: Right Living as a Fine Art A Study of Channing's Symphony as an Outline of the Ideal Life and Character by Hillis Newell Dwight Channing W H William Henry Contributor - Conduct of life; Character

@FreeBooks

Posted in: #FreeBooks #FreeBooksIndia #FreeBooksApp #gg

Vote Up Vote Down   0 Reactions

Login to give Reaction!

MY SYMPHONY.

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common--this is my symphony.

WILLIAM HENRY CHANNING.

A STUDY OF CHANNING'S "SYMPHONY" AS AN OUTLINE OF THE IDEAL LIFE AND CHARACTER.

To the revival of learning in the fourteenth century, to the revival of religion in the sixteenth, and the revival of liberty in the eighteenth century must now be added the revival of the beautiful in this new era for art. In former ages man was content if his house was dry, his coat was warm, his tool strong. But now has come an era when man's house must have beautiful walls, when woman's dress must have harmonious hues, when the speaker's truth must be clothed in words of beauty; while in religion if the worshiper once was content with a harsh hymn, now man best loves the song that has a beautiful sentiment and a sweet tune. Always the useful had a cash value. Now beauty has become a commodity. To-day, to hold his place, the artisan must become an artist. The era of ugliness, with its clumsy tools and ungainly garments, has gone forever. No longer content with lending strength to coat or chair or car, manufacturers now vie with one another in a struggle to make the garment take on lines of grace, and colors soft and beautiful. Society seems to be standing upon the threshold of the greatest art movement in history. Best of all this, revival of the beautiful promises to be a permanent social possession.

Very brief and fitful that first art epoch when Phidias polished statues, the very fragments of which are the despair of modern sculptors. All too short also that era when Raphael and Botticelli brought the canvas into what seemed the zenith of its perfection. It was as if the vestal virgin of beauty had drawn near to fan the flickering light into a fierce flame only to allow it quickly to die out again. But if other art epochs have been soon followed by eras of ugliness and tyranny, it was because formerly the patrician class alone was interested in the beautiful. In that far-off time, Pericles had his palace and Athens her temple, but the common people dwelt in mud huts, wore coats of sheepskin, and slept on beds of straw. The beauty that was manifest in pictures, marbles, rich textures, bronzes, belonged exclusively to the cathedral or the palace.

Now has come an era when art is diffused. Beauty is sprinkled all over the instruments of dining-room, parlor and library. It is organized into textures of cotton, wool and silk. Even in the poor man's cottage blossoms break forth upon floor and walls, while vines festoon the humblest door. Once, at great expense, a baron in France or Germany would send an artist into Italy to copy some masterpiece of Titian or Tintoretto. Now modern photography makes it possible for the poorest laborer to look upon the semblance of great pictures, statues, cathedrals, landscapes--treasures these once beyond the wealth of princes. Having made tools, books, travel, home, religion to be life-teachers, God has now ordained the beautiful as an apostle of the higher Christian life.

Recognizing the hand of God in every upward movement of society, we explain this new enthusiasm for art upon the principle that beauty is the outer sign of an inner perfection. Oft with lying skill men veneer the plaster pillar with slabs of marble, and hide soft wood with strips of mahogany. But beauty is no outer veneer. When ripeness enters the fruit within a soft bloom steals over the peach without. When every drop of blood in the veins is pure a beauteous flush overcasts the young girl's cheek. When summer hath lent ripeness to the harvests God casts a golden hue over the sheaf and lends a crimson flush to the autumn leaves. For beauty is ripeness, maturity and strength. Therefore when the seer says, "God maketh everything beautiful in its time," he indicates that God's handiwork is perfect work. When some Wordsworth or Emerson leaves behind men's clumsy creations and enters the fields where God's workmanship abounds, the poet finds the ground "spotted with fire and gold in tints of flowers"; he finds the trees hung with festooned vines; finds the forests uniting their branches in cathedral arches; finds the winds making music down the long, leafy aisles; finds the birds pouring forth notes in choiring anthems, while the very clouds rise like golden incense toward an unseen throne. Though the traveler journey far, he shall find no bud, no bough, no landscape or mountain or ocean, that is not overcast with bloom and beauty.

We are not surprised therefore when we see that as man's arts and industries go toward perfection they go toward beauty. Carry the coarse flax up toward beauty and it becomes strong cloth. Carry the cocoon of a worm up to beauty and it becomes a soft silken robe. Carry rude Attic speech up to beauty and it becomes the language of Homer or Hesiod. Carry the strange face or form tatooed upon the arm of the savage up to beauty and it becomes a Madonna or a Transfiguration. Carry a stone altar and a smoking sacrifice up to beauty and it becomes a Cologne cathedral or a Westminster Abbey. Indeed, historians might use the beautiful as the touchstone of human progress. The old milestones of growth were metals. First came the age when arrows were tipped with flint. Then came the iron age, when the spear had a metal point. The bronze age followed, lending flexibility to ore hitherto unyielding. Later came the steel age, when weapons that bruised gave place to the keen edge that cuts. Perhaps the divinity chat represents our era will stand forth plated with oxide of silver.

But his ideas of beauty would measure man's progress quite as accurately. In that first rude age beauty was external. Man twisted gay feathers into his hair, painted his cheeks red or yellow, wore rings of bright shells about his neck. But our age is high because beauty has ceased to be mere personal adornment. Man now seeks to make his books beautiful for the intellect, his library and gallery beautiful for taste and imagination, his temple beautiful for worship, his home beautiful in the interest of the heart, his song and prayer not simply true, but beautiful with praise to the unseen God. If in rude ages beauty was associated with physical elements, the glory of our era is that beauty, unfolding from century to century, is now increasingly associated with those moral qualities that lend remembrance to mother and martyr, to hero and patriot and saint.

To-day, fortunately for society, this world-wide interest in art is becoming spiritualized. From beautiful objects men are passing to beautiful thoughts and deeds. We begin to hear much of the art of right living and the science of character building. Having lent charm and value to column and canvas, to marble and masterpiece, beauty now moves on to lend loveliness to mind and heart. For it seems an incongruous thing for man to adorn his cottage, lend charm to its walls and windows, make its ceilings to be like the floor of heaven for beauty, while within his heart he cherishes groveling littleness, slimy sin, light-winged evasions, brutal passions. He whose body rides in a palace car must not carry a soul that is like unto a savage. Having lingered long before the portrait of Antigone or Cordelia, the young girl finds herself pledged to turn that ideal into life and character. The copy of the Sistine Madonna hanging upon the wall asks the woman who placed it there to realize in herself this glorious type of motherhood.

When the admirers of Shakespeare bought the house in which their hero was born, they planted in the garden the flowers which the poet loved. Passing through the little wicket gate the pilgrim finds himself moving along a perfumed path, while to his garments clings the odor of violets and roses, sweet peas and buttercups, the columbine and honeysuckle--flowers these, whose roots are in earth indeed, but whose beauty is borrowed from heaven. From these grounds men have expelled the poison ivy, the deadly nightshade, all burdocks and thistles. And the soul is a garden in which truth, purity, patience, love, long suffering are qualities whiter than any lily and sweeter than any rose, whose perfume never passes, whose beauty does not fade. And having succeeded in transforming waste places into centers of radiant beauty, man encourages the hope that he can carry his own reason, judgment and ambition up to full symmetry and perfection.

Free books android app tbrJar TBR JAR Read Free books online gutenberg

(0)

Login to post a comment!