Full Download Solution Manual For Fundamentals of Financial Management 14th Edition Eugene F Brigham Joel F Houston PDF Full Chapter
Full Download Solution Manual For Fundamentals of Financial Management 14th Edition Eugene F Brigham Joel F Houston PDF Full Chapter
Brigham Jo
A most important event in the artistic life of the South, and one
whose ultimate results are likely to be of such a far-reaching nature
that is impossible to even roughly estimate their valve at the present
time, occurred on January 18th., 1899. On that day a group of
representative and influential gentlemen met at the residence of Mr.
Theodore Marburg and founded what is known as The Municipal Art
Association of the City of Baltimore. Although the idea of such an
organization is not a new one,—such associations already exist and
are in a flourishing condition in New York, Boston and other Northern
Cities,—no such society can be found elsewhere in the South.
Baltimore can therefore for once be justly congratulated on having
shown a spirit of real enterprise and civic pride, which, sooner or
later, is sure to be followed by all her Southern sisters.
The main object of this new municipal art association is to receive
and collect funds for the beautifying of the public squares and
buildings of the City. It will also use its utmost endeavors—through
experts and disinterested, broad-minded laymen—to have such
funds judiciously expended. It is proposed to enlarge the
membership, which is somewhat limited at present, as much as
possible and at the same time, to form a woman’s auxiliary branch
that will work in harmony with the main organization, composed
exclusively of men. It is estimated that a body of at least two
thousand public-spirited men and women can thus be found and
eventually welded into a powerful association devoted to the very
best artistic interests of the people of Baltimore. If this calculation is
correct, a considerable amount of money will accumulate annually in
the treasury of the society, solely from the collection of the yearly
dues, which have been wisely fixed at the small sum of $5.00. In
order to increase the association’s resources much more rapidly
than is otherwise practicable, it has been resolved that life
membership may be procured by those who are willing to pay the
sum of $100.00, and that the title of “Patron” will be bestowed on all
those who are liberal enough to donate the sum of $1000, or more.
The money so collected from dues and voluntary contributions is to
be carefully husbanded until the amount becomes sufficiently large
to justify the directors in opening a worthy competition for the
decoration of some public building, the erection of a statue, or the
building of a monument of real and lasting artistic merit. It may not
be possible to procure enough money to purchase such a work of art
annually, but it will be a question of only a few years at most before
the results of this much needed society will become evident to the
least observant. It is with feelings of the greatest pleasure that we
commend this highly laudable and intelligent movement to the
people of Baltimore, and we hope they will give it their unswerving
and enthusiastic support.
GEORGE MEREDITH.
Art and artists are continually suffering at the hands of “belletristic
triflers.” Phrase-making is the passion of the day; and as a falsity or
a half-truth concerning literary matters is so much easier of utterance
than the awkward whole truth, that demands lengthy qualifications,
we seldom find the latter gaining in the race with glittering
mendacities. It is not, for instance, the saner body of Matthew
Arnold’s criticism that has been generally absorbed; it is his more or
less questionable catch-words and airy brevities of characterization.
These seem apt to the understanding because they fit so well the
tongue; their convenience gives them their fatal persuasion. The
world likes a criticism in little, a nut-shell verdict, something of
intellectual color that can readily be memorized for dinner-table
parlance, the vague generalization that conceals the specific
ignorance. Macaulay’s “rough pistolling ways and stamping
emphasis,” Scott’s “bastard epic style,” and the conception of
Shelley as “a beautiful and ineffectual angel beating in the void his
luminous wings in vain” have thus come to be solemn verities with
many who care more to talk literature than to read it. A whilom gaiety
of journalism served to convince the public that Whitman’s voice was
a “barbaric yawp”; and consequently his “Leaves of Grass” is seldom
glimpsed save in a spirit of derision. These are some of the unhappy
results of our latter-day strain after “a pregnant conciseness” of
language.
George Meredith like many of his predecessors has suffered much
from the thumb-nail criticism of the day. His judges are apt to insist
upon his mannerisms and to insist on nothing else. The generality of
readers hearing so much about the “mereditherambic style” rest
under the belief that this writer is a tripod of frenzied incoherence;
that he lacks, especially as a poet, both style and substance. That
this is far from being the truth about Meredith’s verse anyone who
has read it with attention well knows. Not only does much of it fulfil
the requisites of orthodox style, but it contains, even more than his
novels, the vital convictions of his mind. Indeed, it is in his verse we
come nearest the real teacher, as we come nearest the man in his
relation to life at large—to the general scheme of things.
A realization of George Meredith’s poetical virtues by the reader of
real literature is due a writer who has proved his claim to genius in a
monumental series of novels, a writer who, while not acceptable to
all, has yet many admirers that regard him as one of the strongest
towers of modern thought. One can, however, scarcely hope for
more than a limited acceptance of his poems; that he should be
popular in the ordinary meaning of the word, as some poets are
taken to heart by the sons of men, is indeed scarcely conceivable.
Such popularity, which is after all an equivocal tribute for the most
part, Mr. Meredith has never aimed to secure. His has been a life of
remoteness from profane ambitions, a life steadfast to the standard
early set for himself—a standard of the highest kind.
And yet, while Mr. Meredith may not exercise the attraction of
many other poets for the general reader, few will deny that in his
fruits of song one tastes the flavor of an original, deep-seeing mind;
that there is in the character of many of his poems what well rewards
the serious attention necessary to their complete comprehension.
Difficult in part they may seem in the casual reading, owing to
combined entanglement of rhetoric and ideas, but few who press
their inquiry past the line of a first natural discouragement of perusal
can fail totally to be affected by the spell they cast over the mind.
Beauty there is unquestionably lurking beneath what seems often a
wilful obscuration of theme. Coming here and there upon some
apparently dry metrical husk of thought, there falls, as from some
frost-bitten flower-pod, a shower of fairy seeds that lodge as a vital
donation within the remembrance. Groping in the midst of a
Meredithian mystery, even the less sensitive ear catches a ritornello
of exquisite, wholly seductive sound. For it is not so infrequently that
like his “The Lark Ascending.”
THOMAS HARDY.
Genius proves itself as much by the tenacity of its taste for one
handicraft as by anything else; it evidences itself not so much in
versatility as in volume. It is rather a mark of mediocre mentality
when a man must needs lay his hand to the doing of this and that.
Genius, as a rule, has no such itch; generally speaking, he is content
to fulfill himself in one given direction—to maintain his being in a
single sphere with a passion superior to that of his fellows. Thus it is
we seldom find after leaving the regions of facile talent writers whose
inspiration expresses itself in prose and poetical form with equal
seriousness; one is the vehicle of the divine voice, the other a mere
diversion. Goethe, it is true, has given us “Wilhelm Meister,” Victor
Hugo was a great poet as well as a great romancer, George
Meredith, as we have endeavored to show, is a singer of peculiar
force as well as a master novelist, and among the later literary
figures of especial power we have Kipling, whose prose and poetry
about balance the scale of worth; but the exceptions are few, and the
logic of letters tends to show oneness of aim in the case of genius.
Thomas Hardy undoubtedly belongs to the ranks of great
novelists; his series of romances has been laid on the firm basis of
beauty and knowledge; he has hallowed a part of England peculiarly
rich in unique personality and natural charm; it belongs to him and
the heirship of his memory as validly as though it had been granted
him by the Crown. So well has he filled the office of fictionist that
there seems no need of an attempt on his part to enforce his fame
by appearing as a poet. The publication of “Wessex Poems” (New
York: Harper & Bros.) is indeed no positive declaration of such
ambition; it is perhaps put forth hesitatingly rather in response to
public demand than because of a conviction of its intrinsic merit. It
represents the fruit of odd moments punctuating a long literary
career. The character of the volume is what one might have
anticipated, although had it been of a wholly different sort it could
scarcely have created surprise. There are two Hardys—the man on
whose heart weighs the melancholy facts of human existence and
the happier artist in close and peaceful communion with the sweet
infinite spirit of nature. It is the former Hardy that figures in the
volume singularly unsoftened by any intimation of the other phase of
the writer.
The character of Hardy himself as existing behind the art-self is
one that inspires a peculiar interest. One would know it not simply to
gratify a curiosity that, indeed, is too much indulged of late in lines of
gross private revelation, but to weigh the justice of the charge of
wilful pessimism so generally made against him. The gloomy brow of
Hardy’s art seems far from being of that impersonal sort which
makes much of the modern melancholy of literature inexcusable as a
mere degenerate seeking.
One feels inclined to say that Hardy’s prose is poetry and his
poetry prose. The present volume reveals little of the genuine lyric
gift, but the singing while labored is not without force and individual
color. Some of the ballads possess considerable spirit, and where
character is outlined it cuts the consciousness with Hardy’s well-
known skill of vivid portraiture; as for instance, “The Dance at the
Phœnix,” describing the passion of an aged dame for the pleasures
of her youth how she steals forth from the bed of her good man to
foot it gaily at the inn and how on her return at morn she dies from
over-exertion; “Her Death and After” where the lover of a dead
woman sacrifices her fair fame for the sake of rescuing her child
from the cruelties of a stepmother; and “The Burghers,” a tale of
guilty lovers, and a husband’s unique conduct. In these, as in other
poems of the kind, one can not but feel that Hardy would have put
the matter so much better in prose; which, indeed, is what in some
cases he has done. Some of the contemplative verse has a
quaintness of expression which suggests the sonnets of
Shakespeare; the lines are frequently lame, but every now and then
there is a really virile phrase. In true old English style are some of
the lyrics, of which “The Stranger’s Song” is perhaps the most
successful: