Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1879-07-05

c which looked down from the Paf
Q thenon, to the Greek Slave Of Pow
+ ers, and in painting from the Iphi
: genia of Timanthes to the Madonna
of Raphael and Holbein, while il
4 poetry we have the early and per
/ feet type in Helen, of whom
They cried, No wonder snch celestial charm
, For seven long years have set the world il
, arms.
What winning grace and what majestl,
She moves a goddess and she looks queen
What would poetry be without
speaking alone of physical beauty,
for it is a significant fact, noticed by
1 an accurate writer, that the graces
of intellect and the charm of man.
ner are no less remarkable in Aspa-
ria and Cleopatra than the beauty
of their persons. Shakespeare has
scarcely hero; he has only hero
ines. There is hardly play in
which there is not perfect
woman; CordeIia, steadfast in
grave hope, high duty and errorless
purpose; Desdemona, HermiOne,
Perdita, Helena and Virgilia are all
faultless. So in Scott, both prose
and poetry, from pure and lofty
Ellen Douglass to brave and gentle
Jenny Deans. The Greek heroines
from AndrOmache to patient Pen
elope, the Beatrice of Dante's great
poem, are all ideal types of human
faith, human love and divinely hui
man beauty.
When we hear a sweet and lovely
little girl singing
1 want to be an angel and with the angels
dwell,
we feel like taking her by the hands
and saying to her, You are already
an angel, cultivate your soul, and
the wings and robes of beauty will
be yours even here. But there is
something ridiculously incongruous
in hearing big-fisted, rough-hewn, |
boisterous boy bawling, even in
Sunday-school, II want TO be an
angel" He would make a pretty |
angel, climbing the forbidden trees |
of Paradise, eating the golden APP
Piles, killing the song birds with his
indiarubber. sling, robbing their
nests, and then Joining the first re-
belliOn to become a second Lucifer, |
rObbing the banks or breaking an
insurance company. 1t is only the |
old, old men who are fitted for /
heaven, after youth has consumed |
its passion, middle age gratified its
ambition and old age fed its avarice.
1t is only recently we heard a dis
tinguished lecturer comment upon
the fact that it was not until the
pure pen of woman and the impress
of her character came to English
literature that it became potent to
cultivate and refine a people. Who
can measure the influence for good |
of the pens of Mrs. Norton, Mrs.
Hemans, and above all and beyond
all, and nearer and dearer than
them all, Mrs. Browning.
AS woman is the highest type of
the beautiful, so the highest type of
woman is she who combines within
herself in the greatest perfection the
essential elements of beauty-phys-
ical, intellectual and moral. 1t is
in the cultivation of the intellect,
theelevatiOn of the soul, that woman
approaches nearest the perfect type
of beauty, and she fultills her high
est mission in cultivating the beau
tiful In herself and others. She
must herself attain to an accurate
sense of the beautiful by earnest,
loving and unselfish attention to
her impressions of it; not to the
neglect of other aims and other du-
ties, but by humble and loving ways
to make herself susceptible to deep
delight from the meanest objects of
creation, and feel that
There's beauty all around our paths, If but
Can trace it midst familiar things and
through their lowly guise.
She must see beauty in nature
and art, the meanest rill. the might
lest river, in the pebble upon the
shore and the great sea itself, 'and
music in its roar,o and then ascend
ing higher to the beautiful of music
and poetry, and still ascending yet
to a still loftier height, to charity
and duty and k0Ue.
Goethe said the two most beauti-
full things in all the world were the
bright sky above us and the sense
of duty within our hearts. Plato
prescribed to artists that they should
create nothing illiberal or defOrmed,
but should cultivate only the beau
thatshould beengraven !
in every home and seminary and i'm
the memory and heart of every girl
and woman. There never was a
time in the history of any people
more favorable to the cultivation of
the arts and the advancement of
every aesthetic taste than the pres
ent in America. Mr.. Buckle SAYS a
people must first become wealthy
before they can become learned;
that while engaged In the mere
struggle for subsistence no very
deep learning can be attained. This
is partially true, but the majority
of the people of our country are now
in that condition that much time
can be given to education and to
the cultivation of the arts. They
have passed the pioneer age, passed
the age of mere struggle for subsist-
ence and come now to the age Of
adornment and the cultivation of
the beautiful, Art galleries such as
the CorcQran at Washington aud
tho National Academy of Designs
and art journals like Appleton's are
rapidly spreading abroad a love of
the beautiful, refining the taste and
the morals Of the people.
The stately halls of the Hudson and
the lovely homes Of The Sehuylkill
and Potomac equal, in taste, the
stately homes of England, the sweet
villas By the Rhine. Our artists
like HOsmer, Powers, Winnie Ream,
Beard and Hart are bringing us to
the days Of true Athenian glory,
while our poets, SAKE, L0ngfellow,
Bryant and Ryan, though some
dead are singing TO the world. Here
is the trne sphere Of waman, and i'm |
this revival az the arts and this
activity i'm the culfiva-
ton of the beautiful is her gloriaps
opportunity for the achievement Of
that high place to which she was
Iieatlned, II Is 4 solemn duty 10
bring every sense into that state of
cultivation in which It shall form
the trnest conclusions and attain the
pleasure. Ignorance is never
bliss. Think you the unlettered
bOor, the illiterate Gurth, perpetual
thrall of Cedric ignorance-wh0
treads the daisy beneath his feet,
who walks through leafy shades
and upon grand mountains, and yet
sees no beauty in any of these-eu-