The Pleasures of Life Part 18

"Is now your bride, The gift of heaven, and to your trust consigned; Honor her still, though not with pa.s.sion blind; And in her virtue, though you watch, confide.

Be to her youth a comfort, guardian, guide, In whose experience she may safety find; And whether sweet or bitter be a.s.signed, The joy with her, as well as pain divide.

Yield not too much if reason disapprove; Nor too much force; the partner of your life Should neither victim be, nor tyrant prove.

Thus shall that rein, which often mars the bliss Of wedlock, scarce be felt; and thus your wife Ne'er in the husband shall the lover miss." [18]

Every one is enn.o.bled by true love--

"Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all." [19]

Perhaps no one ever praised a woman more gracefully in a sentence than Steele when he said of Lady Elizabeth Hastings that "to know her was a liberal education;" but every woman may feel as she improves herself that she is not only laying in a store of happiness for herself, but also raising and blessing him whom she would most wish to see happy and good.

Love, true love, grows and deepens with time. Husband and wife, who are married indeed, live

"By each other, till to love and live Be one." [20]

For does it end with life. A mother's love knows no bounds.

"They err who tell us Love can die, With life all other pa.s.sions fly, All others are but vanity.

In Heaven Ambition cannot dwell, Nor Avarice in the vaults of h.e.l.l; Earthly these pa.s.sions of the Earth; They perish where they have their birth, But Love is indestructible; Its holy flame forever burneth, From Heaven it came, to Heaven returneth; Too oft on Earth a troubled guest, At times deceived, at times opprest, It here is tried and purified, Then hath in Heaven its perfect rest: It soweth here with toil and care, But the harvest time of Love is there.

"The mother when she meets on high The Babe she lost in infancy, Hath she not then, for pains and fears, The day of woe, the watchful night, For all her sorrow, all her tears, An over-payment of delight?" [21]

As life wears on the love of husband or wife, of friends and of children, becomes the great solace and delight of age. The one recalls the past, the other gives interest to the future; and in our children, it has been truly said, we live our lives again.

[1] _Filicaja_. Translated by Leigh Hunt.

[2] Not from pa.s.sion itself.

[3] Pope.

[4] Wordsworth.

[5] Browne.

[6] Malory, _Morte d' Arthur_.

[7] I avail myself of Dr. Jowett's translation.

[8] Burns.

[9] Malory, _Morte d' Arthur_.

[10] Symonds.

[11] Scott.

[12] Scott.

[13] Trench.

[14] Lovelace.

[15] Moore.

[16] Tennyson.

[17] Wordsworth.

[18] Bondi. Tr. by Gla.s.sfors.

[19] Tennyson.

[20] Swinburne.

[21] Southey.

CHAPTER V.

ART.

"High art consists neither in altering, nor in improving nature; but in seeking throughout nature for 'whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are pure;' in loving these, in displaying to the utmost of the painter's power such loveliness as is in them, and directing the thoughts of others to them by winning art, or gentle emphasis. Art (caeteris paribus) is great in exact proportion to the love of beauty shown by the painter, provided that love of beauty forfeit no atom of truth."--RUSKIN.

CHAPTER V.

ART.

The most ancient works of Art which we possess are representations of animals, rude indeed, but often strikingly characteristic, engraved on, or carved in, stag's-horn or bone; and found in English, French, and German caves, with stone and other rude implements, and the remains of mammalia, belonging apparently to the close of the glacial epoch: not only of the deer, bear, and other animals now inhabiting temperate Europe, but of some, such as the reindeer, the musk sheep, and the mammoth, which have either retreated north or become altogether extinct. We may, I think, venture to hope that other designs may hereafter be found, which will give us additional information as to the manners and customs of our ancestors in those remote ages.

Next to these in point of antiquity come the sculptures and paintings on a.s.syrian and Egyptian tombs, temples, and palaces.

These ancient scenes, considered as works of art, have no doubt many faults, and yet how graphically they tell their story! As a matter of fact a king is not, as a rule, bigger than his soldiers, but in these battle-scenes he is always so represented. We must, however, remember that in ancient warfare the greater part of the fighting was, as a matter of fact, done by the chiefs. In this respect the Homeric poems resemble the a.s.syrian and Egyptian representations. At any rate, we see at a glance which is the king, which are officers, which side is victorious, the struggles and sufferings of the wounded, the flight of the enemy, the city of refuge--so that he who runs may read; while in modern battle-pictures the story is much less clear, and, indeed, the untrained eye sees for some time little but scarlet and smoke.

These works a.s.suredly possess a grandeur and dignity of their own, even though they have not the beauty of later art.

In Greece Art reached a perfection which has never been excelled, and it was more appreciated than perhaps it has ever been since.

At the time when Demetrius attacked the city of Rhodes, Protogenes was painting a picture of Ialysus. "This," says Pliny, "hindered King Demetrius from taking Rhodes, out of fear lest he should burn the picture; and not being able to fire the town on any other side, he was pleased rather to spare the painting than to take the victory, which was already in his hands. Protogenes, at that time, had his painting-room in a garden out of the town, and very near the camp of the enemies, where he was daily finishing those pieces which he had already begun, the noise of soldiers not being capable of interrupting his studies. But Demetrius causing him to be brought into his presence, and asking him what made him so bold as to work in the midst of enemies, he answered the king, 'That he understood the war which he made was against the Rhodians, and not against the Arts.'"

With the decay of Greece, Art sank too, until it was revived in the thirteenth century by Cimabue, since whose time its progress has been triumphal.

Art is unquestionably one of the purest and highest elements in human happiness. It trains the mind through the eye, and the eye through the mind. As the sun colors flowers, so does art color life.