This is the mission of sacred art--to teach us to be better and not to go back; to bring us from the fierce chasing after the world, and make us forget the golden links we are striving to forge for the sinking of our manhood or womanhood; to tell us how the nations long ago lived and loved and laboured, and now lie dead in spite of all their pomp, as we shall be in spite of all our hankerings after what is ours no longer than a day of Time. To give us gleams of sunshine and green fields and cooling streams, when we are parched by the dust of the streets. To give us glimpses into the wisdom of innocence, when we are blinded by guilt and shame and crusted selfishness. To give us glowings of chivalry and patriotism, when we are forgetting all these inspirations in the ignorance of this book philosophy. To make us more merciful to the poor and unfortunate, the maimed in mind as well as body; to make us love all as our brothers and sisters, no matter what their faults may be. 'Living pure, reverent, patient, pitiful, loving all things that live, even as themselves, letting unkindness die, and greed and wrath.'--Buddha. This is the mission of our sacred art--to educate each soul, painters and people; to subdue the self that is now dominant, and plant the other on its throne; to make men and women of us all, in the highest, truest, grandest sense. PART II.--THE COMIC SIDE OF ART Art is many-sided, but with the exception of one, or perhaps two, of the sides, all the rest are comic. Viewed from the outside, that is, the standpoint of the buyer and the critic, the ludicrousness of it is almost appalling. It would be tragic in the intensity of its farcical characters, even as a very hearty laugh sometimes will cause sudden death by choking, were it not for the shades of the pitiful or contemptible which relieve it of the load of laughter, and change the downward curve of the broad grin into a decided upward smiling termination. I dare say you will think my subject should be composed of illustrations from Cruikshank, Gillray, Leech, and other masters of the comic muse, and so it ought to be, perhaps, and for that very reason I do not feel inclined to treat it so. I do not like to see ladies dress all by the month's fashion-plates, whether it suits them or not, nor men do exactly the things expected of them. Where would be those delightful throbs of surprise if it were not for the tangent starts of the unconfined lunatics who pass for men and women of talent on this very superficial, thin-crusted globe of ours? One of the most amusing sides of art is the method people have of judging a picture.