MUSIC.—BY EDWARD J. HOLSLAG.
In the second panel, Corrupt Legislation is represented by a woman with a beautiful but depraved face sitting in an abandoned attitude on a throne the arms of which are cornucopias overflowing with the coin which is the revenue of the State. But this revenue is represented not as flowing outward, for the use and good of the people, but all directed toward the woman herself. The artist’s idea was that when revenue is so abundant, as here depicted, that it greatly exceeds the needs of government, then government becomes a temptation to all kinds of corrupt practices. The path in front of the throne is disused and overgrown with weeds, showing that under such a corrupt government the people have abandoned a direct approach to Justice. With her right hand, the woman waves away, with a contemptuous gesture, a poorly clad girl—representing Labor—who comes, showing her empty distaff and spindle, in search of the work which should be hers by right, but which she cannot obtain under a government inattentive to the wrongs of the people. In her left hand the woman holds a sliding scale—used as being more easily susceptible of fraud than a pair of balances, and the proper emblem therefore of the sort of justice in which she deals. A rich man is placing in it a bag of gold; he sits confidently beside her, secure of her favors in return for his bribe. At his feet are other bags of gold and a strong box, together with an overturned voting-urn filled with ballots, signifying his corrupt control of the very sources of power. In his lap he holds the book of Law, which he is skilled to pervert to his own ends. In the background are his factories, the smoke of their chimneys testifying to his prosperity. On the other side the factories are smokeless and idle, showing a strike or shut-down; and the earthen jar in which the savings of Labor have been hoarded lies broken at her feet.
The logical conclusion of such government is Anarchy. She is represented entirely nude, raving upon the ruins of the civilization she has destroyed. In one hand she holds the wine cup which makes mad, and in the other the incendiary torch, formed of the scroll of learning. Serpents twist in her dishevelled hair, and she tramples upon a scroll, a lyre, a Bible, and a book—the symbols, respectively, of Learning, Art, Religion, and Law. Beneath her feet are the dislocated portions of an arch. To the right, Violence, his eyes turned to gaze upon the cup of madness, is prying out the corner-stone of a temple. To the left, Ignorance, a female figure, with dull, brutish face, is using a surveyor’s staff to precipitate the wreckage of civilization into the chasm which opens in the foreground. Beyond, lying in an uncultivated field, are a broken mill-wheel and a millstone. But the end of such violence is clearly indicated; no sooner shall the corner-stone be pried from the wall than the temple will fall and crush the destroyers; and beside the great block on which Anarchy has placed her foot lies a bomb, with a lighted fuse attached. Such a condition, says the painting, must inevitably contain the seeds of its own destruction.
GOOD ADMINISTRATION.—BY ELIHU VEDDER.
On the other side of the central tympanum, Good Administration sits holding in her right hand a pair of scales evenly poised, and with her left laid upon a shield, quartered to represent the even balance of parties and classes which should obtain in a well ordered democracy; on this shield are emblazoned, as emblems of a just government, the weight, scales, and rule. The frame of her chair is an arch, a form of construction in which every stone performs an equal service—in which no shirking can exist—and therefore peculiarly appropriate to typify the equal part which all should take in a democratic form of government. On the right is a youth who casts his ballot into an urn. He carries some books under his arm, showing that education should be the basis of the suffrage. To the left is another voting-urn, into which a young girl is winnowing wheat, so that the good grains fall into its mouth while the chaff is scattered by the wind—an action symbolical of the care with which a people should choose its public servants. In the background is a field of wheat, a last touch in this picture of intelligence and virtue, and, in itself, symbolical of prosperous and careful toil.
In the last panel, that of Peace and Prosperity, the central figure is crowned with olive, the emblem of peace, and holds in her hands olive-wreaths to be bestowed as the reward of excellence. On either side is a youth, the one to her right typifying the Arts, and the other, Agriculture. The former sits upon an amphora or jar, and is engaged in decorating a piece of pottery; behind him is a lyre, for Music, and in the distance a little Grecian temple, for Architecture. The other is planting a sapling,—an act suggestive of a tranquil, just, and permanent government, under which alone one could plant with any hope of enjoying the shade and fruit of after years. The background of the picture is a well-wooded and fertile landscape, introduced for much the same purpose as the wheat-field in the preceding tympanum.
ANARCHY.—BY ELIHU VEDDER.