us struggle of the just against the unjust; at the
fall of the wicked, the triumph of the innocent,--the furrowed and
rugged faces glow with sympathy, all hearts proclaim the loveliness of
virtue, or are unanimous in the condemnation of vice. Full of just
indignation against the aggressor, of generous sympathy with the
oppressed, shall the palpitating throng stay the quick throbbing of
their hearts to inquire of the men of the senses if they may _admire_,
or of the critics and schoolmen if they may _approve_? Their intuitions
have already decided the question for them. Why do the masses always
accord in their estimation of the just and unjust? why do they always
agree about glory and shame, vice and virtue, courage and cowardice? why
do they always find Beauty in the success of suffering virtue, the
triumph of oppressed innocence, the rescue of the wronged and helpless?
The answer throws its light over the whole world of art: Because God's
justice, even when it condemns themselves, is one of the Divine
attributes for whose enjoyment they were created; because it stands
pledged that whatever may be the disorder visible upon earth, it will
rule in awful majesty over the final ordering of all things. The soul,
urged on by an unconscious yet imperative thirst for the Absolute,
having in vain tried to find its realization in a world furrowed by
vanities and scared by vices, takes its flight to the clime of the
ideal, to find there the growth of eternal realities. The poet builds
ideal worlds in which he strives to find the absolute, adorning them
with all the beauties for which the human heart pines: heroism,
patriotism, devotion, love, take form and find appropriate expression;
for all is wisdom, power, liberty, and harmony in the artistic realms.
Art is a celestial vision which God sends to his exiled children, to
give them news of the invisible world for which they were created, to
soothe their sorrows, to turn their thoughts and affections to their
true centre. Art is the transient realization, the momentary possession
of the desires of the soul!

There is then a Beauty inaccessible to the senses, above the narrow
limit of technical laws, which a simple and uncorrupted people
intuitively feel and love, for which the masses reserve their most
profound admiration, and which it is unquestionably the province of the
true artist to manifest through whatever medium he may have chosen as
his specific branch of art. The delight