The idea that such an outrage upon divine modesty will "cultivate and refine" people sounds like one of Satan's satires. We honor the "uncultured West" for making a heroic kick, and trust that it will keep on recalcitrating until every unclean statue forced upon its attention in the name of art is forever disfigured. The protest of the West proves that its mind is still pure,—that it has not yet reached that plane of "culture" where modesty perishes in the frosts of formalism.
The liberty accorded art has degenerated into license. The beautiful is no longer sought, but the bizarre. It is not the massy shoulders of Hercules, the rounded arm of Juno, the beautiful bust of Hebe, the godlike pose of Apollo or the shapely limb of Aphrodite that painter and sculptor seek to reproduce; it is an "effect" similar to that of Boccaccio or a fragrant French novel. It is not against the true in art that the West is rebelling, but against the vulgar.
* * * "THERE'S ONE COMES AFTER."
A SKETCH.
None so poor but they may build fairy castles in the air; none so wretched but they may fondly gaze upon the fickle star of Hope, flaming ever in that Heaven we see by Faith.
A man, worn with suffering and sorrow and sin, was toiling homeward in the night from a far hunter's camp, whither he had been banished by a doctor's edict, "Rest from labor lest ye die." "That indeed is a misfortune," he had said, and redoubled his vigils at the desk. Then they brought his little son, the last gem in the sacred circle of the home whose breaking up broke his heart, and placed the child upon his knee. He looked at its fair face and said, "I will go." A man for whom the shadows should still be falling toward the west, but old before his time, deep scarred by angry storms, battered and bruised like some presumptuous mortal who had seized his puny spear and plunged into such wars as the Titans were wont to wage upon the Grecian Gods. The jaded steed stumbled along the dark and dangerous way, while its rider dreamed with wide open eyes and sometimes muttered to himself in that dreary solitude.
"There's one comes after—in dying I do not die, in losing I simply pass the sword from sire to son. I may but fill a ditch for a better to mount upon and win the mural crown. What, then, if that other be——"
The owl hooted as he passed, and from the thicket came the angry snarl of wolves. "How human!" he bitterly exclaimed. "Hoots and hungry howls, all along life's path— a weird pilgrimage in the dark."
He nodded, his head bowing almost to the saddle-bow, then awoke humming, he knew not why,
"As long as the heart knows passion.
As long as life, as long."