Rodomonte for his swaggering Moor, had the village bells rung for joy, it would not be preposterous to think of our Mother English as furnished with a joy-bell to ring in from the realms of imagination every worthy new-comer into the language. If the history of liberty is made up of personal sacrifice, the history of civilization is made up of personal effort. We can trace the path of some inventions, some sciences, some professions, by the names which line the way. It would be impossible to measure the value to the race of some single lives. In many of these words rubbed down by the friction of centuries from the names of those who labored or suffered or sinned enough to immortalize their memory, are contained strange episodes of history, and as costly as they are strange. Language is full of honors to the illustrious dead who have led the race. It is the field also where history takes some of its sternest revenges, by impaling the very name of the criminal in a perennial crucifixion. There are obsolete words which are only sarcophagi, and hold at bottom a little dust of ideas long since mouldered into oblivion. But there are others, and far more, which like antique funeral urns emptied of their ashes and filled with living flowers, have parted with their old dead meaning, and are now full again of young fresh life. The qualities which are added by such changes are rather scientific than poetical. And though a language is not necessarily poetic because fresh and primeval, nor necessarily unpoetic when it has reached its periods of maturest culture, the new life it receives from the earnest leaders of each generation rarely adds to its power of artistic expression, but rather to its resources for accurate statement and clear definition. ARTICLE VIII.-AMERICAN LANDSCAPE PAINTERS. It is forty years since Cole-the first of a succession of landscape painters who have given American art the distinctive character of a school-in a series of allegorical pictures entitled "The Voyage of Life," awakened, to some extent, the popular taste for landscape. Engravings of these pictures were to be found in almost every home. They gave expression to the then prevailing sentiment which tinctured, more or less, every phase of thought: manifesting itself in "tracts for the times," in certain appendages to poems exhibiting with conscious cleverness we cannot call it naiveté-the ingenious machinery of the thought aptly serving this idea. It was thrust so pointedly in the eye of the reader, that he was denied any personal interpretation whatever to even the subtleties that have their own natural and insinuating actions. Art was sacrificed for the story it would illustrate, and poesy for the "moral" it should point. Thus Art was enfeebled by super-sensuous ideas, ill suiting its capacities for expression: while poesy was too subservient to narrow commonplace, that dried its sap, and, like a trailing vine stiffly lengthened out, tied it tightly to some well-known precept. It was too palpable, too conscious, too like the strut of a moralizing mentor rudely thrust in between truth and beauty and the tender soul. We have grown more trustful of these; perhaps more charitable in the estimate of our ability to interpret them rightly; at all events, our views of morality have broadened, while the true and the beautiful have so far gained by this that we are now ready to admit that they possess virtues of their own more effective and powerful than commonplace reiterations of accepted precepts. We have outgrown this tendency so far as to look back upon it with more of curiosity than sympathy. New values have been let in upon the mind with the closer investigation of scientific fact and truth. This has given new character to thought. The pale reflections of medieval reminiscences are being dissipated by the full blaze of revived Greek tendencies in our sympathies, which compel the fancy to a basis of fact, and plant the ideal upon the true foundations of the real. Cole was only truly himself when he broke away from those false notions of the aim and end of art, and gave us the unaffected sentiment which he drew freshly from the inspirations of Nature, and the moral influence of that voice which goes up from her unutterable stillness, speaking more eloquently than words, more pointedly than precept, searching the conscience more deeply by the light that is inherent in the very principles of beauty and truth. He did this so effectually as to inspire the artistic mind of the country with sympathies that may be traced to this source. Several of our best painters acknowledge that through the pictures of Cole their feeling for landscape was first touched. Cole's sympathies were rather those of a poet than an artist. His choice of subject indicated this "The Course of Empire," "The Voyage of Life," &c. These are themes for the poet rather than the painter. Art was overstrained to suit the sequence of thought; its own appropriate values were subordinated to extraneous ideas. That which is eminently qualified for mental imagery is ill adapted to the sensible forms of Through these it aims at their highest possible transfigurement consistent with the utmost refinements of sense. But it is no less dependent upon the sensible appearance than music is upon the palpable conditions of sound. Cole's best qualities are not to be found in these series of his works; they are to be met with in his forest scenes, in his Italian views, in his free and forcible rendering of pastoral landscape. art. The next link in the chain of special talent that has distinguished native landscape painting is Durand-originally an engraver, and never entirely freeing himself from its influence on his style. With an individuality in marked contrast with that of Cole, Durand's treatment of the landscape is no less poetic and refined. Perhaps the most masterly of his works is that which has for subject Goldsmith's metaphor: As some tall cliff, that lifts its awful form, Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm, His rendering of this is so solemn, so affecting and grand, so in sympathy with the pure sentiment of Nature, that it deserv edly holds an unique place in modern landscape art. We know of no picture more justly to be cherished with pride in the future museum of our "old masters," than this. It has been said, with little consideration of the merits of the question, that our native talent is not possessed of the distinctive character of foreign schools of art, that it lacks original tendencies traceable to an unique source, or developed out of any marked or homogeneous milieu; while the modern French, English, and German schools, are instanced as offering their peculiar elements of contrast and character. But a little careful study of the character of our landscape art will show that this assertion has no real basis of fact. Our art, in this special direction, evinces not only originality and merit, but merit of a very high order, second to that of no other modern school; while in unstudied spontaneity in entering into the genuine sentiment of Nature, it is unique in the right direction. True, among older peoples, distinctions of character may be traced to a primitive source, while every successive development is marked by the influx of new ideas through historic changes, conquest, and commercial activities; while we, as a nation, have no such historic sequence running back to distinctions of race, or the "primitive influence of soil and climate." We are transplanted offshoots of matured civilizations, entering upon this new scene with old traditions; being fused into national existence through no slow process of development, but spontaneously, through necessity and common interests. The units of character which contributed to the formation of our national spirit, still preserve their individuality, their identity, which links them, more or less remotely, with traditional ties. The traditions of many peoples belong to this people; the history of many nations is the basis of our own. Art has no place with the restless or varying moods that affect the outer circles of society; it is rooted in the heart of that higher culture which gives it sympathy and support. Of all the elements, therefore, which pioneer the way into new states, and new conditions, Art is the last to follow. It is the fruit. not of necessity, but of reflection and repose. It flourishes naturally at the centres of the most intellectual activity. It is based upon those higher wants which follow necessities; consequently in character and quality it partakes of the nature of those sympathies and wants which insure it development and support. These sympathies have thus far with us tended strongly in the direction of landscape. Hence has our art, under this sentiment-awakened by breaking into a wilderness of natural beauty, with its expression unmarred by man's destructive agencies-derived its inspirations from a legitimate source. Having no other means of contact with that which inspires ideas suitable to the aims and ends of art, no antique remains, no surroundings calculated to awaken artistic sympathies-in short, no art, whether of the past or present, to excite emulation, or stimulate the fancy-Nature, in her undisturbed, primeval grandeur, in her moods, expressions, sentiments and the like, filled this void, and became the object of artistic aims. Bryant and Durand have interpreted this for us in a manner that awakens the heart to the fullest response. Within the strict confines of painting, this is now sustained with more mature art, in the works of Gifford, Church, McEntee, Whittredge, Inness, Kensett, and Hubbard. In the works of these men may be found that which gives our landscape art the distinguishing features of a school; the natural product of our own milieu. In style and method it has an individuality no less marked than that which distinguishes foreign schools. The French is the only school that evinces vigor and genuine merit abroad. The English school of to-day is weak, mannered, and destitute of that vital force only to be derived through close contact with Nature, and a profound study of her values and expressions. Since Turner and Constable, English landscape painting has degenerated into feeble mannerism. The German school, in landscape, is scarce worthy of mention. It is not only outrageously mannered, but it is the most mechanical mannerism to be met with anywhere. Any one of the works of this school may serve to represent the whole. We have not a few of its disciples on this side |