The moral from all this is, love Art, and if you choose, practise Art. Purchase Art for itself alone, and in the main for yourself alone. If you so do, you will encourage Art to more purpose than if you spent thousands a year in Art-Unions, and in presenting the public with what pleased you; just as a man does most good by being good. Goldsmith puts it in his inimitable way—"I was ever of opinion that the honest man, who married and brought up a large family, did more service than he who continued single, and only talked of population."
I have said those things strongly, abruptly, and perhaps rudely; but my heart is in the matter. Art is part of my daily food, like the laughter of children, and the common air, the earth, the sky; it is an affection, not a passion to come and go like the gusty wind, nor a principle cold and dead; it penetrates my entire life, it is one of the surest and deepest pleasures, one of the refuges from "the nature of things," as Bacon would say, into that enchanted region, that "ampler æther," that "diviner air," where we get a glimpse not only of a Paradise that is past, but of a Paradise that is to come.
There is one man amongst us who has done more to breathe the breath of life into the literature and the philosophy of Art, who has "encouraged" it ten thousand times more effectually than all our industrious Coles and anxious Art-Unions, and that is the author of Modern Painters. I do not know that there is anything in our literature, or in any literature, to compare with the effect of this one man's writings. He has by his sheer force of mind, and fervour of nature, the depth and exactness of his knowledge, and his amazing beauty and power of language, raised the subject of Art from being subordinate and technical, to the same level with Poetry and Philosophy. He has lived to see an entire change in the public mind and eye, and, what is better, in the public heart, on all that pertains to the literature and philosophy of representative genius. He combines its body, and its soul. Many before him wrote about its body, and some well; a few, as Charles Lamb and our great "Titmarsh," touched its soul: it was left to John Ruskin to do both. *
* This great writer was first acknowledged as such by our
big quarterlies, in the North British Review, fourteen years
ago, as follows:—
"This is a very extraordinary and a very delightful book,
full of truth and goodness, of power and beauty. If genius
may be considered (and it is as serviceable a definition as
is current) that power by which one man produces for the use
or the pleasure of his fellow-men, something at once new and
true, then have we here its unmistakable and inestimable
handiwork. Let our readers take our word for it, and read
these volumes thoroughly, giving themselves up to the
guidance of this most original thinker, and most attractive
writer, and they will find not only that they are richer in
true knowledge, and quickened in pure and heavenly
affections, but they will open their eyes upon a new world—
walk under an ampler heaven, and breathe a diviner air.
There are few things more delightful or more rare, than to
feel such a kindling up of the whole faculties as is
produced by such a work as this."
DISTRAINING FOR RENT.
Of this picture it is not easy to speak. We do not at first care to say much about feelings such as it produces. It is, to our liking, Wilkie's most perfect picture. If they were all to be destroyed but one, we would keep this. His "Blind Man's Buff," his "Penny Wedding," his "Village Politicians," and many others, have more humour,—his "John Knox preaching," more energy,—his "John Knox at the Sacrament," more of heaven and victorious faith; but there is more of human nature, more of the human heart, in this, than in any of the others. It is full of
"The still, sad music of humanity
still and sad, but yet musical, by reason of its true ideality, the painter acting his part as reconciler of men to their circumstances. This is one great end of poetry and painting. Even when painful and terrible in their subjects, "they are of power, by raising pity and fear or terror, to purge the mind of suchlike passions,—that is, to temper and reduce them to just measure with a kind of delight or, in the words of Charles Lamb, "they dispose the mind to a meditative tenderness."