The morning star and Catholic messenger. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1868-1881, 1873-12-07
The People Who Travel.

For several months past the American
tourists In Europe have been tiding home
ward, each steamer bringing hundred or
so, and much will be heard of their expert
ences abroad in the saloons of "good so.
ciety" this winter.
Somebody has divided all modern tour
lists into four classes-the sentimental, the
matter of facts, the tourist because it is
fashionable, and the refined and educated.
The sentimental tourist, especially Of the
word, over every picturesque castle, pref
ty river, and towering height, which she
visits her tastes are 80 catholic that every
picture she sees is "perfectly lovely" and
every church is chow splendid !" She
s'goes wild" over the Coliseum by moon
she gazed at the dome of st. Peters. The
matter -of-fact tourist has brought back
notebook full of figures. He will tell you
just how high the Nelson Monument is,
just how long it takes to go from Paris to
Geneva and just what it costs, just how
the size of the Turkish army. The fash
ionable tourist, pure and simple, has but
little to impart; he was incontinently bored,
but, knowing the grandeur was "the
thing" pursued it with heroic self-sacrifice
to the end.
Our travellers have not only brought
home q large stock of visual experience,
but with them have come boxes, and cases,
and monster trunks, packed with the OBJ
jets dart which their own or the mercen-
airy and vicarious taste of experts has sug-
gested as worthy materials of home adorn-
ment; and, among these, pictures-whether
modern originals, rare bits of the old mas
tiers, or copies of the latter-form perhaps
the most extensive and valuable part. The
reader need not be told that the principle
art-show of Europe consists of the pictures
which are collected in the galleries, palaces,
and churches. Everywhere one is com
PEELED, whether he will Or not, to prone
made between long rows of canvas and
more, he is imperatively expected to ad
mire them all. To suggest that he is weary
of picture galleries, is to condemn his taste
forever. Few though there be who have
any culture or knowledge of art, it is rarely
that European tourist can be found so
brave as to acknowledge that endless per-
ambulations of picture-galleries bore him.
Afectation in art or rather of taste and
Judgment in art. is a prevalent fashionable
weakness, and all the ecatbing TRADES of
Ruskin, who is forever tearing his hair-in
print-over this subject, have not con-
quered the invincible craving of nearly
every one to be considered persons Of
taste.
But there is, after all, another extreme :;
and this is more injurious to an object
which ia surely one of high Importance
the education Of the people in Rrt-than is
the assumption of a taste which does not
exist. There are people, and among them
people intelligent, shrewd, and in other
matters very sensible, who courageously
but wrongly decry the pictorial art as USE
less and sheer waste Of time, skill, and
money, and who hold in contempt not only
all who practise, but all who enjoy it.
| Devoid of either a natural or cultivated
taste in the beauties of the canvas, and
rigidly utilitarian in their views, they see
no good in any thing that does not directly
contribute to the material machinery of
| life. These forget that the graces and
adornments of civilization have a very
powerful and certain effect upon the NOR
ality, virtuous pleasure, and humaneness
of a people.
There is, indeed, real use in looking at
and studying pictures, even though it be
I with the most uncultivated eye. 1t is q
good thing, even to the matter of fact and
the fashionable tourists, that they are OBJ
liged by the fat of Fashion to make the
round of the Louvre, to have the chefs
d'gavre of the great masters pointed OFT to
them, to study up the catalogues, and to
be told the special excellencies of each
work. They absorb something of taste and
culture from this unconsciously, as, in GER
tain tasteless waters, healthful minerals
are taken into the body, giving it better
tone. Such persons may not be able to ap
preciate the quality of a beautiful picture
the combination of harnonies 10 the draw
ing, the coloring, the attitude, the allegory,
and the moral told; 1t is only keen ma.
tural taste, carefully educated, that can
recognize the approach to perfection in the
execution of great artist. But something
of excellence is caught by the untutored,
even from these. Pictures of q secondary
rank-such as battle-scenes, scenes from
the history of courts or nations, portraits of
the famous-have their use in creating q
curiosity for knowledge, and making the
past more vivid az a reality. A custom OF
peculiarly of a people may be more readi-
Iy understood by glance of q good illus
tration of it on CANVAS than by an octave
volume. Who does not recognize, with
almost the vividDess of the scenes which
pass daily before our eyes, just what the
Dutch bOOr and his frau were in Rem brant's
time, by glimpse of one of his household
scenes Everybody who has seen por-
trait by Velasquez knows what sort of
person Spanish don of the time of Philip
w. was. Raphaers sacred pictures reveal
at once the uDquestiOning faith of the me-
dieval Italians in miracles. Each great
painter represents something of his time
its tastes, its faith, Its manners, its histori-
cal events, its tendencies-and 30 is able to