THE ESSENCE OF THE FINE ARTS. 



tural shade of trees, that they gave to temples the names of groves. In the visl 

 shades of trees, poets have composed verses which animated their countrymen to heroic 

 and glorious actions. Here orators have delivered their discourses, and the profoundest 

 philosophers have been so enamoured of nature's beauties as to be content to pass their 

 lives in her bosom, in repose and contemplation. Among the luminaries of the middle 

 ages, how prized must have been flowers, since we find them named after whatever was 

 most valued. Nature is the great storehouse of art, and in the infancy of the latter, and 

 prior to the refined pleasures which art affords, being extensively dififused among any coun- 

 try or people, the innate love of the beautiful would, of course, be more concentrated 

 upon nature. Accordingly, in the early period of mankind, as also in the infancy of dif- 

 ferent states, large use was made of beautiful natural objects in seasons of festivity, as 

 emblems of happiness and rejoicing, " Let us crown ourselves," says the author of the 

 Book of Wisdom, " with rose-buds and flowers before they wither." Early nations in 

 all their ceremonies, whether of the banquet, the altar, or the tomb, made large use of 

 flowers as docorations. Among the classical ancients, the wreath of the victor, and other 

 rewards of merit, were arboraceous, and this led to their extensive employment, as sym- 

 bols, in architectural decorations, 



I come now to the second branch of my subject, viz : — the beautiful in the Human Mind 

 or Imagination. 



"Every star in Heaven," says Emerson, "is disconcerted and insatiable; gravitation 

 and chemistry cannot content them; ever they woo and court the eye of every beholder; 

 every man that comes into the world they seek to fascinate and possess, — to pass into his 

 mind, for they desire to republish themselves in a more delicate world than that they oc- 

 cupy. It is not enough that they are Jove, Mars, Orion, and the North star, in the gra- 

 vitating firmament; they would have such poets as Newton, Herschell, and Laplace, that 

 they may re-exist in the finer world of rational souls, and fill that realm with their fame. 

 These beautiful basilisks set their brute, glorious eyes, on the eye of every child, and, 

 if they can, cause their natures to pass through his wondering eyes into him, and so all 

 things are mixed." And so through the wondering eyes of every man, all external ob- 

 jects seek to pass. The aspect of nature ojierates insensibly upon the soul of every ra- 

 tional creature in proportion to his natural susceptibility, and the images reflected there, 

 whilst modified by the original disposition and current of his being, become invigorated 

 by his intellectual power, and enriched by the stream of education. Impressions and in- 

 fluences operate also from other sources, until his mind Ijecomes 



" A mausii'U for a'l lovely forms, 

 His memory a dwelling; place 

 For al sweet sounds and harmonies." 



A feeling, more or less, of the beatiful in nature, is common to all, but only the artist, 

 who from superior intellectual power, and greater strength of imagination, has a fresher, 

 deeper insight into the inexhaustible life around, possesses the caj anty to form his ideal, 

 and give it expression. All have the esthetic feeling, which means sensitiveness, or sus- 

 ceptibility of the impress or influence of the beautiful and poetic, but few have the crea- 

 tive power which belongs to the artist, viz : the faculty fjr reproducing and embodying 

 the feeling in some form of art, — a picture, a statue, a building, or a poem. This is what 

 is properly termed genius, than which there is perhaps nothing more difficult to define. It 

 has been said to consist of a refined love of nature, "a love of the flower and perfection 

 s, and a desire to draw a new picture, or copy of the same." Sir Joshua 

 must be considered incorrect when he speaks of the imagination as being a 



