Page:The Academy Of the Fine Arts and Its Future, Edward Hornor Coates, 24 January 1890.djvu/4

 the Louvre or the Vatican lie open to all who look upon them for the first time. One of the most distinguished critics of modern times says that Edgar AllenAllan [sic] Poe, with all his genius and intellectual qualification, could not have been a great poet, because he had not sufficient knowledge.

Still the love of art, like the love of nature—and the one always brings the other or is born with it—grows upon us with ever increasing force; and the time comes when, endowed with new power of vision, the old ideals thrown aside, we wander with Diaz in the woods of Fontainbleau, or on the borders of the Seine with Daubigny; gaze upon the wastes of Old Ocean with Richards, or sail across the grand Canal at Venice with Turner, Rico or Moran, with real delight. Later we walk in quiet fields, or under blue skies, with Rousseau and Dupré, pause with Millet in listening expectation to hear from the distant spire the pathetic melody of the Angelus, or wait with Corot, behind a clump of silver hazel bushes, to catch the tones from the ringing lyre of Orpheus, as he salutes the triumphant morn. Later still, but perhaps it is not always later, the hard and lifeless block of the sculptor speaks to us in language at once distinct and intelligible. We feel the charm and power, which, without color, depend upon form and light for their expression;—"the cold marble leaps to life—a God." And when at last we know, and have made our own those deathless creations of Pheidias—the Victory, the Fates and the Theseus of the pediment, we break away from the inward passion which has held us mute, and are ready to declare with Emerson that

4