Year: 1869

geam of sun shine across it, often forms a
bit Of coloring that turns room into a
| picture. So Prang's overturned basket
of bright red cherries, hung on a wall of
a proper tint, is pleasing bit of color,
pleasing because it attempts not too much
and does all it attempts well. So, also,
pious notices and texts in Illuminated
letters have double valve,-they orna-
ment and they teach. These have no val
ue one way or the other as art; but they
are very Dleasent and useful as household


Mrs. Stowe then teaches the alphabet
of all true culture-self.relance, and a
courage to reject the advice Of others,
however pretentious, when their dicta are
at utter variance with ones own impress
sions. Of course, this does not imply un-
teachableness, it only demands a reason
for the faith preferred to us. She says:


"Ihe great value Of pictures for home
should be, after all, in their sentiment.
They should express sincere ideas and
tastes of the household, and not the tyran-
nical dicta of some art critic or neigh
Dor. 1t is desirable that the drawing and
painting should be good and respectable,
and that the family should be well enough
informed to know that a picture painted
on ajapanned waiter, however smooth and
pretty, is not good picture simply be-
cause It'll smooth and pretty We should
try to cultivate our taste and then express
it; but the value of family pictures in
great degree should consist in the fact
that they do sincerely represent our own
tastes and preferences and not those of
others 1t is disirable that these should be
cultured tastes, but quite as much SO that
they be real and genuine A respectable
engraving that truly is felt by the family
as an artistic pleasure is better thing
for them than a much higher one that
they do not understand or care for"


This is sound doctrine, but deliciously


conoclastic; the Nation, which has sneer-.
ed at almost all our best men, will give
its aesthetic lips an extra curl when it
reads this passage.


Following out this though, Mrs. Stowe
commemds all self-selccted collections,
whether they be those of connoisseur
with only classical engravings on his walls,
or those of some pains-taking business man
and his plain, excellent, housekeeping
wife, to whom, land it is neither sorrow
nor shame to say it," ga genuine picture
Of a smiling baby, good dog, fine horse,
q bunch of flowers, are worth the whole
Vatican"


There is world of sound art criticism
as we'll as common sense and genial telling
in this passage, with which we shall close
our extracts:


"Can there be but one sort Of thing iH
this world and is not tuft of moss, in
its way, as good as an oak tree? Is it
any sin not to have been to Rome and liv-
ed, or any merit to have done So? If
your neighbor is stepped to the lips in
high art and so classical that his very
chairs have ages of good authority for his
patterns; let us not despise him therefore,
and let him not snub and predominate'
over his weaker brother, who4has got only
so far as sincere admiration for the pref
ty things the Lord makes, when genuinely
represented Hast thou faith Z? Have
it to thyself.' Applaud and glorify thy
own collection with full heart. but be
gentle to thy next door neighbor who eat.
eth only herbs.


"There are certain humble works of art
in which excellence consists simply in a
faithful and truthful representation to ma
ture, in which the excellence is of a kind
Of which common people can become good
Judges. 1t takes very little artistic skill
or sense to judge whether stalk Of blue
gentan is faithfully painted, or the copy
of bunch of apple blossoms is true to-
the model Of its great original. A host
of such simple, inexpensive ornaments are
given by Prang in his chromo-lithography..
A bunch of apple blossoms, a blue gentiaD,,
so represented as to excel average paint
ing, forms charming domestic ornament,
unpretending, unambitious, and always
beautiful. Never do our hearts cease to
thrill when the time Of year comes round
for their fair originals to smile on us, and
never can we lose the sense of beauty in.
their limitations.


1t is one of the signs of the millennium
that real good art, correct and pure as far
as it goes, is being made the Inheritance,
OF the million, as it is now being done by
the chromo-lithograph; and we have little
: sympathy with the scornful style in which
lsome sclf-important art critics have con-
demned or ridiculed efforts that are bring
ing beauty and pleasure to so many thou
sand homes that otherwise poverty would
Z keep bare" lf ~
1 Bravo, Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe |!


But what will Don Positive of the N. Y.
: Tribune sav In Won 2 Wa wa;t In faa =