, the education of an Artist; on this,
however, we shall at present add but a few words. We use the word
_education_ in its widest sense, as involving not only the growth
and expansion of the intellect, but a corresponding developement of
the moral being; for the wisdom of the intellect is of little worth,
if it be not in harmony with the higher spiritual truth. Nor will a
moderate, incidental cultivation suffice to him who would become a
great Artist. He must sound no less than the full depths of his being
ere he is fitted for his calling; a calling in its very condition
lofty, demanding an agent by whom, from the actual, living world, is
to be wrought an imagined consistent world of Art,--not fantastic,
or objectless, but having a purpose, and that purpose, in all its
figments, a distinct relation to man's nature, and all that pertains
to it, from the humblest emotion to the highest aspiration; the circle
that bounds it being that only which bounds his spirit,--even the
confines of that higher world, where ideal glimpses of angelic forms
are sometimes permitted to his sublimated vision. Art may, in truth,
be called the _human world_; for it is so far the work of man,
that his beneficent Creator has especially endowed him with the powers
to construct it; and, if so, surely not for his mere amusement, but
as a part (small though it be) of that mighty plan which the Infinite
Wisdom has ordained for the evolution of the human spirit; whereby is
intended, not alone the enlargement of his sphere of pleasure, but of
his higher capacities of adoration;--as if, in the gift, he had said
unto man, Thou shalt know me by the powers I have given thee. The
calling of an Artist, then, is one of no common responsibility; and it
well becomes him to consider at the threshold, whether he shall assume
it for high and noble purposes, or for the low and licentious.

Form.

The subject proposed for the following discourse is the Human Form; a
subject, perhaps, of all others connected with Art, the most obscured
by vague theories. It is one, at least, of such acknowledged
difficulty as to constrain the writer to confess, that he enters
upon it with more distrust than hope of success. Should he succeed,
however, in disencumbering this perplexed theme of some of its useless
dogmas, it will be quite as much as he has allowed himself to expect.

The object, therefore, of the present attempt will be to show, first,
that the notion of