Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1886-01-28
THE FINE ARTS.
How Their High Cultivation Has
Been Associated With National
Decadence.

4
The progress of this country in one al
least of the fine arts is notably shown
in the pages of the principal magazines
published in the centers of wealth and
culture. These magazines, while they
seem to me decidedly lower in literary
tone and purpose than they were TWEEN
ty years ago, are immeasureably super
ior in the artistic excellence of their IL
Illustrations. And in this respect they
are admittedly superior. to anything
Europe can produce; so that in one
branch at least America is an exporter
of fine art. The pre-eminence in this
one branch, and the great progress in
all kindred branches of the fine arts are
to very many Americans source of
pride and self-congratulation. But, in
the light of history,I cannot help deem
ing it matter of apprehension rather
than congratulation for a country to
become pre-eminent in the fine arts. In
any nation and any age, the tlourishing
of the arts has been associated with a
marked decadence in patriotism, indie
pendence. and all the plain and home.y
virtues.
When the pencil of Phidias was filling
the Parthenon with forms of beauty,
| fino LODI II
Grecian art immortal, the Greeks who
saw and admired had lost their yigor
and stamina as people, and were soon
to lose their nationality for ages and
become the slaves of successive hordes
who carved with the sword instead of
the chisel and who handled the spear
and the bow more skillfully than the
brush, and who loved the music of the
ringing shield better than that of the
twanging Tyre.
When Roman art eliminated in the
Pantheon, decay was already far adj.
yanced in the heart of that vast en-
pire, soon to fall beneath the barbarians
who worshiped in the dark forests of
the North, to whom the hardy virtues
were all and the fine arts nothing.
When the painters and singers and
sculptors of modern Italy were the adj
miration of the world, her people were
the pity of the world in their squalid
poverty, neutrality-suspicious. and political
slavery.
Itwas when the structure of German
nationality lay in ruins beneath the feet
of Napoleon, when Germany was groan-
ing in poverty and weakness under a
score of petty despots, that she gave to
the world her great names in art. 1t
was under the patronage of those same
petty despots that her famous art gal
leries were created, her operas built
and her composers and painters re-
warded with the money wrung from
the poyerty-stricken and tax-ridden
peasantry.
In the reigns of Louis XIV and XIV
luxury was ripe among the mobility
and the initiative and decorative arts
reached high excellence; but down in
the lower strata of society smoldered
and gathered the volcanic fires and
forces of the Reign of Terror.
Austria yet lies sluggish and torpid,
but cruel and hideous, python-like,
gorged with the nations she has stran-
gled and swallowed; but the gay
strains of the "Blue Danube waltz, or
iginating among the marble palaces
aud imperial theaters of Vienna, echo
in every land, from where the broad
Pacific washes the shores of "Farthest
Ind far around westward to where it
GIBBS and flows through the Golden
Gate of California.
Just as the fine arts seem to enervate
any people who become devoted to
them, SO high refinement in any par
| ticular art seems fatal to its energy and
power upon human life. That simple
and homely old tune-a very lout aud
peasant in the musical realm-which no
performer ever mentions without a
smile good-naturedc contempt ankee
Doodle-has been more of a power in
the world-has more strongly urged
men onward with light hearts and high
courage against heavy odds and deep
discouragements, than the grandest
Emusic of the future" Wagner ever
wrote or ever will. Dixie" which
bore.up the hearts of myriads of South
ern soldiers, half clad and half fed,
through tour long years against hope
less odds and accumulated defeat
what child of any royal name in the
realm of music could have done as
much? Yet Dixie was only the found
ling of some unknown minstrel troupe.
"Old John Brown!" How many hun
dreds of thousands of men with those
inspiring strains parting their lips and
swelling their hearts, rushed to the re-
cruiting rendezvous, and how many
hundreds of regiments marched to bat
tie keeping step to the rhythm of those
rhymeless linesi But that wonderful
air was as obscure in its origin and as
simple in its character as the Maid OF
Orleans, who reused and raised a ma
ton from the black pit of despair to the
sublime heights of victorious enthu-
siasm Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, writer
of high culture and the pet of the re.
fined circles of the ''Athens of Amer
lea" wrote the battle Song of the
Republic, but in the ''tug of war; and
the ''perlous edge of battle the repub-
lie refused to sing it. In those rugged
and trying times its fine artifciality was
as feeble and out of place as was q
corps of kid-gleved, rose-scented and
-bedizened darlipgs of the drawing
room in the dust and smoke and sweat
and toll of battle.
In our great Atlantic cities, where
art is more and more honored and
wooed, and better and better paid
where the operate star receives thou
sand dollars night, thousands of the