ed to little effect by such as
receive with indiscriminate and phlegmatic avidity all that is handed
down to them in the shape of experience or time-sanctioned rule. But
plastic art claims not merely our sympathy, in its highest capacity
to emit thought and sentiment; but as form, colour, light, life, and
beauty; and who shall settle the claims between thought and beauty?
But art has beauties of its own, which neither impair nor contradict
the beauties of nature; but which are not of nature, and yet are,
inasmuch as art itself is but part of nature: and of such, the
beauties of the nature of art, is the feeling for constructive
beauty. It interferes not with truth or sentiment; it is not the
cause of unlikely order and improbable symmetry; it is not bounded by
line or rule, nor taught by theory. It is a feeling for proportion,
ever varying from an infinity of conflicting causes, that balances
the picture as it balances the Gothic edifice; it is a germ planted
in the breast of the artist, that gradually expands by cultivation.

To those who would foster its development the only rule we could
offer would be never to leave a design, while they imagine they could
alter for the better (subordinate to the truth of nature) the place
of a single figure or group, or the direction of a line.

And to such as think it beneath their care we can only say that they
neglect a refinement, of which every great master takes advantage to
increase the fascination which beauty, feeling, or passion, exercises
over the multitude.

A Testimony

I said of laughter: It is vain;--
Of mirth I said: What profits it?--
Therefore I found a book, and writ
Therein, how ease and also pain,
How health and sickness, every one
Is vanity beneath the sun.

Man walks in a vain shadow; he
Disquieteth himself in vain.
The things that were shall be again.
The rivers do not fill the sea,
But turn back to their secret source:
The winds, too, turn upon their course.

Our treasures, moth and rust corrupt;
Or thieves break through and steal; or they
Make themselves wings and fly away.
One man made merry as he supp'd,
Nor guessed how when that night grew dim,
His soul would be required of him.

We build our houses on the sand
Comely withoutside, and within;
But when the winds and rains begin
To beat on them, they cannot stand;
They perish, quickly overthrown,
Loose at the hidden bas