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one may so speak, the mental and spiritual pulse. The moment 
this high office is forgotten—high, though despised by some—the 
moment you become indifferent as to whether your work will 
please or not; or, worse still, the moment you permit yourself 
to become primarily and visibly didactic, at that moment your 
_ work as a pure artist is at an end. You have nothing to do 
_ withteaching. In your school, paradoxical as it may seem, men 
learn, indeed, but they are not taught. You have nothing to do 
with morals, per se; and yet it is quite true that you may make 
for those who come under your influence a moral atmosphere 
pure as the heavens above, or an immoral atmosphere debasing 
as the pit of hell. 
If this consideration were kept steadily before us, both 
picture and poem would often be very different in character from 
- what they now are. We should instinctively shun the present- 
ation of what is mean, deformed, or repulsive; and, quite as 
naturally, we should take the highest pleasure in setting forth 
those things which are ‘‘lovely and of good report.’’ This does not 
mean that we are not to appeal to the tragic sense. Sorrow, 
alike in its simplest and its grandest forms; the tenderest and 
most melting pity; terror even, are all within the artistic 
range; but loathing and unmitigated horror are radically and by 
their own nature inadmissible. The work of a certain contem- 
porary school of French painters would illustrate this point. The 
_ subjects which these men choose are outside the pale of art; and 
neither thoroughness of scholastic training, nor the most won- 
derful technical skill, will avail to save their productions from 
ultimate reprobation. In literature the same thing holds, and 
modern instances are by no means wanting. We all know the 
poets with regard to whom fecundity of fancy, and a very cataract 
of words, and melody which is only too abundant and too obvious, 
will not be found sufficient to outweigh the intrinsical and primary 
defect which attaches to some of their poems in consequence of 
the subjects themselves being outside the proper domain of art. 
For final arbitrament on this point we are seldom wrong if 
‘we go to Shakspere. One might offer without rashness to 
construct out of his works alone, and guided alone by his practice 
and example, a complete canon upon the subject of the limitations 
of art, which should be as applicable to the purpose of the painter 
as it would be to that of the poet. Contrast his work with that 
of his contemporaries, and you will soon perceive how delicate 
and unerring was the instrument of his artistic apprehension. 
To him, indeed, it was given to try every spirit whether it was 
good or evil. His genius was in his hand as a divining rod, 
which told him unfailingly where his steps might safely tend, 
d where they must be promptly withdrawn. Considering him 
an artist only, we see how much the broad sanity and clear 
a 
