Studio: international art (35.1905)

Gloria in Excelsis

condition of emotional tension when he penned
the lines—-

“ I tell thee, minstrel, I must weep,

Or else this heavy heart will burst.”

Would the advocates of the “simple life” sup-
press the artistic temperament entirely and leave
us no safety-valve for our pent-up feelings but those
with which the Divine Author of Being has en-
dowed the birds of the air and the beasts of the
field ? Is the gratitude of mankind to have no
more noble manifestation than a placid content-
ment, sunning itself in the bounty of a lavish
Providence? Surely not. The mere circumstance
that man is gregarious implies a certain imitative
faculty leading necessarily to defects as to virtues,
and it implies also the need for an outward and
ostensible means of conveying the expression of
those sentiments held in common by the units of
society, in order that the tacit understanding
existing among them may be universally felt and
appreciated.

If, then, it is essential our nakedness should be
clothed, why in coarse raiment, rather than in
purple and fine linen? Is not the whole history
of Art a confirmation of the desires of mankind to
accomplish some consummation embodying the
faith that is in them ? To express in concrete form
something of the magnitude and sublimity of the
great universe wherein man is but an atom, where
nothing is insignificant and the whole stupendous.

Is a figurative “ burning of vanities ” only another
mode of exhibiting the very bane it is sought to
eradicate, and the pleas of simplicity merely a
negative evidence of the same fervour which raises
a reredos or creates an oratorio ? If my admiration
for an object is very great, I may convey the sense
of my feelings either by silent wondernment or by
the erection of a suitable monument to the occasion.
Time has shown, by immemorial custom, the
greater frequency of the monumental method.
But it may well be that some highly-strung natures,
cut off from the sympathy of others by the very
intensity of this emotion, may find their feelings
too acute, their love too ardent, or their grief too
sadly deep, to betray it to their fellows. To such
a soul belongs the sorrow, unwatered by tears, and
a brow unruffled by the care that grips, with deadly
fingers, at the heart-strings it would snap. So with
excess of joy, the silent rapture of the lover’s kiss,
the unspoken trust when hand clasps hand, or the
exultant glance of childhood at an unlooked-for joy.
These, and such as these, the simple life affects
not. There are, however, milder forms of mental
excitement, which delight in reciprocal action, and
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the natural expression of such phases is music,
poetry, and painting; something which responds
to the rhythmic conditions of the mind, and is
capable of interpreting its meaning, without too
exacting a confession of the particular phase.
Upon the basis of this responsiveness is founded
the whole vast expanse of human nature —- the
touch that makes us kin. The history of art might
supply many famous examples—music perhaps the
most universal; for that supplies the earliest and
the completest medium for the emotional expression
of the heart of man. From the pipes of Pan to the
orchestration of Wagner is a long story, but it is
the story of human passion in all its expansions.
The “ simple life ” is a life of attainment, and the
serenity of Buddha is too far removed from the
common conditions of vulgar intercourse for us to
adopt it for an exemplar in the ordinary manifesta-
tions of human joys and woes, wherein is vouchsafed
to us only a distant glimpse of that divine peace
which passeth all understanding.

“ Singing she wrought, and her merry glee

The mock-bird echoed from its tree ”—

is a state of affairs which appeals to our natures;
and the Quaker poet who penned the lines was
fain to confess in the same poem that—-

“ For us all some secret lies,

Deeply buried from human eyes.”

The simple life is a life for angels, not for men
and women, struggling in a complex world, the
very object of their being withheld from them, and
their every effort, outside the beaten track, a mere
experiment which may fail utterly to attain the
purpose aimed at by the experimentalist. The
ever varying conditions attendant upon the same
objects, baffle the ingenuity of mortal wit and we
can no more grapple with the scope of the universe,
than we can foretell the events of a few short hours
in all the countless ages of creation. 'To be
simple in such a world, one must either deliberately
shut one’s eyes to the varied symphony of nature
or be too idiotic to be aware of it. Neither con-
dition attunes itself with the manifold expressions
of life, where every instant is fraught with an
infinitude of change, too vast to be compassed by
the intellect of man, yet so interwoven with his
own common needs as to deny to the most in-
different the possibility of ignoring it. To-day no
Pharaoh’s host invites the tempest’s wrath, the
dread sirocco sweeps across the plain where there
are none to overwhelm ; the tempest roars through
forest and prairie, yet none can tell us why. The
constant cycle of the varying seasons brooks not an
instant’s pause ; the ever-changing day follows the