It is necessary to have admirers of art. They are the only Republican patrons. Just as in conversation it is full half of the art to listen well.

The history of our artists and the popular feeling on the subject of art confirm the position we have taken. The love of art and the creative power have been spontaneous. They have seemed free outbreaks of native genius — the outworkings of American character. The lives of Allston and Weir and Kellogg among the painters, of Greenough and Clevenger and Powers and Crawford among the sculptors, are striking illustrations. Of our poets Bryant and Longfellow are evidences of the same fact. On the point of artistic merit they have few English rivals. Still farther evidences are found in the galleries and institutions for the encouragement of art, which have lately arisen in the principal cities of our country. We do not indeed compare them with similar institutions in Europe. We speak of them simply as indications of American growthnot wonderful in comparison, but certainly wonderful for us. Those who speak with incredulity or contempt of the genius of our countrymen in the arts of design, need only a sight of the specimens of painting and sculpture in the Boston Atheneum, and similar rooms in New York and Philadelphia, to do involuntary homage to the skill and power of the artists by whom they were produced.

Το

The views we have taken are further substantiated by the peculiar opportunity presented in our new moral and social position. It is not excellence to imitate. Success in the fine arts depends upon the creative faculty. The beautiful is a province of creation. Here in America to repeat the Old World is not desirable; to imitate the follies and sins of European society will be a retrogade movement. revive the splendid affectations of chivalry is beneath the mission of American freedom. Here let a man live to be himself; let the young man preserve the dew of his youth in the glory of manhood; let him be what nature and all the free and pure influences of God may make him. A new man is unfolding himself here, not merely an old man living in a new world. Elements that have never mingled before are meeting here in a new and more earnest strife. A full grown man of the Old World is here to grapple with life's first necessities,

civilized man with un

civilized nature. The toil of the past has been more of endurance than achievement. The few who have nobly striven have yielded their birthright or fallen in the contest. The promise of beautiful youth has failed. A New World brings a new opportunity. May the coming strife prove successful!

America, then, is peculiarly fitted for the exercise and development of the creative faculty. It is a new world, with new influences and free from old restraints. The temptation to imitate is comparatively small. And what the fine arts now demand for a new impulse, what they want in all senses, is not so much galleries and schools, and these not at all unless they preserve strictly an American character, not the Cartoons or Elgin marbles, not the grand old pictures even; but a more correct knowledge of what true art really is, not as Grecian or Italian art, but as a universal and eternal thing,—what are its purposes and objects, and by what means these can be reached. Life in America, we have said, is a new thing, and the artist must be true to the new condition and character. These he must express. By these he must be tried, and not by the masters of the past alone. It is vain to suppose that our social condition, so different from any previous state, will nurture or fashion the arts on any old model. In ourselves we must be our Own model. To start in our progress from the old point, that of Grecian or Mediaval art, will be the certain prophecy of failure, for the old sources of inspiration are not about us. Our feelings and sympathies are excited by new influences; they are new themselves. These we must represent, and no others. To these we must be true and loyal. Following any others, we shall be false to ourselves, to our character, and of consequence our toil and love will all be in vain. We must create. Imitation will degrade and sink us. Living, as we do, under the influences of a Republican government and the Protestant religion, we must build houses and churches that shall represent these new ideas of national and religious life, not the palaces of kings, not Catholic cathedrals. We must paint and carve men and women after the likeness of ourselves, not after the forms of Greece or Italy. Our painting and sculpture must represent action as we act, and feeling as we feel. It will not do to paint

gods or goddesses whom we laugh at, or saints in whom we do not believe, or heroes with whom we have no sympathy. To do anything great we must represent the life that is going on in the New World and in the present, not the life of the Old World and of the past, however ancient or grand or venerable the Old World and the past may seem. We want artists who shall prove themselves as true to the American character as Bryant has proved himself in his poetry, and Webster in his eloquence. If we answer this condition, that is, if we are true to ourselves and if we continue American, we must be a creative people in the Fine Arts as we already are in the Useful. To express faithfully and vigorously the American character and life in the direction of beauty, will produce a new school of art as certainly as our character and life are new and original.

Thus far, we readily admit, that we have realized but little. We dwell upon the promise and prophecy, which are by no means insignificant or small. Our success in the arts, as in all things holy and great, will depend upon our fidelity to the influences and condition of the New World. We must maintain and carry out the American character. This is the vital point, and on it we need to fix all our attention. If science and religion flourish, if we keep the national life sound and healthy, then the fine arts will flourish also, and possess a sound and healthy growth. We of America are not Greeks or Italians. Our religion is not theirs, our feelings are widely different, and our civilization has taken a very different character from theirs. artists therefore are not to express what they believed and felt that would be imitation. Let them express what we believe and feel- - this will be creation. For there is not such a spectacle in history as men producing with any power of life what they have not felt, or influencing others by uttering what they have not believed.

Our

D. C.

ART. III.-POETICAL CONTRIBUTIONS.

I. THE FROST.

THE frost is out amid our open fields,

And late within the woods I marked his track;
The unwary flower his icy finger feels,
And at its touch the crisped leaf rolls back.
Look, how the maple o'er a sea of green
Waves in the autumnal wind its flag of red!
First struck of all the forest's spreading screen,
Most beauteous too, thou earliest of her dead!
Go on; thy task is kindly meant by Him,
Whose is each flower, and richly covered bough;
And though the leaves hang dead on every limb,
Still will I praise his love; that early now

Has sent before this herald of decay,

To bid me heed the approach of winter's sterner day.

J. V.

2

II. THE FUNERAL BELL.

I STOOD amid the bearded corn,
A laborer that summer day;
And heard all songs of nature float
Into the wind - away.

The rain fell fast on distant hills,

And damp and heavy grew the air;
When calmly from the vale below
Stole up a call to prayer —

A funeral toll-distinct and clear,
As ever rang a marriage peal: -
'Pray! pray for one we bury now!
Kneel! kneel! poor mourners, kneel!"

The shadow of the wing of Death
A deeper darkness seemed to lend
Unto the gloom of the flying storm,
Beginning to descend.

Fiercer and fiercer blew the gust,

Tearing the black-piled clouds asunder; Louder and ever louder rolled

The awful tones of thunder.

Yet soft as chance-notes of a dirge,

Breathed by calm lips, unseen the while;
And low and solemn as they thrill
Some vast cathedral pile;

The music of that passing knell

Kept faltering up and down the lea; Like bell-notes rung among the Alps, To bid the tempest flee.

I thought above the raging storm
The sun shone clear in th' upper sky;
And would again look down on us,
When clouds were driven by.

I thought above that burial scene,

Where hearts were bowed with weeping griefs, A spirit, newly winged in heaven,

Hovered, to bring relief.

Soon, fresh and beautiful, the fields

Were spanned with God's benignant smile; And all within its holy light

Seemed sanctified the while.

The village requiem ceased to throb
Upon the sad, attentive ear:

Oh! may the Father's tenderest smile
Have blest the mourner's tear!

R. P. R.

III. A PARABLE.

From the German of Friedrich Rückert.

A PILGRIM led, o'er Syrian sand,
A camel by the halter-band.
The animal, with startled eye,
Grew suddenly so fierce and shy,