blocks of marble. They reject life as prosaic, and create a death which they call poetic. They despatch the day's weary chores, and fly to voluptuous reveries. They eat and drink, that they may afterwards execute the ideal. Thus is art vilified; the name conveys to the mind its secondary and bad senses; it stands in the imagination, as somewhat contrary to nature, and struck with death from the first. Would it not be better to begin higher up,-to serve the ideal before they eat and drink; to serve the ideal in eating and drinking, in drawing the breath, and in the functions of life? Beauty must come back to the useful arts, and the distinction between the fine and the useful arts be forgotten. If history were truly told, if life were nobly spent, it would be no longer easy or possible to distinguish the one from the other. In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful, because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America, its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men. It is in vain that we look for genius to reiterate its miracles in the old arts; it is its instinct to find beauty and holiness in new and necessary facts, in the field and roadside, in the shop and mill. Proceeding from a religious heart it will raise to a divine use, the railroad, the insurance office, the joint stock company, our law, our primary assemblies, our commerce, the galvanic battery, the electric jar, the prism, and the chemist's retort, in which we seek now only an economical use. Is not the selfish, and even cruel aspect which belongs to our great mechanical works, to mills, railways, and machinery, the effect of the mercenary impulses which these works obey? When its errands are noble and adequate, a steamboat bridging the Atlantic between Old and New England, and arriving at its ports with the punctuality of a planet,-is a step of man into harmony with nature. The boat at St. Petersburgh, which plies along the Lena by magnetism, needs little to make it sublime. When science is learned in love, and its powers are wielded by love, they will appear the supplements and continuations of the material creation. THE END. TALES OF EVERY-DAY LIFE, BY FREDERIKA BREMER. UNIFORM WITH SLATER'S SHILLING SERIES. To be published in Monthly Volumes, price One Shilling each, handsomely bound in green cloth, gilt, a new, complete, and uniform edition of MISS BREMER'S NOVELS, TRANSLATED FROM THE SWEDISH. "No fictions, since those of Scott, have captivated all classes like those of Frederika Bremer." A Volume will be published on the 15th of each month, until the whole are completed. LONDON. GEORGE SLATER, 252, STRAND; J. MENZIES, EDINBURGH; J. Mc GLASHAN, Dublin, Super-royal 32mo, neatly and substantially bound in green cloth, gilt. SLATER'S SHILLING SERIES OF POPULAR AND CLASSICAL WORKS. It is intended to embrace, in this monthly series, the most popular and classical works of Emerson, Lamartine, Longfellow, George Sand, and other celebrated English and Foreign writers. ALREADY PUBLISHED. I. EMERSON'S TWELVE ESSAYS, On History, Self-Reliance, Compensation, Spiritual Laws, Love, Friendship, Prudence, Heroism, the Over Soul, Circles, Intellect, and Art. II. VATHEK; An Arabian Tale, by W. BECKFORD, Esq., with a Memoir of the Author, by W. NORTH. "Vathek is, indeed, a remarkable performance." Quarterly Review. "For correctness of costume, beauty of description, and power of imagination, Vathek far surpasses all European imitations. As an Eastern tale, even Rasselas must bow before it; his Happy Valley will not bear comparison with the Hall of Eblis."Lord Byron. III. A Romance, by HENRY W. LONGFELLOW, Author of the "Voices of the Night," "Evangeline," &c., &c. "Look not mournfully into the past, it comes not back again. Wisely improve the present. It is thine. Go forth into the shadowy future, without fear, and with a manly heart." |