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At the cost of much labor and time, with the reward of much delight, and the penalty of painful disappointment, we carefully read in Venice Mr. Ruskin's three volumes, verifying or refuting his statements and opinions by an appeal to the churches, palaces, and pictures themselves. As the closing result of our labors, we found the entire work the baseless fabric of a vision, glowing and intense with the ornate coloring of words, and beauteous with the filigree-woven tissue of poetic fancy. But the fairy structure, so beauteous in the distance, vanished into thin air_upon the near approach of scrutiny. Foundation it had none, or such only as was false and fancy-framed. In the end we admire in this great work just two things-the illustrations and the eloquence-especially the eloquence with which we shall play and sport in delight to the end of time, as children do with soap-suds, blowing them into bubbles and wondering at the rainbow colors taken from all that is lovely in earth and beauteous in heaven. But of all Mr. Ruskin's baseless eloquence, the rapture on "the olive-tree" is the most astounding. We have again and again looked into the cupola of St. Mark, then at Mr. Ruskin's illustration, and then again have once more drunk in the eloquent words-always, however, with the same impression -that of magnificent absurdity. With that literary chivalry which gives to Mr. Ruskin's warfare the spirit of knighterrantry, he challenges "the untraveled English reader to tell" him "what an olive tree is like." He assures us that "at least one third out of all the landscapes painted by English artists have been chosen from Italian scenery;" that "sketches in Greece and in the Holy Land have become as common as sketches on Hampstead Heath;" that "the olive tree is one of the most characteristic and beautiful features of all southern scenery;" and yet, that "the untraveled English reader" "has no more idea of an olive tree than if olives grew in the fixed stars." Then the reader's sympathies are appealed to-"For Christ's sake," "for the beloved Wisdom's sake," "for the ashes of the Gethsemane agony," the olive tree ought not to have been so used. The reader thus highly wrought, and the writer exalted to frenzy-pitch, both at length collapse into the following conclu

sion :

VOL. XLIV.-NO. III.

"I believe the reader will now see that in these mosaics, which the careless traveler is in the habit of passing by with contempt, there is a depth of feeling and of meaning greater than in most of the best sketches from nature of modern times; and without entering into any question whether these conventional representations are as good as, under the required limitations, it was impossible to render them, they are at all events good enough completely to illustrate that mode of symbolical expression which appeals altogether to thought, and in no wise trusts to realization; and little, as in the present state of our schools, such an assertion is likely to be believed, the fact is that this kind of expression is the only one allowable in noble art."*

"The untraveled English reader" who "has no more idea of an olive tree than if it grew in the fixed stars," will be saved from the trouble, and even from the desire of traveling in search of this knowledge, by referring to the drawing which Mr. Ruskin has so considerately published as a test at once of his own superior insight and of the world's contrasted ignorance. Sad it is that the ignorant world should, for well-nigh eight hundred years, have looked upon these olive tree mosaics unconscious of their "depth of feeling and of meaning," insensible to the "symbolical expression which appeals altogether to thought "- -an expression which assuredly ought not to have been overlooked, as we are told emphatically in italics that it is "the only one allowable in noble art." Sad it may be in the opinion of Mr. Rus. kin that "the untraveled English reader" has been so long insensible to these inscrutable beauties; but to our mind there is something far sadder still: that he should fall an unconscious victim to a shadowy eloquence, which he has no means of knowing to be just as worthless as it is alluring. Such of the public as read for a higher end than to feel the ear tickling with pleasurable sound, will do well to test Mr. Ruskin's brilliant fallacies by the plainer prose of more truthful writers. For example, as an antidote to Mr. Ruskin's Byzantine mania, take the following sane passage from M. Rio:

"Whenever we meet with a Madonna of a

blackish hue, dressed in the Oriental manner, fingers, bearing a deformed infant in her arms, with pointed and disproportionately elongated the whole painted in a style much resembling that of the Chinese; or a Christ on the Cross,

* See "The Stones of Venice," vol. iii. chap. 4.

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Byzantine art was, as we have said, at once of classic art the grave and of Christian the cradle; but, strange to say, as we have already seen, one thousand years had passed away since the birth of Christ, and yet Christian art still slumbered in precarious infancy-a sleep, too, which had the semblance of death. But the hour of its awakening growth had come. The intelligence of Italy bursting into new life, expressed itself in a newly-created beauty. Christian art then first began to make itself worthy of the country of its nativity, to take from the Italian sky its serenity, from the Italian mind its ardor and imagination. The thoughts which gained from the poet the melody of words, sought from the painter the beauty of forms; and the epic which described paradise, purgatory, and hell, inspired the pictures of Giotto and Orgagna, where Christ, come to judge the world, assigns to man his happiness or woe. But the poetic thought was naturally matured before the pictorial form; and thus while Dante wrote in the thirteenth century, Leonardo, Raphael, and Michael Angelo did not paint till the fifteenth. By what gradual steps and successive stages the poetry of Christian truths developed themselves into matured and perfect pictorial forms, has always seemed to us an inquiry of the most vital interest: How far the progression of Christian art was resultant from the advancement of civilization; how far dependent upon the revival of classic learning, or upon a renewed appeal to nature; how far incident to the characteristics of race or the beauties of climate; how much the offspring of a sensuous and imaginative religion; or, finally, to what extent the independent creation of these great artists, who seem to have come, as it were, by a special providence just when most wanted. In one sense, as we have seen, the death of classic art was the birth of the Christian. It was perhaps fortunate that the old civilization should die out, in order that the new, unencumbered by the past, might

*See M. Rio's "Poetry of Christian Art," p. 30.

be moulded into the spiritual types of the Christian faith. Nevertheless, Byzantine art, the extinction of the classic, formed for the Christian the matrix of its new birth. The Byzantine Madonna, described by M. Rio, as of "blackish hue, dressed in Oriental manner, in a style much resembling that of the Chinese," was, in fact, the rude type and germ of that spiritual beauty in which she was at last exalted as the queen of heaven, and the worshiped of earth. With what ardor does the student trace the progressive steps from this first repulsive form to the last perfected beauty-from a Madonna painted by St. Luke to the "Virgin most pure" of Angelico or Perugino" Thou resplendent star, which shinest o'er the main, blest Mother of our God, and ever Virgin Queen!"* With what tender watchfulness does the traveler in Italy mark the gradual transitions from the lowest type of womanhood to the purity which belongs to heavenly love, and that beauty which is religion! It were, indeed, a labor of no common interest to trace, with the progressive growth of Italian art and civilization, the corresponding exaltation of each Christian portraiture; how the St. John became more and more worthy of the Saviour's love; how St. Peter grew into the rock of the Church; with what power and dignity St. Paul bore the sword of the Spirit; and, finally, as the highest consummation, how divinity shone through the features of the Saviour's face.

The manner and the means by which Christian art thus rose into life, health, and beauty, out of the sicklied cradle of the dark ages, where it so long slumbered in the night-the laws which thus governed its organic growth, open a sphere to criticism both subtle and extended. Entering on such a labor, we should trace and strive to determine those subtle laws of nature by which the immaterial thought and emotion so wondrously mould themselves into form and expression in the human countenance and frame. We should have to investigate the relation subsisting between representative minds and typical heads, to determine the development and the features suited to the prophet or the apostle; and thus ascend

*See Ave Maris Stella, and see likewise Fra Angelico's Madonna della Stella, in the Sacristy of Sta Maria Novella, Florence.

ing from the earthly to the heavenly, to | sonality, possessing an individual body and construct out of men angels, and to trans- soul capable of growth and of decay, cramute the natural body into the incorrupt- dled, as we have seen, in the fresco cataible body of the resurrection. Thus we comb, or in the mosaic church, then walkshould deal with the motives of men and ing the earth in strength and beauty, angels, with the laws which govern the teaching men to live righteously and die natural kingdom of the earth, and sway blessedly; and again, as we have not now the supernatural kingdom of the heavens. time to show, falling into decrepitude, and In this extended system of art-philosophy, finally sinking into the common grave of as written in the progressive history of Italian greatness, where it still lies in art-development, having determined the death, if without the hope of resurrection, framework and functions of the body, nat- at least leaving upon earth a blessed ural and spiritual, we must penetrate be- memory. neath the surface to the phases and move- In this somewhat discursive paper we ments of the soul itself. In those greatest, have treated of the vicissitudes and strugbecause most difficult and most compre- gles of Christian art in those early days hensive, of art-creations, the last judg- when the open grave was eager to receive ments, which, from the twelfth century the precarious birth which the cradle down to the present times, have been con- seemed in vain to nurture into life. We tinuously represented both in painting and have seen that, the Church driven to the sculpture, we find the souls of all created Catacombs, persecution not only involved. beings, men, angels demons, under every Christian art in darkness, but threatened possible emotion of surprise, ecstasy, or it with extinction. This first danger bedamnation. We need scarcely say that ing passed, a second scarcely less fatal, it becomes a question of much metaphysi- and in duration more protracted, seemed cal subtlety to determine how an angel to entail on the years of infancy the dewould have acted, felt, or appeared when crepitude of age. The nascent art, instead Christ, as judge, entered the heavenly of starting into life with the vital impulse choir-whether the righteous, when first of the new religion, became, for well-nigh they caught the splendor of the beatific one thousand years, implicated in the vision, would have fallen on their knees downfall and wreck of the Roman empire; in worship, have raised their hands in and thus, as we have seen, Roman-Christwonder, or covered their faces from ex- ian and Byzantine works long distorted cess of light; whether the lost, still as and disgraced the beauty and the truth arch-angels, though ruined, would assem- of the otherwise triumphant revelation. ble in war against the Highest, or whether, But when Italy, again rising out of ruins, as in the paintings of the middle ages, asserted for a second time, in supremacy they at once should fall into the form of of genius, her right to the empire of the demon-monsters stung by scorpions and world, Christian art once more rose from tormented by flames. Such questions, we the grave, and was borne exulting, on the say, cease to be merely artistic, and be- topmost wave of the incoming civilization. come a portion of human and divine phi- All the glory of Italy then fervently spoke losophy dependent upon the nature and in the language of art. The Italian clime, attributes of God, men, and angels. Hav-in its beauty and intensity; the Italian ing thus dealt with the laws of man's material body, and of his immaterial spirit, in their relation to art-treatment, it were necessary to examine how art has, from age to age, conducted itself; what laws, whether natural or artificial, it has observed or violated; how far the bodily framework of art has been consonant with the material structure of the world; to what extent art's inner and spiritual existence has shown itself accordant with the spiritual laws which govern in man and actuate in God. Christian art thus regarded takes on in the entire range of its existence, as it were, an individual per

manners, in their grace and charm; the
Italian mind in its ardent warmth and
fertile imagination; the Italian religion, in
its passion for scenic show
all that con-
stituted the wealth, and the glory, and the
poetry of Italy, obtained through art ade-
quate expression.

In the preceding narrative of the early stages of this national art, we have marked the laws which governed the vicissitudes both of its rise and fall-have seen how those laws were linked with the destiny of empires, and involved in the first principles of human action. In such a survey the rules of art are but the universal experi

ence of mankind; the painted picture but | of nature, having the two aspects of mata portion of the enacted life; the country ter and of spirit- the two habitations of of a people's home, the current of a peo- earth and of heaven: and thus likewise ple's history, their affections, their hopes, have we seen that Christian art, uniting and their fears, all giving to art its cha- into one visible form these two aspects of racter and expression. Thus, as we have matter and of spirit, found a habitation on shown, the philosophy of art is but a por- earth, and gained its access to heaven, in tion of the wider philosophy of man and the land of Italy.

From the Edinburgh Review.

THE WORKS OF THE LATE EDGAR ALLAN POE.*

commonest necessaries of life.

EDGAR ALLAN POE was incontestably | poor partner, both being in want of the one of the most worthless persons of whom we have any record in the world of letters. Many authors may have been as idle; many as improvident; some as drunken and dissipated; and a few, perhaps, as treacherous and ungrateful; but he seems to have succeeded in attracting and combining, in his own person, all the floating vices which genius had hitherto shown itself capable of grasping in its widest and most eccentric orbit.t

The few remaining incidents of his life afford little or no variety or relief from the foregoing history. They are all tinged by the same gloom. His wife, whom he had married when residing at Richmond, dies. During her last illness, her mother is met going about from place to place, in the bitter weather, half-starved and thinly clad, with a poem or some other literary article, which she was striving to sell; or otherwise she was begging for him and his

*The Works of the late Edgar Allan Poe: with a Memoir by Rurus WILMOT GRISWOLD, and Notices of his Life and Genius by N. P. WILLIS and J. R.

LOWELL. 4 vols. New-York: 1857.

This first sentence of the article in the Edin

burgh strikes the key-note of what the Reviewer has to say in regard to the character and conduct of Edgar Allan Poe. The tune is not an agreeable one, and we have no desire to follow the Reviewer in his sad enunciation through the gloomy chapters of such

a life as Edgar Poe presents. We prefer to pass by the deeply colored faults and follies of his life to

what may be said to the advantage of his talents and genius.

Nevertheless, even after this prostration, Poe seems to have arisen for a short period, and to have signalized himself by some more literary activity. He wrote an essay, entitled "Eureka," delivered lectures, and his wife being then dead— engaged himself to marry "one of the most brilliant women of New England." This engagment, however, is one that he means to break. "Mark me," ," he says, "I shall not marry her." In furtherance of this gentlemanlike decision, he deliberately gets drunk, and on the evening before the appointed bridal is found "reeling through the streets, and in his drunkenness commits, at her house, such outrages as render it necessary to summon the police." He went from New-York with a "determination thus to induce the ending of the engagement," and—succeeded.

His last journey is now to be taken. He travels as far as Baltimore, but never returns. He is seen a short time afterwards in that city, in such a state as is induced by long-continued intoxication, and after "a night of insanity and exposure," he is carried to a hospital, and there, on the evening of Sunday, the 7th day of October, 1849, he dies, at the age of thirty-eight years!

One of his biographers concludes with the words: "It is a melancholy history." We trust that it will prove a profitable one; for unless we are mistaken, it in

volves a moral that may be studied with advantage by future authors.

We have now to offer an opinion on the peculiar features and literary value of Poe's productions in prose and verse. In reference to the former, we are disposed to think that we can trace his inspiration in a great measure to the writings of Godwin and Charles Brockden Browne. There is in each the same love of the morbid and improbable; the same frequent straining of the interest; the same tracing, step by step, logically as it were and elaborately, through all its complicated relations, a terrible mystery to its source. These authors pursue events through all their possible involutions, but seldom deal with character. There is indeed a singular want of the dramatic faculty in all these eminent persons. Godwin, it is true, in his "Fleetwood" and "Mandeville," and Browne in "Ormond," and " Arthur Mervyn," made an effort to draw forth some human peculiarities; but their personages are little more, after all, than stately abstractions or impersonations of certain moodes or guesses of their own minds, the results of solitary thinking. Whatever latent qualities they possess, each of their figures reminds one somewhat of the cocoon-a thing drawn from the entrails of it parent, with no apparent vitality about it.

less curious rather than accurate, desultory rather than wide; and his genius grew rank in a half-cultivated soil.*

Considered apart from his poetry, Poe's fictions seem to resolve themselves for the most part into two classes: one like those to which we have already adverted, where a series of facts woven mysteriously out of some unknown premises are brought apparently to a logical result; the other, where the author deals strictly with a single event; where there is little or no preliminary matter, but the reader is at once hurried into a species of catastrophe, or conclusion of the most exciting character. These last-mentioned fictions are necessarily short, because the sympa thy of the reader could not possibly remain at the high point of tension to which he is raised by the torture of the scene. In a few instances we encounter merely a gloomy scene, (sometimes very highly wrought and picturesque,) or a human being fashioned out of the most ghastly materials-a tale, in short, without any result, properly speaking. We look in at the death-bed of a man: we see him writhe-utter a few words referable to some imperfectly disclosed event; or he professes to expound, under mesmeric influence, while he is dying, or when he is dead, certain things which the human mind in its wakeful healthy state is quite incapable of comprehending.

Notwithstanding the appearance of originality, due perhaps more to the eo- It should not be forgotten that in some centricity of his life and the deformity of of these sketches, which are the most his moral character than to the vigor or mysterious in their treatment, the author freshness of his intellect, it is easy to trace has contrived to absolve himself from the throughout Edgar Poe's writings impres- necessity of verifying, in his usual mansions derived from authors which he had ner, the rationale of his design. He aschanced to read or contrivances which had cends into the cloudiest regions of metadwelt in his memory. So little indeed physics, of speculation-of conjecture-of can he be considered a truly original dreams! God, as we learn, amongst other writer, that he perpetually reminds us of things, from "Mesmeric revelation," is something we have read before. Some-"unparticled matter." From M. Valdetimes he imitates the matter-of-fact pre- mar we collect, that a man, thrown into cision that gives such reality to the fictions a mesmeric state just before death, will of Defoe; sometimes he pursues the fantastical or horrible nightmares of Hoffman; sometimes a thought visits him from the highly-wrought philosophy of Novalis, or the huge and irregular genius of Jean Paul; sometimes he loses himself, like the Louis Lambert of Balzac, in the labyrinth of transcendental speculation. But though he resembles these writers in his love of the marvelous, and in his ingenious treatment of it, he is inferior to the least of them in depth. His reading was doubt

It is a curious example of his superficial acquaintance with the literature of other lands, that in recapitulating the titles of a mysterious library of books in the "House of Usher," he quotes among a list of cabalistic volumes Gresset's "Vertvert," evidently in complete ignorance of what he is talking about. Gresset's "Vertvert" is the antipodes of Poe's "Raven;" but the comic interest of the former poem, and the tragic interest of the latter, turns alike on the reiteration of bird-language: and it is not impossible that Poe may have had in his mind some vague impression or recollection of Gresset's celebrated parrot.

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