The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 | Page 9

evidences more striking than the founding
of charitable institutions or benevolent societies, since the latter may,
and too often does, arise from the most selfish and vainglorious motive,
while in the former the individual is lost in the many who press eagerly
to bear their part in a noble work, in this spontaneous outpouring of
true and heartfelt benevolence. From this same spirit arises the
wonderful success which attends the efforts of sanitary commissions
and soldiers' aid associations in alleviating the sufferings and softening
the privations of our soldiers in the field. With such evidences
constantly appearing before our eyes of the deep and noble feelings of
the American heart, who can doubt that our civilization is a progressive
one, our enlightenment equal? Who can doubt the capacity of the
American people for good, or look with foreboding upon our future?
Another important sign of the times, as evincing our advancing
civilization, is the revival of art in our midst. In the midst of all our
bustle and toil and eager strife for gain, there has ever been a something
wanting to the completeness of our life, a something to fill and satisfy
that yearning of the soul for æsthetic beauty, which is at once an
evidence of its progress and its capacity for diviner things. Too long
have we been absorbed by the desires of our animal nature, in whose
pursuit there is little gratification to that finer portion of our inner
selves which will not be silenced by anything short of the deepest
degradation. The people--the great people--need something--something
higher, more ennobling, more tender--to fill the vacant spot in their
hearts and homes, to preserve the balance between the animal and the
spiritual part of their lives, and to clothe their surroundings with a
higher and holier significance than can arise from the events and
associations of the work-day life. In art the missing link is found, and
whether it be the simple ballad in the evening circle or the modest print
that graces the humble cottage walls--and the humbler the habitation

the deeper the manifestation, because the more touching--it is but the
expression of the people's appreciation of the needs, the capacities, and
the holier aspirations of the better part of humanity. Hence the revival
of art has a deep significance; it is something more than a forced, an
exotic, and hence ephemeral growth; it is the manifestation of the
awakening of the people to the æsthetic sentiment; it is the actual result
of the intellectual and moral needs of society; it is in itself the striving
of a great people for the beautiful and true. And as such it has a broad
and deep foundation in the godlike in human nature, which shall insure
not only its permanence but its progress as long as the good and the
true have any influence whatever upon our society. That we have had,
until a comparatively late period, no art among us, is the result not of a
lack of capacity to comprehend the beautiful, but of the intense and
all-absorbing passion for gain which has so nearly proved the bane of
our society by shutting out the consideration of better things: that art
has so suddenly revived in our midst is a proof that, so far from having
our humanity, our political position, our very civilization itself
swallowed up in the love of the almighty dollar, as has been predicted
of us by foreign wiseacres, we have been aroused to our danger and to a
true appreciation of the better part of existence; which is itself an
evidence of the elasticity and the recuperative energy of our social
system.
In literature our progress is not so flattering. In its effects upon
civilization a literature can only be judged by that portion of it which
touches the popular heart, which descends to the humblest fireside, and
is most eagerly sought after by the ploughboy and the operative. All
other, however brilliant it may be--and the more brilliant or profound
the farther it is generally removed from the minds of the masses--is to
them but as the stars of a winter night, cold and distant, radiating little
warmth to the longing soul, too far away to awaken more than a faintly
reflected admiration. He who said, 'Give me to write the songs of a
people, and I care not who makes their laws,' touched the tender spot in
the great heart of humanity; he was a sage in that truest of philosophy,
the study of human nature. Though we have our princes in every branch
of literature, who are the result of and an honor to our civilization, yet
for their own results in moulding the tastes, the habits, and the intellects

of the common people, in contributing to their advancement, they