But this spirit
is departing, and now our slowness or reluctance is rather the result
of a want of knowledge and critical judgment than of a want of
feeling for art.
To stimulate this feeling, it is requisite that our public should
have free access to galleries in which shall be exhibited in
chronological series specimens of the art of all nations and schools,
arranged according to their motives and the special influences that
attended their development. After this manner a mental and artistic
history of the world may be spread out like a chart before the
student, while the artist with equal facility can trace up to their
origin the varied methods, styles, and excellences of each prominent
epoch. A gallery of art is a perpetual feast of the most intense and
refined enjoyment to every one capable of entering into its phases of
thought and execution, analyzing its external and internal being, and
tracing the mysterious transformations of spirit into form. It has
been well said, that a complete gallery, on a broad foundation, in
which all tastes, styles, and methods harmoniously mingle, is a court
of final appeal of one phase of civilization against another, from an
examination of which we can sum up their respective qualities and
merits, drawing therefrom for our own edification as from a perpetual
wellspring of inspiration and knowledge.
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