finite mind the two words are by no means
synonymous. There can be no _real_ beauty without truth, but many truths
are not beautiful, and beauty, no less than truth, is an important
ingredient in that complex resultant, Art.

We quote from one of the articles of organization of the above-named
Society: 'The right course for young artists is faithful and loving
representations of Nature, selecting nothing and rejecting nothing,
seeking only to express the greatest possible amount of fact.' Now we
all know that the best way to stultify the mind and conception of a
youthful student, in any branch of art, is to keep before him
commonplace models. Indeed, what student gifted with genius, or even
with any high degree of talent, will not (if unrestrained) himself
select as studies, not any mere chronicle of desired facts, but the most
significant forms (suited to his proficiency) in which he can find those
facts embodied?

The article quoted must be based upon the belief that there are no
commonplace, ugly objects in nature. If we sit down and reason over, or
use our microscopes upon any work of the Almighty, we can find wisdom
and beauty therein, but that does not alter the fact that beauty and
significance are distributed in degrees of more and less. 'Art is long
and time is fleeting,' and the genuine artist has no hours to waste over
the less significant and characteristic. Besides, each student deserving
the name, has his own individuality, and will naturally select, and the
more lovingly paint, objects in accordance with his especial bent of
mind. Not that we would have him become one-sided, and neglect the study
of matters that might some day be useful; but in this, as in all things
else, he must temper feeling with judgment, and make the mechanical
execution the simple, faithful handmaiden to truly imaginative
conception.

In the moral world we may cheerfully accept physical deformity for the
sake of some elevated principle therewith developed; but in the realm of
art, man's only sphere of creation, we want the best the artist can give
us, the greatest truth with the highest beauty. We are not willing to
take the truth without the beauty. If we are to be told that sunlight
tipping the edges of trees produces certain effects upon those edges and
the shadowed foliage behind, let the fact be worthily represented, and
not so prosily set forth that the picture shall be to us simply a matter
of curiosity. That those trees