anced naturalism can do? All that human
genius and erudition can offer us? All that artistic grace and
tenderness can win for us? Clouds and darkness rise before us as we
read, the mother of our Lord loses her sanctity, Jesus becomes an
impostor, the apostles deceivers, human testimony is forever dishonored.
A pall shrouds the infinite blue of the sky, and our beloved dead seem
festering in eternal corruption!

We must confess we prefer the bold and defiant scepticism of Voltaire,
to the Judas kiss of M. Renan.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

ART ITEMS.

Among our exchanges is a little periodical entitled '_The New Path_,
published by the Society for the Advancement of Truth in Art.' The
members of this Society are otherwise known as 'Pre-Raphaelites,' in
other words, as seekers of the Ancient Path, trodden before certain
mannerisms had corrupted the minds of many painters and most technical
connoisseurs. Their aims and principles are, so far as they go, pure and
lofty. Truth in Art is a noble thing. But can these gentlemen find none
outside of their own society? The face of nature is very dear to us, and
during long years have we closely observed its forms, its changing hues
and expressions. We do like when we look at a picture to know whether
the trees be oaks, elms, or pines; whether the rocks be granitic,
volcanic, or stratified; whether the foliage be of spring, midsummer, or
autumn; even whether the foreground herbage be of grasses or
broad-leaved weeds; but is there no danger that minutiae may absorb too
much attention, that the larger parts may be lost in the lesser, that
while each weed tells its own story, the distant mountains, the
atmosphere, the whole picture, in short, may fail to tell us theirs in
any interesting or even intelligible manner? In excess of surface
details, may we not lose body, roundness; and, in matching exact color
rather than the effect of color through the tremulous ether, may not the
subtle mysteries of distance, of actually diffused and all-suffusing
light, escape the painter? It is possible to possess the body and fail
to grasp the life. Give us not blotchy nondescripts for natural objects,
fling to the winds all narrow, school-made, conventional ideas, but, in
giving us the real, give us the ideal also; otherwise we freeze, missing
the spirit which should warm and shine through the letter.

We fear lest in his zeal for truth, many a Pre-Raphaelite may be led to
overlook beauty. To a