The arts find their essential unity in the fact that their sole object is the manifestation of the beautiful. No one knows better than the artist that beauty is not the production, of his own limited understanding, but that, after having duly made his preliminary studies of the laws of the medium through which he is to manifest it, it shines into, it reveals itself, as it were, intuitively to the divining soul. Far lower in its sphere than that infallible inspiration which speaks to us through the sacred pages of Holy Writ of the things immediately pertaining to our relations with God, true artistic power must still be considered as inspiration, since it is constantly arriving at more than the unassisted reason of man could command by the fullest exercise of its highest logical powers. The impassioned Romeo cries: 'Can philosophy make a Juliet?' That philosophy has never made a Juliet in art is positively certain! Let us then reverentially enter upon an analysis of the effect of beauty upon the human spirit, whether found in the perfect works of our God, or shining through the more humble imitations and manifestations of the fallible human artist.
The perception of beauty first excites a sensation of pleasure, then a feeling of interest in the beautiful object, then a perception of kindness in a superior intelligence, from which it is at once seen it must ultimately flow, then a feeling of grateful veneration toward that beneficent Intelligence. Unless the perception of beauty be accompanied with these emotions, we have no more correct idea of beauty than we can be said to have an idea of a letter of which we perceive the fine handwriting and fair lines, without understanding the contents. The emotions consequent upon the due perception of beauty are not given by the senses, nor do they arise entirely from the intellect, but, proceeding from the entire man, must be accompanied by a right and open state of the heart. A true perception and acknowledgment of beauty is then certainly elevating; exalting and purifying the mind in accordance with its degree. And it would indeed seem, from the lavish profusion with which the Deity has seen fit to scatter it around us, that it was His beneficent intention we should be constantly under its influence. Now the artist is one gifted by his Creator to discern that ineffable beauty which is everywhere present, to live in the realm of the ideal, and to reveal it to men through words, forms, colors, sounds, and, would he insure the salvation of his own soul, through good deeds. Thus it can be proved that 'religion is the soul of art,' and essentially necessary to the artist, because it gives him, simultaneously, the ideas and feelings of the Absolute, without which he must lose his way, falling into sterile and ignoble copies of the real, like the Dutch painters, and thus be able to produce nothing but detailed and accurate copies of low subjects, of factitious emotions, or of vulgar sensations. Without faith, the artist prefers the body itself to the feelings which animate it--the polished limbs of a Venus to the brow of a Madonna! The intellect alone can never soar to the regions of eternal truth, to the Absolute; it must be aided by the heart in its daring flight. Faith and love are the snowy and glittering wings of true artistic excellence. When the soul is full of the bliss of beauty, the feeling of its happiness urges the artist on to the necessity of imparting it,--while his heart is wrapt in the vision of the Absolute, he would fain build for his joyous thoughts an eternal abode with his fellow men, that they too might see the steppings of the All Fair, and so be cheered and stimulated in these their gloomy days of evil.