The drawings were examined by the best critics and pronounced excellent, and a ticket of admission was immediately issued together with a highly complimentary reference to her work.
The next day my friend, congratulating her country and herself that at least in the republic of art no caste existed, presented her ticket of admission in propria persona. There was a little preliminary side play in Delsarte pantomime,—aghast—incredulity—wonder; then the superintendent told her in plain unartistic English that of course he had not dreamed a colored person could do such work, and had he suspected the truth he would never have issued the ticket of admission; that, to be right frank, the ticket would have to be cancelled,—she could under no condition be admitted to the studio.
Can it be possible that even art in America is to be tainted by this shrivelling caste spirit? If so, what are we coming to? Can any one conceive a Shakespeare, a Michael Angelo, or a Beethoven putting away any fact of simple merit because the thought, or the suggestion, or the creation emanated from a soul with an unpleasing exterior?
What is it that makes the great English bard pre-eminent as the photographer of the human soul? Where did he learn the universal language, so that Parthians, Medes and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, in Egypt and Libya, in Crete and Arabia do hear every one in our own tongue the wonderful revelations of this myriad mind? How did he learn our language? Is it not that his own soul was infinitely receptive to Nature, the dear old nurse, in all her protean forms? Did he not catch and reveal her own secret by his sympathetic listening as she “would constantly sing a more wonderful song or tell a more marvellous tale” in the souls he met around him?
“Stand off! I am better than thou!” has never yet painted a true picture, nor written a thrilling song, nor given a pulsing, a soul-burning sermon. ’Tis only sympathy, another name for love,—that one poor word which, as George Eliot says, “expresses so much of human insight”—that can interpret either man or matter.
It was Shakespeare’s own all-embracing sympathy, that infinite receptivity of his, and native, all-comprehending appreciation, which proved a key to unlock and open every soul that came within his radius. And he received as much as he gave. His own stores were infinitely enriched thereby. For it is decreed
Man like the vine supported lives,
The strength he gains is from th’ embrace he gives.
It is only through clearing the eyes from bias and prejudice, and becoming one with the great all pervading soul of the universe that either art or science can
“Read what is still unread