On the other hand, every specific art has its own special theory, designed to teach the limits of its means, and the difficulties peculiar to the medium through which it is to manifest the Beautiful, with the various rules by which it must be regulated in its realization of the fundamental laws of Beauty. A clear, deep, and comprehensive view of the origin and nature of the Fine Arts, is the work most needed by the readers and thinkers of the present century. Some noble attempts have indeed been made in this direction, but, valuable as such essays may be, they do not yet correspond to the growing, requisitions of the public mind. It is true such a work would be one of great difficulty, exacting immense stores of information, and highly cultivated tastes. The writer must possess the logical power requisite for the most subtle analyses; he must have the _creative_ genius to combine the scattered facts of natural beauty, with their varied effects upon the human consciousness, into one great whole; while, at the same time, the tenderness and susceptibility of the _receptive_ genius must be equally developed in him. He should blend the loving and devout soul of a Fra Angelico with the logical acumen of a Bacon. How seldom is the creative genius sufficiently tender and humble to be, in the full sense of the term, at the same time, _receptive_! After its treatment of the philosophical theory of Art, such a work should also throw its light upon the special theories, and more general rules of specific arts; for such rules, when true, are never arbitrary, but spring from the fundamental laws, of universal Beauty. They are but the external manifestation, through material mediums, of eternal laws. The compiler of the present article can offer no such great work to the reader. An earnest effort will however be made to bring together the related thoughts upon Art and Beauty. They are found scattered almost at random over so many pages; to link them together by arranging them in their logical sequences, placing them so that they will illustrate and mutually corroborate one another: and, working up with them the thoughts suggested by them, the author has labored to form of them a compact and easily perused _whole._ For the ideas selected are _essentially related_, and, scattered as they may have hitherto been, naturally gravitate round a common centre. No longer drifting apart through the chaos of multitudinous pages, they are now formed into a system of order, a galaxy of which the central sun is--the Divine attributes as manifested through the Beautiful.