The Rose of Art

Following the sun, westward the march of power!
The Rose of Might blooms in our new-world mart;
But see, just bursting forth from bud to flower,
A late, slow growth — the fairer Rose of Art.

— R. W. GILDER.


Ideals in Art

Our age is moved deeply by the study of ideals in art. Each generation is amazed at its own progress. In the great Field Columbian Museum one can see the history of many an idea: The boat idea, beginning at three logs bound together with a piece of bark and passing on toward the ocean palace; the transportation idea, beginning with a strap on a man's forehead, passing on through the panniers on a goat or a donkey and reaching to the modern express train; the sculpture idea, moving from some stone or earthen or wooden outlines onward toward the angelic forms that seem about to live and speak. There you will see the wooden eagle which marked the grave of some Indian. And what a creature it is! Nothing but the infinite kindness of civilization could persuade us to call it a bird of any known species. And yet, perhaps, the Indian when dying was happy that such a wooden bird was to stand on his grave and keep his memory green. Into our age, so full of new and grand conceptions in art, there must come the marching ideals of human life. Man is moving through a redemptive world. All lips should sing each day the song of the old harpist: "Who Redeemeth Thy Life from Destruction." What our age needs is a rapid advance of the ideals of life. A Catholic priest who has spent thirty years in the temperance cause has said: "The saloon is the greatest enemy that Rome has left in the world. The criticisms which the Protestants make of Rome's dogmas are harmless compared with the ruin of mind and soul wrought by the saloon and its defenders." No one will deny the truth of the priest's complaint, and all are glad to mark the new effort of the Romanists to set up new ideas. Protestants should not, can not, hate a Catholic; but all good citizens must cherish little regard for any one who has not gotten beyond the saloon idea. — SWING.