At all events, it is sad to trace no direct or secret
hint at new or transcendental methods conspicuous or even dimly
apparent in the painter's art. Little there is in the effort to draw
our finer instincts to spiritual truths. The utmost mechanical skill
of the diligent artist is discernible, labouring incessantly without
extraordinary or transcendental light to the appointed end, the goal
accomplished. It should be understood that as spiritual Art of its own
property and nature is beset, environed on all impinging sides with a
multifold range, a series of difficult corners around which the
sense cannot immediately travel, but would for the fructification or
sustentation's sake of its etherealism, a process of counter argument
may deduce this aphorism, that in works of art in which the eye
travels quickly round all the corners of thought, motive, and
expression, the priceless, highest crown of spirituality cannot be
awarded to it. The painter, honestly striving with his subject, and
on lines of intimate understanding, has none of his physical reasons
thrown into shade, either be it for the nobility of his art, or for
urgency's sake, or for the softer assuaging of sensitiveness in the
breasts of his academic audience, having no inclination to be stung
when in the precincts, the hands of Art; for to whom else is the
pictorial homily directed? The group of figures upon the raised
tribune is classically adjusted to its position of prominence.
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