On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
: * endowed with the power of recognising beauty , though " immersed ^ in matter / ' enveloped in the grossest obstruction , of accident and circumstance * He eees it in the misty length of street , as well as in the living landscape ; in river , sea , and ]
sky . He sees it in the forms and faces of men going about their daily occupations , and earning their daily bread . It elevates his conception of the degree of dignity , which it is possible to realize in public life , and it gleams upon and gladdens him in all the scenes of domestic retirement .
To the cultivation of a taste for beauty we must immediately look for the rescue of human sympathies from that low conventional standard to which the abuse of the commercial spirit has some tendency to reduce them , especially when , as in England , it is assisted by the temptation to emulate a privileged class in brute magnificence and unmeaning display .
I pity those who see nothing but so much unproductive consumption in the balloon voyages , with which , just now , the fancy of our metropolitans is so mightily taken , and nothing but so much simple , if not stupid wonder in the gleam which lights up the eye of the hod-laden ' * Grecian ; " as he sees the gaudy globe careering above him through the clouds . I pity thoae who see nothing but a nuisance in the crowd which gathers , in attention how serious , and enjoyment and interest how earnest ., around the chanter
of" With a cliosen band In a foreign land , The life in the woods for me . " Who Jiear nothing but villanous sounds in the band of amateur musicians exercising their acquirements outside the beer-shop , not unappreciated or unrewarded by those within *
Very pleasant it is to meet the image-boy , emerging from the lanes and alleys of St Giles or Spitalfields , with his empty board under his arm ; still pleasanter to watch the progress of the bargain which takes his last figure . The purchase is cotn p leted : —in the satisfaction which comes over the purchaser's face ( the connoisseur may sneer ) I see a type of the influence—the benignant influence of art on man , and again I exclaim , " Would that 1 were a painter ! ' L . D .
Untitled Article
i ( f lt On Expression .
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1836, page 702, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2663/page/50/
-