That their subjects were generally of
a melancholy cast is acknowledged, which was an accident resulting
from the positions their pictures were destined to occupy. No man
ever complained that the Scriptures were morbid in their tendency
because they treat of serious and earnest subjects: then why of the
pictures which represent such? A certain gaunt length and slenderness
have also been commented upon most severely; as if the Italians of
the fourteenth century were as so many dray horses, and the artist
were blamed for not following his model. The consequence of this
direction of taste is that we have life-guardsmen and pugilists taken
as models for kings, gentlemen, and philosophers. The writer was once
in a studio where a man, six feet two inches in height, with
atlantean shoulders, was sitting for King Alfred. That there is no
greater absurdity than this will be perceived by any one that has
ever read the description of the person of the king given by his
historian and friend Asser.
The sciences have become almost exact within the present century.
Geology and chemistry are almost re-instituted. The first has been
nearly created; the second expanded so widely that it now searches
and measures the creation. And how has this been done but by bringing
greater knowledge to bear upon a wider range of experiment; by being
precise in the search after truth? If this adherence to fact, to
experiment and not theory,--to begin at the beginning and not fly to
the end,--has added so much to the knowledge of man in science; why
may it not greatly assist the moral purposes of the Arts? It cannot
be well to degrade a lesson by falsehood.
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