The Old State House was built in 1748. In it "the child
Independence was born." Here the royal governors of the province
and the royal council sat. It was from the balcony on the State
street side that the news of the Declaration of Independence was
proclaimed. Here, in 1835, William Lloyd Garrison found refuge
from a mob which had broken up an anti-slavery meeting and
threatened the life of this brave agitator.
On the corner of Washington and School streets is a quaint
building, the oldest now standing in Boston. It was erected in
1712 and is known as The Old Corner Book Store. Some of the
largest and most influential American publishing houses had
their inception in this building.
One must not fail to see Copley Square, the center of artistic,
literary and educational life in Boston. Fronting on this square
are Trinity Church, commonly known as Phillips Brooks' church,
as his pastorate there covered a period of twenty-two years. St.
Gaudens' statue of Brooks stands in front of the church. Also
facing this square is the chaste and classic front of the Boston
Public Library. Two of Saint Gaudens' groups adorn enormous
pedestals at either side of the entrance. Inside, on the walls
of the grand stairway, are magnificent paintings by John La
Farge and others, while on the four sides of the main public
room are mural paintings by La Farge, depicting the entire
history of Sir Arthur and the Holy Grail.
Just before crossing the river into Charlestown one's attention
is directed to a small triangular space surrounded by an iron
fence, no side of which is more than five or six feet long, in
which is growing a single tree. To this is attached a sign
proclaiming that "Dogs are not allowed in this park." Just
across the river, not far from Bunker Hill Monument, is the Navy
Yard.
The museum of Fine Arts in Boston contains many important works
from both the old and modern masters. Here you will see Turner's
"Slave Ship." "This picture has been the cause of more criticism
than any that has ever been brought to our shores. Every
gradation of opinion was expressed from Ruskin's extravagant
enconium where he says, 'I believe if I were induced to rest
Turner's immortality upon any single work I should choose the
Slave Ship; the color is absolutely perfect,' to the frank
disapproval of our own George Innes, when he says that it is
'the most infernal piece of clap-trap ever painted. There is
nothing in it. It is not even a fine bouquet of colors.' Some
one said it looks like a 'tortoise-shell cat having a fit in a
platter of tomatoes.' The lurid light that streams through the
mist of the angry sea intensifies a scene already too horrible."
Whoever has seen the peasants of France in their own harvest
fields near Barbizon will not fail to recognize the close
relations and the intimate knowledge Millet had of these humble
peasants. As you gaze at the great mounds of wheat with the
crowd of laborers resting, you seem to catch the very spirit of
the dignity of labor that the artist so admirably portrays in
all his work. You see not only these particular toilers but all
the laborers of earth, who by the sweat of their brows make the
earth yield her increase.
"His figures seem to be uncouth and of the earth; they are
children of Nature who have been so long in contact with the
elements and soil they seem to partake of the sternness of the
landscape quite as much as the sturdy oaks tried by the storms
and stress of unnumbered days of exposure. His Shepherdess is
also worth considering and represents his aim in art." These are
his words: "I would wish that the beings I represent should have
the air of being consecrated to their position, and that it
should be impossible to imagine that the idea could occur to
them of their being other than that which they are - the
beautiful is the suitable."
What poems of grace and beauty the works of Corot are! How well
he knew the trees, for he lived among them and loved them. No
other artist has so marvelously portrayed the very soul of trees
in their swaying, singing, dew-tipped branches. They are vast
harps through which wandering breezes murmur aeolian melodies,
"morning and evening anthems" to the Creator. His paintings have
a freshness and fragrance of the dawn; a mystery seems to hang
over them. The very spirit of the morn broods over that classic
landscape of his "Dante and Vergil." In the opening words of
Dame's Inferno he gives us the vivid setting of this wonderful
scene:
"Midway upon the journey of life he found himself within a
forest dark, for the straight forward pathway had been lost. He
wandered all night and in the morning found himself near the
foot of a mountain. He began the ascent but was met by a
panther, light and exceedingly swift. He was about to return,
but the time was the beginning of morning. A lion with uplifted
head, and a hungry she-wolf next he spied and rushed down toward
the lowlands where he beheld Vergil, who has come to guide him
to his beloved Beatrice."
One should pause to view the "Master Smith." One here sees in
very form the character Longfellow so clearly describes in his
"Village Blacksmith." It is to the eye what the melody of the
poem is to the ear, purest harmony that ever sings the dignity
of labor.
One should also pause to admire the "Sphinx" by Elihu Vedder,
"The Misses Boit" by Sargent, Winslow Homer's "Fog Warning,"
John W. Alexander's "Isabella and the Pot of Basil." This last
picture we love not only as a work of art but because it is the
subject of one of Keat's poems, "Isabel."
Isabella was a beautiful Florentine maiden who lived with her
two brothers.
