instance of the degradation into
which the human mind may fall, when it suffers human works to
interfere between it and its Master. The recommending the color of
an old Cremona fiddle for the prevailing tone of everything, and the
vapid inquiry of the conventionalist, "Where do you put your brown
tree?" show a prostration of intellect so laughable and lamentable,
that they are at once, on all, and to all, students of the gallery,
a satire and a warning. Art so followed is the most servile
indolence in which life can be wasted. There are then two dangerous
extremes to be shunned,--forgetfulness of the Scripture, and scorn
of the divine--slavery on the one hand, free-thinking on the other.
The mean is nearly as difficult to determine or keep in art as in
religion, but the great danger is on the side of superstition. He
who walks humbly with Nature will seldom be in danger of losing
sight of Art. He will commonly find in all that is truly great of
man's works, something of their original, for which he will regard
them with gratitude, and sometimes follow them with respect; while
he who takes Art for his authority may entirely lose sight of all
that it interprets, and sink at once into the sin of an idolater,
and the degradation of a slave.

[O] I should have insisted more on this fault (for it is a fatal
one) in the following Essay, but the cause of it rests rather with
the public than with the artist, and in the necessities of the
public as much as in their will. Such pictures as artists themselves
would wish to paint, could not be executed under very high prices;
and it must always be easier, in the present state of society, to
find ten purchasers of ten-guinea sketches, than one purchaser for a
hundred-guinea picture. Still, I have been often both surprised and
grieved to see that any effort on the part of our artists to rise
above manufacture--any struggle to something like completed
conception--was left by the public to be its own reward. In the
water-color exhibition of last year there was a noble work of David
Cox's, ideal in the right sense--a forest hollow with a few sheep
crushing down through its deep fern, and a solemn opening of evening
sky above its dark masses of distance. It was worth all his little
bits on the walls put together. Yet the public picked up all the
litt