Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1899-06-19
mere. true to nature and life than some

immortal on the other side or the sea,
but 1t is the fashion Of Americans to
mention foreign artists and to know
little or nothing about our own Copley
and Allston, and Inman and Gree
nough, and Kensett. Let the afluent
fling out of theiS windows and into the
backyard valueless daubs on canvas
and call in these splendid but unre-
warded men and tell them to adorn
your walls, not only with that which
shall please the taste, but enlarge the
minds and improve the morals and
save the souls of those who gaze upon
them. ALI American cities need great
galleries of art, not only open annually
for few days on exhibition but which
shall stand open all the year round,
and from early morning until 10 o'clock
at night and free to all who would
come and go.
Build Art Galleries.
What preparation for the wear and
tear of the day five minutes look in
the morning at some picture that will
open a door into some larger realm
than that in which our population
daily drudge! Or what good thing
the half hour Of artistic opportunity
on the way home in the evening from
exhaustion that demands recuperation
for mind and soul as well as bodyi
Who will do for the city where you
live what W. w. Corcoran did for
Washington and what others have
done for Philadelphia and Boston and
New York? Men of wealth, if you are
too modest to build and endow such
place during your lifetime, why not
go to your iron safe and take out your
last will and testament and make a
codicil that shall build for the city of
your residence throne for American
art? Take some of that money that
would otherwise spoil your children
and build an art gallery that shall as
sociate your name forever, not only
with the great masters of painting
who are gone, but with the great mas
tiers who are trying to live, and also
win the admiration and love of tens Of
thousands Of people who, unable to
have fine pictures Of their own, would
be advantaged By your benefactions
build your own monuments and not
leave 1t to the whims Of others. Some
of the best people sleeping in Green
wood have no monuments at all, or
some crumbling stones that in a few
years will let the rain wash out name
and epitaph, while some men whose
death was the abatement of a nuisance
have pile Of Aberdeen granite high
enough for a king and eulogium
enough to erabarrass seraph.
Oh, man Of large wealth, instead of
leaving to the within of others your
monumental commemoration and cpl
taphology, to be looked at when people
are going to and fro at the burial of
others, build right down in the heart
of our great city, or the city where you
live, an immense free reading room or
a free musical conservatory or free
art gallery, the inches for sculpture
and the walls abloom with the rise and
fall of nations and lessons of courage
for the disheartened and rest for the
weary and life for the dead, and $50
years from now you will be welding
influences in this world for good. How
much better than white marble, that
chills you If you put your hand on it
when you touch it in the cemetery,
would be a monument in colors, in
beaming eyes, in living possession, in
splendors which under the chandelier
WOu1u ne SIOWluS anu WdIul anu LUX
ed at by strolling groups with cata-
lOgue in hand, ON the January night
when the metropolis where the body
sleeps is all showed under! The tower
of David was hung with 1000 dented
shields of battle, but you, oh man of
wealth, may have grander tower
named after you, one that shall be
hung not with the symbols of carnage,
but with the victories of that art
which was so long ago recognized in
my text as pleasant pictures" Oh,
the power Of pictures! I cannot de
ride, as some have done, Cardinal Ma
Zarin, who when told that he must die,
took his last walk through the art gal
lery Of his palace, saying: 'Must quit
all this? Look at that Titan! Look
at that Correggio! Look at that del
uge of Caracci! Farewell, dear pic
turesv'
A Universal Language.
AS the day Of the Lord of hosts, ac-
cording to this text, will scrutinize the
pictures, I implore all parents to see
that in their households they have
neither in book nor newspaper nor on
canvas anything that will deprave
Pictures are no longer the exclusive
possession of the aff1uent. There is |
not respectable home in these cities
that has not specimens of woodcut or
steel engraving, if not of painting,
and your whole family will feel the
moral uplifting or depression. Have
nothing on your wall or in books that |
will familiarize the young with scenes
Of cruelty and wassail. Have only
those sketches made by artists in ele-
waited moods and none Of those scenes
that seem the product of artistic de