Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 11.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

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[392] pre-eminently practical as to be ‘incapable of an inutility’; and yet along with this we have combined a sentiment which is wanting to the Englishman. Youth and struggle and poverty have held in abeyance the art spirit heretofore; but how rapid has been the advance in its direction, now that wealth has relaxed the mere necessity for bread-winning, and offers the leisure without which no arts can be fostered!

As a matter of course, or rather as a matter of history, Southern lands have been in large measure the chosen homes of beauty, luxury and leisure; and hence it follows legitimately that they should be the homes of all the higher arts. Compare Northern Europe with Southern through the Middle Ages on to the Cinque-Cento period, and how vast the difference! To be sure the Renaissance gave Germany an Albrecht Durer; but for one artist north of the Po, hundreds might be counted south of it. Where were England's old masters, when Spain, Venice, Tuscany, were reckoning theirs by scores?

If, then, art existed in our own country at all, we might naturally look for it in the Southern portion, where much, in time past, conduced to foster it—wealth for the more distinctively marked and limited upper classes, refinement, generally diffused education for such, and only two abundant leisure. But if we do look for it in the South, we fail to find it. The entire art spirit, with but few exceptions, has been confined to the North. Our poets, painters, sculptors, as a general thing, have been born above the charmed ‘line.’

We allow the fact, without inquiring after the solution, farther than to say that we believe physical indolence has had very much to do with it. Now that times have changed, and such necessity for individual effort has arisen as did not exist two decades ago, we may hope for better things, of which we already see the well-defined promise. From the carcass of the slain lion may be drawn the honeycomb of those beautiful arts that shall sweeten all our future.

We are awakening, it is certain, to the importance of cherishing those in our midst who have won for themselves such reputations as reflect credit upon their mother-land. Among the first of Southern sculptures—nay, it is not invidious to say the very first of these—is the Virginian Valentine. Galt, of Norfolk, was cut off in the days of his early promise. Ezekiel, of Richmond, is building up his fame in Rome. But Valentine has already achieved, abroad and at