end, and is
that end as salutary as they would wish? We dare not pronounce judgment.
They may answer that they terrify the unjust rich man by pointing out to
him the yawning pit that lies beneath the frail covering of wealth; just
as in the time of the Dance of Death, they showed him his gaping grave,
and Death standing ready to fold him in an impure embrace. Now, they
show him the thief breaking open his doors, and the murderer stealthily
watching his sleep. We confess we cannot understand how we can reconcile
him to the human nature he despises, or make him sensible of the
sufferings of the poor wretch whom he dreads, by showing him this
wretch in the guise of the escaped convict or the nocturnal burglar. The
hideous phantom Death, under the repulsive aspect in which he has been
represented by Holbein and his predecessors, gnashing his teeth and
playing the fiddle, has been powerless to convert the wicked and console
their victims. And does not our literature employ the same means as the
artists of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance?

The revelers of Holbein fill their glasses in a frenzy to dispel the
idea of Death, who is their cup-bearer, though they do not see him. The
unjust rich of our own day demand cannon and barricades to drive out
the idea of an insurrection of the people which Art shows them as slowly
working in the dark, getting ready to burst upon the State. The Church
of the Middle Ages met the terrors of the great of the earth with the
sale of indulgences. The government of to-day soothes the uneasiness of
the rich by exacting from them large sums for the support of policemen,
jailors, bayonets, and prisons.

Albert Durer, Michael Angelo, Holbein, Callot, and Goya have made
powerful satires on the evils of their times and countries, and their
immortal works are historical documents of unquestionable value. We
shall not refuse to artists the right to probe the wounds of society
and lay them bare to our eyes; but is the only function of art still
to threaten and appall? In the literature of the mysteries of iniquity,
which talent and imagination have brought into fashion, we prefer the
sweet and gentle characters, which can attempt and effect conversions,
to the melodramatic villains, who inspire terror; for terror never cures
selfishness, but increases it.

We believe that the mission of art is a mission of sentiment and love,
that the novel of to-day should take the place of the parable and the
fabl