Office of Artist.

It is the office of the artist to give a moral to nature, to trace t'e analogies between the spiritual world and the natural. By the rude and ignorant, the loveliest and most magnificent works of nature are disregarded. Though they may produce an unconscious effect, he sees not the soul of things.

"A primrose by the river's brim,

A yellow, primrose is to him,

And it is nothing more."

While to him who has wandered the earth in company with the poet, it will bring up sweet thoughts of spring; bright memories of vernal seasons past, and brighter hopes of an eternal awakening from wintry torpor. Hear with what the poet, who is wont

"To play with similies,

Loose types of things through all degrees,"

can invest this little flower, giving it a voice which will not be hushed, but shall echo on from year to year, and find a response in many a heart :

"I sang, let myriads of bright flowers,

Like thee in field and grove,
Revive, unenvied-mightier far
Than tremblings that reprove
Our vernal tendencies to hope
In God's redeeming love.

"Sin-blighted though we are, we, too,
The reasoning sons of men,
From our oblivious winter called,

Shall rise and breathe again,

And in eternal summer lose

Our threescore years and ten."

Poetry, the widest range.-Indefinitely multiplied.—Highest office of poetry.

Poetry, addressed to both the eye and the ear, has by far the widest range in tne dominion of the Muses. Her flights are only limited by the power of the imagination. From its capability of being indefinitely multiplied, it is more universally diffused than any of the other arts. It can be carried into the depths of the forest, and be borne to and fro on the bosom of the deep, while the other fine arts, in any thing like perfection, are confined to populous cities. The creation of the poet, while it adorns he library of the palace, and is enjoyed by the prince, at the same time may enrich the scanty bookshelf of the cottage, and rejoice the hearts of its humble inhabitants. The names of other artists, however celebrated, are known and cherished but by the few, while the names of our eminent poets are watchwords that call up an echo in almost every heart. The highest office of poetry is to delineate the emotions and passions of the human soul; and here she has the advantage of the other arts, for she can trace them from their cause to their effects, while they can only seize and portray some fleeting moment. So, in description, poetry can soar from morn to dewy eve, and from torrid to frigid climes, without a pause in her flight, at the same time giving the storied associations connected with each scene. To the cultivated mind, what subtle beauty, what far-soaring thought, may a single line of the poet convey. Take a line or two of Milton:

"Listening to what unshorn Apollo sings,
To the touch of golden wires."

The break of the metre in the first line is half its beauty. It brings the ear attent to hear—what? The touch of golden wires. Unshorn Apollo-what an humble epithet! yet, who would attempt to substitute a better? We behold the bright

Observation of nature.-Moral advantages.-Savage tribes.

rayed orb of day careering through the skies, rejoicing in his might, and yet this is but the background of the imagery. We see afar off, half veiled in the showery radiance, the human-like god, with floating locks, touching the celestial golden lyre, and hear the united harmony of all that high bards have sung. And all this, too, in a moment of time, even as the eye glances over the lines. Such is the winged power of art, it can transport us to the heavens; such its mysterious potency, it can make ages pass in review before us in a moment.

The contemplation of the works of the painter cultivates a minute observation of natural objects. The lover of the beauties of nature is best prepared to appreciate the excellencies of art, and the devotee of art, traces in nature many beauties which by the uncultivated eye are unnoticed. And, in the delineation of the human face, what sweetness, what nobleness, what gentleness, and what strength of soul may the artist teach! Silently, but surely, will his lessons take effect. "As in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man ;" and does not genius give a heart and a soul to the painting, the statue, and even to the architectural pile? The cultivation of the fine arts has, then, not only intellectual but moral advantages. And should they not be used in the work of education? The imagination will be active, then surely it is expedient to direct it into proper paths, and to provide it with nutritious food.

Among savage tribes, where even the useful arts are almost unknown, there is still found a rude appreciation of beauty, shown in the ornaments and trinkets with which they seek to adorn themselves and the uncouth objects of their worship. But in proportion as civilization and elegance of manners advance, the fine arts rise in excellence, and in their zenith of splendor mark the highest point of a nation's refinement.

Art a universal language.-Italy-Rules of criticism.

Art is a universal language, limited to no age and no country. It speaks to us from the past in a well-known voice, and binds us to the generations of the departed with feelings of sympathy which it is well to cherish. But for her poets, her painters, her sculptors, her architects, how would Greece,

"Immortal Greece, dear land of glorious lays,"

address us from the olden time? But in the harsh and discordant voice of anarchy and war, and far from being a watchword to call up thoughts of chaste and exalted beauty, and lofty heroic glory, she would scarcely appear elevated above the barbarous tribes of the north.

To Italy, the present sanctuary of the arts, the eye turns with peculiar fondness, as to the trysting-place of the world; a neutral ground, where all become fellow-denizens with the great souls of the past, who still live in their works. Nature, in its sublimest scenes, awes and subdues the soul, while art excites the mind, and challenges it to activity. It is the achievement of

man, and conveys the idea of human power and energy; and by

that action and reaction that passes from mind to mind, till, like the restless waves of ocean, commingling and separating, each forms a part of each; by that pervading sympathy that forms, and moulds, and develops, as, with increasing power, it passes from age to age, does it call aloud on the soul of man to awake and act.

A FEW GENERAL RULES OF CRITICISM.

The rules of criticism are not arbitrary, they are drawn necessarily from the constitution of our intellectual nature

Fashion.-Manner.- Idealizing.-Talent and genius.

There is in the mind of man an innate power of appreciating the beautiful. True, the wayward prejudices of fashion may for a time, esteem deformity an excellence; it may even find delight in distorting that most perfect work of nature, the human form. Still the standard of beauty is unchanged and unchangeable, however custom may sanction that which is ungraceful and inelegant. Both the eye and the ear may become the slave of habit, and receive most pleasure from the peculiarities of manner to which they have been accustomed; hence enlightened criticism will seek for beauty independently of differing styles.

Art is not satisfied with merely copying nature; it seeks to refine it, or rather to seize its hidden soul, and embody it anew. It rejects all that is common-place, and even succeeds in enduing matter with an air expressive of intellect or sentiment, A column of fine proportions seems to tower up in conscious majesty, and the poet may impart a peculiar expression to the delicate flower, or the beetling cliff. Art, then, in its highest develop ment, is not only an imitation of nature, but an ideal, an etherealized representation both of natural objects and of human nature. Who cannot recall some scene, that, without particular interest when beheld in broad sunshine, became invested with exceeding beauty when the sun threw his gorgeous cloudy mantle to the breeze, and suffused earth and air in a flood of soft radiance; when the deepening shadows of twilight brought out more fully each feature of the landscape, and beautified it as much by what it hid as by what it revealed. Thus, exalted art casts an ideal light, a sunset glow over the object imitated. The artist aims not only at copies of nature, but at re-creations of it. In this consists the nature of artistic genius; talent can copy, or cement together scattered fragments, but genius alone can, out of various elements, bring organized life and beauty.