Besides, is it not true that the very character natural to the artist is peculiarly fitted to exert a beneficial influence on a material and commercial society? The pursuits of commerce are very apt to engender a spirit of utter indifference to everything except material well-being--a spirit of competition and mutual distrust most injurious to the happiness of society; but the artist is proverbially careless of mere pecuniary gain, and is always full of trust in his fellow men. In the various phases of excitement which are constantly agitating society, he looks only for the manifestation of noble passions and great thoughts. In the base smiles wreathing so many false lips, he sees but the natural expression of kindness; when lips vow fidelity, he dreams of an affection based upon esteem, not upon a passing instinct, a sordid or sensual interest--he believes in a union of hearts. Breathing everywhere around him the high enthusiasm of his own truthful and loving soul, he knows nothing of those perfidious jealousies and bitter enmities which creep and twist in the shade, always hiding under some fair mask; of those coarse intellects opposed to every noble impulse, or of that proud and obstinate egotism which repels every generous emotion of the heart, because it knows that _feeling_ creates an _equality_ which is wounding to its haughty estimation of its own supposed merit. It is certain that the soul was not created for the accumulation of money, but to enjoy God. It is a free and living power, whose true condition upon earth is the voluntary fulfilment of duty. It was made for this by the God of love. Duty, love to God and man, is the Ideal of human life; and as art and poetry should be the expression of the highest and most universal ideas of the human race, duty should not only be the Pole star of the artist's own life, but its chastening purity should preside over all his conceptions. A profane or unchaste work of art is a sacrilege against the most High; an insult to those divine attributes in whose image that artist himself was made, and which he must constantly struggle to suggest or typify, that the work of his hand prove not a golden calf, an offence both to God and man. The moral ideal always advances as we approach it. 'Be ye perfect as I am perfect,' is the precept of the Master. This is the justification of the poet when he portrays men in advance of the common level of life. The _moral_ Beautiful is the realization of _Duty_, which the poet should picture in its most sublime form. He may and should sing of the passions, but _Duty is the eternal pole star of the soul_! The susceptible heart of the artist must respect the majesty of virtue. Unless his escutcheon glitter with the brilliancy of purity, he is not worthy to be one of the Illustrious Band whose high mission upon earth (with lowly reverence be it said) is the manifestation of the Divine Attributes. O Holy Banner,