738 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



age (the pterodactyl), known very -well by its fossil remains, if clothed 

 with flesh and provided with limbs and wings, would make a creature 

 iu some respects like the dragon of fairy tales. 



The mythical gigantic kraken of the northern seas has a legitimate 

 descendant, and is simply an exaggerated type of the giant architeuthis 

 of the coast of Newfoundland, of which a specimen has recently been 

 exhibited in this city. 



The " roc ' of Sindbad the Sailor was not much larger than the epi- 

 ornis of Madagascar and the dinornis of New Zealand, more than twice 

 the size of the ostrich. The Eastern imagination, on the basis of these 

 great birds actually coexisting with man, would naturally put on the 

 wings which birds of this type did not possess, and then the transporta- 

 tion of a man into the " Valley of Diamonds " would be quite possible. 



These forms could hardly have been imagined by barbarous man ; 

 they must have had their prototypes in nature : they are, therefore, 

 not ideal forms, but, in a zoological sense, real forms. 



An artist may be ignorant of history, chronology, and zoology, as 

 well as of anatomy and physiology, and may be a perfect child in bis 

 knowledge of common things beyond his immediate every-day sight. 

 Even Raphael, Albert Diirer, Salvator Rosa, Vandyke, Paul Veronese, 

 Poussin, and many others, have greatly erred in these respects. In- 

 stances might easily be mentioned, but I will merely allude to them to 

 show that art has not always been true to nature and fact, and to say 

 that we are not only at liberty, but in duty bound, to protest against 

 all untruthfulness, whether it oifend the eye or the reason. 



Let me not be understood as pretending to say that there is no art 

 or beauty in purely fanciful creations in painting or sculpture. There 

 is a place, and a genuine one, for the allegorical, the symbolic, the mys- 

 terious, the unreal, if you will, in art ; but such art, from the very fact 

 of its unreality, untruthfulness, and impossibility, is, I maintain, a lower 

 type than that which is strictl}' natural and true. Wings of angels, as 

 messengers of glad tidings or guardian spirits, are, as fanciful creations, 

 beautiful, though untrue ; winged heads, as suggesting the swiftness of 

 thought and intelligence, are acceptable as symbolic, though impos- 

 sible : but all such creations should take a subordinate position in art, 

 and in proportion as the symbolism departs from the true, the known, 

 and the conceivable. We must not confound the results of the imagi- 

 nation, which exaggerates possible parts seen, or supposed to be seen, 

 in nature, with the wholly unreal products of the fancy ; we may admit 

 their beauty, but, however definite and pleasing their outlines, if their 

 combinations, when tested by reason, are impossible, they must be re- 

 garded as lower than the natural. They may answer for gas-fixtures, 

 monuments, memorial windows, and various articles of household deco- 

 ration, but not for anything demanding admiration and following as a 

 work of high art. 



Let me now bring to your remembrance a few celebrated works of 



