insists that beauty is equally forbidden. We do not assent in full to this conclusion; and if we had not already exceeded our prescribed limits, we would undertake to show that his law is quite too sweeping and arbitrary. Still there is a certain measure of truth in what he says. There is undoubtedly a connection between repose and the right perception of the beautiful, which is not acknowledged or understood as it should be. The elegant painting and sculpture which we find occasionally lavished on some place of mere trade or travel is a gross perversion. We sympathize too with Mr. R. in much of what he says in respect to the decoration of railway stations, though what he inveighs against is not found in this country to any such noticeable extent as on the other side of the water. "Better bury gold in the embankments,” he says, “than put it in ornaments on the stations. Will a single traveller be willing to pay an increased fare on the South Western, because the columns of the terminus are covered with patterns from Nineveh? He will only care less for the Ninevite ivories in the British Museum: or on the North Western, because there are old Englishlooking spandrils to the roof of the station at Crewe? He will only have less pleasure in their prototypes at Crewe House. Railroad architecture has or would have a dignity of its own if it were only left to its work. You would not put rings on the fingers of a smith at his anvil.”—pp. 100, 101. Mr. R. contends, and we think he is correct in it, that all men have a sense of what is right and wrong in the matter of decoration, but that they fail to act up to the sense they have. It is indeed painful to see, as we often do, how fashion and custom tyrannize over men here as in other things of less consequence. The question too frequently is not 'what should be?' but what has Mr. A. done already in the same line?' And here we quote a passage as beautiful as the subject could demand. "The question of greatest external or internal decoration depends entirely on the condition of probable repose. It was a wise feeling which made the streets of Venice so rich in external ornament, for there is no couch of rest like the gondola. So, again, there is no subject of street ornament so wisely chosen as the fountain, where it is a fountain of use; for it is just there that perhaps the happiest pause takes place in the labor of the day, when the pitcher is rested on the edge of it, and the breath of the bearer is drawn deeply, and the hair swept from the forehead, and the uprightness of the form declined against the marble ledge, and the sound of the kind word or light laugh mixes with the trickle of the falling water, heard shriller and shriller as the pitcher fills. What pause is so sweet as that-so full of the depth of ancient days, so softened with the calm of pastoral solitude?"-p. 102. The requisitions of symmetry and proportion as elements of the beautiful have here their place of consideration, in order to complete the subject; but we have not time to enter upon these, nor upon the great topic of color and sculpture as related to beauty. In respect to the Lamp of Life we shall do little more than to name it in its place, the subject being too wide and even intricate for us to do it any justice in the limits to which we are confined. What the author intends by life in architecture, is the expression which structures of wood or stone may be made to bear, of intelligence and purpose in the builder, and a certain animation of form. He insists that man shall throw his soul into architectural works and make it animate them so that every stone and timber as it were shall be indicative of human feeling. us. The Lamp of Memory leads us to the consideration of architecture in a very interesting aspect. In this aspect it is very much undervalued in our country. There is so little of memorial architecture here that we have hardly any occasion to feel its power, and then again our restless and migratory character prevents our attention from being drawn in this direction. But in the volume now before us, it is well said of architecture considered in this aspect, "We may live without her, and worship without her, but we can not remember without her." In speaking of the memorial character of architecture in its domestic structures, Mr. Ruskin touches a point which is well worth consideration any where, but which has special need of consideration among There is among us, what we do not know how otherwise to describe so well, a lack of the home feeling. As a people we are alive to all that is exciting. We want the world to be stirring all around us. We are impatient of our present condition and all the while seeking to better it. The boy hardly gets above his boyhood before he feels the desire to outgo his father. The father too encourages him to this, even begets in him this desire and pushes him off into the world to shift for himself. Thus thrown on our own resources as for the most part we are at an early age, we grow up to be a people of great self-reliance and fertility of resource. There is a feeling of independence which no other people probably have in equal measure. But it may well be questioned, whether we could not afford to forego some of our smartness for the sake of an increase of those quiet and contented feelings which may be nourished around the domestic hearth. We are in no little danger of losing sight of the importance which God has attached to the family relation. Instead of considering it as a permanent source of all that is best and most blissful, both for the present and the future, we too often regard the family simply as a nest, where we are to have birth and be nourished, only until we are fledged and able to shift for ourselves. It is not unfrequent to see father and son treating each other, when both have arrived at manhood, with less apparent regard than they do others with whom they are connected with no ties of blood. Would that we could be made to think that filial and parental affections are designed to be as permanent as life itself, and there is never any shame in their manifestation. Would that parents could understand what a nursery of all that is best and of immortal worth, home is capable of being; and that they would study to make it such. Then the children and the children's children would find the roots of deepest affection clinging to the old hearth stones; and the eyes, for many a generation, would brighten at the sight of the ancestral roof and the trees that stand as monuments around it. We pray that our people may think more and think better of home. Indeed we rejoice in the belief that an improvement is even already taking place at this point. We hope too that as our people come to think more of the home feeling, they will also think more of the home structure; and that we shall not always build as though for one generation alone, as though we expected our children quickly to desert the house of their nativity and the place where they have received the principles which are to shape and color all subsequent life. We have indeed no system of entail, and we have no regret on this score. But we might build so for comfort and happiness at home, and might so use our houses as homes instead of mere conveniences for eating and sleeping while engaged in the great work of making money; we might so identify the family history with the walls of the dwelling and the trees and fences round about, that it would be felt the greatest privilege of the children to live and die where they were born, or if that in the providence of God were impossible, then at least to make pilgrimages to it even from afar as to a shrine more sacred than that of Mecca or Jerusalem. In respect to this whole matter there is food for reflection in the following remarks of our author. "When men do not love their hearths, nor reverence their thresholds, it is a sign that they have dishonored both, and that they have never acknowledged the true universality of that Christian worship which was indeed to supersede the idolatry, but not the piety, of the pagan. Our God is a household God, as well as a heavenly one; He has an altar in every man's dwelling; let men look to it when they rend it lightly and pour out its ashes. It is not a question of mere ocular delight, it is no question of intellectual pride, or of cultivated and critical fancy, how, and of what aspect of durability and of completeness, the domestic buildings of a nation shall be raised. It is one of those moral duties, not with more impunity to be neglected because the perception of them depends on a finely toned and balanced conscientiousness, to build our dwellings with care, and patience, and fondness, and diligent completion, and with a view to their duration at least for such a period as, in the ordinary course of national revolutions, might be supposed likely to extend to the entire alteration of the direction of local interests. This at the least; but it would be better if, in every possible instance, men built their own houses on a scale commensurate rather with their condition at the commencement, than their attainments at the termination, of their worldly career; and built them to stand as long as human work at its strongest can be hoped to stand; recording to their children what they have been, and from what, if so it had been permitted them, they had risen. And when houses are thus built, we may have that true domestic architecture, the beginning of all other, which does not disdain to treat with respect and thoughtfulness the small habitation as well as the large, and which invests with the dignity of contented manhood the narrowness of worldly circumstance.""-p. 150. Under the Lamp of Obedience, Mr. Ruskin sets forth the necessity of a fixed system of law in architecture, in obedience to which its various structures shall rise, rather than according to the whim or caprice of the individual builder. He insists that the great principles involved in building constitute a common law of architecture, which must not be violated, and which can not be violated except with dangerous results. He discusses in this chapter also the subject of new styles and of originality in architecture, and concludes that no new style is necessary and that the great architect has room enough to show all needful originality while working in conformity with the already accepted principles of the art. We have not space to enlarge upon these topics, important as they are, nor to go farther with the general subject before us. Our pages are not the appropriate place for formal and complete discussions of the subject in its more professional aspects. We can only touch the grand principles involved, and give to our readers the more plain and practical conclusions to be derived from them. For a fuller examination of the matter we must refer them to particular treatises upon the subject. This we have at present endeavored to do. Our course of thought may appear disjointed and fragmentary. This has been even necessary on account of the wide field we have traversed, its many subjects of consideration, and the inadequacy of space for their orderly treatment. But if, by what we have now done, we are able to impress any with a sense of the dignity and moral importance of architecture, if we are able to beget in any an increased esteem of home and a desire to make the house more what the shrine of domestic affections should be, or if we can lead to the same result by leading any to the book which we have here and there opened before them, we shall not regret the labor which we have put forth for the accomplishment of this object. Noah Porter, fr. ART. VII.-BARTOL'S DISCOURSES. Second edition, Discourses on the Christian Spirit and Life. By C. A. BARTOL, THE author of these discourses is-as most of our readers know generally called a preacher of Unitarian Christianity. So far as any doctrinal opinions are advanced in this book, they are not however those which distinguish the old or the new school of Unitarian Theology. Mr. Bartol, it is true, in common with most liberal divines, now and then explicitly rejects a doctrine which we hold to be essential to the integrity and life of Christianity. The ways in which he disposes of it are also very common with liberal theologians, and these are, nakedly to assert, either that it can not be taught in the Scriptures, or that it is a part of Calvinism, or that it is now antiquated, or that no rational theologian would think of defending it. On the other hand, it would be easy to show, that more than one of the truths which in its dogmatic form the author most dogmatically rejects, is in fact implied, expanded, and illustrated in some of the most thrilling and powerful passages of this interesting volume. It would be easy to demonstrate, that the author is indebted to the "Calvinism" which he so easily puts aside, for the best parts of his book. We do not propose to discuss the theology of these discourses. Indeed they were not designed to defend or inculcate any scheme of doctrinal truth. They are what they purport to be, literally -"discourses of the Christian spirit and life." When a second edition was called for, and the author found that the volume had attracted some attention beyond the circle of his friends, he prefixed a somewhat elaborate introduction-as "a larger expression of his faith." In this introduction, he does not state or defend his views of Christian theology so far as they differ from those of the majority of believers. Rather does he vindicate Christianity itself from that subtle but pervading skepticism in respect to its necessity, its permanence, its historic verity, and its spiritual power, which he encounters in the circles for which he writes. This skepticism we believe, is not wanting in many other circles, which are less bold and honest in their avowals of the distrust which they actually feel. This introduction, as an argument designed for these ends, and addressed to the men for whom it was written, is an argument of great interest and power. We pity the man who is not touched by its earnestness, charmed by its beauty, and moved by its eloquence. We do not sympathize with the theologian, who can not appreciate the value of such an argument, proceeding from such a source, and adapted to such a circle of readers,-because it does not assert the whole truth, or because it may imply or even positively af firm some serious error. We quote the following passages ** "If a few of the able and learned for a time wander off on the adventure of skepticism and self-sufficiency, they will be likely, nay, how often, by their own spiritual necessities, have the strongest of them been constrained to return. Christianity, many-sided, many-handed, stretching out far her guards and co-workers, has encompassed, caught and rescued them, changing their infidelity at one human presentation of her into faith, as she beams upon them in another. She has, indeed, other apologists than those who have written and spoken eloquently in her behalf.` Sickness, death, sorrow, sin, and remorse, if other witnesses can be resisted, are her sad, yet majestic advocates |
