The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-06-17

of religious faith and aspiration, grouping
into awful pictures the mighty creations OF MS
dark imagination, and again, carving out
with his strong hand faces and forms oil trans
cendent loveliness and majestic peaceful
ness and repose. Mozart may be likened
both to Raphael and Shakespeare, resembling
the former in the sweet and exquisite beauty
of his fancies. in his fluent ease and airy deli
eacv. and in his wonderful subtilty and refine
ment; and ranking with the master poet in
the exhaustless fertility of his resources and
as the incompatible dramatist of his art-the
creator through music of living characters,
the delineator of passions, the mirror OF ma
ture. Bach, for his marvellous perfection OF
form and for bis power of enteringinto the deep
est recesses- of sorrow, suffering, and shame,
NAV be compared not inaptly to Dante;
while HAYDN may stand as the Claude Lor-
raine of his art, the reflection of the green
fields of earth, of the sunny blue of heaven,
and of all that is fairest, brightest, and most
beautiful in the world of creation We would
not follow the conceit too far, and without
even an allusion to Mendelssohn or Handel,
or Gluck, or to Rossini and the great army
of Italian composers, we have cited names
enough to enable the mind to see at glance
the iustness of the claim of our time to an
overmasteriDg superiority in music.
We have not meant to imply by what has
been said that any of the arts which gorify
life have passed-or indeed ever can pass
into state of hopeless decay. They are in
their nature immortal, for they fiud their
source and fountain head in the undying soul
of man. The art of any time must needs be
great and good if it but gives expression to
the thought and life which characterize the
time The painting and poetry of the
nineteenth century have in great measure
fulfilled this condition, and have gained
the right and the power to live for
many ages. Our architecture and our
sculpture have failed in exactly that degreein
which they have labored to copy the work of
another race and era. With their emancipa-
tion the day of their greatness will dawn; so
that there is more hope for the plastic art of
our time in the statuettes of John Rogers
than in hundred Greek Slaves and White
Captives But with this truth may also exist
another, founded upon the fact that any age
may find in single art a peculiar adaptation
to its need, and the swiftest, surest, and
fullest mode of uttering its thought and
feeling. The law which governs this
truth may be obscure, but the
truth itself is undesirable. Music, as it
would seem, has taken, and for the present
| is to take, this eminent position with us. The
soul of man which, in the classic time, found
| its brightest expression through the chiselled
stone; which afterwards spoke through the
| tints and lines of the medieval painters, and
uttered itself through the god. like voices of
| Shakespeare and Milton, now inspires the
souls and guides the pens of the composers
of music. We are well eontented that it
should be 80. The age which has contributed
| the opera, the oratorio, and the symphony to
art may be pardoned for its failure to create
a new school in sculpture, in painting, or in
architecture. 81. aa