'And can the sun so rise,
So bright, so rolling back the clouds into
Vapors more lovely than the unclouded sky,
With golden pinnacles and snowy mountains,
And billows purpler than the ocean's, making
In heaven a glorious mockery of the earth,
So like, we almost deem it permanent,
So fleeting, we can scarcely call it aught
Beyond a vision, 'tis so transiently
Scattered along the eternal vault; and yet
It dwells upon the soul, and soothes the soul,
And blends itself into the soul, until
Sunset and sunrise form the haunted epoch
Of sorrow and of love; which they who mark not
Know not the realm where these twin genii
(Who chasten and who purify our hearts,
So that we would not change their sweet rebukes
For all the boisterous joys that ever shook
The air with clamor) build the palaces
Where their fond votaries repose and breathe
Briefly;—but in that brief cool calm inhale
Enough of heaven to enable them to bear
The rest of common, heavy, human hours,
And dream them through in placid sufferance.'
Byron.
No work of art in which this expression of infinity is possible, can be very elevated without it; and in proportion to its presence it will exalt and render impressive themes in themselves tame and trivial. If we will but think of it, it is very strange in how many unexpected places we shall find it lurking: for example, the painter of portraits is unhappy without his conventional white stroke under the sleeve or beside the armchair; the painter of interiors feels like a caged bird unless he can throw a window open or set a door ajar; the landscapist dare not lose himself in the forest without a gleam of light under its farthest branches, nor ventures out in the rain unless he may somewhere pierce to a better promise in the distance, or cling to some closing gap of variable blue above—escape from the finite—hope—infinity—by whatever conventionalism sought—the desire is the same in all.
Our ideas of beauty are intuitive, and it is only in a dim way that we read the types, the powers for whose immediate cognition we lost in the fall; but it is certain that a curve of any kind is far more agreeable to us than a right line; may not the reason of this fact be: every curve divides itself infinitely by its changes of direction?
What curvature is to lines, gradation is to shade and color; it is their infinity—dividing them into an infinite number of degrees.
Such examples might be indefinitely multiplied, but having placed the key in the hands of the reader, we leave him to unlock the treasure houses of suggestive thought, which he will find profusely lying in his daily paths. This key will not only open for him many of the rarest caskets in which art stores her gems, but will also unclose some of the ineffable wonders of God's mystically tender creation. 'My son, give me thy heart!' is written in God's own hand on everything He hath made.
'To me, the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.'
The absence of that mental vision which unites the visible to the invisible is not only ruinous to the art of the present age, but also to its faith, and, consequently, to its happiness. Thousands, feeling themselves in a narrow world while they unceasingly long for the infinite, rush into rash and wicked suicide, that they may thus escape from the contradictions and complicated pangs of the finite. The rays of light from the everlasting sun of wisdom and love are indeed forever falling round us, but we no longer bear the prism of faith which would decompose them for us, giving them such direction as they fall upon the symbolic, the relative, that we might read in their three-fold splendor the symbolized, the Absolute. The human soul was created for the enjoyment of God, and, consequently, touches the infinite at every point, and the health and well being of the spirit are far more concerned in its exploration than in any of the vaunted discoveries which it is at present making for the comfort of the body in the material world.
As the limits of the horizon are constantly enlarging before the eyes of one who ascends a mountain, so does the moral world, of which the physical is but the symbol, unroll its immense perspectives of light and love before the gaze of the rapt seeker of truth.
'Deep love lieth under
These secrets of time;
They fade in the light of
Their meaning sublime.'
The infinite is the vast background from which all life projects; upon whose unity the immense variety of the world is sketched. As understood or sought by the finite, it is the central fire, the burning heart of art; it is the last line in all our horizons; the last shade in all our colors; the last note in all our concerts; the alpha and omega of all true genius. It aspires in the last sigh of the mortal as he lingeringly leaves its dim manifestations upon earth: it lightens in the first smile of the immortal as its full fruition greets him in the presence of his God!