The Nelson Evening Mail. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1868.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume III, Issue 38, 15 February 1868, Page 2

The Nelson Evening Mail. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1868.

I Mb Justice Richmond, in the eloquent address which he delivered on Wednesday evening at the Institute, feelingly expressed his sense of the very partial nature ' of the education at present imparted to the youth of this colony, and complained that it did not bring into action all the ', faculties of their minds. It must be obvious that the strictures of the learned Judge are all too true. The present system of education does indeed leave one of the 'five gateways of kuowledge' neglected and comparatively useless. It does not inculcate, as the more comprehensive system of theaucient Greeks used to do, the humanising lessons of art, and teach the eye to select and admire whatever is beautiful in form, elegant in design, harmonious in color, exquisite in proportion, and graceful either intrinsically or iu relation to surrounding objects. And yet this is a matter of considerable importance. To form and gradually elevate the taste of a people is to refine their manners and habits of thought. To promote an enlightened appreciation of whatever is truly admirable, either in nature or in art, is to enlarge the sum of human enjoyment, to assist in supplanting grosser I pleasures, to divert men's minds from the exclusive pursuit of material objects, to distribute wealth by * variety of new channels, and to cause it to be regarded by those who are most successful in its acquisition less as an end than as a means to an end. It makes all the difference between a miserly Elwes and a Lorenzo di Medici, the one resembling a fountain of fertilizing water, and the other a stagnant pool, as useless as unsightly. The Governments of Europe, without exception, ostentatiously supply their subjects with such intellectual food, quite as much from motives of policy, as from a love of art, but it is different with us. Hitherto the Government of this colony has been in the habit, whether rightly or wrongly, of looking on these higher luxuries of life as things which a free and prosperous people might take or leave, as they would a country-house or an operabox, but which ifc was as little bound to supply, and consequently we can point to no step which it has taken to develop the taste of our people. This has been very far from being the case in Australia, though even there, especially in New South Wales, the development of the popular taste has had its commencement in private impulses. And perhaps it is as well that it has been so, for odious is the luxury, even in a worldly sense, that has not the redeeming quality of art. Australia would indeed be the most detestable of 'nouveaux riches/ did nofc not apply some of the mammon her prosperity has given her to obtain that which may help to correct it. There are two ways in which a people may honor art— by the development of native genina, by such means as the Judge proposed on Wednesday night, and by the acquisition of works which shall kindle

J and inform it, as suggested by Dr. Irvine. Would that we could hear that a sum of I money had been placed on the Estimates, \ for the purchase of works of art, preliminary to the establishment of a public gallery iu this city I The beginning would be a good one, and honorable members of all shades of opinion in the Provincial Council would, we should imagine, concur in such a vote. In such an insti- ! tutiou, although those who resorted to it would be chiefly Nelson people, a large J number of the visitors who entered its I walls would be attracted to them irom a | distance, and it would thus assume the j character not of a mere local aud provin- ; oial, b«t rather of a colonial gallery. Nor | would the purposes of such a gallery be recreative and educational only. The i collection of objects of art would have its utilitarian uses, for the day will come when art manufacture will be established in our midst, aud when our ceramic | ware, our metal castings, and our textile fabrics will iudicate the beneficial results accruing from the access which our designers and artisans may have had to the best models and tbe purest examples of correctness in drawing and color. We may reasonably flatter ourselves that we possess a population in this province anxious to avail itself of every opportunity of mental culture, and deserving to be supplied with increased means of gratifying that desire. With growing intelligence and improved tastes, we should witness a corresponding growth of temperate and thoughtful habits among our people ,• and it would be, far pleasanter sight to see a working mason 'dazzled and drunk with beauty * to quote the words of Byron, whilst contemplating a cast of the 'statue that enchants the world,' than to see the same individual reel out of a tavern intoxicated by a far more hurtful cause of inebriety. Let it also be remembered that the development of political freedom has invariably accompanied the highest development of national art. To quote the eloquent rhapsody which Walter Savage Landor I puts into the mouth of Michel Angelo : — The arts cannot long exist without the advent j of freedom. From every new evacuation from | whence a statue rises, there rises, simultaneously, a bright vision of the age that produces it ; a strong desire to bring it back again ; a throbbing love, an inflaming regret, a resolute despair, beautiful as Hope herself ; and Hope comes, too, be- | hind. Clothed in glorified bodies of living marble, I instructors arise out of the earth, deriders of barj barism, conquerors of time, heirs and co-equals of i eternity.