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SECTION II.-MORAL.

In a

Form, color, drawing, musical sounds, are, like language, worthless without something to convey— some moral truth instinctive to the life of man. good work, the moral will not appear in one part alone, nor stand in any need of explanation. The statue will breathe it in every limb, it will dictate every note of the music, and no chorus will be needed to preach it into the drama-and in the romance it will not stare in like a sheeted ghost at the close, but live and move throughout, the embodied spirit of the whole. The world, though sinful, has decency enough to honor the appearance of virtue. Though they may take secret pleasure in an immoral work, they will not have the effrontery to praise it as such. God has put salt enough into the dead body to keep it from such utter corruption. The indecent disclosures of Pompeii are withheld from public view, and the prurient productions of prostituted genius are sold by stealth. He is an exceptionally degraded specimen of humanity, who is not ashamed of his vices. The great majority of the corrupt, though they may be shameless among their own class, attempt to cover their corruptions in more respectable company. It is not safe, therefore, for one's own reputation, to contemplate no higher motive, to pander to the tastes of the depraved. Who would covet the praise of the most skillful execution, in a work calculated to bring a blush to the cheek of virtue.

Low pruriency may give a certain kind of undercurrent popularity; but the universal voice of those who confer all permanent and valuable renown, will consign an immoral work to contempt and oblivion. Whoever courts the favor of the vicious, hangs a millstone about the neck of his own fame. A fault in morals is a fault in art.

But genius wofully executes its divine commission if it descend to feel the check of popular morality. To breathe upon the heart of man, secularized by worldly business, the atmosphere of holy beauty; to recommend the charms of truth and goodness; to win, thereby, the affections of men from vice and error, and fan those lofty aspirations, which are kindred to devotion, is the noble moral of art.

Fine taste is a cognate of natural piety; and art, in her proper place, and proudest triumphs, a servant of religion.

-Gerard on Taste. Alison on Taste. Hartley on Man, Part I., Chap. IV., § 1. Coleridge. Henry Nelson Coleridge, Introduction to Greek Poets.

PART III.

LIMITS OF THE FIELD OF ART.

THOUGH it is not to be presumed that every means of reaching the emotion of beauty has already been put in requisition, a classification of the arts according to the elements of human nature which they primarily call into activity, will show that genius has left few conceivable avenues unoccupied. Such a classification will also be the most complete and satisfactory.

I. To begin with our primary notions of the external world, we find a large group of arts, which seek the approbation of taste by means of gratifying the senses. Of these the various senses retain their own respective classes. Sight and hearing, however, are the chief purveyors for the mind: the other three are more concerned in attending to the safety and comfort of the body, and their capacities are narrower and lower. Refinement of mind exalts the worth and dignity of character; refinement in bodily gratifications works only voluptuousness and ultimate degradation of the moral nature.

II. A second group address themselves to the understanding, enlisting the work of the senses only in as far as sensible signs are necessary to communicate the thoughts of one mind to another. Under this head come all the varieties of oratory and elegant literature.

Subordinate to these orders, the individual arts arrange themselves under the particular elements of human nature from which they have sprung, each embodying some phase of the beautiful, peculiar to itself.

CHAPTER I.

THE arts belonging to the first class may be conveniently disposed under the five heads of Plastics, Graphics, Architectonics, Landscape Gardening, and Music: each constituting a separate language, and possessing its peculiar capabilities of expression, and holding its own proper field of ideas.

PLASTIC ART.

Plastic, in accordance with its Greek original, is applied to the art of shaping or modeling, which is consequently concerned with forms, especially organic, and its highest efforts are expended upon the human form, as the most beautiful and interesting to the human eye, as well as the most eloquent in varied meaning. The primary branch, from which the generic name is derived, pertains to modeling in soft

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