TALBOYS.
Methinks, sir, that the moral emotion with which we regard actions greatly right or greatly wrong, is no transport; it is an earnest, solemn feeling of a mind knowing there is no peace for living souls, except in their Moral Obedience, and therefore receiving a deep and grateful assurance of the peace of one soul more, in witnessing its adherence to its virtue; and the pain which is suffered from crime is much more allied to sorrow, in contemplating the wilful departure of a spirit from its only possible Good, than to those feelings of repugnance and hate which characterise the temper of our common human emotion towards crimes offering violence and outrage to humanity.
NORTH.
I believe that, though darkness lies round and about us seeking to solve such questions, a feeling of deep satisfaction in witnessing the adherence to Moral Rectitude, and of deep pain in witnessing the departure from it, are the necessary results of a moral sensibility; but taken in their elementary simplicity, they have, I think, a character distinct from those many other emotions which will necessarily blend with them, in the heart of one human being looking upon the actions of another—"because that we have all one human heart."
TALBOYS.
Who can doubt that Religion infuses power and exaltation into the Arts? The bare History teaches this. In Greece Poetry sang of Gods, and of Heroes, in whose transactions Gods moved. Sculpture moulded Forms which were attempted expressions of Divine Attributes. Architecture constructed Temples. De facto the Grecian Arts rose out of Religion. And were not the same Arts, of revived Italy, religious?
BULLER.
They all require for their foundation and support a great pervading sympathy—some Feeling that holds a whole national breast. This is needed to munificently defraying the Costlier Arts—no base consideration at bottom. For it is a life-bond of this life, that is freely dropped, when men freely and generously contribute their means to the honour of Religion. There is a sentiment in opening your purse.
SEWARD.
Yes, Buller—without that sentiment, no man can love noble Art. The true, deep, grand support of Genius is the confidence of universal sympathy. Homer sings because Greece listens. Phidias pours out his soul over marble, gold, and ivory, because he knows that at Olympia united Greece will wonder and will worship. Think how Poet is dumb and Sculptor lame, who foreknows that what he would sing, what he would carve, will neither be felt nor understood.