Our birth, growth, and continued weal, depending on large, deep
principles--principles deliberately elaborated and adopted by reason,
and generously embracing the whole--our life must be interpenetrated
by principle, and thence our literature must embrace the widest and
most human wants and aspirations of man. And thus, it will be our
privilege and our glory to be then the most national in our books when
we are the most universal.
IX.
USEFULNESS OF ART.
ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE INAUGURATION OF THE RHODE ISLAND ART
ASSOCIATION IN PROVIDENCE, SEPTEMBER 4, 1854.
_Gentlemen of the Rhode Island Art Association:_--
We are met to inaugurate an Association whose aim and end shall be the
encouragement and culture of Art. A most high end--among the highest
that men can attempt; an end that never can be entertained except by
men of the best breed. There is no art among savages, none among
barbarians. Barbarism and art are adversary terms. When men capable of
civilization ascend into it, art manifests itself an inevitable
accompaniment, an indispensable aid to human development. I will say
further, that in a people the capacity to be cultivated involves the
capacity, nay, the necessity of art.
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