Strange Visitors: A series of original papers, embracing philosophy, science, government, religion, poetry, art, fiction, satire, humor, narrative, and prophecy, by the spirits of Irving, Willis, Thackeray, Brontë, Richter, Byron, Humboldt, Hawthorne, Wesley, Browning, and others now dwelling in the spirit world; dictated through a clairvoyant, while in an abnormal or trance stateHorn, Henry J.
Religion
Strange Visitors: A series of original papers, embracing philosophy, science, government, religion, poetry, art, fiction, satire, humor, narrative, and prophecy, by the spirits of Irving, Willis, Thackeray, Brontë, Richter, Byron, Humboldt, Hawthorne, Wesley, Browning, and others now dwelling in the spirit world; dictated through a clairvoyant, while in an abnormal or trance state
Horn, Henry J.
Spirit writings
Art is about to undergo a revolution. At present too much attention is
given to the literal rendering of a fact, and imagination, which is
merely a faculty for reaching the immaterial, is checked; but ere long
painters will turn their attention to representing scenes in spirit
life, and the inspiration which attended the old masters when they
gave wings to their fancy and cut loose from identical imitation, will
return.
Let the camera and the photograph reproduce the exact outline and
minutiae, but let the artist paint with the pencil of imagination and
inspiration! Only permit imagination to have root in the material
world. As no man can become a good angel who has not developed his
physical nature in harmony with his spiritual, so neither painter
nor medium can represent the artistic beauties of the natural world,
nor of the spirit world, unless he has had a good physical training.
It is only through the _physical_ that the imagination can express
itself with beauty and correctness. Truth is beauty, and is always
proportionate; the light equalizing the dark, precisely as in the
perfection of art a mass of shadow is balanced by a proportion of light.
One of the most agreeable places of rest or there-abouts is the
artists’ rendezvous--a building larger than St. Peter’s at Home,
magnificent in structure, and filled with wonderful paintings.
Here artists and authors of all nations are to be found. You can step
in any morning and have a chat with Lawrence, Reynolds, Lessing,
Delaroche Hazlitt, Coleridge, Charles Lamb, Beethoven, Mendelssohn,
Rossini, Willis, Irving, Anthon, Sigourney, Osgood, Booth, Kemble,
Kean, Cooper, Vandenhoff, Palmerston, Pitt, O’Connel, Lamartine,
Napoleon, Margaret Fuller, Charlotte Bronté, Lady Blessington, and
others of note, who have made themselves illustrious during the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. People of congenial tastes and
aspirations can readily obtain admittance, and all freely engage in
conversation on topics connected with art and literature.
A large garden is attached to the building, filled with every manner
of fruit-tree, and is accessible to all; any poor devil of an artist
can go there and some bewitching Houri will present him with all the
delicious condiments which his taste or fancy can demand.
In these matters the inhabitants of earth need to take a lesson from us.
I prophesy that America will be a pioneer in these reformations, and
will, in some Central Park, erect a building similar to this, where
aspiring artists may receive food for the soul and the body, and where
artistic minds can meet and interchange ideas.
EDWARD EVERETT.
_GOVERNMENT_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account