The American people, cosmopolitan, concrete, the union, the result rather
of a union of so many nationalities, ought surely to do its share towards
this expression. The American people surely represents the century,--has
much of its spirit: is full of unrest; is eminently practical, but
practical only in embodying poetical or lofty ideas; is demonstrative and
excitable; resembles the French much and in many things,--the French, who
are at the head of modern and European civilization,--who think and feel
deeply, but do not keep their feelings hidden. The Americans, too, like
expression: when they admire a Kossuth or a Jenny Lind, a patriot exile or
a foreign singer, all the world is sure to know of their admiration; when
they are delighted at some great achievement in science, like the laying of
an Atlantic Cable, they demonstrate their delight. They make their
successful generals Presidents; they give dinners to Morphy and banquets to
Cyrus Field. They are thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the
age. Therefore they are artistic.
How amazed some will be at the proposition,--amazed that the age should be
called an artistic one,--amazed that Americans should be considered an
artistic nation! Yet art is only the expression in outward and visible form
of an inward and spiritual grace,--the sacrament of the imagination. Art is
an incarnation in colors or stone or music or words of some subtile essence
which requires the embodiment.
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