In aristocracies a few great pictures are produced; in democratic countries, a vast number of insignificant ones. In the former, statues are raised of bronze; in the latter, they are modelled in plaster.

When I arrived for the first time at New York, by that part of the Atlantic Ocean which is called the Narrows, I was surprised to perceive along the shore, at some distance from the city, a considerable number of little palaces of white marble, several of which were built after the models of ancient architecture. When I went the next day to inspect more closely the buildings which had particularly attracted my notice, I found that its walls were of whitewashed brick, and its columns of painted wood. All the edifices which I had admired the night before were of the same kind.

The social condition and the institutions of democracy impart, moreover, certain peculiar tendencies to all the imitative arts which it is easy to point out. They frequently withdraw them from the delineation of the soul to fix them exclusively on that of the body: and they substitute the representation of motion and sensation for that of sentiment and thought: in a word, they put the Real in the place of the Ideal.

I doubt whether Raphael studied the minutest intricacies of the mechanism of the human body as thoroughly as the draftsmen of our own time. He did not attach the same importance to rigorous

* [I trust I may be allowed to enter a protest against an opinion which some readers will perhaps agree with me in thinking a mistaken one. Whoever has examined the accurate study, the close fidelity to nature, and the profound scientific knowledge of Raphael and of almost all the great masters of art, in their drawings, (where the means by which their perfect works were achieved are more easily discernible than amidst the total splendour of those works themselves,) will, I think, prefer them to the crude design or the pedantic modelling of more recent times. Nor has the industry of the elder artists in these details ever been surpassed. For instance, in the series of sketches for Raphael's finest works, one represents the skeletons of the whole group, in perfect and not unmeaning osteology; a second reproduces the same group fleshed with complete anatomical science; in a third, the artist proceeds to put drapery on his figures. To compare the drawing of Raphael with that of David, is to compare the science of a surgeon with that of a butcher. The former penetrated by his art into the hidden beauty and truth of nature: the latter dragged nature to the easel, and deprived her at once of life, truth, and freedom.

I would be understood to confine this remark to the illustration here, as

accuracy on this point as they do, because he aspired to surpass nature. He sought to make of man something which should be superior to man, and to embellish beauty's self. David and his scholars were, on the contrary, as good anatomists as they were good painters. They wonderfully depicted the models which they had before their eyes, but they rarely imagined anything beyond them they followed nature with fidelity; while Raphael sought for something better than nature. They have left us an exact portraiture of man; but he discloses in his works a glimpse of the Divinity.

This remark as to the manner of treating a subject is no less applicable to the choice of it. The painters of the middle ages generally sought far above themselves, and away from their own time, for mighty subjects, which left to their imagination an unbounded range. Our painters frequently employ their talents in the exact imitation of the details of private life, which they have always before their eyes; and they are for ever copying trivial objects, the originals of which are only too abundant in nature.

I think, inappropriately selected; for of the general influence of democracy on the choice of subjects, on the range of art, on the spirit, faith, and education of artists, and, last though not least, on the sympathy of the public, the passage above gives a very true analysis. The pictures of Ostade, Teniers, and Paul Potter belong as truly to the burghers of Holland, as those of Raphael and Michael Angelo to the aristocracy of the Church, or those of Titian and Velasquez, Rubens and Vandyke, to the courts and palaces of Europe.-Translator's Note.]

CHAPTER XII.

WHY THE AMERICANS RAISE SOME MONUMENTS SO INSIGNIFICANT, ANI OTHERS SO IMPORTANT.

I HAVE just observed, that in democratic ages monuments of the arts tend to become more numerous and less important. I now hasten to point out the exception to this rule.

In a democratic community individuals are very powerless; but the state which represents them all, and contains them all in its grasp, is very powerful. Nowhere do citizens appear so insignificant as in a democratic nation; nowhere does the nation itself appear greater, or does the mind more easily take in a wide general survey of it. In democratic communities the imagination is compressed when men consider themselves; it expands indefinitely when they think of the State. Hence it is that the same men who live on a small scale in narrow dwellings, frequently aspire to gigantic splendor in the erection of their public monuments.

The Americans have traced out the circuit of an immense city on the site which they intended to make their capital, but which, up to the present time, is hardly more densely peopled than Pontoise, though, according to them, it will one day contain a million of inhabitants. They have already rooted up trees for ten miles round, lest they should interfere with the future citizens of this imaginary metropolis. They have erected a magnificent palace for Congress in the centre of the city, and have given it the pompous name of the Capitol.

The several States of the Union are every day planning and erecting for themselves prodigious undertakings, which would astonish the engineers of the great European nations.

Thus democracy not only leads men to a vast number of inconsiderable productions; it also leads them to raise some monuments

on the largest scale: but between these two extremes there is a blank. A few scattered remains of enormous buildings can therefore teach us nothing of the social condition and the institutions of the people by whom they were raised. I may add, though the remark leads me to step out of my subject, that they do not make us better acquainted with its greatness, its civilization, and its real prosperity. Whensoever a power of any kind shall be able to make a whole people co-operate in a single undertaking, that power, with little knowledge and a great deal of time, will succeed in obtaining something enormous from the co-operation of efforts so multiplied. But this does not lead to the conclusion that the people was very happy, very enlightened, or even very strong.

The Spaniards found the city of Mexico full of magnificent temples and vast palaces; but that did not prevent Cortes from conquering the Mexican empire with six hundred foot soldiers and sixteen horses.

If the Romans had been better acquainted with the laws of hydraulics, they would not have constructed all the aqueducts which surround the ruins of their cities-they would have made a better use of their power and their wealth. If they had invented the steam engine, perhaps they would not have extended to the extremities of their empire those long artificial roads which are called Roman Roads. These things are at once the splendid memorials of their ignorance and of their greatness.

A people which should leave no other vestige of its track than a few leaden pipes in the earth, and a few iron rods upon its surface, might have been more the master of Nature than the Romans.

CHAPTER XIII.

LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS OF DEMOCRATIC AGES.

WHEN a traveller goes into a bookseller's shop in the United States, and examines the American books upon the shelves, the number of works appears extremely great; while that of known authors appears, on the contrary, to be extremely small. He will first meet with a number of elementary treatises, destined to teach the rudiments of human knowledge. Most of these books are written in Europe; the Americans reprint them, adapting them to their own country. Next comes an enormous quantity of religious works, Bibles, sermons, edifying anecdotes, controversial divinity, and reports of charitable societies; lastly, appears the long catalogue of political pamphlets. In America, parties do not write books to combat each other's opinions, but pamphlets which are circulated for a day with incredible rapidity, and then expire.

In the midst of all these obscure productions of the human brain, are to be found the more remarkable works of that small number of authors, whose names are, or ought to be, known to Europeans.

Although America is perhaps in our days the civilized country in which literature is least attended to, a large number of persons are nevertheless to be found there who take an interest in the productions of the mind, and who make them, if not the study of their lives, at least the charm of their leisure hours. But England supplies these readers with the larger portion of the books which they require. Almost all important English books are republished in the United States. The literary genius of Great Britain still darts its rays into the recesses of the forests of the New World. There is hardly a pioneer's hut which does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakspere. I remember that I read the feudal play of Henry V. for the first time in a log house.