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to his ideas in some work of art — picture, statue, or structure. 

 Art therefore was nature, reproduced — brought through the 

 mind of man — re- wrought in the forge of his imagination ; it 

 was the soul's highest and most spiritual sphere of action, 

 through which it was united to nature, and could only be con- 

 ceived as their " vital synthesis." 



Art was the expositor of beauty ; in different languages or 

 characters it yielded its secrets. Its several branches, — paint- 

 ing, and sculpture, and architecture, though each had a voice 

 to awaken tlie echoes of the heart, addressed the spectator 

 differently. Both the picture and the statue are more spiritual 

 in their elements, — speak less to the sense, and more directly 

 to the soul, than the productions of the architect, in which 

 the spirit of beauty manifests itseK tlurough the grossest 

 earthly elements; having two distinct natures, the material 

 and the spiritual, the latter art bears a striking analogy to 

 man himself : — 



" From difierent natures marvellously mixed, 

 Connexion exquisite of distant worlds ! " 



But from nature the principles and elements of all the arts 

 were alike derived; constructive principles in architecture, 

 and, in all the arts, the germ and type of every beauty of 

 curve, or combination of curves, are found in her. All de- 

 scriptions of design are varied reflexions of nature. Every 

 true style of architecture, as of all the arts, had its types in 

 nature. The chief qualification called for in the artist was 

 the faculty of perceiving and fully understanding nature : ex- 

 cellence in art arose more from looking at nature philosophi- 

 cally, — comprehensively, — than in manual* dexterity, or power 

 of delineation. Sensuous grace in nature was but the material 

 veil of a higher life and beauty ; there was a beauty of form, 

 and there was another beauty, — the living idea of it ; and it 

 was the office of the artist to unfold the meaning of the natural 

 fact, and reveal this inner life to the observer. 



In conclusion, he said the ultimate end of physical, was 



