"The educational movement resulting from Charlemagne's genius was practical. Two main objects had he therein upon his conscience and his mind. The first, was the support of the Christian Faith; his seven liberal sciences circled round theology, the centre of the intellectual system. No argument was needed as to the obligation of uniting sacred and secular learning, because the idea of disuniting them never was entertained. His other object in patronizing learning and instruction was the benefit of the State. He sought to train good men of business; judges well qualified, ready penmen in his chancery; and this sage desire expanded into a wide instructional field. Charlemagne's exertions for promoting the study of the Greek language—his Greek professorships at Osnaburgh or Saltzburgh—have been praised, doubted, discussed, as something very paradoxical; whereas, his motives were plain, and his machinery simple. Greek was, to all intents and purposes, the current language of an opulent and powerful nation, required for the transaction of public affairs. A close parallel, necessitated by the same causes, exists in the capital of Charlemagne's successors. The Oriental Academy at Vienna is constituted to afford a supply of individuals qualified for the diplomatic intercourse, arising out of the vicinity and relations of the Austrian and Ottoman dominions, without any reference to the promotion of philology. We find the same at home. If the Persian language be taught at Haileybury, it is to fit the future Writer of his Indian office. He may study Ferduzi or Hafiz, if he pleases, but the cultivation of literature is not the intent with which the learning is bestowed."
Here is the manner in which Sir Francis Palgrave contrasts and compares the two emperors, Charlemagne and Napoleon:—
"Napoleon sought the creation of an anti-christian imperial pontificate—the caliphate of positive civilization; his aspiration was the establishment of absolute dominion, corporeal and intellectual; mastery over body and soul; faith respected only as an influential and venerable delusion; the aiding powers of religion accepted until she should be chilled out, and the unfed flame expire, and positive philosophy complete her task of emancipating the matured intellect from the remaining swathing bands which had been needful during the infancy of human society. And the theories of Charlemagne and Napoleon, though irreconcileably antagonistic, in their conception, would, were either fully developed, become identical in their result, notwithstanding their contrarieties. They start in opposite directions, but, circling round their courses, would—were it permitted that they should persevere continuously and consistently—meet at the same point of convergence, and attain the same end.
"Moreover, the territorial empires of Napoleon and Charlemagne had their organically fatal characteristics in common. Each founder attempted to accomplish political impossibilities—to conjoin communities unsusceptible of amalgamation; to harmonize the discordant elements which could only be kept together by external force, whilst their internal forces sprung them asunder—a unity without internal union. But even as the wonderful agencies revealed to modern chemistry effect, in a short hour, the progresses which nature silently elaborates during a long growth of time, so in like manner did the energies of civilization effect in three years that dissolution for which, in the analogous precedent, seven generations were required."
THE DECORATIVE ARTS IN AMERICA.
The growth of the fine arts, commonly so called, in this country, has been a fruitful subject of congratulatory observation in the last dozen years. The opera in that time has gained a permanent home here, and our sculptors and painters have gone out into the old fields of art, and claimed equality with their masters—an equality which Italy, Germany, France, and even England, slowly and reluctantly in some cases, but in the presence of the works of Powers, Crawford, Greenough, Leutze, and others, have, at length, confessed. In painting, as everybody knows, with few exceptions our best works have never been seen abroad, and the advance of design here is therefore to be studied only in our own exhibitions, hung with the productions of Durand, Huntington, Eliott, and the crowd of young painters coming forward every season to claim the approval of the people. The general taste keeps pace with every achievement. We hear that the Art-Union was never visited so much as this year; and private galleries, and those of every dealer in works of art, are thronged. The existence in our principal cities, under the control of men of cultivation, of stores for the sale of works in the fine arts, is a fact eminently significant. That of Williams & Stevens, in Broadway, for example, could be sustained only by a community in which there is a refinement of taste such as a few years ago could be found only in limited circles in this country. Beginning with efforts to introduce the finest forms and combinations in looking-glass and picture frames, the proprietors of this establishment have made it a great market-house for artists, and the display upon its walls and in its windows is frequently more attractive to the connoisseur than the exhibitions of the Academies or the Art-Unions. And it is astonishing how many of the best works of the European engravers—works which may justly be called copies of the master-pieces of contemporary foreign art—are sold here, to adorn houses from which the tawdry ornaments in vogue a few years ago have been discarded. The same observations may be made in regard to furniture. The graceful styles and high finish to be seen at many of our stores, and in our recently furnished houses, illustrate a progress in elegance, luxury, and taste, not dreamed of by the last generation. And in all these things it is observable that the advance is in cheapness as well as in beauty. In this respect indeed we have scarcely kept pace with the French and English, but the cost at which a man of taste and a little tact can now furnish a house, so that it shall illustrate not only his own refinement but the condition of the best civilization of the time, is astonishingly small, compared with what it was a few years ago. The fine engraving, with its appropriate frame, to be bought for thirty dollars, is to be much preferred before the portrait or indeed before any painting whatever that is purchasable for a hundred dollars; and though silver is unquestionably silver, the imitation table furniture, of the most classical shapes, that is sold now for a fifth of the cost of the coinable metal, looks quite as well upon a salver. The arts by which beauty is made familiar in the homes of all classes of people are of all arts most deserving of encouragement, and it is among the happiest of omens that they are receiving so much attention—far more attention now than they have ever before received in America. We shall hereafter attempt a more particular exhibition of this subject.