ARBITERS. The world at large is the arbiter at large of a nation's fame; with its thousand eyes it witnesses a nation's deeds, and from their collective testimony is national glory or national disgrace established. 169 Washington Irving: The Sketch-Book. English ARCHEOLOGY. Archæology is not only the handmaid of history, it is also the conservator of art. XXXIV. The Archæologi 170 Lord Lytton: Speeches. cal Congress, Aug. 2, 1869. ARCHITECTURE · The Gothic cathedral is a blossoming in stone subdued by the insatiable demand of harmony in man. The mountain of granite blooms into an eternal flower, with the lightness and delicate finish, as well as the aerial proportions and perspective of vegetable beauty. 172 171 Emerson Essays. Of History. Great edifices, like great mountains, are the work of ages. Victor Hugo: Notre Dame. Bk. iii. Ch. 1. Architecture is a creation of the human intellect, adding to the stores of beauty in the world. 173 Thomas Starr King: The White Hills. Lake Architecture is the art which so disposes and adorns the edifices raised by man for whatsoever uses, that the sight of them contributes to his mental health, power, and pleasure. 174 Ruskin: The Seven Lamps of Architecture. Ch. 1. Architecture is the work of nations. 175 Ruskin: The True and the Beautiful. Sculpture. The architecture of a nation is great only when it is as universal and as established as its language, and when provincial differences of style are nothing more than so many dialects. 176 Ruskin: The Seven Lamps of Architecture. Ch. 7. We may live without architecture, and worship without her, but we cannot remember without her. 177 Ruskin: The Seven Lamps of Architecture. Ch. 6. When we build, let us think that we build (public edifices) for ever. Let it not be for the present delight, nor for present use alone, let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for; and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say as they look upon the labor and wrought substances of them, "See! this our fathers did for us." 178 Ruskin: The Seven Lamps of Architecture. The Lamp of Memory. 18 ARCHITECTURE-ARISTOCRACY. The sight of such a building (St. Peter's) is like a ceaseless, changeless melody. 179 Mme. de Staël: Corinne. Bk. iv. Ch. 3. Hill, Translator.) (Isabel The rendering, architecture is frozen music, has come to us from the philosophy of Kunst;-since it is music in space, as it were frozen music. If architecture in general is frozen music. (Schilling, Translator, pp. 576, 593.) ARGUMENT- see Oratory. Much might be said on both sides. 180 Addison: Spectator. No. 122. A knock-down argument: 'tis but a word and a blow. 181 Whenever you argue with another wiser than yourself, in order that others may admire your wisdom, they will discover your ignorance. When one imagines a discourse better than yourself, although you may be fully informed, yet do not start objections. 183 Saadi: The Gulistan. Ch. 8. Rules for Conduct in Life. No. 37. They are yet but ear-kissing arguments. 184 ARISTOCRACY. Shakespeare: King Lear. Act ii. Sc. 1. Natural aristocracy is the eminence of men over their fellows in real mind and soul. 185 Henry Ward Beecher: Proverbs from Plymouth Those families, you know, are our upper-crust, not upper ten thousand. 186 Cooper: The Ways of the Hour. Ch. 6. Ch. 24. The aristocracy is the immediate power between tyranny Aristocracy is always cruel. 1 A social life which worships money, and pursues social distinction as its aim, is, in spirit and in fact, an aristocracy. 190 J. G. Holland: Plain Talks on Familiar Subjects. II. Fashion. ARMY, The. No man can be a great officer who is not infinitely patient of details, for an army is an aggregation of details, a defect in any one of which may destroy or impair the whole. It is a chain of innumerable links, but the whole chain is no stronger than its weakest link. 191 ART George S. Hillard: Life and Campaigns of George Ch. 3. see Archæology, Architecture, Artists, Beauty, Life, Literature, Nature, Painting, Perfection, Science, Sculptors, Sculpture. The art which is grand and yet simple is that which presupposes the greatest elevation both in artist and in public. Amiel: Journal, Dec. 9, 1877. (Mrs. Humphrey Ward, Translator.) 192 Art, unless quickened from above and from within, has in it nothing beyond itself which is visible beauty. 193 John Brown: Spare Hours. Notes on Art. Nature is not at variance with art, nor art with nature, they being both the servants of His providence. Art is the perfection of nature. Were the world now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos. Nature hath made one world, and art another. In brief, all things are artificial, for nature is the art of God. 194 Sir Thomas Browne: Religio Medici. Pt. 16. Burke: The Sublime and Beautiful, 1756. No work of art can be great but as it deceives; to be otherwise, is the prerogative of nature only. 196 Burke: The Sublime and Beautiful. Pt. ii. Sec. 11. If art be not the imitator of nature, it is still less the copyist of art. Its base is in the study of nature, not to imitate, but first to select, and then to combine, from nature those materials into which the artist can breathe his own vivifying idea; and as the base of art is in the study of nature, so its polish and ornament must be sought by every artist in the study of those images which the artists before him have already selected, combined, and vivified; not, in such study, to reproduce a whole which represents another man's mind, and can no more be born again than can the man who created it; but again to select, to separate, to recombine, - to go through the same process in the contemplation of art which he employed in the contemplation of nature, profiting by all details, but grouping them anew by his own mode of generalization, and only availing himself of the minds of others for the purpose of rendering more full and complete the realization of that idea of truth or beauty which has its conception in his own mind. 197 Bulwer-Lytton: Caxtoniana. Essay xxiii. On Certain Principles of Art in Works of Imagination. Art is a spiritual triumph. 198 William Ellery Channing: Note-Book. Art. Art is an absolute mistress; she will not be coquetted with or slighted; she requires the most entire self-devotion, and she repays with grand triumphs. 199 Charlotte Cushman: Charlotte Cushman (American Actors Series). Ch. 10. The conscious utterance of thought by speech or action, to any end, is art. 200 Emerson: Society and Solitude. Art. The highest problem of every art is, by means of appearances, to produce the illusion of a loftier reality. 201 Goethe: Truth and Poetry. Bk. xi. (Godwin, Translator.) The perfection of an art consists in the employment of a comprehensive system of laws, commensurate to every purpose within its scope, but concealed from the eye of the spectator; and in the production of effects that seem to flow forth spontaneously, as though uncontrolled by their influence, and which are equally excellent, whether regarded individually, or in reference to the proposed result 202 J. M. Good: The Book of Nature. Series i. Lect. 9. True art, which requires free and healthy faculties, is opposed to pedantry, which crushes the soul under a burden. 203 Hamerton: Thoughts about Art. XIV. The Artistic Spirit. Art is the work of man under the guidance and inspiration of a mightier power. 204 J. C. and A. W. Hare: Guesses at Truth. Art is a reality, not a definition; inasmuch as it approaches a reality it approaches perfection, and inasmuch as it approaches a mere definition it is imperfect and untrue. 205 B. R. Haydon: Table Talk. Art must anchor in nature, or it is the sport of every breath of folly. 206 Hazlitt: Table Talk. Second Series. Pt. i. Essay xviii. Madame Pasta and Mademoiselle Mars. Art is but the mirror of life. 207 Heine: Wit, Wisdom, and Pathos. The Romantic Art is higher than nations, older than many centuries. Men of genius are more apt to feel art than to understand it; and they sometimes mistake that emotion which a work of art calls forth for essential characteristics of the work itself. 209 George S. Hillard: Six Months in Italy. Ch. 29. Art has its fanatics and even its monomaniacs. 210 Victor Hugo: Ninety-three. Pt. ii. Bk. iii. Ch. 6. (Benedict, Translator.) Every work of art has also a certain end or purpose for which it is calculated. 211 Hume: Essays. XXII. Of the Standard of Taste. There is certainly something accidental in the first rise and the progress of the arts of any nation. 212 Hume Essays. XII. Of Eloquence. Art does not lie in copying nature. Nature only furnishes the artist with the material by means of which to express a beauty still unexpressed in nature. He beholds in nature Lect. iii. more than nature herself holds or is conscious of. 213 Henry James: Lectures and Miscellanies. The Principle of Universality in Art. Art is nothing more than the shadow of humanity. 214 Henry James: Lectures and Miscellanies. The Principle of Universality in Art. Art is positive, claiming a substantive majesty, and beggaring all adjectives to set forth its praise. Lect. iii. 215 Henry James: Lectures and Miscellanies. Lect. iii. The Principle of Universality in Art. Why does no painter, no poet, no sculptor, succeed in snatching the inmost secret of art, and so making his name immortal? 216 Henry James: Lectures and Miscellanies. Lect. iii. The Principle of Universality in Art. Piety in art, poetry in art, puseyism in art, let us be careful how we confound them. 217 Mrs. Jameson: Memoirs and Essays. The House of Titian. The beautiful is the most useful in art; but the sublime in art is the most helpful to morals, for it elevates the mind. 218 Joubert: Pensées. No. 326. (Attwell, Translator.) The youth of art is handsome, its manhood pompous, its old age rich, but overcharged with ornaments which disfigure it and hasten its decay. 219 Joubert: Pensées. No. 276. (Attwell, Translator.) |