Painting, sculpture,
and the dramatic theatre, it would seem, no longer play an
indispensable or even important part in the workings and mediumship
of intellect, utility, or even high esthetics. Architecture remains,
doubtless with capacities, and a real future. Then music, the
combiner, nothing more spiritual, nothing more sensuous, a god, yet
completely human, advances, prevails, holds highest place; supplying
in certain wants and quarters what nothing else could supply. Yet in
the civilization of to-day it is undeniable that, over all the arts,
literature dominates, serves beyond all--shapes the character of
church and school--or, at any rate, is capable of doing so. Including
the literature of science, its scope is indeed unparallel'd.
Before proceeding further, it were perhaps well to discriminate on
certain points. Literature tills its crops in many fields, and some
may flourish, while others lag. What I say in these Vistas has its
main bearing on imaginative literature, especially poetry, the stock
of all. In the department of science, and the specialty of journalism,
there appear, in these States, promises, perhaps fulfilments, of
highest earnestness, reality, and life, These, of course, are modern.
But in the region of imaginative, spinal and essential attributes,
something equivalent to creation is, for our age and lands,
imperatively demanded. For not only is it not enough that the new
blood, new frame of democracy shall be vivified and held together
merely by political means, superficial suffrage, legislation, &c.
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