DOI issue:
No. 104 (October, 1905)
DOI article:Mural and sculptural decoration of the St. Paul Capitol
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.26960#0467
"THE MORAL AND DIVINE LAW"
JOHN LA FARGE
hundred deaths and drawing, at Birch Coolie and
Wood Lake, such a hot reply to the massacre from
the men under General Sibley as put an end to all
kicking at the pricks of the treaty of the Traverse
des Sioux. However short a time the common-
wealth of Minnesota has been in making, it is none
too soon to bid good-bye to the tomahawk, to see
the pow-wow give place to the caucus, the wigwam
to the capitol.
The idea that the nation, or the people of any
given spot, are too young in history for a sense of
art is only partly true and grows false in the over-
urging. A cask of wine in a Bordeaux cellar is still
a cask of wine though you carry it away and spill
it down the gullies of the Colorado Canyon. And
civilization is largely of one vintage. Some time
has passed since the Law was given from Sinai.
The Parthenon, which was probably not the one
joy of every baker and stevedore in the Pirieus, is
no new thing. The long conflict of church and
city and state out of which came the later, larger
idea of modern nationality, although newer, is still
very old. Yet these things only rent a new, un-
furnished house when their inheritors open fresh
land and institute, as it were overnight, a new
commonwealth.
Mr. La Farge has gone back to such matters in
the subjects he has chosen for his four lunettes
"THE RELATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL TO THE STATE"
JOHN LA FARGE
LXXXIV