tennyson, according to Kingsley, is to have most nearly reproduced the real old English ballad, and so it goes, through the whole circle of art. No wonder that earnest thinkers begin to inquire for the Art of the Future, and wonder what it is to be.

Yet this our age has produced one stupendous original thought, with many of its results; though these are as yet only in the very beginning. I mean Science with its practical applications; its technology, in the form of steam-engines, looms, clothes and food for everybody, and scores of thousands of other novelties. And dilettanti

keep wondering what the Art of the future is to be, when this stupendous power of Science is advancing at colossal strides, inevitably destined in a few years to swallow up