In the progress of truth, the animal passions degrading our nature are by degrees checked and subdued. The license of lust and the brutality of intemperance, marking a civilization inferior to our own, are at last driven from public display. Faithful Art reflects the character of the age. To its honor, libertinism and intemperance no longer intrude their obscene faces into its pictures. The time is at hand when religion, humanity, and taste will concur in rejecting any image of human strife. Laïs and Phryne have fled; Bacchus and Silenus are driven reeling from the scene. Mars will soon follow, howling, as with that wound from the Grecian spear before Troy. The Hall of Battles, at Versailles, where Louis Philippe, the inconsistent conservator of peace, has arrayed, on acres of canvas, the bloody contests in the long history of France, will be shut by a generation appreciating true greatness.
In the mission of teaching to nations and to individuals wherein is true greatness, Art has a noble office. If not herald, she is at least handmaid of Truth. Her lessons may not train the intellect, but they cannot fail to touch the heart. Who can measure the influence from an image of beauty, affection, and truth? The Christus Consolator of Scheffer, without a word, wins the soul. Such a work awakens lasting homage to the artist, and to the spirit from which it proceeds, while it takes its place with things that never die. Other works, springing from the lower passions, are no better than gaudy, perishing flowers of earth; but here is perennial, amaranthine bloom.
Allston loved excellence for its own sake. He looked down upon the common strife for worldly consideration. With impressive beauty of truth and expression, he said, "Fame is the eternal shadow of excellence, from which it can never be separated."[180] Here is a volume, prompting to noble thought and action, not for the sake of glory, but for advance in knowledge, virtue, excellence. Our Artist gives renewed utterance to that sentiment which is the highest grace in the life of the great magistrate, Lord Mansfield, when, confessing the attractions of "popularity," he said it was that which followed, not which was followed after.
As we contemplate the life and works of Allston, we are inexpressibly grateful that he lived. His example is one of our best possessions. And yet, while rejoicing that he has done much, we seem to hear a whisper that he might have done more. His productions suggest a higher genius than they display; and we are disposed sometimes to praise the master rather than the work. Like a beloved character in English literature, Sir James Mackintosh, he finally closed a career of beautiful, but fragmentary labors, leaving much undone which all had hoped he would do. The great painting which haunted so many years of his life, and which his friends and country awaited with anxious interest, remained unfinished at last. His Virgilian sensibility and modesty would doubtless have ordered its destruction, had death arrested him less suddenly. Titian died, leaving incomplete, like Allston, an important picture, on which his hand was busy down to the time of his death. A pious and distinguished pupil, the younger Palma, took up the labor of his master, and, on its completion, placed it in the church for which it was destined, with this inscription: "That which Titian left unfinished Palma reverently completed, and dedicated to God." Where is the Palma who can complete what our Titian has left unfinished?
Let us now devoutly approach the grave of the brother whom, in order of time, we were first called to mourn. William Ellery Channing, the Philanthropist, died in the month of October, 1842, aged sixty-two. By an easy transition we pass from Allston to Channing. They were friends and connections. The monumental stone which marks the last resting-place of the Philanthropist was designed by the Artist. In physical organization they were not unlike, each possessing a fineness of fibre hardly belonging to the Anglo-Saxon stock. In both we observe similar sensibility, delicacy, refinement, and truth, with highest aims; and the color of Allston finds a parallel in the Venetian richness which marks the style of Channing.
I do not speak of him as Theologian, although his labors have earned this title also. It is probable that no single mind, in our age, has exerted a greater influence over theological opinions. But I pass all this by, without presuming to indicate its character. Far better dwell on those labors which should not fail to find favor in all churches, whether at Rome, Geneva, Canterbury, or Boston.
His influence is widely felt and acknowledged. His words have been heard and read by thousands, in all conditions of life, and in various lands, whose hearts now throb with gratitude towards the meek and eloquent upholder of divine truth. An American traveller, at a small village nestling on a terrace of the Tyrolese Alps, encountered a German, who, hearing that his companion was from Boston, inquired earnestly after Channing,—saying that the difficulty of learning the English language was adequately repaid by the charm of his writings. A distinguished stranger, when about to visit our country, was told by a relative not less lovely in character than elevated in condition, that she envied him his journey "for the sake of Niagara and Channing." We have already observed that a critic of Art places him in an American triumvirate with Allston and Washington. More frequently he is associated with Washington and Franklin. Unlike Washington, he was never general or president; unlike Franklin, he never held high office. But it would be difficult to say that since them any American has exerted greater sway over his fellow-men. And yet, if it be asked what single measure he carried to a successful close, I could not answer. It is on character that he has wrought and is still producing incalculable change. So extensive is this influence, that multitudes now feel it, although strangers to his spoken or even his written word. The whole country and age feel it.
I have called him Philanthropist, lover of man,—the title of highest honor on earth. "I take goodness in this sense," says Lord Bacon, in his Essays, "the affecting of the weal of men, which is that the Grecians call Philanthropia.... This of all virtues and dignities of the mind is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and without it man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing, no better than a kind of vermin." Lord Bacon was right. Confessing the attractions of scholarship, awed by the majesty of the law, fascinated by the beauty of Art, the soul bends with involuntary reverence before the angelic nature that seeks the good of his fellow-man. Through him God speaks. On him has descended in especial measure the Divine Spirit. God is Love; and man, when most active in good works, most nearly resembles Him. In heaven, we are told, the first place or degree is given to the angels of love, who are termed Seraphim,—the second to the angels of light, who are termed Cherubim.