About the year 1825 an American school of landscape-painters was founded by Thomas Cole, many of whose pictures were allegorical. Durand is one of those who excelled in landscape painting. In other provinces of the art, Peale, Weir, Huntington, Page, Morse, Chase, Whistler, Sargent, Abbey; in landscape, Gifford, Kensett, Church, Bierstadt, McEntee, Inness, Winslow Homer, well represent what is best and most characteristic in the later productions of American painters.
MUSIC.—In music, Germany in the nineteenth century held the palm. Schubert, Spohr, Weber, Meyerbeer, and Wagner are names of world-wide celebrity, while in the works of Mendelssohn (1809-1849) and Schumann (1810-1856) the art of music reached its climax. Chopin (1810-1849), the founder of a new style of piano-forte music, was born in Poland: his father, however, was French.
PHILANTHROPIC REFORM.
In a survey of the course of recent history, notice should be taken of the increased activity of a humane spirit in the several nations.
1. SOCIAL SCIENCE.—The investigation of social evils and of their proper remedies, and of the laws which govern man in his social relations, has received of late the name of social science. In 1857 a meeting in London, over which Lord Brougham presided, resulted in the organization of a society of persons interested in different forms of social improvement, bearing the name of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science. Its work embraced the consideration of these five subjects: law-amendment,—to promote which a society had existed, of which Lord Brougham was the head; education; prevention and repression of crime; public health; and social economy. Branches were established in various towns in England. Similar societies have flourished in the United States. An international society of the same character held its first meeting in Brussels in 1862. The wide range of special topics which these societies consider may give an appearance of indefiniteness to their aims. The movement at least indicates that social advancement has assumed the form of a distinct and comprehensive problem, and is drawing to itself the deliberate attention of thoughtful persons of diverse nations and creeds.
2. MITIGATION OF THE SUFFERINGS OF WAR: HOSPITALS.—If wars are still frequent and destructive, much more has been done of late to mitigate the sufferings consequent upon armed conflicts. The right of an invading force to ravage the territory of an enemy was seldom practically asserted in the nineteenth century. Non-combatants, according to the modern rules of war, are not to be molested. Their property, if it is taken, is to be paid for at its fair value. The doctrine that requisitions may be made by a commander is not yet abandoned. It was acted on by Napoleon on a large scale. It was not approved by Wellington. There is a growing opinion against it. It is not now held to be a crime for an officer to hold a fortress as long as he can. In the care of the sick and the wounded, there has been a great change for the better. The ambulance system, or the system of movable hospitals accompanying armies on the field, was established by the French, with the approval of Napoleon, in 1795. The name ambulance is also frequently given to the vehicles for transporting the wounded and sick. The whole ambulance system was completely organized in the American civil war, and defined by an Act of Congress in 1864. To a French surgeon is due, also, the establishment of a corps of stretcher-bearers. By the European Convention adopted at Geneva (1864), the wounded, and the whole official staff connected with ambulances, are exempted from capture as prisoners of war. For the more efficient organization of hospitals, a great service was rendered by the example of Florence Nightingale, an English lady, who, at the head of a company of volunteer nurses, during the Crimean war created a great establishment of this sort at Scutari (1854). The increased pains-taking in the method of building, in the ventilation and general management of hospitals, during the last half-century, has gone far towards freeing them from the dangers and evils to which they were formerly subject.
SANITARY SCIENCE.—Sanitary science, and the engineering connected with it, belong to the nineteenth century, and mainly to the second half of it. Systems of drainage have been devised which involve much mechanical skill, not to dwell on their usefulness in promoting health. Prior to 1815, in England, the law forbade the discharge of sewage in water-drains. The law of 1847 required that which up to 1815 was prohibited. The great change on this whole subject dates from the cholera of 1832, which awoke public attention to the sources of disease. The condition of the poor, and the discussions relating to it, lent a new stimulus to the inquiry. A series of English reports, from 1842 to 1848, had a great influence in producing a sanitary reform, in the particulars referred to, in England and in other countries.
3. PUBLIC EDUCATION.—During the nineteenth century, systems of general education were established in different countries. In a part of the United States, an effective common-school system has always existed. In Germany also, especially in Prussia, there have long been thorough provisions for the instruction of all the young in elementary branches. In France, in consequence of the laws requiring primary schools in all the communes of any considerable size, the average of illiteracy has of late steadily diminished. In 1881, in France, instruction in the public primary schools was made absolutely free. England has witnessed a very great change in the legal establishment of means of instruction in the rudiments of knowledge for the whole people. The Education Act of 1876 required that every child between the ages of five and fourteen should receive such teaching. In England, and in some other countries, the employment of children who have not had a certain amount of school instruction was prohibited by law. In the new kingdom of Italy, every commune having four thousand inhabitants was required by law (1859) to maintain a primary school. By subsequent legislation, the compulsory principle was adopted as far as the circumstances of the country would allow. The result has been a most remarkable diminution in the numbers of the wholly illiterate class. Other European states have made primary education compulsory. For instance, in Hungary, attendance at school was made obligatory for children from the beginning of the eighth to the end of the twelfth year. Such measures in behalf of general education as governments have adopted in recent times are founded, to be sure, partly on the conscious need of self-protection against ignorance and its baleful consequences to the state. A more directly humane impulse, however, mingles with this motive. The operation of benevolent feeling is seen in the multiplying of special schools for the benefit of the blind, of the deaf and dumb, and even of imbeciles.
4. REFORM OF CRIMINAL LAW.—The advance of humane sentiment has produced a reform of criminal law. In England, in the closing part of the eighteenth century, there were two hundred and twenty-three offenses that were punished with death. To injure Westminster Bridge, to cut down young trees, to shoot at rabbits, to steal property of the value of five shillings, were capital offenses. Vigorous and persevering opposition was made to the mitigation of this bloody code. Sir Samuel Romilly (1757-1818) began his effort at reform by endeavoring to secure the repeal of these cruel laws, one by one. His bills, when carried with difficulty through the Commons, were repeatedly thrown out by the House of Lords. One of the most strenuous opponents of the change was the Lord Chancellor, Eldon. Lord Ellenborough, the chief justice, stigmatized the proposed alteration of the statutes as the fruit of "speculation and modern philosophy." It was predicted that, if it were made, there would be a terrible increase of crime. Sir James Mackintosh continued with success the effort of Romilly. In 1837 the list of capital offenses had been reduced to seven. One consequence was the striking diminution of crime. Another reform in England was that of the police-system (1816). The officers of the police had encouraged crime in order to secure the reward of forty pounds offered by the government on conviction, in the case of crimes of a certain grade.
5. PRISON-DISCIPLINE REFORM.—One of the distinctions of modern philanthropy is the prison-discipline reform. When Howard began his labors (1773), the prisons in England were generally dirty, pestiferous dens, crowded with inmates of both sexes,—nurseries of loathsome disease, and of still more loathsome vice. Soon after this time, a serious effort began to make prisons a means of reform, instead of schools of debauchery and crime. There was a movement for the erection of penitentiaries of improved construction. This was aided by the exertions of Jeremy Bentham. The most successful efforts in behalf of a better system of management in prisons were made by members of the Society of Friends. Of these, the most useful person in this cause was Mrs. Elizabeth Gurney Fry (1780-1845), a woman of rare powers of mind and of the noblest Christian character. By her personal influence, she wrought such a transformation of character and behavior among the female convicts in Newgate Prison as it had been deemed impossible to effect. The reforms which Mrs. Fry effected spread to other places. Her labors were not confined to Great Britain. She visited France (1838), Belgium, Holland, and other countries. Her correspondence in the interest of the cause which she served extended to Russia and Italy. Her recommendations bore fruit for good in almost all parts of Europe. Signal improvements in plans of construction, and in the interior life of prisons, have been effected under the auspices of the Prison Discipline Society in England. In these changes, the example of changes and reforms in this matter in the United States has had a marked influence. The two great ends kept in view at present in the arrangements and occupations of prisons are the reform of the criminal, and the deterring of others from the commission of crime. Distinct establishments for the detention, reform, and training of juvenile offenders, who were formerly corrupted by association with criminals mature in vice, are peculiar to recent times. The transportation of English convicts to Australia began in 1787. As these multiplied, there sprang up cruelty on the part of supervisors in the colonies; and in the penal settlements where the worst offenders were guarded, there were found the most corrupt and degraded herds of criminals. The opposition in the colonial communities to transportation found support in England. In 1840 deportation to New South Wales ceased. At length Van Dieman's Land also refused to receive this forced emigration even of released convicts. The British Government was obliged to rely on other methods of punishment, especially on the graduation of the term of confinement according to the conduct of the criminal.