and passing away of Man; this was the great human truth visible to him. Their labor, their sorrow, and their death; ruin of all their glorious work, passing away of their thoughts and their honor, mirage of pleasure, fallacy of hope, gathering of weed on temple and step, gaining of wave on deserted strand; weeping of the mother for the children, desolate by her breathless firstborn in the streets of the city, desolate by her last sons slain among the beasts of the field. And their Death. The old Greek question again, yet unanswered." "Religion seems to him discreditable, discredited, not believing in itself; putting forth authority in a cowardly way; watching how far it might be tolerated; continually shrinking, disclaiming, fencing, finessing; divided against itself, not by stormy rents, but by thin fissures, and splittings of plaster from the walls. Not to be either obeyed or combated by an ignorant but clear-sighted youth, only to be scorned. And scorned not one whit the less, though also the dome dedicated to it looms high over distant winding of the Thames, as St. Mark's campanile rose for goodly landmark over mirage of lagoon."

We feel much indebted to Mr. Ruskin for describing and illustrating so faithfully the inversion, by Transcendentalism, of the symbolism of ancient art; although this has been done unconsciously, and he has attributed the particular bent of Turner's mind and the direction of his genius to the influence of external nature and of the circumstances connected with his early life, which if true, as it is not, would not affect the question that has here been settled. This tendency, so peculiar to the transcendental mind, to make the manifestations of human nature depend upon the influence of external nature, is referable to the same inversion of order that has here been illustrated, and has fortunately led Mr. Ruskin to disclose more of the imperfections of his favorite artists than he otherwise would have done. He does this service for us again, in contrasting the genius of Bacon and Pascal, and in showing the opposite ideals realized by Shakspeare and Dante; and we will quote his description of the latter to illustrate this tendency, and also to illustrate the degradation of Unitarian Art in the region of Poetry through the influence of Naturalism; because Shakspeare, as well as Bacon, was a representative man, and combined the vices and the excellences of this school in the most intense and wonderful manner, the brilliancy of his Fancy and the pungency of his Wit being unapproached by any succeeding artist. He says, "Whatever difference, involving inferiority,

there exists between Shakspeare and Dante, in his conceptions of the relation between this world and the next, we may partly trace, as we did the difference between Bacon and Pascal, to the less noble character of the scenes around him in his youth; and admit that, although it was necessary for his special work that he should be put, as it were, on a level with his race, on those plains of Stratford, we should see in this a proof, instead of a negation, of the mountain power over human intellect. For breadth and perfectness of condescending sight, the Shaksperian mind stands alone: but, in ascending sight, it is limited; and the difference between these careless masques of heathen gods, or unbelieved though mightily conceived visions of fairy, witch, or risen spirit, and the earnest faith of Dante's vision of Paradise, is the true measure of the different influence between the willowy banks of Avon and the purple hills of Arno. Shakspeare is distinguished from Dante eminently by his always dwelling on last causes instead of first causes. Dante invariably points to the moment of the soul's choice which fixes its fate; but Shakspeare always leans on the force of Fate as it urges the final evil; and dwells with infinite bitterness on the power of the wicked, and the infinitude of the result dependent seemingly on little things."

The ground of this naturalistic ideal is to be found in the principles of "Sympathy" and "Naturalism," the external and destructive laws of the Sentimental Nature, which, in Transcendentalism, become the ruling laws of the mind: the first demanding individual gratification from a universal point of view, and therefore identifying the individual with every thing external to him in which any kind of relationship or community of life can be traced; and the other demanding the assertion of the individual from a universal point of view, and therefore demanding the full gratification instead of the sacrifice of individual inclination, and the full manifestation instead of the subjection of individual thought, as that of an absolute cause which is the "Light of the World;" these being inversions of that repudiation of all external things, and that individual self-sacrifice, which are demanded by the Church and represented in all legitimate Art. That these were included in the naturalistic ideal set up by Mr. Ruskin as a substitute for that of the ancient artists, is apparent from his writings. A recognition of Sympathy as the ground of all moral manifestations and of the true ideal in Art may be found in the Chapter on "Vital Beauty" already alluded to, from which the following is taken: "Throughout the whole organic creation,

every being in a perfect state exhibits certain appearances or evidences of happiness; and, besides, is, in its nature, its desires, its modes of nourishment, habitation, and death, illustrative or expressive of certain moral dispositions or principles. Now, first, in the keenness of the sympathy which we feel in the happiness, real or apparent, of all organic beings, and which, as we shall presently see, invariably prompts us, from the joy we have in it, to look upon those most lovely which are most happy; and, secondly, in the justness of the moral sense which rightly reads the lesson they are all intended to teach ;-in our right accepting and reading of all this, consists, I say, the ultimately perfect condition of that noble theoretic faculty, which can only be fully established with respect to vital beauty. Its first perfection relating to vital beauty is the kindness and unselfish fulness of heart, which receives the utmost amount of pleasure from the happiness of all things. Only as we draw near to God, and are made in measure like unto him, can we increase this our possession of charity, of which the entire essence is in God only. Wherefore it is evident that even the ordinary exercise of this faculty implies a condition of the whole moral being in some measure right and healthy, and that to the entire exercise of it there is necessary the entire perfection of the Christian character; for he who loves not God, nor his brother, cannot love the grass beneath his feet, and the creatures that fill those spaces in the universe which he needs not, and which live not for his uses; nay, he has seldom grace to be grateful even to those that love him and serve him: while, on the other hand, none can love God nor his human brother without loving all things which his Father loves, nor without looking upon them every one as in that respect his brethren also, and perhaps worthier than he, if, in the under concords they have to fill, their part is touched more truly; so that I know not of any thing more destructive of the whole theoretic faculty, not to say of the Christian character and human intellect, than those accursed sports in which man makes of himself, cat, tiger, serpent, chaetodon, and alligator in one. As we pass from those beings of whose happiness and pain we are certain, to those in which it is doubtful or only seeming, as possibly in plants, though I would fain hold, if I might, the faith that every flower enjoys the air it breathes,' neither do I ever crush or gather one without some pain,—yet our feeling for them has in it more of sympathy than of actual love, as receiving from them in delight more than we can give; nevertheless, the sympathy of very lofty and sensitive minds usually reaches

so far as the conception of life in the plant, and so to love, as with Shelley, of the sensitive plant, and Shakspeare always, as he has taught us in the sweet voices of Ophelia and Perdita, and Wordsworth always, as of the daffodils and the celandine; and so all other great poets, that is to say, great seers."

Now, it will be seen that this elevation of the principle of Sympathy is perfectly harmonious with the other statements with regard to Naturalistic Idealism, in which external nature is made to be the governing principle in its realization: but, in stating the transcendental idea of individual self-assertion from a universal point of view, Mr. Ruskin was obliged to deny every thing that he had before said with regard to Turnerian Art, and in stating the relation between external nature and man; for, as we have said, this ideal cannot be stated except in a contradiction. He says, "It might be thought that the tenor of the preceding chapter was in some sort adverse to my repeated statement that all great art is the expression of man's delight in God's work, not his own. But observe: he is not himself his own work; he is himself the most wonderful piece of God's workmanship extant. In this best piece not only he is bound to take delight, but cannot, in a right state of thought, take delight in any thing else, otherwise than through himself. Through himself as the sun of creation. In himself as the Light of the World. Let him stand in his due relation to other creatures, and to inanimate things, know them all and love them, as made for him, and he for them,

- and he becomes the greatest and holiest of them. But let him cast off this relation, despise and forget the less creation around him, and, instead of being the light of the world, he is a sun in space, a fiery ball spotted with storm. All the diseases of the mind leading to fatalest ruin consist primarily in this isolation. Every form of asceticism on one side, of sensualism on the other, is an isolation of his soul or of his body; while every healthy state of nations and of individual minds consists in the unselfish presence of the human spirit everywhere, energizing over all things, speaking and living through all things. The art which is specially known as "Christian" erred by pride in its denial of the animal nature of man; and, in connection with all monkish and fanatical forms of religion, by looking always to another world instead of this. It wasted its strength in visions, and was therefore swept away by the strong truth of the naturalist art of the sixteenth century. But the naturalist art erred on the other side; denied at last the spiritual nature of man,

and perished in corruption. A contemplative re-action is taking place in modern times, out of which it may be hoped a new spiritual art may be developed."

We have made these quotations from Mr. Ruskin, which we have condensed into as small a space as was possible without changing their meaning, because it is important that the two principal sources of Naturalistic Idealism here illustrated should be pointed out. We shall make no comment, supposing that the inversion of legitimate idealism, the discord between the elements which constitute this new modern ideal, and the confounding of opposite things, which have here been alluded to, although ingeniously concealed, will be sufficiently apparent. We will therefore conclude this notice of Mr. Ruskin with an account of the third and last element named by him as constituting the true ideal in Art, which is "Grotesque Idealism." It will be understood that what is called the Grotesque, in ancient art, is constituted by combinations of vegetable and animal forms, partly from nature and partly from ideal conceptions of the Imagination, which are introduced into Architecture and into illuminated manuscripts as

glyphical element symbolic of religious ideas; this being, like Architecture, one of the arts which have been lost. Mr. Ruskin, however, who believes in nothing but natural productions, and does not seem to understand that any symbolism, other than that superficial one which is addressed to the Fancy, has ever existed, has adopted this element for the purpose of introducing the Comic as a true ideal in Art in the place of the sublime conceptions of the ancient painters, but particularly of Raphael, repudiating these as specimens of the false ideal in Art: and this he has done by confounding the religious symbolism termed Grotesque with the Comic; a combination that is positively monstrous. To prevent the shock which such a doctrine is calculated to give, in describing the Grotesque Ideal, he first alludes to the symbolism of the ancient artists, such as Dante and Albert Durer, under the name of "the Pathetic Grotesque;" and then proceeds to confound these legitimate and truly ideal religious symbols, which are productions of the Imagination, with the forms of "Satire and Wit," which he names "the Jesting Grotesque," and which are produced by the Fancy, when governed by its destructive law, under the influence of "Imperfection." He says, "The grotesque being not only a most forcible instrument of teaching, but a most natural manner of expression; springing as it does at once from any tendency to playfulness in minds highly compre