SECTION II.
PAINTING.
Painting,—the most beautiful in the triumvirate of the Arts, proudly follows Sculpture in her classic path,—the precedence only yielded as to one of elder birth, who attired in her snow-white raiment marches forward with majestic step, casting her shadow to the confines of History; while her graceful follower, clad in the rainbow-tinted garments, and having no shadow of herself, receives her coloured brilliancy from the glowing Sun of Genius, and thence in gratitude reflects back her pictorial light to illuminate the mind! This delightful art may be defined to be a species of poetic and historic writing, and subservient to the same ends—the expression of ideas and events—of Nature and her children. It bears resemblance to the diamond in the dark recesses of the earth, which by its own innate quality emits sparkling rays of light, thereby not only discovering its own splendour, but giving a lustre to obscurity.
Painting has her direct claims to be received as authority for past events and records, and in illustration may be cited the Life and History of the Saviour. The pictorial art alone was for centuries the only record whereby the mass of the people could read that Sacred Life. The cross upon the banners, shields, and pennons of the Crusaders, spoke to the Christian heart, even above the din of arms or the yell of battle. When the Latin was the general tongue of prayer and preaching, the pictorial art sprung into life with redoubled power; and from the painting above the altar, representing the Crucifixion, the people learned that Christ suffered,—it alone reached the heart and understanding, while the Latin language reached only the ears of the unlettered. Has not the Life of the Redeemer been traced through every event by the painter's magic art? The Annunciation, Nativity, Disputation in the Temple, Healing the Sick and the Blind, Last Supper and Sacrament, Rejection by Pilate, Crucifixion, and the Resurrection and Transfiguration, are the pictorial Volumes of our religion. Angelo, De Vinci, Raphael, Murillo, Rubens, and West, were as essentially historians of sacred events,—as Plutarch, Livy, Tacitus, Gibbon, Hume, and Robertson, were those of a national and political character.
Painting has traced upon the galleries of Versailles the chief events of the French kingdom—of the Empire and its glory. And in the present day, the new walls of England's Parliament are to be decorated with her deeds of chivalry—sacred to her historic and undying fame!
The walls of the American capital contain the imperishable history of Washington, and the Freedom of the Western Hemisphere! Paintings then will not be rejected as evidences of events, or of religious and national records.