the ideas and sentiments which kindle the soul to
admiration and awe. These feelings belong to every one by nature, and
are most powerful when most felicitously called out by the magic of the
master, who requires time and labor to perfect his skill. Art is
therefore popular, and appeals to every one, but to those most who live
in the great ideas on which it is based. The peasant stands awe-struck
before the majestic magnitude of a cathedral; the man of culture is
roused to enthusiasm by the contemplation of its grand proportions, or
graceful outlines, or bewitching details, because he sees in them the
realization of his ideas of beauty, grace, and majesty, which shine
forever in unutterable glory,--indestructible ideas which survive all
thrones and empires, and even civilizations. They are as imperishable as
stars and suns and rainbows and landscapes, since these unfold new
beauties as the mind and soul rest upon them. Whenever, then, man
creates an image or a picture which reveals these eternal but
indescribable beauties, and calls forth wonder or enthusiasm, and
excites refined pleasures, he is an artist. He impresses, to a greater
or less degree, every order and class of men. He becomes a benefactor,
since he stimulates exalted sentiments, which, after all, are the real
glory and pride of life, and the cause of all happiness and virtue,--in
cottage or in palace, amid hard toils as well as in luxurious leisure.
He is a self-sustained man, since he revels in ideas rather than in
praises and honors. Like the man of virtue, he finds in the adoration of
the deity he worships his highest reward. Michael Angelo worked
preoccupied and rapt, without even the stimulus of praise, to advanced
old age, even as Dante lived in the visions to which his imagination
gave form and reality. Art is therefore not only self-sustained, but
lofty and unselfish. It is indeed the exalted soul going forth
triumphant over external difficulties, jubilant and melodious even in
poverty and neglect, rising above all the evils of life, revelling in
the glories which are impenetrable, and living--for the time--in the
realm of deities and angels. The accidents-of earth are no more to the
true artist striving to reach and impersonate his ideal of beauty and
grace, than furniture and tapestries are to a true woman seeking the
beatitudes of love. And it is only when there is this soul longing to
reach the excellence conceived, for itself alone, that great w