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1Author:  Cozzens Frederic S. (Frederic Swartwout) 1818-1869Requires cookie*
 Title:  Prismatics  
 Published:  2003 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: “The loveliest thing in life,” says a gifted author, “is the mind of a young child.” The most sensitive thing, he might have added, is the heart of a young artist. Hiding in his bosom a veiled and unspeakable beauty, the inspired Neophyte shrinks from contact with the actual, to lose himself in delicious reveries of an ideal world. In those enchanted regions, the great and powerful of the earth; the warrior-statesmen of the Elizabethan era; the steel-clad warriors of the mediæval ages; gorgeous cathedrals, and the luxuriant pomp of prelates, who had princes for their vassals; courts of fabled and forgotten kings; and in the deepening gloom of antiquity, the nude Briton and the painted Pict pass before his enraptured eyes. Women, beautiful creations! warm with breathing life, yet spiritual as angels, hover around him; Elysian landscapes are in the distance; but ever arresting his steps,—cold and spectral in his path,—stretches forth the rude hand of Reality. Is it surprising that the petty miseries of life weigh down his spirit? Yet the trembling magnet does not seek the north with more unerring fidelity than that “soft sentient thing,” the artist's heart, still directs itself amid every calamity, and in every situation, towards its cynosure—perfection of the beautiful. The law which guides the planets attracts the one; the other is influenced by the Divine mystery which called the universe itself into being; that sole attribute of genius—creation.
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