The heart of an Englishman must ever swell with pride as he contemplates his country's greatness. He looks around him, and his eye every where meets with the signs of increasing opulence and prosperity, while his ear is filled with the busy hum of an industrious, and, despite the idle babblings of the ignorant, and the empty declamation of interested, selfish, and disappointed men, a contented population, happy in the enjoyment of comfort, beyond that of the labouring classes of most other countries. He visits her marts, her harbours, and her ports—men of all nations are met together there—fleets of rich argosies are ever arriving and departing—and myriads of steamers flit to and fro, happily now engaged in promoting the arts of peace, but ready at a moment's notice to become the defenders of his country's shores, and, as recent events have shown the world, able also to carry war and devastation along the coasts of her enemies, even to the uttermost parts of the earth. He explores the seats of her manufactures; there he beholds vast edifices teeming with crowds of work-people, occupied in supplying the wants of mankind. In short, wherever he bends his steps, all are usefully employed—industry, enterprise, and perseverance, are found throughout the land. He also feels it no vain boast to be a denizen of that small isle, whose inhabitants, by their own proper energy, have extended their dominion over a territory on which the sun never sets—peopled by upwards of two hundred million souls—consisting of colonies, nations, and people, differing from each other in form of person, complexion, habits, manners, and in language—elements apparently the most discordant and heterogeneous, yet firmly knit and bound into one vast glorious empire, which, successfully resisting the rudest shocks, often assaulted, ever victorious, and, thanks to the bravery of her warriors, and the wisdom of those who now guide her councils, having defeated alike the open attacks and the secret machinations of her enemies, at this moment constitutes the most powerful state of ancient or modern times—abounding in wealth, and rejoicing in freedom, beyond all other nations of the earth.
He glories also in the intellectual pre-eminence of his country. Her victories by sea and land attest the genius of her captains; her institutions bear witness to the sagacity of her lawgivers and her statesmen. Her railroads, docks, canals, and other public works, bear the marks of superior intelligence acting for the general good. His countrymen were the first to press steam into the active service of mankind. By the genius of Watt and his successors, a power, before destructive and uncontrollable, has been rendered the mighty agent of man's will, the supplier of his wants, and the minister of his convenience. Through their inventions, steam has become, as it were, the breath, the life, of a noble animal of man's creation, untiring in its ceaseless labours, irresistible in its tremendous strength; and, when its maker chooses to endow it with powers of motion, fleeter also than the wind, but of imposing might and majesty as it pursues its headlong course; and yet, withal, checked by a single touch, yielding a perfect obedience to the hand of its ruler, and submissive to the slightest intimation of his will. In the walks of science, literature, and philosophy, he finds equal reason to be proud of his country. Splendid discoveries in every branch of science meet him as he enquires, and but a few years have passed away since the death of one—Sir Humphry Davy—of whom it is scarce too much to say, that he revolutionized a great science by his discoveries, or that, by the power of his single intellect, he dived deeper into the hidden mysteries of the material world than all preceding generations had been able to penetrate. In short, an Englishman finds his country possessed of warriors, statesmen, philosophers, historians, poets, and authors, in every branch of literature, who are the admiration of the whole civilized world. In all these, England stands proudly pre-eminent, the first, the very first, among the nations. It is much to be able to feel this, but an Englishman would fain feel even more than this; his noble ambition is to see his country first in every thing; he would have her pre-eminent alike in the fine arts and those pursuits which distinguish the recreations and amusements of a refined and polished people, as in the more useful arts of life.
But here the pleasing portion of the picture ceases—
"Ogni medaglia ha il suo rovescio,"
every medal has its obverse, says the Italian proverb; and the comparatively low rank which his country occupies in this new field of view, is a melancholy contemplation for an Englishman. He finds that, in general, things are judged of only by the measure of their practical utility, and that the beautiful and the useful are usually deemed to be incompatible; thereby affording, however reluctantly we may admit it, at least some justification of Napoleon's celebrated and bitter reproach, that we are a nation of shopkeepers. It would seem, in truth, that we do not possess that quick perception of the beautiful which is enjoyed by the more excitable and imaginative sons of the south. In painting, we believe we possess a school second to none of modern art. But, beautiful as their works may be, can we place our Reynolds, Lawrence, Hogarth, and Gainsborough in competition with Raphael, Correggio, Rubens, or Claude? In sculpture also, can Westmacott, or even Chantrey—we speak with reverence of the illustrious dead—be compared with Michael Angelo or Giovanni de Bologna? When pressed on these topics, the candid Englishman must, with a sigh, confess his country's inferiority. Architecture also, with few exceptions, has long been our reproach. We judge of the degree of civilization and refinement to which ancient Greece and Rome attained, by the beauty and elegance of their mutilated remains. We find their temples, even in ruins, beautiful beyond the day-dream of our modern architects; some of them, till bold and sacrilegious hands despoiled them, adorned with sculptures which, surviving the destruction of the people who raised them, the wanton rage of barbarous enemies, and the inroads of the elements for near two thousand years, sill remain, in their decay, the wonder and admiration of the world, the models of modern sculptors, and the greatest treasure of art a nation can possess.
In the lapse of ages, perhaps, England, in her turn, may be deserted, her mines exhausted, her edifies ruined, her existence as a nation terminated. The site of her vast metropolis may once more become an undulating verdant plain, intersected by a tidal river; and, perhaps, nothing may remain outwardly to show the curious traveller where the ancient city stood. The pristine abode of man upon the earth, may again be thickly peopled, and civilization may have rolled back to the south, its ancient source. Then may history or tradition vaguely tell of powerful nations who once flourished in the north; their very existence doubted, perhaps, by all, and by many disbelieved. Some day, perchance, one whom accident or curiosity may have brought to the shores of ancient Britain, may wend his weary way along the bank of the noblest river of the land. On a mound a little higher than the rest, something on which the hand of man had evidently been employed may attract his attention, and stimulate him to search among the tangled weeds and brushwood which grow around. The discovery of a marble fragment may, perhaps, eventually lead to the uncovering of one of those statues which now grace the interior of our St Paul's, on the site of which the stranger had unconsciously been exploring. Or, suppose the traveller to have bent his steps in a north-easterly direction, towards the foot of that gentle slope which terminates at the base of the heights of Highgate and of Hampstead. Suppose him, by some strange chance, to stumble upon that incomparable specimen of modern sculpture which stands on high at King's-Cross, lifted up, in order, we presume, to enable the good citizens duly to feast their eyes upon its manifold perfections, as they daily hie them to and fro between their western or suburban retreats and the purlieus of King Street or Cheapside. What estimate would the stranger form of the taste or skill of those who placed on its pedestal the statue we have first supposed him to have found? It avails not to disguise the truth. What that truth may be, we leave to the intelligence of the reader to divine. But what would be the effect of the other discovery we have imagined? The traveller would turn away, convinced that history or tradition gave false accounts of the power and genius of the ancient inhabitants of the land on which he trod, that their glory was a dream, their civilization a delusion, their proficiency in the arts a fable. For the honour of our country, let us hope that the figure of which we speak may not be suffered much longer to disgrace a leading thoroughfare of our metropolis. It has already stood some eight or ten years, a melancholy monument of English taste and English art in the nineteenth century.
For the attainment of excellence in the higher branches of art, as has been well observed by an intelligent foreigner, M. Passavant, it is requisite that a people should possess deep poetic feeling, and that art should not be considered among them as a thing of separate nature, but that it should interweave itself with the ties of social life, and be employed in adding beauty to its nearest, dearest interests. Now, the English, he continues, are more disposed to an active than to a contemplative life. They possess, it must be owned, a character of much earnestness and energy; yet, from the earliest times, their attention has been more directed to the cultivation of the mechanical arts and the sciences appertaining to them than to those nobler branches of art which flourish spontaneously in a more contemplative nation. This characteristic disposition, and the physical activity necessarily connected with it, have been by some ascribed to the influence of our climate, to our moist and heavy atmosphere, and clouded skies, to counteract the influence of which, and to preserve a counterbalancing buoyancy of mind and body, an active habit of life is requisite. But this hypothesis is untenable; for Flanders, with a similar climate, and flourishing likewise by means of its native industry, affords sufficient proof how little these circumstances are prejudicial to the cultivation of the fine arts. Perhaps a better reason may be found in the wide difference which is observable between the national habits of our countrymen and those of the people among whom the arts have been cultivated with the greatest success. In those countries where the beautiful was felt, where the arts were objects of national importance, where a people assembled to award the palm between rival sculptors; and also, in comparatively modern times, when a reigning monarch did not disdain to pick up a painter's pencil, and a whole city mourned an artist's death, and paid honours to his remains; all the rank, wealth, genius, talent, taste, and intelligence of the people were concentrated in one grand focus. Among the states of ancient Greece and modern Italy, the city was in fact the nation; and at Athens, Rome, Venice, and Florence, was collected all of genius, taste, and talent, the people as a body possessed. The mental qualities were thereby rendered more acute, and the tastes and manners of the people more refined and cultivated, by constant intercourse and communication with each other. This refinenent was shared by all classes, and the lower taking pattern from the higher, the whole mass was learned. In England, the very reverse of this takes place. Here, for the most part, those alone frequent our towns, whose doom it is to labour for their bread, they have no leisure from the engrossing pursuits of wealth; business, like a jealous mistress, leaves them no time for other objects. In spite of various disadvantages of soil and climate, the taste for rural pursuits seems part and parcel of our nature, and that species of the genus homo, the country gentleman, seems peculiar to our island. Till within a few years, the great majority of this class, whose abundant wealth and leisure might seem to constitute them the peculiar patrons of the arts, seldom or never frequented even the metropolis, but for generations remained fixed and immovable in the place of their forefathers, rooted to the soil as one of their old oaks. "His guns, dogs, and horses, were the things the squire held most dear." Hunting, shooting, and other sports, formed not only the amusements of his leisure hours, but the business of his life. His intercourse with the world confined to a narrow circle of acquaintance, all of the same tastes and pursuits with himself, he could learn or know no others. Generous pursuits, hospitable, liberal, and open hearted, hating alike poachers and dissenters, possessed of many virtues, avoiding many a crime, discharging the duties, as well as exercising the rights of property; exemplary in all the relations of life, a good father, a tender husband, a kind master, an indulgent landlord, a blessing to himself and those around him, he lived and died the Squire Western of his day, without that refinement and cultivation of the tastes and mental powers which the more polished inhabitants of the metropolis insensibly contract. Sure there were many to whom this does not apply, many who combined the "gifts" of both a town and country life. But, nevertheless such was the great bulk of that class, among whom, had London been England, as even in our own time Paris is or was France, the beautiful would not probably have been so much neglected.
So occupied have the great mass of our countrymen been in the pursuit of wealth, that all that did not directly contribute to this end has been uniformly rejected as useless. A familiar example of the truth of this observation may be seen in the numerous factories and other buildings erected for commercial purposes, in the manufacturing districts of Lancashire and Yorkshire. In buildings of this class, all embellishment and ornament, however simple, which good taste, had it been consulted, might have suggested, to relieve the wearying straightness of outline, or the plain dull flatness of these large ponderous masses of brick and mortar, have been neglected, or rejected, probably as not increasing its productive powers, and therefore unworthy of consideration. Such has been the general principle. But this neglect has at length recoiled upon the heads of its promoters. As long as the world was content to take our manufactures as we chose to make them—when, no other nation having entered the lists with us, we were without competitors, and absolute masters of the commerce of the world, this make-all save-all principle was undoubtedly the most effective. But now, when our manufacturers meet with the keenest competition in every market; when a suicidal export of machinery enables the foreigner immediately to benefit by every mechanical discovery, or improvement in machinery, that is made by our engineers, the case is wholly altered, and the English manufacturer finds out the grievous mistake that he has made. Beauty of design has at length become of paramount importance, and the beautiful, so long neglected, is now avenged. The public taste has advanced too fast. Since the introduction of foreign goods, such as silks and other ornamental fabrics, the inferiority of our native designs for these materials has become manifest to all. We are credibly informed, that there now exists a regular organized system, viz. supply of French designs to our manufacturers; that from these designs all their ideas are borrowed and all their patterns taken, and that, in fact, scarcely a single pattern of purely home invention is worked in a season. The manufacturers are, however, now roused from their lethargy, and great efforts are made to remedy the evil. Schools of design are established, and copyright of design has just been conferred by act of parliament. In some of our commercial towns, large rooms or galleries are opened to the mechanic, where he may study the beautiful and ideal from casts and models of the antique. Pictures also are occasionally exhibited for his instruction. These are indeed great and praiseworthy efforts, in which utilitarianism has assumed a new character, and found a new field of action. These novel institutions, not organized and supported from a pure abstract love of the arts ostensibly promoted by them, but from dire necessity created by successful competition in the more elegant branches of manufacture, in which the exercise of taste and fancy is required, may eventually produce great general results; years, however, must necessarily elapse before their benefits can be felt.
We have hitherto purposely abstained from any allusion to music and musical taste, for the purpose of showing, that music is not the only fruit of civilization which has not as yet arrived at maturity among us; and also for the purpose of ascertaining, whether there might not be some general causes in operation, which affect, in an equal degree, every branch of the more intellectual refinements of civilized life. In this case, the low standard of musical taste and science which will hereafter become the subject of more particular observation, cannot be attributed solely to causes which relate exclusively to music, but must be considered as one amongst other results of general principles. If there be any truth in the foregoing speculations, they apply more particularly to music, and musical taste and science, than to the fine arts, to which we have hitherto confined our observations. Music is peculiarly a social pursuit. It can be cultivated only among the haunts of men. The taste deteriorates, and the mental standard of excellence which each possesses, is lowered when really good music is seldom or never heard. By "the million," it can be heard only while mixing with the world at large; the performer can acquire his mastery over the instrument, at the cost of much time and labour, and he can maintain this mastery, and the purity of his style, only where he can compare himself with others of acknowledged excellence. This can be done only where men congregate in large and populous cities, where the want of amusement is best supplied; the recluse or the solitary man can be no musician.