erpreted and appreciated.
Men and women have written much and well on these large subjects, and
we may hope for more ere long. The secondary or smaller arts have been
hitherto neglected by us,--either treated merely as crafts, to which
artistic education may give help, or as the natural or inferior
outcome of the primal arts, having no claim to the possession of
special laws and history. And yet, when Moses wrote and Homer sang,
needlework was no new thing. It was already consecrated by legendary
and traditionary custom to the highest uses. The gods themselves were
honoured by its service, and it preceded written history in recording
heroic deeds and national triumphs.

It may be said that ivory carving is sculpture, and illuminated
manuscripts and coloured glass windows are painting. But for metal
work, whether in iron or gold, a place must be kept apart; and the
same privileges are due to embroidery and to metallurgy. All arts must
of necessity have their own laws and rules, which ensure their beauty
of execution and their special forms of design; these two last, from
the nature of their materials, and the modes of working them, must be
studied independently of any connection with painting, architecture,
or sculpture.

Yet, if the unity of nature is an accepted fact,[3] then the
acceptance of the unity of art must follow. Art must be considered as
the selection of natural phenomena by individual minds capable of
assimilating and reproducing them in certain forms and with certain
materials adapted to the national taste, needs, and power of
appreciation. If man cannot originate materials, he can invent
combinations;--and this is Art.

If proportion, colour, and sound alike depend on certain mathematical
measurements, and on rhythmical vibrations, there must be a real and
tangible relation between these elements, though applied to obtain
different results. In music, as in all art, harmony is, or ought to
be, a first consideration. We have seen by experiment how a note of
our scale can by touch form geometrical figures with sand on a sheet
of glass,--here form obeys the force of harmony. But what is harmony?

By analogy we may argue from the art of music. We who believe that we
have acquired the knowledge of music as a science, beyond all
preceding knowledge of the subject, have in Europe been able to enjoy
only our own musical scales; whereas throughout the East, those
accepted by the human ear are very various, and