earth holding converse with the sky? Does their purity of colour and tone speak of a land which the imagination pictures, and our thoughts love to abide in-a land unpolluted and undefiled, where the pure in heart do dwell? The clouds, too-ministers of rain and lightning-are they inserted merely to compose the picture, or do they express the symbolism of the heavens? Every rock, mountain, tree, cloud, must thus have a meaning and purpose in itself; each is but part of a general idea-a means to a combined result; and it is in the association of the various individual ideas into one central and pervading thought or passion that we feel the dominion of creative genius, and are brought to acknowledge the true power and capacity of art. Not only should the bare anatomy of the landscape be instinct with thought, but the transient emotions which play across the features of nature, or in other words, the momentary effects which the landscape assumes, must endow the picture with living and speaking expression. The analogy between the human face and the face of nature is here complete. The form of the features bespeaks the permanent constitution of the mind in rest, and in like manner the outline of mountains and trees and rocks is symbolic of nature's energies in repose. To these permanent and constant manifestations are superadded the more transient and spiritual effects of passing emotion; these play upon the features and reveal the momentary phases of the soul within, and in the smile of sunshine or the frown of storm, tell us that nature is no inert mass, but the ever-changing product of active and living forces. Nature is not only intellectual, but is likewise endowed with soul, not only mental but emotional, and she appeals to our sympathies, because we also are creatures of emotion and impulse. Every passion within the human mind meets with a response in nature. Joanna Baillie wrote tragedies to exemplify these human passions, and in like manner the artist should paint landscapes in which the forms, light, and shade, colours, incidents, and effect, should be all focussed into one point, in order to intensify the expression of some ruling passion. No doubt this to a certain extent is always the aim of the true painter, but we are persuaded that little has been attempted in comparison to all that might be accomplished. Nature in the hands of the earnest artist must no longer be mute, but become vocal. 'His praise, ye winds, that from four quarters blow, Fountains, and ye that warble as ye flow Bear on your wings and in your notes his praise.' Especially in southern climates, all nature seems to rejoice with gladness, and to exult in the happiness of existence. Let some pictures then proclaim nature's jubilee, and give to the heart that joy which nature feels. It is easy to understand that this is of all others the most popular form of art; and if a picture can in anywise brighten the dull care of life, it has surely not been painted in vain. Sunlight in a landscape is like the entrance of happy thoughts within the mind. The simplest object either in nature or within the soul thus illumined is elevated above commonplace, and is as it were under heaven's benediction. In works thus beaming with the sunshine of joy few shadows should intrude, and they only to support and enhance the lights, and, as discord in music and evil in the world, only as they tend to the sweeter harmony and more perfect good. In northern latitudes the expression of the landscape is of course the opposite. The smile has become a frown; beauty is under eclipse; the grand and the terrible cast their shadow across the scene, and we think of evil and impending doom. Light is here subservient to shade, thrown in as a ray of hope to make the darkness visible-to save us from that outer and more terrible darkness which is without light and without hope. A landscape should partake of the varied character and contrast of actual life-not all joy, and not unalleviated sorrow. The one must blend with the other in harmonious contrast, each giving to each increased value. The management of the mental expression in a picture requires much discriminative subtlety. Mere light-heartedness standing alone is superficial; and, on the other hand, life abounds so greatly in sorrow, that art cannot be better employed than when it seeks to supply some element that shall dispel the gloom. To express the joy that lies in sorrow, to depict the sunshine after the storm, the promise of better days, which brighten adversitythis is the mingling of the two elements that are found in equal play in actual life, and which lie at the root of our deepest emotions. That men should go night after night to witness a tragedy only for the joy of weeping over their misery is a great anomaly. It may teach us, however, an important lesson in art and art criticism. To throw 'enchantment over passion' and 'cast o'er erring deeds and thoughts a heavenly hue' demands a master hand. In poetry this is possible, and we should like to see it at least attempted in painting. To return once more to the actual. We all know that Salvator Rosa painted pictures of passion. We prize his landscapes, not for their knowledge of nature, in which they are greatly surpassed by our modern school, but because the convulsive workings of his own mind make his pictures the tragedy of landscape art. All that he did was impressed with his own nature. The lines of his trees have the same twisted forms which give violence to his figures. He reduces all to the harmony, or rather to the discordant intensity of one passion, and that passion burns within himself. Nothing so incontestably evinces the creative power of genius as the capability of thus as it were projecting its own nature into all it sees, feels, and hears. To make the beauty around us a portion of ourselves, to use it as an appointed means in our spiritual growth, till our minds become the temples of all sweet sounds and beauteous forms, is one of the greatest privileges of our earthly lot. Not content with dwelling in inert contemplation on the riches thus laid in store, the active mind seeks to clothe its thoughts and feelings in outward form, and to leave some impress on the age in which it lives of its own existence and attainments. Hence the spontaneous birth of poetry and art, the free offspring of a nature overburdened with its riches, the outpouring of a soul which seeks to communicate to others its own joy and blessedness. In what mood the mind shall speak must depend on its individual tone and attainment. The path which in its onward course it has traversed, whether of sunshine or of sorrow, will cast a brightness or a gloom on all its works. Nature is an infinity of beauty, alike incomprehensible in extent and variety, and man, the finite, can only appropriate and make a part of himself a small portion of the riches scattered around him. In nature each mind sees itself reflected; blind and insensible to the beauties which are not congenial to its individual idiosyncrasy, it seizes upon those that are typical of its special phase of thought and feeling. Thus it is that no two men see alike; each man takes as it were his own individual self out of nature, and yet she remains infinite as before, inexhaustible as on the first day of creation, giving even in these last times an originality and freshness which all the labours of past centuries and all the demands of former genius have not exhausted or rendered impossible. Thus likewise no metes and bounds can be assigned to art; its actual extent must always be commensurate with the development of man, and its possible attainment only touches the furthest limit when mind has reached its climax. Coleridge said, that for the writing of an epic poem he should require fifteen years; ten years for reading and the necessary study, five for the writing, and another five for the revision. Now for the highest form of landscape art something like this same mental discipline and labour are necessary. Instead of years of reading must be the not less laborious and extended study of nature; the collecting together of all that is most beautiful and grand in creation. But the most subtle function yet remains, that of arranging, digesting, modifying, and by the creative power of the imagina tion, refashioning nature's manifestations according to the mind's desires. These operations imply mental endowments so varied and profound that it is no marvel that the ideal artist, like the perfect beauty, should be as yet and for ever a mere mental conception. It will now not be difficult to understand why we should be eager to protest against that criticism which would exclude the ideal from art. Of the vocation of art and artists we have the highest notions; and the present state of things notwithstanding, we do not wholly renounce hopes for the future. What we fear chiefly is, lest pictures should be deemed mere toys and playthings to amuse and please, not poems to improve by elevating. Religious art in the middle ages had a function, and so must modern art if it would keep its ground. Unless the painter strive for a higher end than that of merely decorating walls and adding the last finish to house furnishing, he cannot take any important place in the present or coming civilization. He must surrender his post of honour, and leave the cause of progress to the guidance of commerce, philosophy, and science. We doubt not that art, whether it attempt to soar, or be content to sink, will ever be patronized where wealth abounds, and pictures without thought or original purpose cannot but be popular with that large, we had almost said increasing, class to whom the act of thinking is an irksome exercise. It is because we hope better things both for art and humanity that we have thus written. In some respects we have fallen upon adverse times. The present aspect of our religion creates no art patronage; science and philosophy require no pictures, otherwise than as diagrams and illustrations; and poetry itself, like high art, is content to rely on past achievements. Art is now only an interlude in life's more serious drama. This is a great mistake; for she is not only the measure but the means of mental advancement, not only the product but the agent of civilization. She is now too much under the divided guardianship of the mechanist who merely drudges and the dilettante who is content to dream. It is by the union of the man of action with the man of thought, of blind practice with enlightened theory, that art can accomplish her mission and fulfil the requirements of the present age. She will then occupy that middle position between the actual and the ideal which fits her equally for our improvement and our pleasure. She will be made the medium by which our senses, redeemed from grossness, are blended with nobler functions: the visible and the invisible worlds will thus be united into one, and the ideal cease to be a dream because it has become a reality. 145 ART. II.—Islamism: Its Rise and Progress; or, the Present and Past Condition of the Turks. By F. A. Neale. In Two Volumes. 8vo. pp. 365-315. London: James Madden. THE historical student can scarcely find a more instructive chapter in the annals of the world than that which records the rise and progress of the Islam faith, nor a more interesting subject for investigation than an inquiry into the causes of that heresy, so great and so rapid in its advancement. Arabia, certainly, was a soil by no means unfavourable to the growth of that gigantic delusion. Almost entirely cut off from the rest of the world, not only by its remoteness from the great seats of civilization, but by the nomadic habits of its people, that country had never fully experienced the humanizing influences of Christianity; but the Bedouin tribes, sometimes living in the fertile uplands in its centre, and sometimes wandering over the desert plains which extend far and wide in that country, dwelt in a simplicity like that of Abraham, and in a freedom which was neither burdened nor restrained by the imposition of kingly authority. To live, it was needful they should provide only for to-day. As their cares did not extend to it, so they were not accustomed to provide for to-morrow. Ignorant of the refinement and of many of the enjoyments of social life, these wild children of the desert were content to dwell among garish mountains, or on the sandy wastes, certain, when the wretched herbage was exhausted, of being carried to other plains or to other valleys where scanty supplies would be found. The religion of these rude nomads consisted chiefly in adoration of the heavenly bodies-the lovely orbs whose radiance guided them in their nightly wanderings, and which equally to the untutored denizens of the desert, and to the refined inhabitants of the city or town, are 'a beauty and a mystery.' Ignorant of the future life, and of the retribution completely to be realized in it, the Arabs believed, however, that the greater evils of the present state of existence could be escaped or mitigated by offering sacrifices to the heavenly luminaries which they adored. The slaves of superstition in its worst form, their religion was as bloody as their faith was degraded. Around the rude Caaba-structure in Mecca, their temple-city, heathenish rites were observed, which, for cruelty and debasement, could not be surpassed even by the most savage idolaters. The religion of man, unblessed by revelation, must necessarily partake of the character of its originator. The cruel will ever adore a divinity who is the type of their own nature; and, among the barbarous, ferocity will be characteristic of their worship. N.S.-VOL. IX. |