sought alike their inspiration and their reward in celebrating the deeds of the founders of the nation, or in illustrating the achievements and incidents connected with its early history; and in this way acting upon the minds of their country men, and being themselves in turn acted upon by the spirit they raised, they built up their nationality by a sort of mental accretion. There was a moral necessity that this should be so, and so it will ever be where nations gradually emerge from barbarism to civilization, and pass from civilization to refinement. But in this predicament we do not stand. We as a nation were not born but created, and that too not of new matter, but were taken riblike out of the side of sleeping England; and until divorced in spirit as well as body from our powerful master, we will be but a help meet for him, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. We started at a point which other nations were centuries in reaching; but that very advancement was adverse to our obtaining a national character in art, for we started as Englishmen and Frenchmen. The deeds and scenes which many hold up to our poets and painters as the proper subjects for their pens and pencils, are nothing to us as Americans, save that they took place on our soil, because they have no American character. The actors in them were Englishmen, Frenchmen and Indians. Not until after the Revolution did we begin to lose our provincial character. But seventy years have elapsed since then, during which time we have been in habits of constant intercourse with England, and receiving floods of emigrants from her shores; and were it not that we also received an equal number from other nations, thus making a sort of composite people of us, it would be rather to be wondered that we had differed so much, than so little, from her.

But of all the modes adopted to foster the growth of art among us, that of bestowing excessive praise upon, and claiming immunity from criticism for, works produced by native artists, because they are the product of native talent, seems to us not only the most futile, but the most unwise and injurious, to artists and to the national mind. If successful, it causes artists to be satisfied with mediocre attainments, by showing them that they can obtain fame and reward without further effort, and by a meretricious pandering to a morbid national vanity; and permanent

ly injures the public taste by training it to admire as excellence that which is inferiority; and if unsuccessful, it deprives the really deserving artist of the encouragement he merits, and the public of the good they would derive in giving that encouragement to a work which would alike form their taste and gratify their pride; for when those who watch have cried "wolf" so often without a cause, who will run when the real thing appears?

To this style of patriotism a large portion of our journals are very apt to incline, especially if any moral or sacred lesson be attempted by a native artist, and we fear many of them with their eyes open to its injurious effects upon the very arts which they would appear to foster and encourage. Several cases of this kind have occurred lately; but among paintings, none so marked as that of The Court of Death, "The Great Moral Picture," as it was called, by Mr. R. Peale, of Philadelphia.

This picture was exhibited here some twenty-five years ago, and met the appro bation of several high public functionaries, who were pleased to signify the same under their own proper hands and seals, besides giving pleasure to the public generally, as we are told. But eligi. bility to, and even distinction in, civic, executive or military dignity, nor even the being an integral unit in a great and free people just emerging from a successful war, does by no means imply a natu ral susceptibility to, or an educated taste in, the arts. And though we would implicitly defer to the Mayor and Common Council upon matters of city police, and if under sentence of death should consider the Governor's pardon a very admirable document, we should not consider their recommendation of a picture, an opera, or a poem, as having any virtue ex officio. The Court of Death is, we believe, still exhibited in some other parts of the country, and endorsed by paid puffs as "a great American work of art," and all good Americans are called upon to admire it; the more so because the artist was born" upon the anniversary of the natal day of his country." This is the method used to win admiration for a picture which, in spite of two or three good heads, is equally bad in design, drawing, grouping and anatomy, and which has the fatal fault of a complete lack of unity. The design of making Death appear as a stern, inflexible judge, is but feebly car

ried out, his face is stolid rather than stern, impassable rather than inflexible, and instead of intelligently issuing a decree, he seems to be vacantly gazing upon vacuity. The heads of Old Age and Virtue, which are the best in the composition, are nevertheless hard and woody; and Pleasure, instead of being portrayed with an alluring expression, and of full and graceful figure, is a simpering girl, whose meagre arms give good reason to suppose that her ample, ill-hung drapery conceals that which would not be enticing if displayed. The grouping produces an uncomfortable, uneasy feeling, from its want of proper balance. The drapery is ill hung, stiff and woody, and the light and shade very badly managed, or rather not managed at all. This picture is held up as a miracle of tone, color, grouping, anatomy and design. We should not have noticed it had it not been an instance so prominent and so pertinent to the remarks we last made. Mr. Peale's portrait of Chief Justice Marshall in the exhibition of this year, is a fine head; but the wilderness of canvas around it, the head of Solon at the top, and the "Fiat Justitia" at the bottom, are what might be expected of the painter of The Court of Death.

Within the last few months we have had an exhibition of paintings which must have awakened the patriotic pride of every lover of art, while it needed no addition extrinsic to its proper merits to make it of the highest interest to all; for the name of the artist whose works were exhibited is, and will ever be, a part of our national glory. He was, without doubt, the first painter of our country, and as a portrait painter had perhaps no superior in the world. With him portrait painting became almost a creative, instead of a merely imitative, art, from his singular ability of impressing the mental characteristics upon the lineaments. He painted men's characters as well as their faces. By his admirable conversational powers he rarely failed in making his subjects forget that they were sitting for their portraits-an operation which he knew to be so unnatural and constraining to mind and body, that it must generally be fatal to the embodiment of anything save mere feature on the canvas and while they were thus thrown off their guard, his acute and ready perception and knowledge of human nature enabled him with unerring certainty to comprehend alike their strong

and delicate points of character, and these his quick and vivid pencil instantly transferred to the canvas. By thus giving at one view many traits, his canvas presented the whole man at one time, and so he literally made his portraits more like the men than they were like themselves. We need hardly mention the name of HENRY INMAN-a name which will ever be remembered among us till the painter's art is forgotten, which will ever remain a rich legacy of him who is lost to the family to which he was always the indulgent father and kind husband, to the social circle which his exquisite humor, refined taste and warm fellowship so delightfully pervaded, to the friends who looked forward to many hours of such charming converse with him as can only be enjoyed with the gifted of Nature, but which now are among the mourned for things that were, and to his fellows in that art of which he was so bright an ornament.

The collection of his pictures exhibited for the benefit of his family, was not a tithe of even his best works, but was amply sufficient to display his great and versatile genius. The heads of Bishops Moore and White, of Chief Justice Jones, Chalmers, Wordsworth, and Lord Chancellor Cottenham, were remarkable instances of his vigorous handling, admirable flesh tints and pointed touch. They had an air of truth which is beyond literalism and reality. The head of Jacob Barker was an admirable specimen of his Vandykelike vigor, finish, and celerity; for although one of the finest heads in the collection, it was executed in one sitting. Indeed the rapidity of his pencil was as remarkable as its versatility; and this quickness of execution resulted, in a great measure, from the fact that when his pencil touched the canvas it always meant something, and thus he rarely had to undo his work. But in spite of his great talent, let no one think his name and position were easily acquired; it was only by the most intense application that he reached this point and maintained himself there. Indeed, there is nothing more groundless than the opinion, so generally entertained, that great genius can achieve without labor. Time is not the measure of exertion, and concentrat ed effort is more tasking than that which is diffused. Perhaps the capacity to concentrate effort is one great part of genius.

One picture in this collection possessed particular interest. It was the October

Afternoon, the artist's last picture and best landscape. It represents a scene in "the mellow autumn time," upon the edge of a wood and near the bank of a stream. The foreground is occupied by a group of children just broke loose from the village school, which is seen, with its low roof half shaded by the sparse foliage of a gnarled apple tree, near the entrance of the narrow forest road. The composition of the picture is easy, natural and pleasing, to a degree which would indicate that the artist had made landscape the study of his life, and its tone beautifully subdued, though the coloring is warm. Rarely do we see a landscape so winning as this; the shadows of those beautiful trees, under which you can peer till the eye is lost in their winding intervals, are so cool, and the plashing streamlet and warm autumnal haze which fills the atmosphere, so dream-inducing, that it seems as if a walk up that verdant alley which comes to the forest edge would certainly end at the foot of one of those mossy trunks in a reverie, lulled by the murmur of the brook and the distant, broken hum of young voices, till it melted into sleep, full of visions as soft and tranquil as the undulating landscape which stretches dimly into distance. The figures of this picture are admirably grouped, and the faces finished like miniatures. We heartily wish that an exception could have been made in its favor, as the production of a dead artist, and a place been given to it in the Academy's last exhibition, the first one of a long succession of years which has lacked some admirable productions of Inman's pencil.

This exhibition was in every respect of far greater merit than any of its predecessors, both on account of the greater number of good paintings sent in, and the elevated character of the subjects dealt with in a large proportion of the pictures on the walls. The collection was alike an honor to the Academy, to the artists, and to the public taste which demands and can appreciate such pictures. Still there were, as a matter of course, some paintings not worthy of notice, and which served as foils to the excellence of others, and a few so bad in design and handling as to be delightfully ludicrous. In the higher walks of imaginative painting, the works of Huntington, Blaas, Leutze, Mount, Matteson, and Chapman, were conspicuous. Where was Weir? In landscape, Durand and

Cole furnished some of their happiest efforts, and Cropsey and Cranch, pictures worthy much admiration; while the portraits of Elliot, Page, Ingham, and Huntington made this department of the gallery an interest inferior to that of no former year.

HUNTINGTON, to whom we are inclined to give the highest place among our artists of the highest school, sent five pictures, exclusive of three portraits, any one of which would have asserted his preeminence in this department of his art. Of these, our favorite is the Sacred Lesson, which, although not so full of spirituality, and perhaps not so elevated in tone as his Italy, seems to us a more finished work. The subject, a beautiful girl listening to the story of the crucifixion from an aged man, gave opportunity for all the harmony of contrast and the embodiment of that high physical and intellectual beauty of which Huntington seems to have such an admirable conception. His female heads are remarkable for their graceful contour, their high foreheads, but broad, low, and classical brows, and for their perfectly feminine expression, which, as well as their freedom from that exaggeration of points of beauty, such as large eyes and small mouths, into which modern painters are apt to fall, gives them a truthful air which some of hotbed taste mistake for materiality. In fact, his women do not look like sylphs, angels, nor goddesses, but like women, which is the grand reason that they are so beautiful. His heads of old men have equal excellence, and are full of character and vigorous drawing. He seems conscious of his abilities in this way, for three of his pictures for this year present the contrast of feminine youth with masculine age.

Huntington's pictures bear the stamp of high cultivation and of great genius. Not only are his conceptions beautiful, just, and of a high Poetic order, and his designs clear, but his work is almost always well done; the tone of his pictures is such that the eye rests upon them with delight and contentment; the heart sympathizes with the sentiment expressed, and the judgment approves almost without a but. His effects are always simple, direct, and forcible, for he never descends into the pettiness of his art. His coloring is singularly beautiful, and reminds us of that of Lucca Giordano, fa presto Lucca as he was called, but among American artists it is

peculiarly his own. Who has given us such unobtrusive reds and yellows, and such rich, quiet greens? Nobody has ever tried to do it; the very conception of such colors seems to have been left to him, for such was the character of his coloring before he had studied in Italy. They alone are enough to make a reputation, and yet they are but secondary to, though admirably in keeping with, his high poetic conception, his admirable drawing and exquisite flesh tints. Indeed, so beautiful are these colors in themselves, and so harmonious are the broad masses in which they are introduced, that the eye, after wandering round upon the wails, turns unwittingly upon his pictures to drink in their cool, refreshing tone.

His Alms Giving, which, though unlike in other respects, reminds us, by the air and position of its principal figure, of the Charity of Schidone, showed admirable and forcible handling of light and shade, and well expressed its beautiful sentiment. The young woman who gives the alms, and whose cool, pure cheek contrasts so admirably with the feverish and sallow face of the recipient, is a beautiful embodiment of that charity which letteth not the right hand know what the left hand doeth; and there is a dignity in the gratitude and grief expressed on the face of the other which admirably elevates the sentiment of the picture. The old man's head in the shade is a gem.

The Master and Pupils, and the Woman at the Well, are fine specimens of his color and drawing, and breathe the same air of quiet, elevated repose which characterizes most of his pictures; and his Italy tells its own tale perfectly. The mouth so sadly sweet, the deep, earnest eyes, the subdued impulsiveness expressed in the whole face, the classic contour of the head, the sea-green robe, and the rich, mellow sky, deepening in hue almost to gorgeousness as it sinks to the horizon, are all admirably suited to the impersonation of her whose glory has departed, and who has nothing left her but the melancholy task of rescuing, by her pencil, her faded greatness from oblivion; and the simple and apposite accessory of the Roman belfry is hardly needed to give the subject "a local

habitation and a name."

Huntington, like all men of ability after their early success, is somewhat inclined to mannerism of handling; but it

is so slight that he will soon break loose from it. He is sometimes careless in his drawing, a fault which in him is inexcusable. For instance, in Italy the bust is contracted and flat, the left arm of the Woman at the Well, if undraped, would not make an elbow by half an inch, and the right arm of the Alms Giving figure is not well placed. He, also, has a manner of using his glazings, which sometimes produces a patchy, smoky hue. This is particularly observable on the beautifully drawn hands of some of his figures.

LEUTZE, whose " Columbus in Chains" won him such reputation here and abroad, sent two pictures, both of which seemed to us to have great faults and great excellencies. The larger one, the "Landing of the Northmen," failed to impress us as a whole or in detail, even after many careful examinations. It seems to show much ability, but to be more extravagant than able. It has strength, but not that strength which arises from symmetry, and which is the only true beauty of power. From its striking conception and eminent suggestiveness, it, and we think all of Leutze's pictures, will always have great effect upon minds of much ideality, who will take it rather for what it aims to be than what it is. Though we consider this by no means a favorable specimen of the artist's powers, its exaggerated action,extravagant expression, want of proportion and balance, seem to us to be characteristic faults. The same occur, though in a less degree, in "Cromwell and his Daughter," where the arm of the female is preposterously large. But in both these pictures Leutze has thrown that skillful management of light and shade, that rich and harmonious blending of color, that admirable variety of texture in his wellhung drapery, and that intensity of expression in his heads, which are the characteristics of his vigorous pencil.

It is particularly unfortunate when a picture of much pretension and conspicuous position, which has merit enough to attract attention, is so filled with faults as to forbid its success. This was the case with the first picture on the catalogue this year," Tasso and his friends at the Convent of St. Onofio," by T. P. RossITER. The disposition of the groups here is anything but happy. It is difficult to find any point of interest, any prominent figure. It certainly is not Tasso, and it as certainly should not be