Ginoux's Niagara by Moonlight, in Mr. Belmont's gallery, is the only Niagara we have seen which appeals to the imagination, or conveys to the mind any suggestion of the volume, force, and flow of the cataract. Equally true to the spirit of the scene in aerial perspective, breezy water, transparent distances, and harmonious general effect, with a picturesque arrangement of details, is Colman's Gibraltar of this year's Academy Exhibition at New York. Critics may object that the rock seems thin and weak, and does not meet the idea of the stern strength of this natural fortress. But the rock is a secondary nature in the picture, and takes its proper hue and form as seen at the mid-distance on one of those perfect Mediterranean days, which seem as if borrowed from Paradise. Colman has seen such a day, and given its general effects with rare fidelity. He is not less successful in rendering the subtile qualities of smoke in contrast with the more subtile qualities of atmosphere. Turner has done nothing better in this detail. Inness in some respects stands at the head of our landscapists. He impersonates in his pictures his own conditions of mind, leaving it doubtful as yet whether a genius or a failure is before us. His style is formed after Rousseau's, but with an eccentric freedom of feeling and handling that marks original power. He is wildly unequal. But in qualities of vegetable growth, aerial distances, beautiful gradations, and interblending of tints, a rich, vigorous, free brush, in glowing summer heat and noontide repose, suggesting the hum of insects and the ruminating delight of cattle, fleecy, sleeping clouds, water-fed meadows, and verdant hillside, suffusing sky and earth with a lavish warmth of color and a solemn glow of tint almost approaching melancholy in sentiment, but very welcome to certain conditions of soul, Inness stands by himself, the youthful father of a distinct class of landscapists. His skies are not American skies, because they have none of their crystalline, cold gray or silvery light. A colorist and idealist by blood, he so delights in gold and purple and crimson, in intense greens, in deep and strong color of every hue, as indicative of passions and emotions, that it is difficult for him to restrain his brush within the prescribed rules of naturalism. It is impossible, in our limited space, to do full justice to our subject. More names and works might be quoted, but enough have been given to present a general idea of the good points, past condition, and present prospects of our landscapeart. A few words on color, the feeling for which is strong and general, but crude and untrained. Design is too much neglected for its more striking effects. Page is an instance of so deep a feeling in this respect as almost, as it were, to pass his long career in theories and experiments, to the neglect of producing work commensurate with his lofty ideas of art. Hunt sacrifices force of design to diaphanous effects, but is captivating from his delicate sense of color, the refinement of his motives, and purity of his taste. Babcock and Dana are colorists by instinct, Giorgionesque in feeling; the former eccentric in sentiment, color-drunk as it might be; the latter, refined and domestic. La Farge comes before us with equal feeling and an intelligent ambition for the highest walks of art. The tone of his work and mind, alone of our artists, recalls Allston. Elihu Vedder is another of our young men who seem destined to counteract the materialistic tendencies of our art, and to infuse into it higher aims. As a colorist, he is second to none. He has a firm, solid touch, bespeaking executive ability of a high order. No one who has seen his "Sphinx," "Star of Bethlehem," his "Lair of the Sea-Serpent," his alto-rilievos of ideal heads, or his sketches in general, can fail to recognize in him an imagination and invention hitherto rare in our art. But we must await the mature development of our young artists before definitely pronouncing upon them. America has advanced from indifference to fashion in art. It has become the mode to have a taste. Private galleries in New York are becoming almost as common as private stables. Thousands of dollars are now as freely given for pictures, as hundreds one year back. The result is, that not only large sales of indifferent foreign pictures are frequent, at prices that will be likely to flood us with the cheap pictures or falsifications of Europe, but our own artists, to meet the demand, sell even the sketches from their walls at valuations which but recently they did not venture to affix to their finished works. Compared with past neglect, it is beneficial, but it is not the sort of stimulus art craves for its highest effects. That cannot be given by mere competition of rich men, but must come from an educated public appreciation of the real meaning and purpose of art. This is dawning upon America as a general idea displayed by a zeal to establish institutions for the promotion of knowledge of art and the preservation of its works. New York is giving two hundred thousand dollars to provide a building for the Academy of Design, in which will be established the long needed LifeSchool. Under the auspices of the Historical Society, a large sum is collecting to improve their noble grant of land in Central Park by buildings to receive their collections of objects of art and antiquity, on the plan of the British and South Kensington Museums, free to the public. New York has a great advantage over any European capital in the founding of a national art institution, in possessing sufficient land in the very centre of the city, in the midst of its beautiful Park, for indefinite expansion for centuries to come. Baltimore has a similar institution, begun on the Peabody gift of half a million of dollars, with the promise of as much more. Neither is Boston far behindhand. Its Institute of Technology, carefully studied from the experience of Europe, is the most scientifically complete and comprehensive in its organization of any as yet begun in America. It embraces a department of art to include galleries of all epochs and schools. Numerous smaller organizations are springing up in cities like Buffalo, Rochester, and Chicago, showing that the war, so far from stifling the growth of educational institutions at the North, has had the effect to stimulate them, by convincing Americans that the only permanent security for a republic is the enlarged culture of its citizens. Without rating too highly what has as yet been accomplished, we feel warranted in stating that the present time has proved the most auspicious for art and artists that America has seen, and leads us to believe that, under the influence of that activity which characterizes the American mind whenever awakened to topics of universal interest and utility, she will shortly possess schools of art and galleries that shall be commensurate with her mental growth in other directions. ART. VIII. REVIEW OF CURRENT LITERATURE. THEOLOGY. age IN the second volume of his treatise,* Bishop Colenso does the singular service of bringing the controversy respecting the Hebrew records upon the ground of pure literary criticism, and of defining that ground with great exactness. It is evident to any one who has followed the course of argument as stated by Mackay or Nicolas, or on the other side by Ewald, that the antiquity of the name Jehovah has a very important bearing on it, - how important, and with what result, it is the special object of this volume to set forth. The argument, as here stated, consists essentially of two parts. In the first, the distribution of the Pentateuch into portions of different the earlier "Elohistic and the latter "Jehovistic - is stated with great distinctness, more clearly and convincingly than the reader will easily find elsewhere; and the opinion is suggested, rather than argued, that Samuel may probably have been the writer of the earlier document. The marked distinction of this portion (which is pretty easily and clearly traceable as the basis or outline of the narrative) is, that it employs the name Elohim with absolute consistency down to the beginning of Exodus (chap. iii. or vi.), where the name Jehovah is solemnly and formally introduced, after which the latter becomes the proper and constant designation of the Divine Sovereign of Israel. The more recent portions of the narrative - sometimes parallel with the earlier, as in the two accounts of the creation and of the flood, sometimes simply the filling in must have been written when the name Jehovah was already so familiar that the distinction was no longer kept. Once (in Gen. ii., iii.) the two names are used together, to signify their identity, Jehovah-Elohim, and afterwards quite indifferently. They do not, then, according to Bishop Colenso, express the radical distinction in idea which a numerous recent class of writers have found in them, the distinction between an idolatrous natureworship and the sharp monotheism of the Hebrews; neither the distinction which Orthodox critics, as Hengstenberg, have insisted on, as if one expressed the Divine sovereignty alone, and the other God's personal relation to the soul of the worshipper. But the introduction of the later name does mark a distinct period of religious development, a crisis or revolution, corresponding, no doubt, with some marked constructive era in the history of the Hebrew state. The cardinal point of the discussion thence arising is that which defines the date of this religious revolution. The constant tradition of the Hebrews has referred it, without hesitation, to Moses, the founder of the theocracy. This view has in its favor the testimony of the Hebrew and Christian Scripture, wherever it refers to the matter at *The Pentateuch and Book of Joshua critically examined. By the Right Rev. JOHN WILLIAM COLENSO, Bishop of Natal. Part II. New York: D. Appleton & Co. a all. It has also, on grounds partly but not wholly independent, the high authority of Ewald, who vindicates it with great force, and makes it the basis of his entire conception of the early history. On the other hand, a negative school of criticism has given it a very late date, date even as late as the monarchy; has brought the composition of the Pentateuch down as low as Ezra; has given the name Jehovah an origin and a meaning almost purely polemic; and has made the two titles of the Divinity stand, not only for two orders of religious ideas, but as watchwords (so to speak) of the great struggle which the prophets waged with the Canaanitish paganism. Such is, if we understand it, the view of some of the writers we have just referred to. And, apart from dogmatism or tradition, it is not at first apparent where the decision is to be. -- The argument, however, turns upon two pretty well defined points, one of antiquities and one of literary criticism, both of which are discussed with great fulness in the present volume. The first is, the use of the name Jehovah (or abridgments of it) in the composition of proper names, a use which is clearly proved to belong to the periods succeeding Samuel, and not to those before. One or two apparent exceptions, urged by Hengstenberg, are, we think, fully disposed of. There remains, however, the supposition to which Bishop Colenso hardly gives sufficient heed that the name may have been fully established in its religious uses long before, though not adopted, as it were, into the Hebrew hearts and homes by being linked with the fond appellation of a child. This point remains, then, rather a matter of curiosity, subsidiary and uncertain. The other point is more important, and opens into a far wider field. It touches the use of the name Jehovah in the genuine remains of the earliest Hebrew literature. It has been discussed by Bishop Colenso with so much fulness and ability, that it must compel every scholar of a different way of thinking to review his ground carefully. For ourselves, with the best examination we could give the question, we have been satisfied with the argument which assigns the name Jehovah to a period decidedly earlier than Samuel, and hence to the agency and age of Moses.* We are unable to regard the period of the great lawgiver as quite so dim and unhistoric as our author represents it. that "It is quite possible," he says, " and indeed, as far as our present inquiries have gone, highly probable, that Moses may be an historical character, is to say, it is probable that legendary stories, connected with his name, of some remarkable movement in former days, may have existed among the Hebrew tribes, and these legends may have formed the foundation of the narrative. But this is merely conjectural.” — p. 71. This main point we should state - and, in fact, should find it impossible not to state with very much greater confidence. We could not even admit it as a supposition (which our author appears to do) that the patriarchal narrative is mere invention or mere myth. We hold that there was a tolerably well-defined Hebrew nationality, dating a *This argument is briefly stated in "Hebrew Men and Times." |