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So pois'd in air, as if on air it stood
To shew its gold and purple wing.

She hears the bird without a wish to snare,
But rather on the azure air

To mount, and with it wander there
To some untrodden land;

As if it told her in its happy song
Of pleasures strange that never can belong
To aught of sight or touch of hand.

Now the young Soul her mighty power shall
And outward things around her move,
Pure ministers of purer love,

And make the heart her home;

Or to the meaner Senses sink a slave,
To do their bidding, though they madly crave
Through hateful scenes of vice to roam.

But, Ursulina, thine the better choice;
Thine eyes so speak, as with a voice:
Thy heart may still in Earth rejoice
And all its beauty love;

But no, not all this fair enchanting Earth,

With all its spells, can give the rapture birth

prove,

That waits thy conscious soul above.-wA. ALLSTON.

Of the Roman Lady reading Tasso, we say less than of the Spanish Girl, only because the subject admits of less description, and not because it is at all inferior. It has a charm of expression and of perfect reality, that might make it in time even a greater favorite. Such pictures soon become to us something more than mere forms of inanimate beauty. The mind of the artist has endowed them with a portion of his own existence; and the places in which they have been familiar objects, seem, in their absence, as if deserted by an accustomed friend. This emanation of mind is the true and only lasting criterion of greatness in the arts. It is all that elevates them above mere mechanical employments. No beauty of design, no splendor or delicacy of color can compensate for the want of this communion of intellect between the artist and those who look on his works; and where these adscititious excellencies seem to be the characteristics of greatness, they are so only because they are united with a higher power. We admire Titian as the greatest of colorists; but who ever gave to portrait, and even to landscape, such fascination of expression? We read and write about the chiar'oscuro of Correggio as the wonder of his works; but he was, more than all other painters,

a poet in his art; and the magic of his light and shade is but the appropriate, we had almost said the necessary vehicle of the conceptions of a mind of the highest order. Neither color, design, grace, chiar'oscuro, nor even expression gave to Raphael the rank of the first of painters; in each he was surpassed by some one of those who yet were all his inferiors in that dramatic power, by which he communicates immediately with the mind of the spectator.

And this exercise of mental power is by no means confined to historical composition. It may and must be put forth in a great degree in landscape and even in portrait-painting, if we would raise them to the dignity of liberal arts. The mere taking of likenesses, whether of persons or places, is a good and useful trade, and, diligently pursued, deserves success like any other honest industry. But let not those who follow it flatter themselves that they are pursuing the Fine Arts, or complain of the want of taste in the public if they are not patronized. A certain quantity of that labor will always be wanted and paid for; but to purchase such works is no proof of taste, and greatly to admire them shows a sad want of it. An artist of genuine power may and often must do much drudgery of that kind for bread; and to do it is no disgrace. But let him remember that the money he gets for it, and the wonder of the ignorant, are all the rewards he is to expect. If he claim a higher recompense, he must bring higher powers into exercise. Let us not be thought to undervalue portrait or landscape painting as branches of the art, nor, least of all, to speak disrespectfully of those who practise them. We merely wish, that a distinction may be made between the different modes of practice; and particularly to call the attention of artists in all departments of educating and exercising the mind as well as the hand, if they would attain any desirable rank in their profession.

We ardently desire to see the Arts flourish in our country. We think much of their influence on the character of those who are merely taught to enjoy their productions, and by that knowledge are led to a closer observation and new perception of the beauties of nature. But the fact that they furnish another object of intellectual labor to those who practise them is, in our minds, a consideration of at least equal importance. We suffer in this country for the want of such employment, and the want is daily becoming more urgent, as the number of

educated men increases. The several professions are crowded to suffocation. One who desires that his children may gain a livelihood by the labor of the mind, finds it more and more difficult to select for them a vocation which promises both bread, and the consideration in society which such occupations secure. The difficulty of getting an education sufficient for any of the present pursuits of life, is much less than that of finding what to do with it when obtained. We want objects on which to expend the mental energy we can create; we want places to be filled by those who would devote themselves to the cultivation of the mind; something of a liberal cast besides law, physic, theology and politics. If employments for the welleducated are not multiplied, education will be neglected; because, cheap as it is, it will cost too much if no money can be made of it. Literature and the Arts will in time supply this want here as they have elsewhere. The sooner this can be done the better, and the greater the number that can be supported by them, the greater will be the average of education and intelligence in the community. In this view, as means of increasing the number of educated men, we look on all the liberal Arts as matters of vast importance. To open a new or extend an old field of profitable intellectual industry, is one of the greatest benefits that can be conferred on mankind.

But, much as we rejoice in the progress of the Fine Arts, we confess we care comparatively little about the merely mechanical labor that is sometimes called by that name. We do not think the country would be much benefited or its character much elevated, if our artists could paint brass-kettles as well as Ostade, or dead game as well as Snyders. The painter who copies such things, is indeed likely to be somewhat more refined than the tinker or cook who handles the originals; but he is still further removed in an opposite direction from the artist, who endows with form and color the beautiful objects of his own invention, or embodies in portrait the intellect and character as well as the features of the face. We would not absolutely denounce what is called still-life painting, but we value it very lightly; and we protest against admitting among productions of the Fine Arts, those works, of which the whole supposed merit consists in an imitation of what is in itself entirely insignificant, and the highest aim of which is to produce a momentary deception.

The other branches of painting, landscape and portrait as

well as composition of figures, are properly ranked among liberal arts, because in all of them the success of the artist depends mainly on mental cultivation. We do not mean that it will give him the necessary delicacy of organization, if nature has denied it; for in nothing has she more plainly distinguished between men from their birth, than in their different capacities to acquire the imitative arts. But we mean that all her liberality is thrown away when it falls on the ignorant and uncultivated. As to historical composition, the truth is so obvious, that nothing more need be said; it depends on education for all its materials, as well as for the manner of using them. In landscape it may not appear quite so clear at first, for it may seem that the most uneducated are capable of truly observing and imitating inanimate nature. But even if that were all the art of the landscape painter, the mere manner of execution, and still more the selection of objects, would distinguish at once the rude from the cultivated mind. But when we consider the various sources to which composition in landscape is indebted for its charms, how it must combine, vary and contrast the forms and colors of nature, what wonderful effects may be produced by the mere distribution of light and shade, and, more than all, how it is elevated by historical and poetical associations, we see the immense distance that must separate the educated artist in this department, from the mere observer and copyist of natural scenery. Perhaps this aid of association has become more necessary to give value to this kind of painting, than it was formerly. There is undoubtedly some truth in the remark, though as a complaint it is unreasonable, that we value old pictures partly because they are old. Probably the same things, produced in our own times, would not excite the same enthusiasm, though we think the experiment has not yet been tried. If this be so, the remedy for the artist is, not to complain, but to take advantage of it. Let him, if he thinks the public unduly admire old paintings, contrive to recall them in his own works, not by servile imitation, but by resorting to similar sources in nature. Let him learn to revive in new combinations, forms which have become consecrated objects of taste. All invention consists in new arrangement; and when certain classes of objects have become by association peculiarly agreeable to cultivated minds, as much originality may be displayed and more pleasure imparted

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by using them as the elements of composition, than by adopting others in which the same interest is yet to be created. It is for this reason, that the most beautiful composition of American scenery is inferior in interest to an Italian landscape; one is a thing of mere natural beauty, while the other combines a high degree of that with objects of other and more intellectual pleasure. We know that some of our artists and of those who love the Arts, entertain a different opinion on this point, and cherish a patriotic predilection for their native scenery; and we have seen them sometimes a little fretful at the preference given to that of other countries. But the best landscape painters of England and France have gone to Italy for the subjects of their best pictures; and we cannot believe that our own artists are to gain any thing but a very temporary popularity, by discarding the aid of associations which add their greatest charm to the works of established reputation.

In portrait painting, there is the same distinction between the artist and the mere mechanic, though there is not the same choice of subject. When a face is to be portrayed that displays intellect and character, the Art rises to a level with the highest. He can have little notion of the power of painting, who does not perceive at once, the necessity of a high degree of mind in one who undertakes to do justice to the originals of some of the portraits in this Exhibition.

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We have made these remarks, not because we think them new, but because the Exhibition shows that our artists need to be reminded of them. It shows more skill than knowledge; more care to execute well, than to conceive what is worth executing. Of the new pictures, among a very few better specimens, there are abundance of portraits that look as if their originals were wholly taken up with the thought of having their likenesses painted; and of landscapes, of which the forms and colors seem chosen for no reason but to fill a canvass. Exhibition taken together is better than several of the preceding, but that is owing to a judicious selection from the pictures. exhibited before, and not to the improvements apparent in the new ones. We should, however, do injustice to Alexander, not to mention his portrait of Captain Morgan, and that of a lady, as marking great progress; and to Osgood, a young artist, to overlook one of his, which is remarkably happy in exhibiting the character and expression of the original, though defective in color.

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