304 The Evolution of Art. 



in his dingy garret, wondering why his benefactor, the tariff- 

 tinker, does not protect him better. 



I have said that art is the interpreter of Nature. The 

 primal medium of this interpretation is imitation. Burke 

 says : " No work of art can be great but as it deceives ; to be 

 otherwise is the prerogative of Nature only." 



He that has looked farthest into the material heart of the 

 world shall most correctly interpret her secrets. A writer 

 of prominence has said that " Purcell, Handel, and Bach 

 wrote every combination of musical notes that down to our 

 latest times has ever been employed with good effect," and 

 yet the last of them has been dead more than a hundred 

 years ; and Jarvis has said that " all that is noblest in art 

 took its origin in the thirteenth century." 



It is the first necessity of our improvement in art, to 

 clear the way for our great artist, if he is ever to be, that 

 we shall frankly disassociate our artistic genius from the de- 

 ceiving glamour of the national ensign. What callow youth 

 in America does not feel the insignificance of Ruskin when 

 he writes in Fors Clavigera that " though I have kind invita- 

 tions enough to visit America, I could not, even for a couple 

 of months, live in a country so miserable as to possess no 

 castles " ? And with what pride he turns to the divinity of 

 Shakespeare, who consoles him with the gracious aphorism 

 that " the art of our necessities is strange that can make vile 

 things precious " ! And yet Buskin might well be referred 

 to an older country than his own Japan where the temple 

 of Todaiji, older than any cathedral in Europe, retains, al- 

 most unimpaired, the perfection of its structure and the 

 brilliancy of its decoration. 



But is there not something beneath the gibe of Ruskin 

 that rankles of reality ? Is there not a background of ex- 

 perience and of history, of storied memories and regnant 

 battle scenes, as necessary to the loins out of which a great 

 artist is to spring as to the finished product of a Claude 

 Lorrain ? If we believe with Charles Sumner that " that 

 quality or characteristic called experience is the highest ele- 

 ment of art," can we not well understand that the humanity 

 of ages past must look out from the painter's pigment if it 

 is to catch the eye of the true lover of art ? 



The germs of high art, then, have been lying latent in the 

 soil of all the centuries, and have been hindered, encour- 

 aged, overwhelmed, and developed by the fundamental ele- 



