its dazzling foliage. They knew that the fighting, in itself horrible, and only sublime in its necessity and purpose, was but a minor part of the struggle; and they gladly put aside all that proclaimed it as their vocation, and returned to the arts of peace.
The idea of our war seems to have interpreted itself to us all as faith in the justice of our cause, and in our immutable destiny, as God's agents, to give freedom to mankind; and the ideas of our peace are gratitude and exultant industry. Somehow, we imagine, these ideas should be represented in every memorial work of the time, though we should be sorry to have this done by the dreary means of conventional allegory. A military despotism of martial statues would be far better than a demagogy of these virtues, posed in their well-known attitudes, to confront perplexed posterity with lifted brows and superhuman simpers. A sublime parable, like Ward's statue of the Freedman, is the full expression of one idea that should be commemorated, and would better celebrate the great deeds of our soldiers than bass-reliefs of battles, and statues of captains, and groups of privates, or many scantily-draped, improper figures, happily called Liberties.
With the people chosen to keep pure the instinct of the Beautiful, as the Hebrews were chosen to preserve a knowledge of the Divine, it was not felt that commemorative art need be descriptive. He who triumphed the first and second time in the Olympic games was honored with a statue, but not a statue in his own likeness. Neither need the commemorative art of our time be directly descriptive of the actions it celebrates. There is hardly any work of beautiful use which cannot be made to serve the pride we feel in those who fought to enlarge and confirm the freedom of our country, and we need only guard that our monuments shall in no case express funereal sentiment. Their place should be, not in the cemeteries, but in the busy hearts of towns, and they should celebrate not only those who fought and died for us in the war, but also those who fought and lived, for both are equally worthy of gratitude and honor. The ruling sentiment of our time is triumphant and trustful, and all symbols and images of death are alien to it.
While the commemoration of the late President may chiefly take visible shape at the capital, or at Springfield, near the quiet home from which he was called to his great glory, the era of which he was so grand a part should be remembered by some work of art in every community. The perpetuation of the heroic memories should in all cases, it seems to us, be committed to the plastic arts, and not, as some would advise, to any less tangible witness to our love for them. It is true that a community might endow a charity, to be called forever by some name that would celebrate them, or might worthily record its reverence for them by purchase of a scholarship to be given in our heroes' names to generations of struggling scholars of the place. But the poor we have always with us; while this seems the rare occasion meant for the plastic arts to supply our need of beautiful architecture and sculpture, and to prove their right to citizenship among us, by showing themselves adequate to express something of the spirit of the new order we have created here. Their effort need not, however, be toward novel forms of expression. That small part of our literature which has best answered the want of our national life has been the most jealous in its regard for the gospels of art, and only incoherent mediums and false prophets have disdained revelation. Let the plastic arts, in proving that they have suffered the change which has come upon races, ethics, and ideas in this new world, interpret for us that simple and direct sense of the beautiful which lies hidden in the letter of use. There is the great, overgrown, weary town of Workdays, which inadequately struggled at the time of our national æsthetic sensation, in all its newspapers, pulpits, and rostrums, with the idea of a monument to the regiments it sent to the war. The evident and immediate want of Workdays is a park or public garden, in which it can walk about, and cool and restore itself. Why should not the plastic arts suggest that the best monument which Workdays could build would be this park, with a great triumphal gateway inscribed to its soldiers, and adorned with that sculpture and architecture for which Workdays can readily pay? The flourishing village of Spindles, having outgrown the days of town-pumps and troughs, has not, in spite of its abundant water-power, a drop of water on its public ways to save its operatives from drunkenness or its dogs from madness. O plastic arts! give Spindles a commemorative fountain, which, taking a little music from the mills, shall sing its heroes forever in drops of health, refreshment, and mercy. In the inquiring town of Innovation, successive tides of doubt and revival and spiritualism have left the different religious sects with little more than their names; let Innovation build a votive church to the memory of the Innovators sent to the war, and meet in it for harmonious public worship. At Dulboys and Slouchers, it must be confessed that they sadly need a new union school-house and town-hall, (the old school-house at Dulboys having been at last whittled to pieces, and no town-hall having ever been built in Slouchers,) and there seems no good reason why these edifices should not be given the honor to proclaim the pride of the towns in the deeds of their patriots.
On their part, we hope none of these places will forget that it is bound to the arts and to itself not to build ignobly in memory of its great. A commemorative edifice, to whatever purpose adapted, must first be beautiful, since a shabby or ugly gateway, fountain, or church would dishonor those to whom it was dedicated; a school-house or town-hall built to proclaim pride and reverence cannot be a wooden box; but all must be structures of enduring material and stately architecture. All should, if possible, have some significant piece of statuary within or upon them, or at least some place for it, to be afterwards filled; and all should be enriched and beautified to the full extent of the people's money and the artist's faculty.
For the money, the citizens will, of course, depend upon themselves; but may we pray them to beware of the silliness of local pride—(we imagine that upon reading this paper the cities and towns named will at once move in the business of monuments, and we would not leave them unadvised in any particular)—in choosing their sculptors and architects? Home talent is a good thing when educated and developed, but it must be taught in the schools of art, and not suffered to spoil brick and mortar in learning. Our friends, the depraved Italian popes and princes (of whom we can learn much good), understood this, and called to their capitals the best artist living, no matter what the city of his birth. If a famous sculptor or architect happens to be a native of any of the places mentioned, he is the man to make its monument; and if he is a native of any other place in the country, he is equally the man, while home talent must be contented to execute his design.
REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
Mind in Nature; or the Origin of Life, and the Mode of Development of Animals. By Henry James Clark, A. B., B. S., Adjunct Professor of Zoölogy in Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
When all lower branches of Natural History have been finally exhausted, and we begin upon the Natural History of Scientific Men, we shall no doubt discover why it is necessary for each savant to season his mild pursuits by some desperate private feud with the nearest brother in the service. The world of scoffers no doubt revels in this particular weakness, and gladly omits all the rest of the book, in haste to get at the personalities. But to the sedate inquirer it only brings dismay. How painful, as one glides pleasantly on amid "concentric vesicles" and "albuminous specialization," tracing the egg from the germinal dot to the very verge of the breakfast-table, to be suddenly interrupted, like Charles O'Malley's pacific friend in Ireland, by the crack of a duelling-pistol and the fracture of all the teacups! It makes it all the worse to know that the brother professor thus assailed is no mean antagonist, and certainly anything but a non-resistant; and that undoubtedly in his next book our joys will again be disturbed by an answering volley.