The sympathies of life are widening and increasing. Societies are constantly arising devoting themselves to the solacing of human misery; eager sympathies are evinced by different countries in the sufferings of distant lands; ready and substantial aid is gladly tendered in cases of pestilence and famine; and religious intolerance and bigotry are raving themselves to rest. Christ is more and creeds are less than of old. The fact that a free government is now in successful operation, in which (when one false element, slavery, shall be forever eliminated) the voluntary annexation of new states and new countries would be but new ties of strength, with the consentaneous and related facts above quoted, tend to prove that humanity is entering upon a new era; that it is not destined to trail its passionate and quivering wings much longer through the mire of mere materialism; but that newer and higher life is spreading simultaneously through all its members; that the elevating love of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, is hourly penetrating it more deeply; that after its intellect shall have been trained by the sciences—its force increased by industry, commerce, and statesmanship—its inmost heart will be developed by the Charities, now, as with the subtile Greeks, one with the Graces—the arts for the manifestation of the Beautiful. Everything tends to prove, even the wars now waging for national entities, that the human race is approaching that promised phase of civilization, in which all the elements are to combine in glorious unity, sound in witching harmony, and men, full of love to God and man, are to become living stones in the vast temple of the redeemed, one through the loving heart of the Brother who died for them all; one through Him with the Infinite God, since in Him finite and Infinite are forever one!
A few words in the cause of those in advance of their times, and we attain the close of our first volume.
It is a startling fact, in the history of humanity, that the benefactors of the race have always been its martyrs and victims; dyeing every glorious gift which they have won for their brethren in the royal purple of the kingly blood of their own hearts. Is this, brethren, to last forever? Shall we never requite the dauntless Columbus, in the wide sea of Beauty? Of all men living, the artist most requires the boon of sympathy. The most susceptible of them all, the musician, plunging into the unseen depths of the time-ocean to wrestle for his gems, feels his heart die within him, when he sees his fellow men turn coldly away from the pure and priceless pearls which he has won for them from the stormy waves and whirlpools of chaotic and compassless sound.
As the artists must be considered as the standard-bearers of that blissful banner of progress to be effected through the culture of the sympathies of the race, unrolling that great Oriflamme of humanity, on which bloom the Heavenly Lilies of that chaste Passion of the Soul—the longing for the infinite—let us acknowledge that we have failed to render happy the great spirits no longer among us; and let us strive, for the future, not to chill with our mistrust and coldness, not to drive into the sickness of despair with our want of intelligent sympathy, the gifted living, who, as angels of a better covenant, still lovingly linger among us! Let us strive to learn the lesson set before us with such tenderness in the following eloquent words of Ruskin, fitting close as they are to the many which we have already collated and combined with our work from his glowing pages.
'He who has once stood beside the grave to look back upon the companionship now forever closed, feeling how impotent there are the wild love and keen sorrow to give one moment's pleasure to the pulseless heart, or atone in the lowest measure to the departed spirit for the hour of unkindness, will scarcely for the future incur that debt to the heart which can only be discharged to the dust. But the lessons which men receive as individuals, they never learn as nations. Again and again they have seen their noblest descend into the grave, and have thought it enough to garland the tombstone when they have not crowned the brow, and to pay the honor to the ashes which they had denied to the spirit. Let it not displease them that they are bidden, amidst the tumult and glitter of their busy life, to listen for the few voices and watch for the few lamps which God has toned and lighted to charm and guide them, that they may not learn their sweetness by their silence, nor their light by their decay.'
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the highest poet of our own century, has thus given us the artist's creed of resignation, closing her chant with his sublime Te Deum:
Voice of the Creator.
''And, O ye gifted givers, ye
Who give your liberal hearts to me,
To make the world this harmony,—
''Are ye resigned that they be spent
To such world's help?' The spirits bent
Their awful brows, and said—'Content!
''We ask no wages—seek no fame!
Sew us for shroud round face and name,
God's banner of the oriflamme.
''We are content to be so bare
Before the archers! everywhere
Our wounds being stroked by heavenly air.
''We lay our souls before thy feet,
That Images of fair and sweet
Should walk to other men on it.
''We are content to feel the step
Of each pure Image!—let those keep
To mandragore, who care to sleep:
''For though we must have, and have had
Right reason to be earthly sad—
Thou Poet-God, art great and glad!''