In illustration of the subtle influences which here come into play, a late member of this Academy once said to me—­“Let Raphael take a crayon in his hand and sweep a curve; let an engineer take tracing paper and all other appliances necessary to accurate reproduction, and let him copy that curve—­his line will not be the line of Raphael.”  In these matters, through lack of knowledge, I must speak, more or less, as a fool, leaving it to you, as wise men, to judge what I say.  Rules and principles are profitable and necessary for the guidance of the growing artist and for the artist full-grown; but rules and principles, I take it, just as little as geology and botany, can create the artist.  Guidance and rule imply something to be guided and ruled.  And that indefinable something which baffles all analysis, and which when wisely guided and ruled emerges in supreme excellence, is individual genius, which, to use familiar language, is “the gift of God.” [Cheers.]

In like manner all the precepts of Bacon, linked together and applied in one great integration, would fail to produce a complete man of science.  In this respect Art and Science are identical—­that to reach their highest outcome and achievement they must pass beyond knowledge and culture, which are understood by all, to inspiration and creative power, which pass the understanding even of him who possesses them in the highest degree. [Cheers.]

GEORGE ROE VAN DE WATER

DUTCH TRAITS

[Speech of Rev. Dr. George R. Van de Water at the eighth annual dinner of the Holland Society of New York, January 15, 1893.  The President, Judge Augustus Van Wyck, said:  “The next toast is:  ’Holland—­a lesson to oppressors, an example to the oppressed, and a sanctuary for the rights of mankind.’  This toast will be responded to by one of the greatest stars in New York’s constellation of the Embassadors of Him on High—­Rev. Dr. George R. Van de Water, rector of St. Andrew’s Church, Harlem.”]

MR. PRESIDENT AND MEMBERS OF THE HOLLAND SOCIETY:—­One loves to observe a fitness in things.  There is manifest fitness in one coming to New York from Harlem to speak to the members of the Holland Society and their friends.  There is also manifest fitness in taking the words of this country’s earliest benefactor, the Marquis de Lafayette, and, removing them from their original association with this fair and favored land, applying them to that little but lovely, lowly yet lofty, country of the Netherlands.  Geologists tell us that, minor considerations waived, the character of a stream can be discerned as well anywhere along its course as at its source.  Whether this be true or not, anything that can be said of the fundamental principles of liberty, upon which our national fabric has been built, can be said with even increased emphasis of the free States of the Netherlands.

From the Dutch our free America has secured the inspiration of her chartered liberties.  Of the Dutch, then, we can appropriately say, as Lafayette once said of free America, “They are a lesson to oppressors, an example to the oppressed, and a sanctuary for the rights of mankind.”