them that their companions were advancing to their relief, the excitement became intense. But the cannonading advanced steadily nearer, and the rapid volleys of musketry every moment grew clearer, saying in accents more thrilling than language, that our brave troops were victorious.

At length, when the cavalry, plunging wildly over the plain, emerged into view, they mounted the ramparts, and under the folds of their flag, that still floated proudly in the breeze, sent up a huzza that was heard even in Matamoras-the shout of victory.

That was a joyful meeting, when our wearied but victorious army, amid loud huzzas, marched again into Fort Brown, and into the arms of their brave companions. Three thousand five hundred shots had been fired into that single fort, and yet but two men had been killed.

Gen. Taylor's victory was complete. The Mexicans lost their whole artillery 2,000 stand of arms-600 mules, together with Gen. Arista's private papers, and Gen. Vega himself, whom May made prisoner in his desperate charge on and over the battery. Our loss in killed, wounded and missing, in these two battles, was not far from 170; that of the enemy unknown, but it could not be much short of 1,200. The battle of the 9th was much the most severe, as is evident from the greater mortality that attended it-our loss being nearly double that on the day before. Gen. Taylor had thrown up hasty intrenchments around his train, which had been left on the first battle-field guarded by four hundred men; so that he brought but about 1,600 men into the fight, while the Mexicans, notwithstanding their severe loss, had received such heavy reinforcements that they showed a thousand stronger than in the previous engagement. That the Mexicans fought well is evident from their heavy loss nearly one-third of their entire army disappeared from the ranks before it broke and fled. The great disproportion between the killed and wounded in the two armies was owing entirely to the greater precision of our fire, our soldiers having hit or killed each his man. Neither is this a new feature in our battles, for during our previous wars it was ascertained that, as a general rule, one out of every two hundred shots took effect, while in the European battles it is calculated that only one out of every four hundred hits--making a difference of just half, even with Continental troops.

The charge of May was one of the most gallant deeds among the hundred performed in these fierce fought battles, and decided the victory. Had he not succeeded, we should doubtless have gained the day; for, from the outset, our troops never once fell back or wavered, but steadily gained ground. The conflict, however, would have been protracted, and our loss much greater but for this successful charge. It is always desperate business charging artillery with cavalry, yet it is frequently done. The rapidity of its movements, and the want of close packed ranks to resist the shock, make it always successful, unless the artillery is well supported by firm infantry. Thus, at the battle of Aspern, Bessieres charged nearly four hundred cannon, placed in battery, with his heavy armed cuirassiers. The carnage of the volley that received them was awful; yet nothing saved the guns but hastily withdrawing them to the rear, so that instead of charging on cannon, when the smoke lifted, he found himself in presence of infantry, standing in squares, and presenting a girdle of steel to his squadrons. The Mexicans had not time to do this, for it was but a few moments after May emerged into view along the road, before he was among them with his shouting riders. This charge was the more desperate from being made with so few men. When four or eight thousand cavalry gallop into the blaze of artillery the front ranks furnish a wall for those behind; and before a second discharge can mow them down they are amid the guns, or breast to breast with infantry; but when such a small squadron charges almost every man in it is exposed.

When Captain May set out to fulfill his task, to all human appearance he would never bring back half of his men, whether successful or not; and, but for the noble and generous act of Lieutenant Ridgely, such would have been the result. Ridgely was stationed along the road, and was pouring, with frightful effect, his grape into the enemy's battery, when May came riding up with his dragoons at his back. The former stopped him, just as he was about to emerge into open view of the enemy, and in direct range of his batteries, telling him that every piece had just been loaded, and if he charged then he would be swept away. Stop," said this gallant officer, "until I draw their fire," then deliberately fired each gun, which sent such havoc amid their ranks that a general

discharge followed. The next moment, May, with his dragoons, rode into view, and swept furiously forward; and before the Mexicans were fully prepared to receive the shock the clattering tempest was upon them, and "the red field was won." These two battles are worth a thousand speeches in Congress, and Secretary's reports, respecting the wants and organization of our army. They show that our troops can be disciplined into the most perfect coolness and firmness in the hour of battle, and that the courage which won for us an independence, is strong as ever in our soldiers. They show, also, that those demagogues who, in Congress, are constantly decrying our standing army and military school at West Point-ridiculing all military education and science, and uttering frothy words about the bravery of the people being sufficient to outweigh the discipline of veteran troops, are as unfit to control our affairs as were the Jacobins of France to rule the destinies of that country. Too conceited to be taught by the experience of others they never cease their aggressions on everything that rebukes their ignorance, until overthrown, or silenced by deeds they cannot gain say. What would raw troops and volunteer-artillerymen have done with our cannon at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma? Where would have been the "stars and stripes" that is ever on the lips of these men, as if it had but to wave over a battle-field to frighten the oldest veterans of Europe from the fight,

had the country been governed by such policy as they recommend?

West Point has nobly vindicated herself from the attacks of these men, and her brave sons that lie on those fierce fought battle-fields shall forever silence their slanderous tongues. Skill and military discipline saved us, on the Mexican plains, from the severest mortification, and, doubtless, from a protracted war.

All honor then to General Taylor, and May, and Page, and Duncan, and Ridgely, and Churchill, and Inges, and Indon, and McIntosh, and Chadbourne, and Cochrane, and Walker, and Browne, and last though not least, Ringgold, and a host of others. Green be the grass over the fallen, and ever green the laurels that twine the brows of the living. Noble men!-Ye who sleep are not deadthe brave and patriotic never die—they live in the hearts of their countrymen. Not a recreant son was found on those battle-fields; and all honor ought to be paid to our little army, every man of which was a hero. With such soldiers we can never be conquered, nor our arms disgraced. Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma will be bright pages in the biography of General Taylor. All honor, we say, then to our army and its officers. We toast the men, but not the cause; and while a curse rests on our capitol a circle of light surrounds our army of occupation. Our army has won enduring renown, but our government enduring disgrace.

HAVING unavoidably omitted to notice the Exhibition of the National Academy of Design for this year, during the time it remained open, we do not now intend to go into a detailed criticism of the pictures exhibited; but cannot neglect to take the opportunity of speaking of some of our painters and their works, at a time when the remembrance of them must be fresh in the minds of so many of our readers.

Of our painters we may well be proud as to their present attainment in art, and still more as to their promise of future achievement. We believe that Benjamin West is not the only man whom America, within a century of her independence, will send to the masters of Europe as their equal, perhaps as their superior. We believe that in spite of the material tendencies which, as a nation, we undoubtedly have, we have also peculiar characteristics which, now when developed in individual cases, will produce artists of greater strength and higher creative powers than those of modern Europe, and which in future when we, as a people, shall have become convinced that we have some time to devote to other things than those which pertain to our mere material existence, will make us, as a people, enlightened enthusiasts in art. Though at present we can but humbly imitate the example of the Englishman, and content ourselves with admiring and paying to the best of our poor ability, the time will come when we will bring into the field of art a susceptibility which he has not, while we will have all of his calm judgment and quiet humor, the Frenchman's fondness for accuracy and brilliant effect without his pettiness and conventionalism, the vigor and fancy of the German without his grossness and extravagance, and the fervor and grace of the Italian without the morbid sentiment which so frequently stimulates the one, or the languor which is the chief cause of the other.

Various great moral and physical causes combine to give us this prospective position in art among the nations of the earth; but for the very reason that they are great and varied, they will be long in working out their effect; and those who complain that we have not sufficient nationality in art, should recollect that this, in so far as it is desirable, is a consequence, not a precursor of nationality in feeling. Our painters will not found a national historical school by painting red-skins and the scenes of the old French and Revolutionary wars, nor a school of landscape by giving us views of primeval forests in the gaudy dress of autumn. Germans, Englishmen and Italians can do this if they be familiar with the subjects, and their works will be not one whit more American than if they painted the Hartz mountains, the battles of the Great Rebellion, or altar pieces. When we have a settled tone as a nation, then will our national traits be shown by our painters in their handling, not in their choice, of subjects. It is not the subject but the manner of treating it which marks the school. The sacred pieces of Rubens are as unItalian in character as is an interior by Gerard Dow, or a group of drinkers by Teniers; and an American who has the genius requisite to found a new school of painting, would run no more risk of destroying the character of his conceptions by studying and copying the works of Raphael and Rubens, than he would of changing the shape of his head by wearing the cap of the one or the hat of the other; and if he have not that genius, then he cannot do better for himself or his art than to adopt the style of some great master, modified, as it necessarily would be if he have any talent, by the peculiar tone of his own mind.

Neither is it necessary to the fostering of our nationality that our artists should choose themes from our own history.* True, this was the case with other nations, whose early poets and painters

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 encour agement 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 approbation 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 eligibility 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 natural 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 concentrated 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