"Another marked feature of Dutch painting was to be color. Besides the generally accepted reasons that in a country where there are no mountainous horizons, no varied prospects, no great coup d'œil, no forms, in short, that lend themselves to design, the artist's eye must inevitably be attracted by color, and that this must be peculiarly the case in Holland, where the uncertain light, the fog-veiled atmosphere, confuse and blend the outlines of all objects, so that the eye, unable to fix itself upon the form, flies to color as the principal attribute that nature presents to it; besides these reasons, there is the fact that in a country so flat, so uniform, and so gray as Holland, there is the same need of color as in southern lands there is need of shade. The Dutch artists did but follow the imperious taste of their countrymen, who painted their houses in vivid colors, as well as their ships, and in some places the trunks of their trees and the palings and fences of their fields and gardens; whose dress was of the gayest, richest hues; who loved tulips and hyacinths even to madness. And thus the Dutch painters were potent colorists, and Rembrandt was their chief.

"Realism, natural to the calmness and slowness of the Dutch character, was to give to their art yet another distinctive feature, finish, which was carried to the very extreme of possibility. It is truly said that the leading quality of the people may be found in their pictures, viz., patience. Everything is represented with the minuteness of a daguerreotype; every vein in the wood of a piece of furniture, every fiber in a leaf, the threads of cloth, the stitches in a patch, every hair upon an animal's coat, every wrinkle in a man's face; everything finished with microscopic precision, as if done with a fairy pencil, or at the expense of the painter's eyes and reason. In reality a defect rather than an excellence, since the office of painting is to represent not what is, but what the eye sees, and the eye does not see everything; but a defect carried to such a pitch of perfection that one admires, and does not find fault. In this respect the most famous prodigies of patience were Douw, Mieris, Potter, Van der Helst, and, more or less, all the Dutch painters.

“But realism, which gives to Dutch art so original a stamp and such admirable qualities, is yet the root of its most serious defects. The artists, desirous only of representing material truths, gave to their figures no expression save that of their physical sentiments. Grief, love, enthusiasm, and the thousand

delicate shades of feeling that have no name, or take a different one with the different causes that give rise to them, they express rarely, or not at all. For them the heart does not beat, the eye does not weep, the lips do not quiver. One whole side of the human soul, the noblest and highest, is wanting in their pictures. More, in their faithful reproduction of everything, even the ugly, and especially the ugly, they end by exaggerating even that, making defects into deformities, and portraits into caricatures; they calumniate the national type; they give a burlesque and graceless aspect to the human countenance. In order to have the proper background for such figures, they are constrained to choose trivial subjects; hence the great number of pictures representing beer-shops, and drinkers with grotesque, stupid faces, in absurd attitudes, ugly women, and ridiculous old men; scenes in which one can almost hear the brutal laughter and the obscene words. Looking at these pictures, one would naturally conclude that Holland was inhabited by the ugliest and most ill-mannered people on the earth. We will not speak of greater and worse license. Steen, Potter, and Brouwer, the great Rembrandt himself, have all painted incidents that are scarcely to be mentioned to civilized ears, and certainly should not be looked at. But, even setting aside these excesses, in the picture-galleries of Holland there is to be found nothing that elevates the mind, or moves it to high and gentle thoughts. You admire, you enjoy, you laugh, you stand pensive for a moment before some canvas; but, coming out, you feel that something is lacking to your pleasure, you experience a desire to look upon a handsome countenance, to read inspired verses, and sometimes you catch yourself murmuring, half unconsciously, 'O Raphael !'"

The quality of M. de Amicis's style, and also of Mrs. Tilton's translation, is sufficiently shown in the extracts. The latter is spirited and in the main probably exact, but now and then we come upon inexcusable evidences of haste or carelessness. We may be sure that so polished a writer as M. de Amicis would never praise a picture by commending its "prodigious truth to Nature"; and, in a style so flowing and opulent, it is essential that the punctuation should be looked after with more care than has been bestowed upon it in the present instance. The illustrations are serviceable and pleasing.

SINCE

INCE the excitement created in literary and intellectual circles, forty years ago, by the Brook Farm community, no other organized movement, confessedly devoted to the advancement of ideal aims, has awakened so peculiar an interest as the Concord School of Philosophy. Though differing so widely in character, drift, and purpose, the spirit which has been the animating force of these two remarkable experiments has drawn its inspiration from the same sources. Both Brook Farm and the Concord School are the outgrowth of a peculiar form of idealism, first known under the name of transcendentalism. This later phase of its development, though wearing the front of new names, is still transcendental in its character and its beliefs.

It is a curious fact that it is neither in Germany, where transcendentalism took its rise, having its distinct origin in Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason"; nor in France, where the new doctrines were received with that liberalism which characterizes the attitude of the French mind, always ready to erect an altar to the latest variety of an unknown God; nor yet in England, where the new philosophy was imported by Coleridge, whose brilliant genius communicated a new force and glow to the German creed, and where, later, Carlyle and Wordsworth became the high-priests of the new faith-it is in none of these countries that pure transcendentalism is to be looked for. It is to be found only in New England. There alone has the attempt been made to transform the transcendental idea into an actual reality. English sympathizers were not incited by the new ideas to any concerted action. The new wine intoxicated poets and idealists, and their intellectual rhapsodies affected the whole tone of modern English thought. But it ended there. Even the zeal of Carlyle and Coleridge burned itself

out.

But in America transcendentalism was received and accepted in a much more earnest spirit.

Its believers embraced its doctrines as those of a new, a revealed religion. Their zeal had in it not only the fury of the proselytizing spirit, but the animus of a reconstructive force. The new doctrines were to reform society, to reestablish the long-sought harmony between man and the universe, between his ideal cravings and his natural necessities. It was, in a word, the revelation of a new heaven and a new earth.

America, of all modern countries, is certainly the richest in contrasts. The least imaginative and most distinctly practical of all peoples, her

utilitarianism is, nevertheless, veined with an idealism possessing qualities of enthusiasm peculiar to itself. It is the union of these practical and ideal elements in the American character which has made the history of transcendentalism unique in America. It is the practical element which has inspired enthusiasts in philosophy to attempt the reconstruction of society upon theories deduced from the baseless fabric of a philosopher's dream. It is this same practical force which has thus far kept the genius of the American mind free from the iconoclastic spirit. We do not seem to be afflicted with the Gallic passion for destroying first and building afterward. To reform old forms and habits of living and thinking rather than to create new ones; to reconstruct rather than to destroy; to believe in something, and to attempt to turn this belief into a practice, rather than to hate something, and to move heaven and earth to get rid of the horror

these are the distinctive features which have marked the development of the more ideal philosophies on this side of the water.

In the transcendental movement of forty years ago these qualities were conspicuous. The American transcendentalists were not satisfied until they found a vent in some form of practical energy for their new-found intellectual and moral enthusiasms. Brook Farm was one of those vents. The social, political, and intellectual emancipation of women was another. The animus with which the transcendentalists took up the antislavery cause also proved how deepseated was the need for action among these believers in idealism.

In this latest phase of the enthusiasm born of philosophy, as seen at Concord, this same union. of the practical and the ideal impulse has been strikingly illustrated. The Concord philosophers are idealists, but idealists whose highest endeavor is to turn their idealism into a practical reality.

The history of the Concord school is the history of the men who have founded the school. Foremost among them stands the name of A. Bronson Alcott. He alone, of all the now famous leaders in the great intellectual revival of forty years ago, is here to head this newest outgrowth of transcendentalism. Theodore Parker and Margaret Fuller have long ago passed beyond the bourn. Since yesterday George Ripley is to be numbered among the shades of the immortals who people the undiscovered country. Mr. Emerson, though four years younger than Mr. Alcott, has passed the age of active enthusiasms. During these forty years the very word transcen

dentalism has lost the significance of its original meaning. Its history has become obsolete. In the fascinations of modern realism and the developments of modern science that phase of idealism has almost passed into a tradition. The pretty tale of the charming community at Brook Farm-that idyllic episode of philosophers playing at farming-comes to us wearing a certain air of unreality. We are too far removed from the heat, the bitterness, the fires of opposition which the new ideas evoked, to be fully in sympathy with the excitement produced by them.

But Mr. Alcott comes to revive that which was passing into tradition. In him, and with the establishment of this school of philosophy, idealism is to live once more.

Mr. Alcott has remained true to his earliest beliefs. His life has been consecrated to the working out of the spiritual aims which colored the vision of his dawning manhood. The great desire of his life has been to spiritualize education. To further this end he has consecrated his talents and his energies. He has conformed his habits of living to the standards of abstemiousness practiced by the Greek philosophers, Pythagoras, indeed, being his model. To the alluring voice of modern scientific discoveries, and of modern materialistic philosophies, Mr. Alcott has lent a deaf ear. He early enrolled himself among the philosophic sect known as the Mystics, and has remained unswervingly faithful to its doctrines. To-day, in his eightieth year, he has retained, not only the vigor of his early enthusiasms, but the soaring confidence of his youthful ideals. He exhibits, also, the freshness of energy and the ardor of enterprise which characterized his earliest manhood.

In his youth Mr. Alcott dreamed a dream, and now, by a singular combination of circumstances, in his old age the vision has come true. That most deeply cherished plan was to found a school for philosophic instruction. But all hope of establishing such a school had long ago died out, even in Mr. Alcott's sanguine mind. His experiences in the West, however, within the past two or three years, caused a lively revival of his former ambitious desires. It has been Mr. Alcott's habit for many years to take the field, traveling through the Eastern, Western, and Northern States, giving his so-called Conversations, a plan of parlor-lecturing which he has introduced, and one peculiarly fitted for the delivery of his original scheme of topics. Recently, in the course of a Western trip, Mr. Alcott made the discovery that in the heart of the West there was a little center of enthusiastic study of philosophy. In Jacksonville, Illinois, he found Plato clubs composed of earnest students, serious-minded men whose intel

lectual pursuits could only be indulged in after the business life of the day was over. Much, if not all, of this new-born enthusiasm was due to the interest taken in such studies by Dr. Jones, a resident physician of that city. For over twenty years this latter gentleman had devoted his leisure hours to the study and to original criticisms of the Platonic theories. His ardor had kindled that of others. Clubs and small circles were formed, where Dr. Jones found an eager audience to listen to his interpretation of the great master's doctrines.

In St. Louis Mr. Alcott found another little center of philosophic study. The motor in this city, of this revival of interest in such pursuits, was found to be Professor W. T. Harris. This gentleman was then known in practical life as the superintendent of the St. Louis high schools. To the literary world he is known as the editor and founder of the "Journal of Speculative Philosophy." Hegel is his master, and in him Hegelianism has found a new and original exponent of its theories and practical application. In St. Louis, clubs, both of ladies and of gentlemen, were numerous among a certain coterie, formed for the study of Hegel and of the other more ancient philosophies.

In these Western students and philosophers Mr. Alcott found the men for whom he had been looking. Here was the right intellectual milieu for the suggestion of his enterprise. Here, scattered, it is true, but vitalized with a common spirit, was already existent the right material for the building up of a school of philosophy. In Professor Harris and Dr. Jones, and in Mr. Denton Snider, and some other Western gentlemen, Mr. Alcott found interested and zealous coadjutors. Differing from Mr. Alcott in their personal philosophic creeds, these gentlemen found a common bond with him in their desire for the spread of philosophic knowledge. There was between them a sympathetic impulse for united action. To them were joined Mr. F. B. Sanborn and Mr. Emory, of Concord, Massachusetts, who composed in due time the faculty of the new school.

Among these founders of the school, Mr. Alcott is perhaps the only one who avowedly proclaims himself a transcendentalist. The other gentlemen enroll themselves under the standards of some particular philosopher or school of philosophy. But all-notably Professor Harris, who is in some respects to be considered as the most original intellectual force among these Concord philosophers - have received their earlier and strongest impulses from transcendental sources. They were all early Emersonian enthusiasts; Professor Harris read Mr. Alcott's "Tablets," and accepted them, years ago, as the revelations of a true mystic. The philosophies that Dr.

Jones, Professor Harris, Mr. Snider, Dr. Kidney, have most studied and taught, are those that are classed under the generic name of "speculative philosophies," the more ideal, spiritual, imaginative philosophies, as wide as possible from the positivist or materialistic school, being in open opposition to the teachings of Comte and of Herbert Spencer.

In treating of the school, this fact is to be kept clearly in mind: That, first of all, it owes its conception to an avowed transcendentalist; secondly, that its organization, supervision, and teachings, have been directed by men committed to take an ideal view of things. Remembering these facts, the meaning of the Concord school will have a clearer reading. Much of the ridicule and misconception which have attended the opening and the operations of the school has been due to this; its meaning, its purpose, have not been understood. People have not known where to place it, how to formulate its proceedings, how to label its actions. It is only when its fountain-spring of inspiration is named that it can be rightly understood.

Idealists are haters of conventionality. Precedent, an established order of things, the everyday, the ordinary, these are the enemies, the enslavers of men-the killers of all high-born enthusiasms. The idealist rails against the trammels of society; the visionary sees hope for the soul only when it soars beyond them. Mr. Alcott is an enthusiast, an idealist, a visionary. He dreams dreams, he is a seer of visions, his ideals color the whole atmosphere of his mind. When he dreamed of founding a school of philosophy, his vision painted it as far removed from the commonplace college or school organizations as a poet's fancy soars beyond the prosaic details of his surroundings. The school, in its modus operandi, was to be as unlike as possible to any known school, college, or university. Its methods and system of instruction were to be original, unique. It was, first of all, to be an arena for the discussion of intellectual and philosophic themes. It was next to offer to students such a method of instruction as should be best calculated not only to arouse and stimulate intellectual curiosity, but also to develop the spiritual faculties of the soul. The school, in a word, was to incorporate the most beautiful and poetic as well as the most refining influences.

Borrowing the idea of the mise-en-scène from the charming picture of Plato's olive-shaded walks of Academe, Mr. Alcott announced that the school was to hold its sessions in the open air, in the fairest weeks of midsummer, in the grounds adjoining his own house, the OrchardHouse at Concord, Massachusetts. There, among the pine-groves crowning the picturesque hillside VOL. X.-5

forming the background of his dwelling, and under the apple-boughs surrounding it, the severer studies in the philosophies were to be lightened with intercourse with the great god of Nature. Beneath the odorous shade of the trees, students might leisurely saunter while meditating on the theme of the discourse.

The system of instruction was to be based upon an equally ideal principle. The professors were not to be immured behind the walls of college seclusion. The discourses on the Platonic and Hegelian doctrines were not to be jealously guarded as fit food only for the wise and the learned. Philosophy in the nineteenth century was to be as free a thing as it was in the days of the Greeks. The doors were to be open. The whole world might enter. No restrictions as to age or sex were enjoined. Women, indeed, were to be placed upon an equal footing with men in this Temple of Learning. They were to assist there in the office of teacher. That sympathetic relations might exist between students and teachers, conversations and discussions were to follow the lectures, in which all, listeners and students alike, were invited to join. These conversations were designed to entice thought, the aim being to stimulate, by means of conversational friction, intellectual activity.

In July, 1879, the Summer School of Philosophy was opened. Its sessions continued for five weeks. Its corps of professors included Mr. Alcott, Professor Harris, Dr. Jones, Mr. T. Wentworth Higginson, Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney, Mr. F. B. Sanborn, and Dr. Kidney. Students were admitted without preliminary examinations. Most of the sessions were held in the parlors of the Orchard House, the number of visitors, students, and outsiders, numbering perhaps an average of fifty. Much curiosity, comment, and diversity of opinion and criticism, attended the opening of the meetings. The press first ridiculed, then caricatured, and finally attempted to explain its peculiar proceedings; the latter effort not, however, being attended with the same measure of success as when they had impaled its doings on the spear of ridicule. In spite of derision, the little school prospered; it being, perhaps, in accordance with the first principle of philosophy that it should thrive in the teeth of adverse criticism. The audiences assembled during the first season, though small, were interested. The experiment of enlisting sympathy in the new enterprise was deemed a sufficiently successful one to warrant its continuance during a second season. By the generous gift of a lady interested in the future of the school, a small hall was erected on the grounds adjoining Mr. Alcott's house. Here, in this Hillside Chapel, as Mr. Alcott has named the somewhat bare and unpretentious lit

tle edifice, all the exercises of the school were held during the past season (1880). That year was marked by an unexpected interest in the doings of the school. There was a large increase in the number of students and visitors. The press was prolific in reports, reviews, and editorials, and the public generally have evinced an intelligent curiosity concerning its proceedings.

The list of subjects treated in the course of lectures announced for the season of 1880 will, perhaps, to such readers as may not have seen the printed circulars, convey a clearer idea of the intellectual aim of the faculty. Mr. Bronson Alcott was announced to deliver five lectures on mysticism, the subjects being "St. John the Evangelist," "Plotinus," "Tauler," "Erckart," and "Behmen and Swedenborg." Dr. H. K. Jones's lectures were on "Plato," and an application of his philosophy to modern civilization. Professor W. T. Harris delivered five on the History of Philosophy, and five on Speculative Philosophy. Mr. J. Denton Snider gave five on Shakespeare, embodying his original theories and studies on the Shakespearean dramas. There were also three discourses by Dr. J. L. Kidney, on the "Philosophy of the Sublime and the Beautiful"; four by the Rev. W. H. Channing, on "Oriental and Mystical Philosophy." There were other special lectures upon the fine arts and literature. Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney gave two upon Art." Mr. John Albee read two essays upon the "Literary Art." Mrs. Julia Ward Howe's paper was upon "Modern Society"; and Mr. F. B. Sanborn discoursed upon the "Philosophy of Charity." Other single lectures were read by such distinguished men as Professor Peirce, of Cambridge, Dr. Bartol, of Boston, Professor A. P. Peabody, Dr. Elisha Mulford, and Professor F. H. Hedge. The last evening lecture was read by Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson, on " Aristocracy," that being the only occasion upon which this greatest of American philosophers was heard. Two lectures were given daily; one at nine in the morning, and another at half-past seven in the evening. Both lectures were followed by discussions and a general conversation. The sessions lasted, as in the former season, for the space of five weeks.

It has been the aim of the faculty to preserve the school free from the narrowness of either sectarian or ultra-radical prejudices. Proof of this endeavor is found in the fact that among the lecturers are numbered Unitarian and Episcopal ministers of the gospel, several professors of confessed radical opinions, others of pronounced orthodox views, while, as has before been said, the most noted among the leaders of thought are transcendentalists of varying shades of belief. The attitude of the school is a strongly theistic The ultimate results of the philosophic

one.

teachings tending to prove that the highest philosophy is in union with the highest forms of religious faith.

The picture that the school presented, on any one of the summer mornings when its sessions were being held, can be produced in a few words. One entered the little unpainted chapel through winding paths, paths leading one beneath the apple-boughs and along the edges of the OrchardHouse garden. Against the greenery of the hillside stood the plain, pointed roof of the unadorned little chapel. Inside, the space of the chapel was found to be ample (it has a seating capacity of one hundred and fifty); there was plenty of light, and glimpses could be caught, through any one of the numerous windows, of the elms and the pines waving in the sunlight. The decoration of the chapel was of the most severely simple order. Busts of Plato, Thoreau, Emerson, Voltaire, and Pestalozzi were placed about the room. Behind the little raised platform, from which the professors delivered their lectures, was an engraving of "The School of Athens." These, together with a Webster's Unabridged, completed the adornments and equipment of the hall. The auditorium was filled with wooden chairs and settees— ingeniously uncomfortable. About the platform were ranged larger, upholstered arm-chairs, which were occupied by members of the faculty. The kindly, ardent, enthusiastic face of Mr. Alcott was always to be found facing the audience in one of them; so also was the pale, intellectual face of Professor Harris, with its touch of ascetic seriousness; one had also ample opportunity of looking sometimes upon Emerson's wonderful face, with its saintly, spiritual calm, its intently eager expression, at the age of seventy-six still the face of the listener and the learner, and of noting his beautifully simple, unobtrusive manner, as free from consciousness as if he were the least important person present, as indeed it was easy to see he felt himself to be. Some striking physiognomical contrasts were grouped about the little platform at some of the meetings; notably on the occasion of the reading of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe's lecture on Modern Society, when, side by side with that lady's refined, forcible face, appeared the Asiatic features of a Chinese professor, whose olive-tinted face, lit with the restless, bird-like brilliancy of the keen eye, rose from a mass of radiant Chinese crèpe draperies, whose color alone would have proclaimed him a Celestial.

The audiences gathered to listen to the lectures were mostly composed of women. Outside of the lecturers, professors, and reporters, the number of male attendants was conspicuous by the smallness of its ratio. Occasionally the fair, fresh face of a Harvard student would be seen