A poet, having very
unusual pecuniary resources, might, while retaining the necessary idea
of art or culture, or, as our author expresses it, of interest, so
imbue his designs at once with extent and novelty of beauty, as to
convey the sentiment of spiritual interference. It will be seen
that, in bringing about such result, he secures all the advantages
of interest or design, while relieving his work of the harshness or
technicality of the worldly art. In the most rugged of wildernesses-
in the most savage of the scenes of pure nature- there is apparent the
art of a creator; yet this art is apparent to reflection only; in no
respect has it the obvious force of a feeling. Now let us suppose this
sense of the Almighty design to be one step depressed- to be brought
into something like harmony or consistency with the sense of human
art- to form an intermedium between the two:- let us imagine, for
example, a landscape whose combined vastness and definitiveness- whose
united beauty, magnificence, and strangeness, shall convey the idea of
care, or culture, or superintendence, on the part of beings
superior, yet akin to humanity- then the sentiment of interest is
preserved, while the art intervolved is made to assume the air of an
intermediate or secondary nature- a nature which is not God, nor an
emanation from God, but which still is nature in the sense of the
handiwork of the angels that hover between man and God.
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