lorify their
Maker in the enjoyment of His attributes, is an earnest, even here, of
our blissful immortality.

If art has frequently fallen from its high mission, if it has often
failed to incarnate the divine ideas from which all its glories must
flow, it must be attributed in part to the artists themselves; in part
to the public for whom they labor, and whom they too often seek only to
amuse. They clutch at the ephemeral bouquets of the passing passions of
a day, not caring to wait for the unfading crowns of amaranth. If the
artist will stoop to linger in the Circean hall of the senses, he must
not be astonished if good and earnest men should reproach him with the
triviality of a misspent and egotistic life.

If we should pause and examine into the reasons for the different
estimation in which art is held by different persons, we should find
them in the various definitions of the Beautiful which would be offered
us by the individuals in question. Let us linger for a moment to examine
such definitions.

One class of men would tell us that the Beautiful is that which is
agreeable to the senses of sight and hearing. They would admire, in
painting, the delineation of naked flesh, luxuriant as it glows upon the
canvas of Vandyke and Rubens; in statuary, they would seek voluptuous
and sensual positions; while in music, they would love that which
titillates the ear, which lulls them into an indolent yet delicious
languor. Such men are the dwellers in the halls of Circean senses; they
can appreciate only the sensuous. The poets of this class are very
numerous. They never rise to those general ideas which are found in the
universal consciousness, but are forever occupied with fugitive
thoughts, passing as the hour in which they are born. They delight in
representing the _accidental_, the exceptional, the peculiar, the
fashion, mode, or exaggeration of the flying hour. They never sing of
the high and tender feelings which pervade the human heart; of the joys
and sorrows of the soul in its mystic relations with God, its
sympathetic affections with humanity; but delight in describing furtive
sensations, passing impressions, individual and subjective bliss and
woe. Never daring to grapple with the sublime yet tender simplicity of
nature, they sport with eccentricity, delight in fantastically related
ideas, revel in surprises, in sudden and unforeseen developments. Their
style is full of individualities and mannerisms, ornaments