Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1882-12-15
miscellaneous.
For THE SENTINEL.
ART PERCEPTION.

The artists object is to place before
the eye the image of some scene remark
able for its beauty or grandeur. With
untiring zeal he strives to copy the lines,
the tints, the shadings, which make up
the grand painting Mature. He fails,
and the measure of his failure is the
difference between the Mind Infinite and
the mind finite Yet, though he is un-
able to represent on canvas the crimson
glory of the sunset or the pale splendor
of the moonlight, though his brush at.
tempts in vain to depict the form and
color of flower, and his art is poweress
TO catch the blush on maiden's check.
he still can offer us some faint sembance
of the original from which Imagination
may paint a more faithful picture on the
easel of the mind This endeavor to
reproduce objects aud materializc abb
stractions is as cnnobling as it is diff
cult. But there is another branch of
the painters art which exceeds this in
difficulty by as much as mind exceeds
matter in sublimity. 1t is the represent
alton Of thought Love and anger, hope
and fear, JOY and woe--whose hand can
perfectly portray these
Very like tho art Of painting is tho
art of poetry, and we use the latter term
in its widest sense, to include poems in
prose as we'll as those in verse. 1t is
subject to the same restraints and limit
ed by the same bounds. If an artist
can not paint landscape, with its sill
very moonbeams, its snow-crowned
mountains, its spectral forest aud ice
bound river, neither can IA poet describe
it. If painter can never grasp the
look of trust in yon baby's eyes, as it
gazes into its mothers face, it is no less
impossible for the poet to express that
mothers unutterable love And the
pleasure produced by a beautiful picture
Is very similar to the enjoyment we de-
rive from reading grand poem. The
cause of this analogy is, of course, the
fact that the picture and the poem each
appeal, though in different manner, to
tho same intellectual faculty, imagna'
ton. | hear the word sea-shore and i'm.
mediately there arises in my mind an i'm
age of the roaring breakers fringed with
foam, tho golden sands, and the white
winged sea-birds Or | stand, with rap
attention, before the skillful delineation
Of the same scene. Evidently it is, il
both cases the representative power o
the mind that enables me to see that coast
to hear the thunders Of that surf. which
it may be, are thousand miles away
Then we may fail to obtain pleasure
from this image-producing power O.
words, just as We may neglect to gathe
delight from paintings. Some can lool
at the work of q master artist, yet fee
no emotion They can read poeti
description of the scene portrayed il
in that work, yet be unmovcd. TIL
scene itself could not move them,
II, when reading poetry, We SHOULD
try to picture to ourselves the thing
! described, and to imagine the feelings 0
the persons spoken Of, we would be NOR
able to think the thoughts Of the poe
who, as Tennyson truly says,
ain golden cline was born,
With golden stars above;
Dower'd with hate Of hate, the scorn Of scorI
The love of love"
We can not better close this article
. perhaps, than by giving an example {
q the power Of words to call up mental in
a ages. In Campbells exquisite "Pleas
ures Of Hope" there arc several littl
elegies of wonderful pathos We selec
= single one. After telling the story
the "wild maniac" whose madness wa
, brought on by the drowning of he
lover, be says:
"Oft when yon moon has climbed the mi'
Il night sky
And the lone seabird wakes its widest or
~ Piled on the steep, her blazing fagots burn
u To hail the bark that never can return;
y And still she waits, but scarce forbears
~ weep,
'e That constant love can linger on the deep
d How terrible in its sadness is the pie
q ture
u LEE DAVIS LoDGE