always sure of obtaining, it allows them to take the evil for the good;
the grotesque for the beautiful; the meteors of vanity for the heaven
stars of truth.

Such artists love not the mighty arches of gothic architecture, in whose
vast curves and dim recesses lurks the mystic idea of the infinite; they
take no interest in the ascetic faces which the old masters loved to
picture, worn into deep furrows of care by penitence and holy sorrow,
though lighted with the triple ray of Faith, Hope, and Love. They have
no sympathies with the saints and heroes who have been great through
self-abnegation, for such lives are a constant reproach to their own
sybaritical tendencies. Constantly mistaking the effervescence of
passion for the fire of genius; viewing the sublime realities of
religion only as fantastic dreams; seeing nothing but the gloom of the
grave beyond the fleeting shadows of the present life; granting reality
to nothing but that which is essentially variable, phenomenal, and
contingent; forever revelling in the luxuriousness of mere
sensation--they understand only that which can be seen and handled. But
the devotion to the True in art is a disinterested worship--a worship
requiring the most heroic self--abnegation; for the love of fame, of
self, of pleasure, will so bewilder and confuse the artist, that he will
never be able to sound the depths of any art. And now, can we wonder if
pure and earnest men utterly refuse to acknowledge the dignity and worth
of art, when manifested to them through the works of fantastically
sensuous, or voluptuously sensual artists? This misconception of the
true aim of art, of the meaning of the Beautiful--with its natural
consequence, merely sensuous manifestations of Beauty through the medium
of different arts--has been one of the causes of the violent and
inveterate prejudices which have arisen against art itself in the minds
of many good men; and, were this view of beauty and art the true one, we
could not deny that such prejudices or opinions would be but too well
founded. To combat such debasing and false views of the aims of art,
will be the chief object of the present volume. If art were to be
degraded into the servant and minister of the senses, we would be among
the first to condemn it. But all Beauty proceeds from the All Fair, who
hath pronounced all 'good,' and 'loveth all that He hath made.'

Leaving the 'men of the senses' in their Circean sleep, we proceed to
question t