First, of the foundation of art in moral character. Of course art-gift
and amiability of disposition are two different things; for a good man
is not necessarily a painter, nor does an eye for color necessarily imply
an honest mind. But great art implies the union of both powers; it is
the expression, by an art-gift, of a pure soul. If the gift is not
there, we can have no art at all; and if the soul--and a right soul too--
is not there, the art is bad, however dexterous.

107. But also, remember, that the art-gift itself is only the result of
the moral character of generations. A bad woman may have a sweet voice;
but that sweetness of voice comes of the past morality of her race. That
she can sing with it at all, she owes to the determination of laws of
music by the morality of the past. Every act, every impulse, of virtue
and vice, affects in any creature, face, voice, nervous power, and vigor
and harmony of invention, at once. Perseverance in rightness of human
conduct renders, after a certain number of generations, human art
possible; every sin that clouds it, be it ever so little a one; and
persistent vicious living and following of pleasure render, after a
certain number of generations, all art impossible. Men are deceived by
the long-suffering of the laws of nature, and mistake, in a nation, the
reward of the virtue of its sires, for the issue of its own sins. The
time of their visitation will come, and that inevitably; for, it is
always true, that if the fathers have eaten sour grapes, the children's
teeth are set on edge. And for the individual, as soon as you have
learned to read, you may, as I said, know him to the heart's core,
through his art. Let his art-gift be never so great, and cultivated to
the height by the schools of a great race of men, and it is still but a
tapestry thrown over his own being and inner soul; and the bearing of it
will show, infallibly, whether it hangs on a man or on a skeleton. If
you are dim-eyed, you may not see the difference in the fall of the folds