A Glimpse of Contemporary Art in Europe: Second Paper

THE leading department of the Paris Art Exposition of 1867 was genre painting, as it is still of all contemporary art. In this the men of the present day have attained their most conspicuous success. The conditions of life in Central and Northern Europe must always make such pictures and landscapes more popular than any others. This style has never flourished in Italy or in countries where people pass much of their time in the open air, and where the office of art is to decorate churches and the large spaces of palace walls. It was invented in the Low Countries, where it was necessary to make the small interiors cheerful, to compensate for the inclemency out of doors. It has always been loved in England for the same reason. There, the first thing sought by the poor as well as the rich is the comfort of home ; and nothing makes domestic life so delightful as some little bit of color hanging on the walls, or some glimpse of brighter skies and lovelier scenes shining forth from the easel in the flickering firelight, while the curtains are let down to shut out the bare and wintry landscape. At the head of all the artists in this department stood the Prussian Knaus. There were eight grand prizes to be awarded at the Exposition. Of these the Frenchmen took four for themselves,— for Cabanel, Gerome, Meissonier, and Rousseau. Of the four which were left the foreigners on the jury had no difficulty in assigning one to Knaus, who had a majority on the first ballot. He is not so microscopic in his detail as either Gerome or Meissonier, but his art seems to lie closer to the great heart of humanity. His leading picture was the Mountebank showing his tricks before a crowd of peasants, of which there is an engraving well known in this country. This was not only superb in drawing and strong in expression and composition, but it had a sort of vapory beauty of color, of which of course the print can give but a slight idea.

It is unnecessary to say much in this paper of Meissonier, that court painter of Queen Titania, who has accomplished the miracle of the Arabian Nights, and made a hand’s breadth of canvas cover an army. There are several of his pictures in the United States, and photographs from others which are not here, and everybody understands him and admits his extraordinary ability. It so happens that he conciliates all parties, not only the uneducated bumpkin who values a work for the fineness of its detail and the number of pencil-strokes he can count to the square inch,— as if he were judging of a bit of linen cambric,— but the enlightened connoisseur who regards chiefly the strength of form and expression and the power of color and chiaro scuro. It is difficult to say why this artist is not equal to Gerard Dow, except perhaps in those magical effects of light which one sees in the Evening School at Amsterdam. He is not so successful in his later works, especially his military ones, like the Battle of Solferino, notwithstanding he was present on the field riding in the staff of the Emperor. But his personal study of the scene has not enabled him to avoid a sort of dryness of tone in treating it. Indeed, none of his open-air pictures are so pleasing in color and general effect as his interiors,— the Lecture chez Diderot, for instance, where he seems to have transported himself backward in point of time, and to have actually lived — like the famous Count de St. Germain, who was thought to have discovered the elixir of life — among the savans of the eighteenth century. One grows a little tired, perhaps, of the same pearl-gray coat which is so often repeated in these charming interiors ; but the mise-en-scéne is so exact in detail, and the characters so evidently breathe and think, that the picture, which began by appearing a tableau-vivant, with all the old properties utilized over again, ends by becoming a reality. No artist has excelled Meissonier in delicacy of handling ; but, as it has been well said by a French critic, this very quality prevents him from treating so successfully subjects where strong emotion or virile power is to be portrayed. The same exquisite pencil which laboriously produces the minute play of light on a woman’s satin gown cannot so easily depict a soldier dying on the battlefield ; and while be seizes the details with extraordinary perspicacity, he does not always master the totality of a scene. He sometimes exaggerates the objects in the foreground, like the camera of a photographer ; and his local color is often just, while there is a want of general harmony.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by JAMES R. OSGOOD & Co., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

Since we are in the way of comparing the modern genre painters with the older ones, it is fair to say that the two Belgians, Stevens and Willems, are not inferior to Terburg or Metzu. Their elegant interiors, in which women of distinguished presence and superb costumes are occupied in the ordinary actions of polite life, are as good as the cavaliers playing upon the guitar or the ladies arrayed in the famous white satin dresses of those Dutch painters. The women of Stevens remind us a little of the “ fashion-plates “ in the Petit Courrier des Dames, but perhaps those of Terburg, in their time, suggested also the work of the modiste.

One peculiarity of the genre pictures of the present day, and particularly the French, is the far wider range of countries and climates which their subjects embrace. They reflect in this the love of travel which distinguishes this age beyond all others. The Dutch or Flemish painter was content to pass his life in his native town between his dwelling and the tavern, and confined his subjects to what his eyes saw within those narrow limits. But now Gerome paints Turkish butchers and Egyptian Almehs; Fromentin, an Arab bivouac; Bonheur, ponies in the Isle of Sky ; Biard, a slave-ship on the coast of Africa ; Landelle, the snake-charmers of Tangier ; Belly, pilgrims to Mecca ; and Bonnat, Neapolitan peasants. At another point also do the modern genre painters reflect the changes in the world about them. They have kept pace with the advance of archæological learning, and sometimes carry their science so far that it obscures and overlays their art. In estimating the merits of a picture, we must, of course, consider the intelligence of the spectators for whom it was painted, as well as the skill of the artist. There is in Holland a scene of the Flagellation of Christ, in which the executioners wear the multiplied breeches of Dutch peasants, with tobacco-pipes twisted in their hat-bands. Without doubt this picture was more edifying to the honest, ignorant people of that day, than if the Roman soldiers had been represented in the particular uniform of the cohort to which they belonged. The world has grown much more learned since then, and even Rembrandt, if he were now alive, could not make up a satisfactory Oriental scene with nothing but a turban and an old dressing-gown. But this exactness may be carried too far. It is possible to make a picture too archæological, and this is the fault of Alma Tadema, a Dutch artist living in London, who has extraordinary ability and is thought by some to unite in just proportions the detail of the PreRaphaelites with the breadth and general effect of the old school. He gives us scenes in the time of the Pharaohs in which the petty nothings of Egyptian life are represented as minutely as those of a modern fine lady’s boudoir by Toulmouche. But he neglects the flesh and blood for the hieroglyphics, and at some distance one cannot always say which is the mummy and which is Pharaoh’s daughter. Mr. Poynter, an English painter, without being so clever in technical execution as Alma Tadema, exhibited a work at the Royal Academy in 1867 which, while it was sufficiently learned, gave us a stronger feeling of kinship with the human nature of those old days. It showed the Children of Israel in vast numbers, roped and harnessed, and dragging through the sand a colossal sphynx under the blows of their task-masters.

We have spoken of the frivolous and commonplace character of many of the subjects of contemporary genre painting. A striking exception to this is found in the works of Millet and Jules Breton. It has been reserved for modern art to give the serious, pathetic side of peasant life. The Dutch and Flemish painters often represented it as a drunken carouse, and with a perception of little else than mere sensual enjoyment. It was curious to see at the great Exposition how far removed Jules Breton seemed to be from Parisian wickedness, and how completely interpenetrated by the pure and wholesome atmosphere of rural life. His works gleamed out softly and beautifully in their honest tenderness, amongst all those opera-dancers of Dubufe and Cabanel. Nobody but a true genius could have painted those poor Gleaners stooping to their work in that level harvest-field, beyond which the sun was slowly sinking and with its red disk half behind the stubble announcing that the weary day was nearly over. What was lovelier than the Return of the Reapers ? There was a sort of pathetic melancholy in their faces, as if it were their sad lot to toil, and they accepted the duty honestly and reverently. There was something of the same spirit in the works of Edouard Fràre, which are better known in this country, although much inferior to those of either Breton or Millet, and also in the little pictures of Peroff, a Russian painter, and in the more pretentious ones of Israels of Amsterdam. In a different style were the coarse scenes of common life rendered by the Englishman, Erskine Nicol, with no mincing touches or delicate glazings, but with an unctuous impasto which reminded you of paint-skins and palette-knives. They were full of vigorous character, however, although the subjects were so unwashed and dirty that it seemed, as it was said of the works of another man, that they actually smelt and had the odor of St. Giles and the Minories.

Since the Exposition of 1867 there has arisen a new school of genre which shows remarkable power of color and vigor of drawing, and is a sort of reaction against the metallic enamelled style of our modern Mieris, Gerome. Its best pupils are Spaniards such as Fortuny, Villegas, Zamacois, and the younger Madrazo, or others, (like poor Regnault who was killed at the siege of Paris), who seem to have been influenced by studies in Spain. These men are now in fashion, and their works bring the highest prices in Rome and Paris.

We ought not to conclude these rapid touches here and there, upon some of the salient features of contemporary genre painting, without speaking of a style which has been popular in England ever since the days of Hogarth, — we mean pictures which preach many small sermons in one frame. The English prefer numerous episodes to a single striking fact to which the others are all subordinate. They like the accumulation of incidents in the Marriage à la Mode, for instance, where in every square inch there is something which ‘‘ points the moral and adorns the tale.” Mr. Frith’s works are of this sort. His Railway Station was exhibited in Paris in 1867. Like the Derby Day, it was unpleasant in color, particularly in the flesh, but it was interesting in character and expression, and will be valuable to some future historian of the manners and dresses of the time. The print is quite as instructive as the original work, and its great popularity explains why a London publisher was willing to pay more than forty-five thousand dollars for the picture and the copyright.

It is in landscape that modern art may be said to have effected the greatest changes. To be sure, the Dutch and Flemish masters went directly to Nature for their inspiration, and Constable and Gainsborough made their canvases faithful reflections of the English scenery. But some of us can remember when artists evolved landscapes in their studios from the depths of their own consciousness, as the German philosopher drew the proverbial camel. Within a few years there was in France a school which still affected the classic landscape, and conscientiously placed a ruined temple in the foreground in the style of Gaspar Poussin, and introduced shepherds playing upon pipes, as if they ever really made such music. There must always be a dispute as to the precise point where strict imitation of some particular scene in nature should end, and invention, or at any rate selection, should come in. It requires a great deal of ability, of course, to make a perfect copy of nature, •— to compress the infinite lights and darks, the infinite tints and harmonies, of the visible prospect within the scale of the painter’s palette. But difficult as this is, must not the great landscape artist do more than this? The faculty of the imagination is a higher and nobler thing in God’s creation than all the forms and colors of earth or sky ; and may not the incorporation of that with natural appearances produce something finer than the most masterly copying ? There never was a woman of such majestic contour as the Venus de Milo, or of such divine expression as the Sistine Madonna. Should not the landscape artist also seek to vivify and exalt his imitation of real scenes by such transcendent idea of light and color and form as God may have implanted in his soul ? Foreign critics think that the Frenchmen, Rousseau and Decamps and Diaz and Corot and Dupre and others, and the Belgian Lamorinière, and the German Achenbach, and the Russian Ayvasovsky, have done this to a greater or less extent. In England, and here in America, we do not generally venture so far into the regions of the ideal. Our pictures are more like reflections of nature through a lens upon the tablet of a camera. A listener accidentally overheard a remark last summer in London at the Gallery of the Old Painters in Water-Colors that may to a certain extent be true. “Modern landscapes,” said the speaker, “are merely pieces cut out of nature: whether you add to them or shorten them five inches or so will make no difference in the world.” When one of the most distinguished French artists was led up to a clever landscape which we had sent from this side to the Exposition of 1867, he shrugged his shoulders and said, “ C’est un bon portrait.”

Is it too much to say that the best French landscapes show, not only what Nature usually displays, but something still higher and finer; not Nature as she appears through an opera-glass, but with all the outlines softened, and a “light which never was on sea or land,” and which still seems to be true and appropriate, flooding the scene ? The charm of these pictures is too evanescent and subtile to be expressed in words. A great many people seem to prefer a sort of inventory of nature, with every leaf put down and recorded, and its value expressed in line and color ; but far better than this is the vague, shimmering beauty of those pictures of Rousseau and Dupré, where the genius of the artist, which is creative and far more potent than any optical machine or photographic process, seems to have gone out from him and suffused the scene with his own glorious conceptions, transmuting his picture from a mere topographical illustration into a work of art. This chemistry of genius maybe misapplied, as it perhaps is in Corot’s case, who delights in pale greens and morning mists, and whose landscapes are as unsubstantial as those we see in dreams ; as it certainly is in Turner’s later works, who seems to have tried to produce impossibilities, — to give the effects of light by mere smears of pigment, without the opposition of darks. Some of his pictures in the National Gallery are noble illustrations of what genuine power in selection or invention can do when united with extraordinary science ; but others are mere caprices and extravaganzas. The two rooms between which these masterpieces and these eccentricities are divided show the most curious psychological contrast that can be found in the world of art.

But the English water-color artists, with all their admiration for Turner, have not been much influenced by his vagaries. Their exhibitions in London afford the most charming experiences which a stranger can enjoy, although, if a layman may venture to sayso, the increased use of body-color is not improving the effect of their works. But how true they are in the representations of their own scenery ! How faithfully they transfer to the rough surface of their drawing-paper those vast, castellated masses of clouds with great interspaces of pure blue ; those broad, changing shadows chasing each other over the fields, which, even at mid-day, give the most wonderful variety of effects, while the sunshine glints here and there upon some gray churchtower or reddish Elizabethan mansion, or on the silvery sheen of a brook half hidden by the willows, and the thin mists, rising from the moist meadows and dark-green hedge-rows, tone down all the harsh contrasts, and produce a breadth and harmony which is inexpressibly charming to the eye !

We come now to portraiture, one of the most noble and attractive of all departments of art. And here, whatever may be the opinion as to the success of contemporary painters in landscape and genre, everybody must admit that none of them are equal, we will not say to the old masters, Titian, Velasquez, Rubens, Rembrandt, or Vandyck, but to the comparatively modern ones, Largillière, Reynolds, or Gainsborough. One of the best portraits in the Exposition of 1867 was that of the Emperor by Hippolyte Flandrin, but there was not much vitality in it; and as for the fine ladies by Cabanel, Winterhalter, Dubufe, Jalabert, and the rest, while the silks and laces and jewels were irreproachable, and the modelling and drawing were often admirable, they did not suggest the “ real presence ” of the originals. The flesh had not the warm elasticity of life. Without going so far as one of the critics, who said it was done with a mixture of cold cream and strawberry juice, it may be said that in some cases it seemed a sort of skin which had no pores and did not permit perspiration. But Cabanel and Jalabert are men of great ability, and have failed where only a very few artists of genius have ever succeeded ; that is, in taking nature by surprise, and giving us unstudied grace and elegance which were not put on for the occasion. Their works, however, please the noble ladies for whom they are painted, since these are willing to pay from two thousand to six thousand dollars each for this kind of apotheosis.

There were no portraits in the Exhibition so good as one that was shown outside of it, that of M. Bertin, by Ingres, which had been painted thirtyfive years before. The old man’s hands in that picture were worthy of Vandyck. This portrait of Bertin had been a work of immense labor. With some artists this seems to produce a gradual extinction of all life and spirit. With Ingres it was a nearer and nearer approach to his grand ideal. An American artist, who was one of his pupils, told the writer that the number of sittings Ingres had from M. Bertin for this portrait was almost unprecedented, and that the late Duke of Orleans, knowing this, said to him when he proposed to paint the Duchess : “ Madame is easily fatigued : you must not require too many sittings.” “ I shall be satisfied with sixty,” was the reply.

The modern English portrait-painters are even less successful than their brethren on the other side of the Channel. Sir Francis Grant, the President of the Roya. Academy, exhibits every year some noble master of fox hounds in scarlet coat and immaculate boots, surrounded with a group of clogs as hard as if made of tin and properly colored. Mr. Watts and Mr. Millais are, however, the most successful English portrait-painters at present. Mr. Watts holds his subject in a strong grasp, and never loosens his clutch until he has transferred it, so far as lines and modelling can go, to the canvas. But he is muddy and unnatural in the flesh tints. It is always in this that the contemporary portrait-artists fail. Mr. Millais paints children very charmingly, and at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1867 all the mothers went into raptures over two pictures called Sleeping and Waking, and showing two little children in their cribs. At the Academy last year he had a portrait which made a great stir. It was called Hearts are Trumps, and represented three young ladies, sisters, playing cards at a table, and all dressed in light violet-colored silks, which, according to the gossip, had been designed by the artist himself expressly for this picture. The numerous folds made by the voluminous commingled skirts and all the furbelows and accessaries gave a sort of spotty, streaky, chintzy effect, while the skin, as usual, was mottled and unnatural. How far inferior to that exquisite picture of the three Ladies Waldegrave, the beautiful grand-nieces of Horace Walpole, by Sir Joshua, which was in the National Portrait Exhibition of 1867, — Lady Laura winding silk on a card from a skein held by Lady Horatia, while Lady Maria on the right bends over her tambour-frame ! The hands in this group are slightly sketched, but, as Mr. Leslie says of them, they enhance the impression both of grace in the subject and power in the master. Walpole paid Reynolds three hundred and fifteen pounds for this picture ; while the father of the three Misses Armstrong paid Mr. Millais ten thousand dollars in gold for the Card-Players. The prices of portraits in England have increased enormously since Vandyck’s day. King Charles the First paid him only one hundred pounds for that superb full-length which is one of the great ornaments of the Louvre. The value of a pound sterling is much less now, of course, than it was in 1638; but making the most liberal allowance for the change, and comparing the Vandyck with the Millais, it is evident that the great Flemish painter was greatly underpaid.

It would be pleasant to pause here and describe the extraordinary value of that Loan Collection of National Portraits to which allusion has just been made. It was opened in London in 1867, and was the second of three exhibitions of the sort which should be mentioned as another proof of the liberality of the English wealthy classes in the encouragement of art. When it is remembered that, in this second exhibition alone, there were eight hundred and sixty-six pieces, including one hundred and fifty-four by Reynolds, fiftyone by Gainsborough, seventy by Kneller, thirty-one by Hogarth, besides many by Lawrence, Raeburn, Romney, Stuart, Zoffany, Copley, and others, some idea may be formed of its excellence in relation to art. The limits of this article forbid anything more than the allusion to a single point, in which those older artists seem to have been far superior to our contemporary portrait-painters : they gave so much life and expression to their subjects by the action of the hands. Reynolds was famous for this ; for example, his celebrated portrait of himself, shading his eyes with one hand while he holds palette, brushes, and mahl-stick with the other ; Dr. Johnson and Mr. Baretti, each holding the book close to his near-sighted eyes ; Nellie O’Brien leaning her head on her wrist; Garrick resting his clasped hands on the table in front of him with the thumbs joined ; the Marchioness of Salisbury pulling on her glove ; and many other instances.

It is difficult to dismiss this collection without saying more about it. As an illustration of the history and social life of England during the last century, it was more interesting than can well be expressed. We had already been formally introduced to all these charming people by Walpole’s Letters, Boswell’s Life of Johnson, Miss Berry’s and Mrs. Delany’s memoirs, and many other delightful books, and now art came in and made us intimately acquainted with all of them, and imprinted upon our memories traits of form and feature and color so much more vivid and enduring than anything which literature can inscribe. And from all this display of nature and life, of expression and character, we must come down to the hollow tin fox hounds of Sir Francis Grant, and the little babies of Millais lying in their cribs, and all the details of nursery life painted with Pre-Raphaelite minuteness !

III.

WE have briefly described the unusual encouragement given to art ot late years by states and individuals, and the effect of this stimulus upon what has been called, for want of a better name, domestic art, — the art which adorns family and social life. We have now to speak of the condition of that higher art which is connected with public affairs, and is an expression of the best thoughts and feelings of whole nations and communities. This is a matter which cannot be studied within the walls of any international exposition or at the annual displays of any academy. It requires the visiting of many cities and the inspection of widely spread monuments. We may be permitted, however, to state a few opinions on this subject, with such illustrations as are afforded by certain modern examples. The practice of erecting commemorative statues has greatly increased in Europe of late years. They are not generally satisfactory. One of the exceptions is a monument at Milan in honor of Count Cavour. His effigy, of heroic size, stands at the top of the structure, while a figure, representing Italy or History, reclining on the steps of the base, writes his name on the pedestal. But most of these modern works are failures ; and the failure, of course, is generally in the attempt to reconcile the demands of art with historic truth. It is a commonplace remark, that a statue should be something more than a likeness. If all we required were the precise resemblance of the hero or philanthropist, Madame Tussaud could give it to us in wax much more completely than Thorwaldsen ever produced anything in marble. If the point be to show some great act that he performed or trial that he suffered, this could be done by painting much more distinctly than by sculpture. What we desire is a work which shall show our hero in relation to his age and country generally, and not to some spot of ground or moment of time in particular, and still be pleasing as a work of art. It should present the summing up and substance of his life. It should not be an anecdote, but a biography. There is nothing new in these ideas, but they seem to be strangely forgotten by those who have charge of these undertakings. Of course, all this is very difficult to accomplish. It was very well for the Greeks to set up in their temples the images of the contemporary victors in the games, whose forms indicated the perfection of manly beauty, and whose drapery, if it was necessary to add that, fell in harmonious lines. An ugly costume, too, may be rendered so interesting by association, that the mind tempers its angularities to the eye. Such was the queue and cocked hat and long-skirted uniform of the great Frederick and the gray capote of Napoleon. But what can an artist do with the personal deformities and ugly dress which may be closely associated with our ideas of contemporary personages ? What can he do with the gaunt frame of Mr. Lincoln, or the peculiar clothing of Mr. Greeley ? Mr. Peabody, the philanthropist, had a foot which seems to have been modelled upon the same generous scale as his kind heart; and Story has not forgotten that in the statue behind the London Exchange, where the enormous shoe is quite obtrusive and thrusts itself into the face of the spectator.

To answer this difficulty, we would cut the Gordian knot. It is a mistake to erect a statue to a man who has not been dead for, at least, half a century. Indeed, it might be well to delay it as long as the Roman Church postpones the canonization of a saint. We should wait until we can assign to the departed worthy his true place in history, and forget the ugly features of his person and his dress. There may be a time, perhaps, when our descendants will fail to remember the awkward trousers and bushy chin-tuft of Abraham Lincoln, and believe only in the prophetic pathos of his homely countenance.

Many of the modern specimens of monumental art fail because they have no great ideas behind them with which the people at large can sympathize. There was opened last summer at Antwerp the most important piece of pictorial decoration on a large scale which has been attempted of late years in Europe. It is a series of mural paintings in the vestibule of the museum representing the influence of the Flemish schools on foreign schools and of foreign schools on the Flemish, and this idea is illustrated by a number of figure compositions of heroic proportions by one of their leading artists, Mr. DeKeyser. They are well drawn and colored ; but we look at them very coldly, because, in the first place, the idea behind them does not arouse our curiosity or stimulate our enthusiasm, and, in the next place, because, so soon as we enter the museum and see the great realities of Rubens, we forget these shadowy symbolical performances altogether.

It is with the same cool curiosity that we regard the Albert memorial now nearly completed at Hyde Park. We feel a polite respect for the character of the late Prince Consort; but in this superb and costly structure, all the resources of color and gilding and precious materials, and all the ability of modern English sculptors in executing the imposing . symbolical groups at the corners and the frieze of alto-relievos around the base, fail to arouse within us a spark of enthusiasm. How much more we are stirred, for instance, by Thorwaldsen’s Dying Lion on the rocky hillside at Lucerne, erected in memory of the Swiss Guard who fell at the Tuilcries in 1792, that they might be faithful to their oaths !

Almost the only monumental picture at the Exposition was Kaulbaclr’s Epoch of the Reformation, a magnificent cartoon of immense power in form and composition. It was curious to observe how far it seemed to be removed from the interest and sympathies of those great crowds of people from all parts of the world who were passing every day through the Bavarian gallery. One of the leading French jurors who was going about with notebook in hand was heard to say, “ I don't like that” ; and perhaps the vote which afterwards assigned one of the eight grand prizes to Kaulbach was given rather as a compliment to Germany than from any genuine admiration for his productions.

But, in fact, are there any great dominant ideas now in Europe universally stirring the hearts and moulding the lives of the whole people ? Even the pride of race and country seems to be declining. The superb Arch of Triumph at Paris, which grows grander every time it is seen, appears to be the last piece of monumental art that illustrates this feeling. In religion, people are either cold rationalists or bigoted ritualists, either doing without churches or building servile imitations of ancient structures in which what is ugly and inconvenient is considered to bestow spiritual edification. It was our good fortune last summer to see some of the noblest creations of mediæval architecture,— the porches of Chartres, the tracery of Rouen, the nave of Amiens, the west window of Rheims, the Lady Chapel of Ely, the majestic pile of Lincoln, and the solemn perspective of Durham. There were a few old women huddled together for worship in the holes and corners of these glorious interiors, which seemed magnificent shells for the withered kernels within. How different from those ancient times, when vast and picturesque crowds filled these aisles, all of them possessed with a profound belief in the awful omnipotence of the Church as the interpreter of God’s will to man, — not a belief about which casuists argued or which needed to be proved by sermons and pamphlets, but a belief like that in the warmth of the sun or any other natural fact. If we are to erect cathedrals now to embody any general faith, it must be to express the Darwinian idea of the survival of the fittest, or in honor of the Great Universum of Dr. Strauss.

In European politics there is not sufficient veneration for the old ways to seek artistic expression for that “divinity which doth hedge a king,” nor yet that belief in the Universal Republic which embodies itself in monuments. It is a time of strife and turmoil, of doubt and disbelief. There is no great idea prepared to enshrine itself in the higher forms of art. And if there were, the necessity and occasion for such a manifestation are both wanting. The apostles of a new faith would find everything ready made to their hands. The architecture and sculpture and painting are already there. As the new Roman Emperor in the time of the decline decapitated the statues of his predecessor and fastened his own head on the old shoulders, so the zealous proselytes of the Coming Idea in Europe can use the monuments of the old traditions to embody it. The French Republic had only to erase the N’s and the Imperial crowns to find a home in the palace of Versailles; and if the Commune should succeed again, it needs but to efface the bas-reliefs of the ancient victories from the Arch of Triumph and substitute the destruction of the Tuileries and of the Hotel de Ville.

We trust we may be pardoned, at the conclusion of this paper, already sufficiently incomplete and desultory, if we turn away from Europe and from our mainline of thought and inquire whether we are not more fortunate here in America, not only in having great and profound beliefs to express, but in having occasions to express them. It is pleasant to be able to answer this question in the affirmative. Our opportunities consist in this, that most of our great monumental edifices are yet to be built, and some which have been built are so poorly constructed that they will tumble down of themselves, or so contrary to all the principles of good taste, that they will be pulled down by our indignant descendants. It is in America that we may reasonably look for a new type in architecture,—the type that will be generated by the necessity of accommodating immense masses of people under one enclosure for purposes of political discussion, of religious service, of legislative debate, or of the administration of justice, — a type more majestic than that of the Roman Basilica, and capable of the highest embellishment by sculpture and painting.

In those days of the remote future, when the American citizen shall understand, as the Greeks did, that private life should be unostentatious and modest, and all the splendors of art invoked to magnify the dignity of the state ; when the beauty of fitness and the true relations of art to social life shall be universally perceived, so that each room shall have its appropriate ornaments and our houses be no longer bazaars and bric-à-brac shops ; when our rich men, who spend tens of thousands of dollars upon the flowers and gewgaws of a single festival, shall learn that it would be wiser to endow a museum ; when the whole people shall recognize the law that the beautiful should be cultivated as well as the good and the true, and that it is the office of the State to apply its treasures to educate its children in the perception of this principle and to display before them the great triumphs of past ages in sculpture and painting, — when that day arrives, it will be found that in no country in the world have there ever been better occasions and opportunities for the employment of monumental art than here in America.

But it is necessary that there should be not only the occasions and opportunities to employ monumental art, but that there should be great ideas and beliefs behind it, to make it something more than the mere exercise of artistic skill. Let us see whether these also will be wanting in the America of the future. It is true that our history and social life are not picturesque ; that the great events of our past are councils and deliberations, the invisible thoughts and resolutions of wise and patriotic men, rather than the outward acts and sufferings of brave men, although these, indeed, have not been wanting ; that we are deficient here in the badges and symbols and costumes which add vivacity and point to the appearances of European life. It is true that the materials for genre painting and for the small art which decorates parlors and boudoirs are few and scanty. But for great art, for monumental art, for the art of Bramante and Michael Angelo, was there ever any nation like this, where there existed, underlying outward life, such grand ideas and images ; such earnest faiths and profound beliefs, which indeed may seem dim and half extinguished under the coarse necessities of ordinary occupations, but when the ashes are stirred flame up in unexpected splendor and are brightened and purified by the dying breath of heroes and martyrs ? Where, among all European nations and all ages of the world, have there ever been grander ideas than those with which an American associates his love of country, — the idea of space, which embraces half the world ; the idea of strength, which rests upon the broad, immovable foundation of the sovereignty of the people ; the idea of progress, whose irresistible march is checked by no material barriers ; the idea of justice, which shrinks from no sacrifice to maintain the rights of the weakest and the poorest; the idea of wealth, which gathers into its storehouses the treasures of the whole earth ; the idea of charity, which fosters in its expanded arms the outcasts of all nations ; and finally, the idea of peace, for which every war and conflict has been only a precursor and a guaranty, and which, as universal as the sunshine on some halcyon day of summer, bathes the whole continent in its ethereal splendor !

Such are some of the great thoughts which must underlie the monumental art of America. Have we the power to embody them in our architecture and sculpture and painting, to give them a visible shape as the aitists of the past ages did the grand ideas of their times ; as Phidias did in the pediment of the Parthenon; as the Romans did in the mighty circle of the Coliseum; as the God-fearing monks of the Middle Ages did in the spire of Antwerp, and the great rose window, which flashes the jewelled light of Paradise through the nave of Rheims ; as Buonarotti did when he summoned from the unknown world the awful forms of Prophets and Sibyls to look down from the ceiling of the Sistine chapel ? Shall we have the genius and the skill to enshrine also the grand ideas of the coming America in the imperishable shapes of monumental art?

Let us hope, however dark and doubtful the prospect may be at present, that Heaven may vouchsafe to give us this crowning glory hereafter.

William F. Hoppin.