The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-01-10
Museums OF Art as a Means of En-
SHrmC1iOn.


discussed too often, as it cannot be too well
understood by the guardians of civilization
and the conservators of the means OF culture.
Museums of art are the best means of foster
ing and cultivating the historic sense; they
afford us examples of the finest and rarest
and most curious expression of the social life
of the past; they nurse the sentiment of reve-
renee; they beget tolerance, and afford plea
sure. We are so poor in this means OF in
struction, we have so little sense of the value
and significance of SO costly gift. that most of
us are rather ashamed of being poor in what
is the boast of foreigners than unhappy be-
cause of our laggard and dull response to
moral and aesthetic claim upon our material
resources. Next to mitigating the poverty
of helpless and infirm persons - relieving
them from hunger, and protecting them from
cold certainly, we should rank an effort to
make all classes acquainted with the beautiful
and curious manifestations of the human
mind, and the lovely and interesting works
of mems hands. For this purpose, we must
have the means of general and special in
struction in art, in its broadest sense.
We want museum of the fine arts and of
the industrial arts as affected by the fine arts
This museum should hold specimens of the
arts of luxury of Europe since the disruption
of the Roman empire, fragments or examples
of the architecture and sculpture and paint
ing of all epochs, classified and arranged, not
merely to crafty the curiosity of an idle
mind, but for the study of workmen and
special students of the fine arts. Taught by
these specimens of the formative genius of
the most gifted people of the noblest epochs,
we shall soon have body of mon capable of
commencing crusade against ostentation in
the name of beauty; and the common, pre-
tentious, and ugly objects of our everyday
life, in time, shall be replaced by objects and
forms that will give pleasure, soften manners,
and counteract the now unmitigated exercise
and influence of mere industrialism, and
these objects will compensate the average
citizen for the extremes of luxury and want.
Life is sweeter, even to the poor, under a
civilization which is favorable to the growth
and cultivation of the artistic perceptions.
The poor man is happier has more varied
and elevated intercourse with Nature and his
fellow-men, in Italy and France than in
industrial England and America. Our pow
erty in art is poverty in the ameiorations of
civilized life. We rightly employ science to
| enlarge our empire over the material world,
and mitigate pain; but in the meantime we
| do not administer sufficient consolation to
mans spiritual life, now neglected, now out
| ragged, nor do we labor to accumulate and CO.
ordinate the moral and aesthetic elements of
the past and present. great museum Of art
is the only adequate sign and institution of
| those neglected and exquisite forces, which
play through the life of the people of the
| Old World. A museum of art would afford
us adequate instruction in the vestiges of
the ancient civilizations-a solemn and beau
tiful teaching-it would foster reverence,
without which man is barbarian, and OBJ
noxious to every fine and noble sense of the
| difference of things. We are a raw and noisy
and obtrusive people; but place one genera
tion of us under the influence of the past, let
us see something grand and beautiful, not
made by our hands, yet made by the hands of
men, and perhaps we shall feel the sweet
flower of humility break through our pride,
and diffuse its gracious influence over us.
Humility, that flower of the religious life,
and reverence, which is the growth of our
appreciation of what is above and indepen-
dent Of us, are sentiments which have no
place whatever in our life at present. An
| humble and reverent American should be the
| first object to be labelled and pedestalled in
our new museum, but will probably be the
last work of art we shall get.
| Our grand museum, enriched by all that
intelligence and money can CLEAN from the
Old World, with every thing about it spacious
and imposing, commenced, not to be COM
| pleted, 10y this generation, but designed so as
to employ the hands of coming generations,
and large enough to house all that is neces-
sary for the illustration of the brief life Of
the fleeting generations of men-must in a
word, be comprehensive, and 1t must be i'm
posing The entrance and corridors must be
a worthy counterpart to the lofty aisles of our
pine-forests its halls capable of housing the
Assyrian kings and the Egyptian sphynx, and
the paintings Of great masters, new and old.
Commerce, industry, and science have
done much for our century, 1t remains to
be seen if the best men have~abandoned
architecture and painting, and no more con-
Germ themselves with the illustration and
adoTnment Of the life of our race; whether