may be sure that the greatness is in the thing God has made, and if he keeps his heart and eyes open, it may please God to reveal it to him. As the perceptions are cultivated, the more exhaustless God's works seem to be; so that no true lover of Nature can ever look away from her to the ideal." This is quoted from a Pre-Raphaelite writer; and what is Pre-Raphaelitism? It is, if we understand it, a comparatively recent English, Oxford creation, its chief source being in the bold thought of the author of "Modern Painters," although it claims to belong to the ancient school of the Italian naturalistic painters. It is called Pre-Raphaelite, because from the time of Giotto, in the early part of the fourteenth century, to the time of Raphael, Art is esteemed, by this school, to have been based upon true principles of humble, devout, and close study of Nature, and of sincere delight in all God's works; principles which Raphael, and those of his day and after him, have, more or less, departed from, or have not worked upon. The PreRaphaelites then bring back the world of Art to its primitive truth and simplicity. Their watchword is Truth-truth in nature, truth in feeling, truth in expression. Human imagination cannot mend God's work. They therefore drive the artist out of his study into the fields and woods, and set him to drawing the plants, stones, weeds, and commonest objects of nature about him, with absolute precision-without attempting to paint the lily. The author must put implicit faith in nature, and go unhesitatingly where she leads; and "as the artist's perceptions are cultivated, the more exhaustless God's work is seen to be, so that no true lover of nature can ever look away from her to the ideal." The difference is thus a marked one between the two schools; and the Pre-Raphaelites fling down the gauntlet to the whole system of idealism, in which nature forms but the basis for the artist's own combinations and creations, and declare that "it is the primary object of Art to observe and record Truth, whether of the visible universe or of emotion." The results of this school have as yet been incommensurate with their pretensions, although William Hunt, Millais, and others, have painted wonderful pictures, so far as spiritual purity and unequaled finish are concerned;

Overbeck has a bloodless celestiality, which proves that he is, as was said of Fra Angelico, "great in angels, though weak in men;" and if Turner indeed belong to this school, then it has produced the greatest landscape painter of modern times; for though some of his more fragmentary pictures are like the dreams of a crazy man, yet his elaborately finished pictures have in them every quality of the sublimest works of art. The Pre-Raphaelites, we believe, notwithstanding their dogmatism, have laid hold of at least one true principle,-a principle which has the germ of progress in it. They have come back in humble confession to nature-that Art is nature in its origin, and cannot in one sense rise higher than its source. The highest Art is nature. One sight of the Alps is worth more than all the rules of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Here they have found a solid basis. They seek sure inspiration in the patient study of God's inexhaustible works, whether they be grand or minute, rather than in the uncertain workings of their own minds. But they must go on and use the truth they thus wrest from Nature, in the higher forms of the imagination. They must not confine themselves to one truth. They must themselves become creative artists. No man ever was or will be a great artist who despises the true Ideal. He must always remain the same small copyist of nature. Yet the best rules of Art are nothing unless there be the genius that cares little for rules, whether Pre-Raphaelite or Post-Raphaelite. In the rare constitution of the mind, fitting it to delicately correspond to the whole symbolic world of nature, the true artist is found; and as a great poet was never made by the "Ars Poetica," or a great orator by "Quintilian's Institutes," so a great artist will not come through the study of the " Modern Painters." Something of the same conditions of original mind, and of those shaping moral influences that made the great artists of one age, must combine to make the great artists of another age.

This Article has already grown too long to notice other essential principles of Art, such, for example, as Unity, where all is developed from one central idea, and which the human mind. demands in every true work of art; as Simplicity, which is opposed to exuberance or pretension, and which with energy,

vastness, and unity, produces the sublime; as Proportion, which springs from the nature of the object itself, which exists first in nature, and which preserves that fine consistency of parts with the whole, that gives delight in any beautiful object; as Grace, which flows from internal sympathy and freedom of mind; as Character, by which a distinctive and appropriate spirit is stamped on works of Art, expressive of the age, the history, and the idea; as Form, to which everything in art comes at last, and which is the highest intellectual expression of Art, making in some sense Sculpture, a more true æsthetical art than either Painting or Architecture, and perhaps Music, than all of these.

We hold that there is such a thing as Christian Art, which is purified from whatever is base in Paganism, or that fosters immorality; which teaches lessons of love, duty, and humanity; which memorializes heroic deeds; which breathes the spirit of freedom; which draws out and beautifies the affections; which aids the cause of liberal education, and which may even claim an humble place in the offices of Christian Faith.

ARTICLE III.-A DIVINE ACTOR ON THE STAGE.

Ir was the practice of the heathen dramatists of Rome to introduce upon the stage, among the other characters of the play, an impersonation of some of their gods. When this practice was a novelty, and while it was resorted to only on some great and rare occasion, worthy of these divine interpositions, we can conceive that the appearance of a god on the stage might have added, in their heathen imaginations, somewhat to the power and impressiveness of the play. But when the gods came to be introduced more frequently, as they were, and on very trivial occasions, the end sought to be attained by these divine interventions was defeated. The gods were only belittled by these trifling associations, in the eyes of the spectators; being brought into the play with no befitting end to be accomplished. It was therefore laid down as a rule by Horace, in his Ars Poetica, that no god should be brought on the stage, unless there were some grave and important juncture in the plot of the drama, worthy of a divine interventionsome knot which only a god could untie.

This idea of a divine interposition in human affairs, which the heathen brought out in their plays, is, with us, a reality. The drama of human history is incomprehensible without it.

There are certain great crises in human affairs in which God, more clearly than at other times, comes upon the stage and performs a fitting and majestic part in the development of the great drama of human progress and redemption;-times when the presence and agency of some being more than human are demonstrated and felt by every reflecting mind. It is our high privilege and responsibility to live and participate in the scenes of such a period. Never before has there been such an intricate knot in human affairs to be untied, as that which has brought our God upon the stage; never an occasion more

worthy of a divine interposition than this. The plot of the great drama of a rebellious world had become so involved and entangled, that none but a God could conduct it to its grand consummation.

Away from all the ephemeral interests of mere human and party struggles and triumphs, let us look attentively to the part which God has been enacting in the fierce and bloody contest of the last four years of our history. Human power has indeed wrought wonders, but we shall see that God alone is great and glorious. A great and difficult task is this which we propose. We hardly know where or how to begin it, or when begun, where or how to end it. All such views of God in our affairs, as we can gain, after having but just emerged from the midst of the smoke and dust of this conflict, while the facts themselves are, many of them, still involved in obscurity, must be partial and imperfect at the best. It will require all the light of our future and perfected history, and indeed the light of eternity itself, before we can see and appreciate God's manifestations of Himself during our great civil war.

Let us see, then, what glimpses we can get of the interposition of God's hand, as revealed in our recent national history. Our position, just prior to the outbreak of the rebellion, was one of unexampled embarrassment. The Republic was nearly undermined and overthrown by the insidious influence of a social institution, in its very nature antagonistic to the distinctive principles of a free government. We were divided, enervated, corrupted, controlled, and distracted by slavery. A state institution had overleaped its limits, taken full possession and control of our national politics, governed our Congress, ruled our Presidents, seated itself upon the bench with our Judges, and absorbed to itself our whole military and naval power. It had governed the press, the pulpit, and the ballot, and had nearly bound the nation hand and foot, and delivered it over into the hands of a few men who hated the very essential idea on which our government was based. But what could be done? How was the nation to be exorcised of this evil spirit? What human wisdom could