into every rational endeavor, and so make its product predominantly beautiful or useful.

All art, further, is not imitative but properly creative. Art may sometimes follow copy; but its own freedom and originality must inspire and rule the work even if it be copy or it sinks into drudgery, machine-work, and ceases to be rational art. In other words, there is no true art-production where there is not a proper ideal or form in the mind of the artist which it is his aim to body forth in his work.

Ruskin holds that it is

All art, still further, is expressive. expressive ever of ethical states; or rather he seems to hold this view, while he shrinks from saying expressly that it always expresses moral ideas, and he uses the vague term exponent;art is ever exponent of ethical condition. But this is but partial truth and tends to mislead. It is not correct to say thus, that true art can express only moral ideas, except in the sense that all human effort is immediately expressive of moral ideas. It is true that man never drops his moral nature, when he ploughs or when he chats ;-when he labors for bread or wages, or talks simply as pastime or for the coldest intellectual instruction. It is true, moreover, that the moral nature is man's highest, deepest nature; and that art when expressing its phases in fit form, yields its richest, most beautiful products. But we conveniently and rightly distinguish ideas of morality from ideas of truth and ideas of utility; and art may as legitimately express these latter as the former. We need therefore in order to a just appreciation of art to extend Ruskin's too narrow view, and embrace within its proper domain all rational ideas, whether of truth, beauty, or goodness, any of which it is its legitimate function to express. "Love of order and love of kindness," are not the exclusive instincts of humanity which may go forth in art, unless the terms are understood in a vague, indeterminate sense as inclusive of all that is intuitively associated with those instincts, that is, all that lies in the proper rational nature of man. The comprehensive coördinate instincts of humanity rather are three,-the love of knowledge or of the true, the love of the beautiful or of perfect form as that which may be most perfectly felt, the love of the good and right; and art may rightfully express any one of these ideas,

either predominantly or in any lower combination with the others. But this is the essential conception of all art, as that whose work is beauty, that it is expressive of idea; so that an object is beautiful, the perfect work of art, just so far as it is recognized as expressive of idea, and as form. In all beauty, in all true art, there must be idea; there must be expression of it.

But, once more, Ruskin recognizes the Imagination, as concerned in all fine art, as governing in fact in all. He pronounces it "the highest faculty of the human mind." It rules the instincts which are the roots of all human excellence. But its relation to art is obsurely or inexactly represented; his psychology seems to be imperfect or unsound. If however we recognize the imagination as the faculty or capacity of form; as the receptive or communicative attribute of the human soul by which it receives or communicates idea; --capacity of form as synonymous with sensibility, and faculty of form as synonymous with artistic creation, communicative energy; as having to do with the idea of the beautiful, as the intelligence with the idea of the true, and the moral nature with the right and the good, then all becomes clear in regard to its relation to art. The imagination is the art-energy in all art-production, for art is but the producer of form. Its perfection is two-fold, as it is both capacity and faculty. As capacity, its perfection lies in the loving tenderness and affectionate sympathy of its sensibility and whatever enters into a perfect receptivity; as faculty, its perfection lies in its power to fashion and to forin; to idealize the attributes and elements which are most significant and expressive of the object which it would body forth, and to shape them out in truest, fittest form;-in its power, in short, to present idea most perfectly to other rational spirit. So most truly does Ruskin say, in respect to a single art," the secret of language is the secret of sympathy, and its full charm is possible only to the gentle. And thus the principles of beautiful speech have all been fixed by sincere and kindly speech." Here he well observes we discover that which makes the art of language "the fittest instrument of a gentleman's education. To teach the meaning of a word thoroughly, is to teach the nature of the spirit that coined it."

Fine art, then, to sum up in a word our review of Ruskin's teachings, as we would correct them and fill them out in complete relationship, is conversant only with form, with beauty; this being its immediate and governing aim. It is creative, originative; it is imitative only in the large sense as representative of the artist's ideal of an object; it ever creates form, it product, so far as artistic, being not substance, not thing in itself, but thing in its form. It ever expresses idea, so that without idea revealed in its product, it runs into vanity and emptiness, and ceases to be rational art. As energy, it is the imagination, the faculty of form, to which corresponds the sensibility, as the capacity of form. All art is moral, is exponent of the ethical condition, only as the artistic nature is the rational nature, which is essentially moral; and hence the most perfect artistic energy is but the most perfect rational energy, viewed specially in respect to the form which it assumes in its outgoing, not in respect to the beneficent end which it reaches or the right direction which it takes, nor yet in respect to the relations between its essential parts or attributes or to other outgoings of rational energy. Art is characterized as fine in so far as its end or aim terminates in the form, not in the beneficent result, nor in the mere enlightenment; in so far as it addresses preeminently and predominantly the passive imagination or sensibility, not the moral nature or the intelligence; in so far, in fine, as its intended product is perfertest form in itself not good nor truth. We need to add, to prevent misconception, that perfect art, as outworking of a rational nature, must of very necessity be moral and be true.

But we have not in this summing up of a full theory of art, disposed of Ruskin's observation, that the graphic arts must have skill, beauty, and likeness, or truth; and the architectural arts, skill, beauty, and utility. All art must have skill; for skill is but intelligent power, or free and full energy working intelligently. All art must have beauty; for beauty is the one aim and end of art, as we have seen. And all art must be in accordance with truth, that is, must represent ever so as to preserve the identity of relationship between every object as a whole and its parts; for it cannot, uuless fatally to itself, vio late the intelligent nature to which it belongs. If its specific

object be, as in the graphic arts, to represent an object; it cannot do this but as it represents truly. But, what Ruskin and excessive pre-raphaelitism too often overlook, art represents not the object in itself, bu only the artist's ideal of that object; and hence the truth which graphic art is to observe, lies not in the countenance or landscape in itself, but in this ideal of it. Further, all art, in the same way, must be beneficent, or useful, for the artistic nature is, as already observed, essentially moral, and cannot but in suicide ignore or belie its own nature. Architecture, and oratory, it should be remarked, however, are arts in which pure form is not, as it is in ideal sculpture and painting, the exclusive end or object; but an end of utility is combined with the pure artistic end which is ever beauty or perfect form. We find here, as everywhere in Ruskin's writings, very accurate and keen, but incomplete observation; partial, not entire apprehension; vivid insight, vicious generalization.

Re

II. The relations of Art, as they are presented or suggested in these lectures, we may dispose of more summarily. Only the relations of art to its sources and its ends are regarded; and these are considered in the three lectures severally devoted to the relations of art to Religion, to morals, and to use. pudiating the notion that the fine arts are merely modes of graceful recreation and a new resource for times of rest," Ruskin claims that "all great arts have for their object either the support or exaltation of human life,-usually both," and "form one united system from which it is impossible to remove any part without harm to the rest." They "have had, and can have, but three principal directions of purpose or functions; first, that of enforcing the religion of men; secondly, that of perfecting their ethical state; thirdly, that of doing them material service."

We do not find as we should not look for logical completeness or logical consistency in his treatment of these relations; but we shall find original observations, and inspiring sugges tions. We note at once a fatal omission in his enumeration of the generic functions of art; for certainly it is as truly a legitimate function of art to further science, to reveal truth, as to

subserve the interests of religion, or of morals, or of physical comfort. This indeed Ruskin expressly teaches. It is a very faulty classification of human wants ministered to by art into these three of religion, morals, and comfort.

But well and truly does he insist that all that art which, as having connection with religion is denominated religious art and so in its general and ultimate end aims to incite, purify, and exalt the religious spirit, must spring from a religious source. Most admirable is the sentiment in which this view lies couched :-"We may have splendor of art again, and with that we may truly praise and honor our Maker, and with that set forth the beauty and holiness of all that He has made; but only after we have striven with our whole hearts first to sanc. tify the temple of the body and spirit of every child that has no roof to cover its head from the cold, and no walls to guard its soul from corruption in this our English land."

His definition of religion is evidently strained to meet the demands of some theory or some special use. He says he uses the "word 'religion' as signifying the feelings of love, reverence, or dread, with which the human mind is affected by its conceptions of spiritual being." In his view, accordingly, as he expressly says, "there are many religions, but there is only one morality."

A like instance of logical weakness and viciousness, or of capricious use of terms appears, in this connection, in his opposition of the two Prides which he represents as the souree of the "fatalest darkness" in the interpetation of religious symbolical art;-" the Pride of Faith, which imagines that the nature of the Deity can be defined by its convictions; and the Pride of Science, which imagines that the energy of Deity can be explained by its analysis."

In truth, his general treatment of the relations of art to religion are extremely vague, misty, illogical, and unsatisfactory, yielding, however, here and there, delightful fruits of just observation and feeling.

As in its relation to religion, so also to morals, true art must spring from a moral source. "You must have the right moral state first, or you cannot have the art." "Accurately, in proportion to the rightness of the cause and purity of the emotion, is