FREEDOM'S REVEILLE.

Its white fleets plow the morning sea,
Its flag the Morning Star has kissed.
But still the martyred ones of yore -
By tyrants hanged, or burned, or bledWith hair and fingers dripping gore,
Gaze backward from the ages dead,
And ask: "How long, 0 Lord! how long
Shall creeds conceal God's human side,
And Christ the God be crowned in song
While Christ the Man is crucified?
How long shall Mammon's tongue of fraud
At Freedom's Prophets wag in sport,
While chartered murder stalks abroad,
Approved by Senate, Church, and Court? "
The strife shall not forever last
'Twixt cunning Wrong and passive Truth -
The blighting demon of the Past,
Chained to the beauteous form of Youth;
The Truth shall rise, its bonds shall break,
Its day with cloudless glory burn,
The Right with Might from slumber wake,
And the dead Past to dust return.
The long night wanes; the stars wax dim;
The Young Day looks through bars of blood;
The air throbs with the breath of Him
Whose Pulse was in the Red-Sea flood;
And flanked by mountains, right and left,
The People stand- a doubting hordeBefore them heave the tides uncleft,
Behind them flashes Pharaoh's sword.
But lo! the living God controls,
And marks the bounds of slavery's night,
And speaks through all the dauntless souls
That live, or perish, for the right.
His Face shall light the People still,
His Hand shall cut the Sea in twain,
And sky and wave and mountain thrill
To Miriam's triumphant strain.



(NOC

REALISM IN LITERATURE AND ART.
BY CLARENCE S. DARROW.
MAN is nature's last and most perfect work; but however
high his development or great his achievements, he is yet a
child of the earth and the forces that have formed all the
life that exists thereon. He cannot separate himself from
the environment in which he grew, and a thousand ties of
nature bind him back to the long-forgotten past, and prove
his kinship to all the lower forms of life that have sprung
from that great common mother, earth.
As there is a universal law of being which controls al!
forms of life, from the aimless movement of the mollusk in
the sea to the most perfect conduct of the best developed
man, so all the varied activities of human life, from the
movements of the savage digging roots to the work of the
greatest artist with his brush, are controlled by universal
laws, and are good or bad, perfect or imperfect; as they conform to the highest condition nature has imposed.
The early savage dwelt in caves and cliffs, and spent his
life in seeking food and providing some rude shelter from
the cold. He looked at the earth, the sun, the sea, the sky,
the mountain peak, the forest, and the plain, at the vegetable
and animal life around, and all he saw and heard formed an
impression on his brain, and aided in his growth.
Like a child he marvelled at the storm and flood; he stood
in awe as he looked upon disease and death; and to explain
the things he could not understand, he peopled earth and
air and sea with gods and demons and a thousand weird
creations of his brain.
All these mysterious creatures were made in the image of
the natural objects that came within his view. The gods
were men grown large, and endowed with marvellous powers,
while tree and bird and beast were used alike as models for
a being greater far than any nature ever formed.
It was an angry god that made the rivers overrun their
98



REALISM IN LITERATURE AND ART.

99

banks and leave destruction in their path. An offended god
it was who hurled his thunderbolts upon a wicked world or
sent disease and famine to the sinning children of the earth;
and to coax these rulers to be merciful to man, the weak and
trembling people of the ancient world turned their thoughts
to sacrifice and prayer.
The first clouded thoughts of these rude men were transcribed on monument and stone, or carved in wood, or
painted with the colors borrowed from the sun and earth
and sky; in short, the first rude art was born to sing the
praise, and tell the fame, and paint the greatness of the gods.
But all of this was natural for the time and place; and the
graven images, the chiselled hieroglyphics, and all this rude
beginning of literature and art were formed upon what men
saw and heard and felt, enlarged and magnified to fit the
stature of the gods.
As the world grew older, art was used to celebrate the
greatness and achievements of kings and rulers as well as
gods, and their tombs were ornamented with such decorations
as these early ages could create; but yet all literature and
art was only for the gods and the rulers of the world. Then,
even more than now, wealth and power brought intellect to
do their will, and all its force was spent to sing the praises
of the rulers of the earth and air.
The basis of all this art of pen and brush was the reality
of the world; but this was so magnified and distorted for the
base use of kings and priests, that realism in the true sense
could not exist.
It would not do to paint a picture of a king resembling a
man of flesh and blood, and of course a god must be far
greater than a king. It would not do to write a tale in
which kings and princes, lords and ladies, should act like
men and women - else what difference between the ruler and
the ruled? The marvellous powers which romance and myth
had given to gods and angels were transferred to those of
royal blood. The wonderful achievements of these knights
and princes could be equalled only by the gods; and the
poor dependents of the world, who lived for the glory of the
great, were fed with legends and with tales that sang the
praises of the great.
Literature, sculpture and painting, music and architecture,
indeed, all forms of art, were the exclusive property of the



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great and strong; and the artist, then, like most of those
to-day, was retained to serve the great and maintain the
status of the weak.
No one dreamed that there was any beauty in a common
human life or any romance in a fact. The greatest of the
earth had not yet learned to know that every life is a mystery and every death a tragedy; that the spark of the infinite,
which alone transforms clay to life, animates alike the breast
of the peasant and the soul of the prince. The world had
not learned that the ant hill was as great as Mont Blanc and
the blade of grass as mysterious as the oak. It is only now
that the world is growing so delicate and refined that it can
see the beauty of a fact; that it is developing a taste so rare
as to distinguish between the false and true; that it can be
moved by the gentle breeze as well as by the winter's gale;
that it can see a greater beauty in a statement true to life
than in the inflated tales which children read.
Most of the literature and art the world has known has
been untrue. The pictures of the past have been painted
from the distorted minds of visionists and the pliant brains
of tools. They have represented impossible gods and unthinkable saints, angels and cherubs and demons - everything but men and women. Saints may be all right in their
place, but a saint with a halo around his head was born of
myth and not of art. Angels may be well enough, but all
rational men prefer an angel with arms to an angel with
wings. When these artists were not busy painting saints.and Madonnas, they were spending their time painting kings
and royal knaves, and the pictures of the rulers were as
unlike the men and women whom they were said to represent
as the servile spirit of the painter was unlike the true artist
of to-day. Of course an artist would not paint the poor.
They had no clothes that would adorn a work of art, and no
money nor favors that could pay him for his toil. An ancient
artist could no more afford to serve the poor than a modern
lawyer to defend the weak.
After literature had so far advanced as to concern other
beings than gods and kings, the authors of these ancient
days endowed their characters with marvellous powers:
knights with giant strength and magic swords; princes with
wondrous palaces and heaps of gold; travellers who met
marvellous beasts and slew them   in extraordinary ways:



REALISM IN LITERATURE AND ART.

101'

giants with forms like mountains and strength like oxen,
and who could vanquish all but little dwarfs. Railroads
were not invented in those early days, but travel was facilitated by the use of seven-league boots. Balloons and telescopes were not yet known, but this did not keep favored
heroes from peering at the stars or looking down from on
high upon the earth. They had but to plant a magic bean
before they went to bed at night, and in the morning it had
grown so tall that it reached up to the sky; and the hero,
although not skilled in climbing, needed simply to grasp the
stalk and say, " Hitchety, hatchety, up I go.  Hitchety,
hatchety, up I go," and by this means soon vanished in the
clouds.
Tales of this sort used once to delight the world, and the
readers half believed them true. We give them to children
now, and even the least of these view them with a half
contempt.
The modern man who still reads Walter Scott does not
enjoy these ancient myths. He relishes a lie, but it musL
not be too big; it must be so small that, although he knows
in his inmost soul that it is not true, hlie can yet half make
himself believe it is not false. Most of us have cherished a
pleasant waking dream, and fondly clung to the sweet delusion while we really knew it was not life. The modern
literary stomach is becoming so healthy that it wants a story
at least half true; should the falsehood be too strong, it acts
as an emetic instead of food.
These old fairy tales have lost their power to charm, as the.
tales of the gods and kings went down before. They have
lost their charm; for as we read them now, they awake no
answering chord born of the experiences that make up what
we know of human life.
When the beauty of realism shall be truly known, we shall
read the book, or look upon the work of art, and, in the light
of all we know of life, shall ask our beings whether the image
that the author or the painter creates for us is like the one
that is born of the consciousness which moves our souls, and
the experiences that life has made us know.
Realism worships at the shrine of nature. It does not say
that there may not be a sphere in which beings higher than
man can live, or that some time an eye may not rest upon a
fairer sunset than was ever born behind the clouds and sea;



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but it knows that through countless ages nature has slowly
fitted the brain and eye of man to the earth on which we live
and the objects that we see, and the perfect earthly eye must
harmonize with the perfect earthly scene. To say that
realism is coarse and vulgar, is to declare against nature and
her works, and to assert that the man she made may dream
of things higher and grander than nature could unfold.
The eye of the great sculptor reveals to him the lines that
make the most perfect human form, and he chisels out the
marble block until it resembles this image so perfectly that
it almost seems to live. Nature, through ages of experiment
and development, has made this almost faultless form. It is
perfect because every part is best fitted for the separate work
it has to do. The artist knows that he could not improve a
single organ if he would, for all the rest of nature must be
adjusted to the change. He has the skill to reproduce this
perfect shape in lasting stone, and the human brain could
not conceive a form more beautiful and fair. Here is a
perfect image of the highest work that countless centuries of
nature's toil has made; and yet some would seek to beautify
and sanctify this work by dressing it in the garb that shifting
fashion and changing fancy make for men.
It was only the vulgar superstition of the past that ever
suggested that the reproduction of human forms in stone
was an unholy work. Through long, dark centuries religion
taught that the human form was vile and bad, and that the
soul of man was imprisoned in a charnel house, unfit for
human sight. They wounded, bruised, and maimed their
house of clay; they covered it with skins that under no
circumstances could be removed, and many ancient saints
lived and died without ever having looked upon the bodies
nature gave to them. The images of saints and martyrs,
which in the name of religion were scattered through Europe,
were covered with paint and clothes, and were nearly as
hideous as the monks who placed them there.
When the condition of Europe and its religious thought
is clearly understood, it is not difficult to imagine the reception that greeted the first dawn of modern realistic art.
Sculpture and painting deified the material. It told of
beauty in the human form which thousands of years of
religious fanaticism had taught was bad and vile.
If the flesh was beautiful, what of the monks and priests



REALISM IN LITERATURE AND ART.

108

who had hidden it from sight; who had kept it covered
night and day through all their foolish lives; who maimed
and bruised, cut and lacerated it for the glory of the spirit
which they believed was chained within? The church had
taught that the death of the flesh was the birth of the soul,
and they therefore. believed that the artist's resurrection of
the flesh was the death of the soul.
This old religious prejudice, born of a misty, superstitious
past, has slowly faded from the minds of men, but we find its
traces even yet; the origin of the feeling against realistic art
has well-nigh been forgot, but much of the feeling still
remains. No one now would pretend to say that all the
body was unholy or unfit for sight, and yet years of custom
and inherited belief have made us think that a part is good
and the rest is bad; that nature, in her work of building up
the human form, has made one part sacred and another vile.
It is easy to mistake custom for nature, and inherited prejudice for morality.
There is not a single portion of the human body which
some people have not believed holy, and not a single portion
which some have not believed vile. It was not shame that
made clothing, but clothing that made shame. If we should
eradicate from our beliefs all that inheritance and environment have given, it would be hard for us to guess how much
would still remain. Custom has made almost all things good
and nearly all things bad, according to the whim of time and
place. To find solid ground we must turn to nature, and
ask her what it is that conduces to the highest happiness
and the longest life. The realistic artist cannot accept the
popular belief, whatever that may be, as to just where the
dead line on the human body should be drawn that separates
the sacred and profane.
There are realists who look at all the beauty and loveliness
of the world, and all its maladjustments, too, and who do not
seek to answer the old, old question, whether back of this is
any all-controlling and designing power. They do not answer, for they cannot know; but they strive to touch the
subtle chord which makes their individual lives vibrate in
harmony with the great heart of that nature which they love,
and they cannot thitk but what all parts of life are good,
and that, while men may differ, nature must know best.
Other realists there are who believe they see in nature the



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work of a divine Maker, who created man in His own image
as the last and highest triumph of His skill; that not the
minutest portion of the universe exists except because He
wished it thus. To the realist who accepts this all-controlling power, any imputation against a portion of his Master's
work must reach back to the author who designed it all.
We need not say that the human body might not be better
than it is. We only need to know that it is the best that
man can have, and that its wondrous mechanism has been
constructed with infinitely more than human skill; that
every portion is adapted for its work, and through the harmony of every part the highest good is reached, and that all
is beautiful, for it makes the perfect being best adapted to
the earth. Those who denounce realistic art deny that
knowledge is power, and that wisdom only can make harmony; but they insist, instead, that there are some things
vital to life and happiness that we should not know, or
that, if we must know these things, we at all events should
pretend that we did not.
One day the world will learn to know that all things are
good or bad according to the service they perform. A great
brain which is used by its owner for his selfish ends, regardless of all the purposes that are sacrificed to attain the goal,
is as base and bad as the mind can well conceive; while a
great brain dedicated to the right and just, and freely given
to the service of the world, is high and grand. One day it
ought to learn that the power to create immortality, through
infinite succeeding links of human life, is the finest and most
terrible that nature ever gave to man; and to ignore this
power or call it bad, to fail to realize the great responsibility
of this tremendous fact, is to cry out against the power that
gave us life, and commit the greatest human sin, for it may
be one that never dies.
The true artist does not find all beauty in the human face
or form. These are a part of a mighty whole. He looks
upon the sunset, painting all the clouds with rosy hue, and
his highest wish is to create another scene like this. He
never dreams that he could paint a sunset fairer than the
one that lights the fading world. A fairer sunset would be
something else. He sees beauty in the quiet lake, the grassy
field, and running brooks. He sees majesty in the cataract
and mountain peak. He knows that he can paint no streams



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105

and mountain peaks more perfect than the ones that nature
made.
The growth of letters has been like that of art, from
the marvellous and mythical to the natural and true.
The tales and legends of the ancient past were not of
common men and common scenes. These could not impress
the undeveloped intellects of long ago. A man of letters
could not deify a serf or tell the simple story of the poor.
He must write to maintain the status of the world, and
please the prince who gave him food. So he told of kings
and queens, of knights and ladies, of strife and conquest,
and the coloring he used was human blood.
The world has grown accustomed to those ancient tales -
to scenes of blood and war, and novels that would thrill the
soul and cause the hair to stand on end. It has read them
so long that the true seems commonplace and not fit to
fill the pages of a book. But all the time we forget the fact
that the story could not charm unless we half believed it
true. The men and women in the tale we learn to love and
hate; we take an interest in their lives; we hope they may
succeed or fail; we must not be told at every page that the
people of the book are men of straw, that no such beings
ever lived upon the earth. We could take no interest in
men and women who were myths conjured up to play their
parts, reminding us in every word they spoke that, regardless of the happiness or anguish the author made them feel,
they were but puppets, and could know neither joy nor pain.
It may be that the realistic story is commonplace, but so is
life, and the realistic tale is true. Among the countless
millions of the earth it is only here and there, and now and
then, that some soul is born from out the mighty depths that
does not so i return to the great sea, and leave no ripple on
the waves.
In the play o0 life each actor seems important to himself;
the world he knows revolves around him as the central
figure of the scene; his friends rejoice in all the fortune he
attains, and weep with him in all his griefs. To him the
world is bounded by the faces that he knows and the scenes
in which he lives; he forgets the great surging world outside, and cannot think how small a space he fills in that
infinity which bounds his life. He dies; a few sorrowing friends mourn him for a day, and the world does not



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know he ever lived or ever died. In the ordinary life
almost all events are commonplace, but a few important days
are thinly sprinkled in among all of those that intervene
between the cradle and the grave. We eat and drink, we
work and sleep, and here and there a great joy or sorrow
creeps in upon our lives, and leaves a day that stands out in
the monotony of all the rest, like the pyramids upon the
level plains. But these are very, very few, and are important only to ourselves; and for the rest, we walk with
steady pace along the short and narrow path of life, and rely
upon the common things alone to occupy our minds and
hide from view the marble stone that here and there we cannot fail to see, as it gleams upon us through the overhanging trees just where the road leaves off.
The highest mountain range, when compared with all the
earth, is no larger than a hair upon an ordinary globe; and
the greatest life bears about the same resemblance to the
humanity of which it is a part.
The old novel, which we used to read and to which the
world so fondly clings, had no idea of relation or perspective.
It had a hero and a heroine, and sometimes more than one.
The revolutions of the planets were less important than their
love. War, shipwreck, and conflagration all conspired to
produce the climax of the scene, and the whole world stood
still until their hearts and hands were joined. Wide oceans,.
burning deserts, Arctic seas, impassable jungles, irate fathers,
and even designing mothers were helpless against the decree
that fate had made; and when all the barriers were passed,
and love had triumphed over impossibilities, the tale was
done. Through the rest of life nothing of interest could
transpire. Sometimes in the progress of the story, if the
complications were too great, a thunderbolt or an earthquake
was introduced to destroy the villain and help out the
match. Earthquakes sometimes happen, and the realistic
novelists might write a tale of a scene like this; but then
the love affair would be an incident of the earthquake, and
not the earthquake an incident of the love affair.
In real life the affections have played an important part,
and sometimes great things have been done in the name of
love; but most of the affairs of the human heart have been
as natural as the other events, of life.
The true love story is generally a simple thing. On a



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107

sloping hill, beside a country road, lives a farmer, in the
house his father owned before. He has a daughter, who
skims the milk, and makes the beds, and goes to singing
school at night. There are other members of the household, but our tale is no concern of theirs. In the meadow,
back of the house, a woodchuck has dug his hole, and reared
a family in its humble home. Across the valley, only a
mile away, another farmer lives. He has a son who ploughs
the fields, and does the chores, and goes to singing school at
night. He cannot sing, but he attends the school as regularly as if he could. Of course lie does not let the girl go
home alone! and in the spring, when singing school is out,
lie visits her on Sunday evening without excuse. If the girl
had not lived so near, the farmer's son would have fancied
another girl about the same age who also went to singing
school. Back of the second farmer's house is another woodchuck hole and woodchuck home. After a year or two of
courtship, the boy and girl are married, as their parents were
before, and they choose a pretty spot beside the road, and
build another house between the two, and settle down to
common life - and so the world moves oil. And a woodchuck on one farm makes the acquaintance of a woodchuck
on the other, and they choose a quiet place beside a stump,
in no one's way, where they think they have a right to be,
and dig another hole and make another home. For after all,
men and animals are much alike, and nature loves them
both and loves them all, and sends them forth to drive the
loneliness from off the earth, and then takes them back into
her loving breast to sleep.
It may be that there are few great incidents in the
realistic tale; but each event appeals to life, and cannot fail
to wake our memories and make us live the past again.
The great authors of the natural school, Tolstoi, Daudet,
Howells, Ibsen, Keilland, Flaubert, Zola, Hardy, and the
rest, have made us think and live. Their words have
burnished up our thoughts and revealed a thousand pictures
that hung upon the walls of memory, covered with the dust
of years and hidden from our sight. Sometimes, of course,
we cry with pain at the picture that is thrown before our
view; but life consists of emotions, and we cannot truly live
unless the depths are stirred.
These great masters, it is true, may sometimes shock the



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over-sensitive with the stories they tell of life; but if the
tale is true, why hide it from our sight? Nothing is more
common than the protest against the wicked books of the
realistic school, filled with delineations of passion and of sin;
but he who denies passion ignores all the life that exists upon
the earth, and cries out against the mother that gave him
birth; and he who ignores this truth passes with contempt
the greatest fact that nature has impressed upon the world.
Those who condemn as sensual the tales of Tolstoi and
Daudet still defend the love stories of which our literature
is full - those weak and silly tales that make women fit
only to be the playthings of the world, and deny to them a
single thought or right except to serve their master, man.
These objectors do not contend that stories dealing with the
feelings and affections shall not be told - they approve
these, but they simply insist that they shall be false, instead
of true.
The old novel filled the mind of the school girl with a
thousand thoughts that had no place in life - with ten thousand pictures she could never see. It taught that some time
she would meet a prince in disguise, to whom she should
freely give her hand and heart. So she went out upon the
road to find this prince; and the more disguised he was, the
more certain did she feel that he was the prince for whom
she sought.
The realist paints the passions and affections as they are.
Both man and woman can see their beauty and their terror,
their true position and the relation that they bear to all of
life. He would not beguile the girl into the belief that her
identity should be destroyed and merged for the sake of this
feeling, which not once in ten thousand times could realize
the promises that the novel made, but would leave her as an
individual to make the most she could and all she could of
life, with all the chance for hope and conquest which men
have taken for themselves. Neither would the realist cry
out blindly against these deep passions that have moved men
and women in the past, and which must continue fierce and
strong so long as life exists. He is taught by the scientist
that the fiercest heat may be transformed to light, and is
shown by life that from the strongest passions are sometimes
born the sweetest'and the purest human souls.
In these days of creeds and theories, of preachers in the



REALISM IN LITERATURE AND ART.

109"

pulpit and out, we are told that all novels should have a
moral and be written to serve some end. So we have novels
on religion, war, marriage, divorce, socialism, theosophy,
woman's rights, and other topics without end. It is not
enough that the preachers and lecturers shall tell us how
to think and act; the novelist must try his hand at preaching, too. He starts out with a theory, and every scene and
incident must be bent to make it plain that the authbr
believes certain things. The doings of the men and women
in the book are secondary to the views the author holds.
The theories may be very true, but the poor characters who
must adjust their lives to these ideal states are sadly warped
and twisted out of shape.
The realist would teach a lesson, too, but he would not
violate a single fact for all the theories in the world, for a
theory could not be true if it did violence to life. He paints
his picture so true and perfect that all men who look upon it
know that it is a likeness of the world that they have seen;
they know that these are men and women and little children
whom they meet upon the streets, and they see the conditions
of their lives, and the moral of the picture sinks deeply into
their minds.
There are so-called scientists who make a theory, and then
gather facts to prove their theory true; the real scientist
patiently and carefully gathers facts, and then forms a theory
to explain and harmonize these facts.
All life bears a moral, and the true artist must teach a
lesson with his every fact. Some contend that the moral
teacher must not tell the truth; the realist holds that there
can be no moral teaching like the truth.
The world has grown tired of preachers and sermons;
to-day it asks for facts. It has grown tired of fairies and
angels, and asks for flesh and blood. It looks on life as it
exists to-day - both its beauty and its horror, its joy and its
sorrow. It wishes to see all; not only the prince and the
millionnaire, but the laborer and the beggar, the master and
the slave. We see the beautiful and the ugly, and know
what the world is and what it ought to be, and the true
picture which the author saw and painted stirs the heart to
holier feelings and to grander thoughts.
It is from the realities of life that the -highest idealities
are born. The philosopher may reason with unerring logic



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and show us where the world is wrong; the economist may
tell us of the progress and poverty that go hand in hand.
But these are theories, and the abstract cannot suffer pain.
Dickens went out into the streets of the great city,
and found poor little Jo sweeping the crossing with his
broom. All around were the luxury and elegance which the
rich have appropriated to themselves, - great mansions, fine
carriages, beautiful dresses, - but in all the great city of
houses and homes poor little Jo could find no place to lay
his head. His home was in the street; and every time he
halted for a moment in the throng, the policeman touched
him with his club and bade him to " move on."    At last,
ragged, wretched, nearly dead with " moving on," he sank
down upon the cold stone steps of a magnificent building
erected for " The Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign
Parts." As we think of wretched, ragged Jo in the midst of
all this luxury and wealth, we see the tens of thousands of
other waifs in the great cities of the world, and we condemn
the so-called civilization of the earth that builds the mansions of the rich and great upon the rags and miseries of
the poor.
The true realist cannot worship at the shrine of power
nor prostitute his gifts for gold. With an artist's eye he
sees the world exactly as it is, and he tells the story faithfully
to life. He feels for every heart that beats, else he could
not paint them  as he does. It takes the soul to warm a
statue into life and make living flesh and coursing blood, and
each true picture that he paints or draws makes the world a
better place in which to live.
Read Daudet and Flaubert and Maupassant, and you can
see living images that think and move and feel. It needs
no analysis of character to tell us what they think. You
see them move, and you know the motives that inspired the
act. You can hear the murmuring of the waterfall, no
louder than it ought to be; and as you look upon the foliage
of the trees, you fancy that the leaves are almost stirred by
a gentle southern breeze.
You can see and feel the social life, and the gulf that
separates the rich and poor. If you would know the differences that divide French country life, look but a moment
at the party which Flaubert paints, and you can see the gay
faces and rich costumes of the dancers in the hall, and the



REALISM IN LITERATURE AND ART.         111
stolid countenances and uncouth garbs of the peasants who
look through the windows, from their world outside, at this
fairy scene within.
The artists of the realistic school have a sense so fine that
they cannot help catching the inspiration that is filling all
the world's best minds with the hope of greater justice and
more equal social life. With the vision of the seer they feel
the coming dawn, when true equality shall reign upon the
earth - the time when democracy shall no more be confined
to constitutions and to laws, but will be a part of human
life.
The greatest artists of the world to-day are telling facts
and painting scenes that cause humanity to stop and think,
and ask why one shall be a master and another a serf -
why a portion of the world should toil and spin, should wear
away their strength and lives, that the rest may live in
idleness and ease.
The old-time artists thought they served humanity by
painting saints and Madonnas and angels from the myths
they conjured in their brains. They painted war with long
lines of soldiers dressed in new uniforms, and looking plump
and gay, and a battle scene was always drawn from the side
of the victorious camp, with the ensign proudly planting his
bright colors on the rampart of the foe. One or two were
dying, but always in their comrades' arms and listening to
shouts of victory that filled the air, and thinking of the
righteous cause for which they fought and died. In the
last moments they dreamed of pleasant burial-yards at home,
and of a grave kept green by loving, grateful friends, and a
smile of joy lit up their fading faces, so sweet that it seemed
a hardship not to die in war. They painted peace as a whitewinged dove settling down upon a cold and "4farewell" earth.
Between the two it was plain which choice a boy would
make, and thus art served the state and king.
But Verestchagin painted war so true to life that as we
look upon the scene we long for peace. He painted war as
war has ever been and will ever be - a horrible and ghastly
scene, where men, drunk with blind frenzy, - which rulers
say is patriotic pride, - and made mad by drums and fifes
and smoke and shot and shell and flowing blood, seek to
maim and wound and kill, because a ruler gives the word.
He paints a battle-field a field of life and death, a field of



112

THE ARENA.

carnage and of blood. And who are these who fight like
fiends and devils driven to despair? And what cause is this
that makes these men forget that they are men, and vie with
beasts to show their cruel thirst for blood? They shout of
home and native land; but they have no homes, and the
owners of their native land exist upon their toil and blood.
The nobles and princes, for whom this fight is waged, are
sitting far away upon a hill, beyond the reach of shot and
shell; and from this spot they watch their slaves pour out
their blood to satisfy their rulers' pride and lust of power.
And what is the enemy they fight? Men, like themselves,
who blindly go to death at another king's command; slaves
who have no land, who freely give their toil or blood -
whichever one their rulers may demand. These fighting
soldiers have no cause for strife, but their rulers live by
kindling in their hearts a love of native land- a love which
makes them hate their brother laborers of other lands, and
dumbly march to death, to satisfy a king's caprice.
But let us look once more, after the battle has been
fought.  Here we see the wreck and ruin of the strife.
The field is silent now, given to the dead, the beast of prey,
and night. A young soldier lies upon the ground. The
snow is falling fast around his form. The lonely mountain
peaks rise up on every side. The wreck of war is all about.
His uniform is soiled and stained. A spot of red is seen
upon his breast. It is not the color that his country wove
upon his coat to catch his eye and bait him to his death; it
is hard and jagged and cold; it is his life's blood that leaked
out through a hole that followed the point of a sabre to his
heart. His form is stiff and cold, for he is dead. The cruel
wound and the icy air have done their work. The government which took his life taught this'poor boy to love his
native land. As a child he dreamed of scenes of glory and
of power, and the great, wide world just waiting to fall
captive to his magic strength.  He dreamed of war and
strife, and of victory and fame. If he should die, kind
hands would smooth his brow, and loving friends would
keep his grave and memory green, because he died in war.
But no human eye was there at last, as the mist of night
and the mist of death shut out the lonely mountains from
his sight. The snow is all around, and the air above is gray
with falling flakes. These would soon hide him from the



REALISM IN LITERATURE AND ART.

world; and when the summer time should come again, no
one could tell his bleaching bones from all the rest. The
only life upon the scene is the buzzard, slowly circling in
the air above his head, waiting to make sure that death has
come. The bird looks down upon the boy, upon the eyes
which first looked out upon the great, wide world, and which
his mother fondly kissed. Upon these eyes the buzzard will
begin his meal.
Not all the world is beautiful, and not all of life is good.
The true artist has no right to choose only the lovely spots,
and make us think that this is life. He must bring the
world before our eyes, and make us read and think. As he
loves the true and noble, he must show the false and bad.
As he yearns for true equality, he must paint the master and
the slave. He must tell the truth; must tell it all; must
tell it o'er and o'er again, till the deafest ear will listen and
the dullest mind will think. He must not swerve to please
the world by painting only pleasant sights and telling only
lovely tales. He must paint and write and work and think
until the world shall learn so much, and grow so good, that
the true will be all beautiful, and all the real be ideal.



TO ROBERT G. INGERSOLL.
BY EDGAR FAWCETT.
THoU hast peered at all creeds of the past, and each one hath
seemed futile and poor
As a firefly that fades on a marsh, as a wind that makes moan on
a moor;
For thy soul in its large love to man, in its heed of his welfare
and cheer,
Bids him hurl to the dust whence they sprang all idolatries fashioned by fear.
Not the eagle can gaze at the sun with more dauntless and challenging eyes
Than thou at the radiance of truth when it rifts the dark durance
of lies.
From thy birth wert thou tyranny's foe, and its deeds were disdain in thy sight;
Thou art leagued with the dawn as the lark is - like him dost
thou leap to the light!
Having marked how the world's giant woes for the worst part
are bigotry's brood,
Thou hast hated, yet never with malice, and scorned but in service
of good.
Thy compassionate vision saw keen how similitude always hath
dwelt
Between fumes poured from altars to God and from flames haggard martyrs have felt.
What more splendid a pity than thine for the anguish thy race
hath endured
Through allegiance to spectres and wraiths from the cohorts of
fancy conjured?
At the bold pomps of temple and church is it wonder thy wisdom
hath mourned,
Since the architect, Ignorance, reared them, and Fright, the pale
sculptor, adorned?
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