The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863, page 89 by Various Authors
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d more general rules of specific arts; for such rules, when true, are never arbitrary, but spring from the fundamental laws, of universal Beauty. They are but the external manifestation, through material mediums, of eternal laws.
The compiler of the present article can offer no such great work to the reader. An earnest effort will however be made to bring together the related thoughts upon Art and Beauty. They are found scattered almost at random over so many pages; to link them together by arranging them in their logical sequences, placing them so that they will illustrate and mutually corroborate one another: and, working up with them the thoughts suggested by them, the author has labored to form of them a compact and easily perused whole. For the ideas selected are essentially related, and, scattered as they may have hitherto been, naturally gravitate round a common centre. No longer drifting apart through the chaos of multitudinous pages, they are now formed into a system of order, a galaxy of which the central sun is--the Divine attributes as manifested through the Beautiful.
If the writer shall succeed in suggesting to some lucid and comprehensive mind the fact that a noble field for the culture of the human heart and soul remains almost unexplored, and induce one worthy of the task to undertake its cultivation; or if her humble work shall induce one lover of pure art to direct his attention to the glorious promises which it reveals to him of a closer communion with the Great Artist, the beneficent Creator of the Beautiful--she will feel herself more than compensated for her 'pleasant labor of love.'
All true art is symbolic; a thought, an idea, must always constitute the significance, the soul of its outward form. The mere delusive imitations, the servile copyings of the actual shapes of reality, are not the proper objects of art. To form a master work of art, the idea symbolized must be pure and noble; the technical execution, faultless. No heavier censure can, howev