tions. Nothing acts so powerfully on individual and national
character; nothing so beneficially. Wherever art has been without these
consequences, we may be sure that art was false. Its prophets were false
prophets. The assumption of charlatans, however, is no condemnation of
the art itself. The abuses of idolaters is no argument against religion.
M. Kinkel's introduction to the plan of his work has but one fault. It
is a national one. His mode of reasoning is conclusive; but the English
reader, less accustomed to metaphysical phraseology than his German
neighbours, will find some difficulty in grasping it. According to our
author, two conditions are necessary to true art, which he defines to be
"the incorporation of the spirit in a beautiful form." _Beauty_, then,
and _spirit_ are, the two conditions of true art. If one be wanting,
true art is likewise wanting. The spirit, separate from beauty of form,
may be religion and ethics--it can never be art. Beauty of form without
the spirit, is likewise not a work of art. It remains on a level with
matter; but the production of the artist soars higher. Hence true art is
capable of yielding more universal satisfaction both to the artist and
to the spectator than all other intellectual creations. The reason is
obvious. We express and meet with the two grand constituents of our
being; and, whilst other branches of knowledge are apter to separate
than to unite--whilst science is exclusive, and even religion herself is
sometimes productive of discord, true art asserts her right to be
regarded as the great Pantheon of mankind. No idea is _universal_
property unless expressed by art. Even the vast abyss which separates
the lower orders of men from the ranks above them is overcome by art,
for all are sensible of the joys which art produces. To know, therefore,
what and how the mind and hand of man have hitherto worked, is a
necessary, if it be not an indispensable, investigation and pursuit. "We
are not ambitious," says M. Kinkel, "to conquer fame by profound
hypotheses concerning things which, both by time and place, are indeed
far from us. It is not our object to look for art in its infancy amongst
nations which have long ceased to exist, nor shall we at once turn to
Greece and Rome. Our desire is to contemplate those creations, which
from their time and spirit are kindred to our feelings, and to speak of
that branch of art with which Christianity has been busy within the last
eighte