332 • STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



The sentiment originating with the human race and extending as the human 

 race went forward and blossomed out into five great arts— architecture, music, 

 painting, sculpture and literature, and in some one or all of these various forms it 

 held the world subject for thous&nds of years. 



Greece was ruined by the exclusive study of baauty. Greece omitted utility. 

 It nevf r grasped the great ends of politics or religion or social life, but, failing to 

 see these, studied the architecture, sculpture, pilncing, music and the gracefulness 

 of the human form. When Xerxes was approaching Greece with his army, the 

 great men of that nation were standing around on the Olympian field. There were 

 before their eyes chariot races, the foot-race, the shooting-match. A messenger 

 came in saying that Xerxes was just over the mountains ; and those Greek philoso- 

 phers and statesmen resolved not to suspend the games on that account. What 

 was worse than that, only 300 men went to the pass at Thermopylas to repel Xerxes^ 

 and yet still worse, when Leonidas was defending the pass, Xerxes discovered an- 

 other pass through which he flung a hundred thousand men, of which mountain 

 pass the great Greek statesmen knew nothing of the existence. There was more 

 statesmanship in the mind of Abraham Lincoln in his brief life than in all the 

 statesmen of Greece for five hundred years. 



But passing to the great period in which the beautiful reached its culminating 

 point, we come to the time of Michael Angelo. Next to Shakspeare, Michael An- 

 gelo's was perhaps the greatest intellect ever born in the world, and since we do- 

 not know who rthakspeare was, whether he was Shakspeare only, or SShakspeare 

 and Lord Bacoa, Michael Anarelo was the greatest intellect the world has pro- 

 duced. But he was born in a period when only two forms of thought occupied the 

 human mind; one was theologicil thought — abstruse theological thought; and 

 the other was that ornamental thought that decorated theology. Michael Angelo 

 struck the world when the world asked for two things— either the abstruse theology 

 or the external temple, the church, the cathedral, the basilic, and the paintings 

 and statuary of the decorated church. Had Michael Angelo been born in New York 

 in 1860, he would see before him perhaps twenty diflFerent professions. The pulpit 

 would allure him, the lawyer's profession would allure him, the editorial chiir 

 would allure him, the military pursuit would offer its charms, the railroad interest 

 invite his genius ; or, if all of these things failed, there remained the lightning- 

 rod agency and the sewing-machine industry and the book-canvasser's vocation ;. 

 and if, in none of these did he find sufficient allurement, then some philoso- 

 pher would say to him, " Go west, young man, go west." But in Michael An- 

 gelo's day only two voices sounded in his ear. One was, " Michael, either study 

 theology of the church, or decorate this theology ;" and Angelo chose the art of 

 decoration. And, furthermore, the woman of that period were all in favor of the 

 decorative arts. Every woman of note in Florence and Rome cultivated the fine 

 arts. Each morning, instead of taking a carriage and driving to the dry -goods 

 store to purchase a few yards of ribbon, they would walk to where some sculptor 

 was carving in marble, or an architect was rearing a temple, or a Raphael was paint- 

 ing a picture. There were not many of these women, but they were the inspira- 

 tion of the age. In Angelo's day there were women who could recite all of Virgil 

 or all of Homer from memory, t^ometimes the artist would be in love with some 

 one of these conspicuous women, and was thus inspired by that sentiment ; and 

 to be in love with some noble woman in those days was as natural as it is for us to 

 be a Democrat or a Republican, or even a Mugwump. 



At the beginning of the [Sixteenth century there sprung up a development of 

 the useful. The difference between the beautiful and the useful is this : The beauti- 



