deal of ability on a picture which pains the eye and shocks the taste. Such pictures as these two deserve the lowest place in art.

CHAPMAN seems to us to have become careless of his reputation as a draughtsman, and his two principal pictures this year confirm us in the opinion. The attention to detail, and the truthful air and high finish of his accessories, which characterize his performances, will not compensate for so great a fault, The illustrator of the Poets of America must look to his laurels. EDMONDS, the Wall street artist, is maintaining well his reputation for skill in handling, but his scene from the Antiquary lacks sentiment, though finely painted. RANNEY is improving steadily and surely, and despite some academic faults shows ability to do something fine.

FLAGG, who, by some of his pictures, painted soon after his coming to this city, attracted much attention and awoke expectation of good things from him, is losing instead of gaining. His late pictures are full of bad drawing and muddy coloring. His Match Boy" would blush to look at them. We understand that he has painted an "Italian Boy which is equally good, and in the same style, as the Match Seller.

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Mr. TERRY, who has just returned from Italy, and about whom so much was said in the fashionable world, seems to be more fitted for a connaisseur than an artist; to have more taste than talent. We imagine that he has done more by hard labor than by an intuitive perception of the beautiful. Although he is evidently painstaking, his drawing is by no means faultless, his coloring is very opaque, and though not gaudy, his pictures can hardly be called low-toned; and they lack character very much. He seems to be made by what he saw abroad, and to admire the Perugine style of Raphael.

COLE and DURAND keep up their friendly contest to produce the best landscape, and we are quite willing they should do it so long as it gives us such pictures. But it is useless; their styles are so different, and the talent of each is so great, that each will have his own circle of worshipers, and all the world as his admirers. The quiet, subdued tone and rural sweetness of Durand, his light, trembling foliage, his fine atmosphere and clear light, his fathomless sky and floating clouds, the grace and ease of his outlines, the truthful, unaffected air of his

subjects, and his exquisite finish, make him irresistibly charming and almost unimpeachable; while Cole's bold composition and vigorous handling, rich coloring and broad masses of light and shade, his freedom of touch and a certain air of interest which he throws around his subject, always win him instant and pleased attention. Cole's beauties are prominent, and demand the admiration which Durand's win as they gradually unfold themselves. Their faults are hard to find, and they themselves are best fitted to seek them. Of the two, Mr. Cole is the more thoroughly American in his choice of subjects. Mr. C. P. CRANCH is, if possible, more American than Cole, though he differs widely from him in his handling and tone. He is rapidly improving, and acquiring self-reliance, that great requisite to success. At present his compositions have not an air of truth; they lack atmosphere, and are cold and slaty in color. One of the most observant students of nature among our landscape painters is Mr. J. T. CROPSEY. This he shows in his style of composition, and the pertinence of everything he introduces into his pictures, and by the fidelity of his drawing; but his palette spoils all. His coloring is such that it breaks his pictures into gaudy fragments, destroying the effect of his well-drawn perspective; and to make the matter worse he fails in his atmosphere, so that altogether his pictures have a painfully flat and patchy look. This should not be ; such talent as his should not thus commit suicide. Mr. GIGNOUX, who did himself such great credit by his pictures of still life in the Exhibition, also sent a landscape which, despite its sharp outline, want of shade and atmosphere, was a pleasing and highly creditable picture. Mr. HARVEY'S late pictures have not shown the talent of his Illustrations of American Scenery. He elaborates his landscapes to a painful degree. Water colors and flower painting, which are his forte, may have induced this fault. We wonder that some of our landscape painters do not assume a style founded on that of Poussin, that prince of landscape painters. No style could be better adapted for a large portion of our scenery.

The mantle of Inman seems to have fallen upon ELLIOTT, whose male portraits are undoubtedly the finest now painted. He is somewhat prone to that literalism the absence of which gave In

man his wonderful fidelity, but this we think he will soon lose. His heads are living, breathing things, his likenesses both accurate and striking, the texture and tone of his flesh is beautiful, his shading of the face could hardly be improved, and the shadows themselves are, beautifully clear. The position of his heads is worthy of all admiration. He seems to have a perfect command over his palette, and to produce with perfect ease and certainty any shade of flesh tint which his subject requires, His perception of character needs cultivation much more than his painting.

PAGE, saving that he shows himself a little too much inclined to run after theories, maintains his well-deserved reputation. As a draughtsman and a faithful copyist he is surpassed by no portrait painter among us; but his heads lack character, and his bluish half-tints destroy what would otherwise be fine flesh. He covers his canvas so thinly that we think his pictures must all sink away before many years have elapsed. The full length of a boy and the half length of a lady, exhibited by INGHAM this year, show the same delicate coloring, elaborate finish, and untiring industry, which his former pictures have shown. His drapery is admirably lined, and the texture of his stuffs marked with great accuracy; this was shown in the dress in the lady's portrait this year. In spite of Mr. Ingham's exquisitely delicate and finished painting, or perhaps by rea son of his exclusive attention to those qualities, his pictures have always to us a weak and waxy appearance. His fig. ures appear to have no skeletons.

What crotchet has WENZLER in his head that causes him to paint such monstrosities with so much ability displayed in them? His pictures last year were exaggerated enough, but this year he has given us the very madness of Wenzlerism. To make his figures stand out, he descends to the trick of putting them on a dun-colored ground upon which their unsoftened outlines are cut sharply out. His heads are finely drawn, but are mere material copies of so many and such Lines, without the slightest expression or character being given, his flesh, from a strange and affected method of making

up his half tints, has always a cadaverous look, and his hair seems to have a purple enamel upon it. Not content with this he must paint great staring masses of unmitigated blue, red, and green, which are very painful to the eye and altogether inadmissable. Because the sky is blue and the grass green, it is by no means necessary to have in pictures drapery of the same intensity of color. The glowing colors of Paul Veronese and Rubens, are glowing by comparison. Take them out of the canvas and they would appear modest enough. Mr. Wenzler has great talent, and if he will but throw aside his affectations will achieve a high position.

OSGOOD continues to paint portraits which remind us of the White Maid of Avenel as she faded before the eyes of Halbert Glendinning, and FROTHINGHAM to make striking heads and good likenesses which seem as if done with a house-painter's brush. THOMPSON shows decided improvement, and the effects of study.

A picture has been lately exhibited in this city and Boston purporting to be a development of Washington Allston's unfinished Belshazzar's Feast, by Mr. Spear. It is a vile libel on Allston, and so ridiculously bad as to be beneath criticism.

We cannot omit to speak our admiration of the St. Catherine of BLAAS, which was in the Exhibition this year, although he is not one of our artists. It is an admirable composition in a very severe school, reminding us by its close texture and austere style of Caravagio, and by its hard, sharp outlines and management of light and shade, of the painting of Retzch, the great outline engraver. The conception is noble, the grouping admirable, and the light floating air given to the figures individually and as a group, a remarkable point in the picture. It was with reason thought by many to be the gem of the exhibition.

Rarely have we had a year so rich in pictures and other works of art as the past; and from the manner in which they have been appreciated by artists and the public, we are led to hope much for the coming year and for the future. We look anxiously for something from our sculptors.

THE present Polish insurrection gives us an opportunity to say a few words more on the affairs of Poland. We gladly embrace it, for we hope to be able to show that her moral force has increased in spite of the trials she has been enduring, and that the day of her deliverance is approaching. We hope, at the same time, to make the calumnies cast upon her recoil upon the heads of her enemies. To view the Polish question in a proper light, it is necessary to look upon it in connection with the affairs of the civilized world in general, and those of the Slavic race in particular; for it is no longer a mere question of an independent existence of a territory, but it is a question in which the interests of mankind are involved. Shall a people consisting of more than twenty-four millions, whose history is full of noble monuments, and whose language boasts of a literature inspiring the most ardent feelings of patriotism, perish forever? Is the Slavic race, amounting to more than one-third of the population of Europe, doomed to eternal oppression? Are the people of Europe always to suffer the soul-crushing incubus of feudal institutions? Is the will of a few crowned despots to preside over the destinies of the world forever? Are the blessings of life-and-freedom-giving Christianity to be always dispensed by a timeserving priesthood? Has not Christ sown the seed of equality and brotherly love among men, whose each succeeding harvest is to be more abundant? Are men eternally doomed to hatred of one another, and to both political and spiritual bondage? Has it been decreed in the councils of God that lies and wickedness should forever have a mastery over truth and righteousness in this world? These are the questions to which every reflecting person, who has at all thought upon the past, will answer with a most emphatic denial. In each and in all of these

questions the freedom and independence of Poland is comprised.

Kings and their satellites perceived, early enough, that the times were pregnant with Freedom, and they prepared themselves to strangle the Goddess in her cradle. Notwithstanding their great efforts, great expenditures of money and blood to that effect, Providence removed the child into the wilderness, beyond the sea, far from the reach of the hands that were intent upon smothering its life; apparently abandoned to savagery, tempests and uncultivated nature, it was left to grow strong in mind and body.

The first decisive victory that freedom gained over despotism was the achievement of the American Independence. It was in vain that England struggled for eight years with her colonies, pouring out her treasure to the amount of a hundred and thirty-six millions of pounds sterling, and sacrificing, to the lust of power, the lives of her two hundred thousand sons. Now, for the first time in history, liberty has gained a firm platform from which it can unmolested speak to the down-trodden masses. Freedom feels already her strength and security of footing. While she addresses words of consolation and hope to the people her voice enters with terror into the souls of all supporters of tyranny. It has be come a fixed fact, no longer admitting of any doubt, that America is the nursery of liberty. Her detractors may say what they will; she is, beyond any other country, the hope of mankind. It is true that she is but beginning to feel her des. tiny somewhat in the manner of a man who is just awakening from sleep; but she will in due time come to her consciousness, and discharge the great duties that Providence has imposed upon her. If she do not know yet, she will soon know, that the boon of freedom she enjoys was not granted her for her sole

benefit, for her especial aggrandizement and pride, but that it was given her in trust to be accounted for as the patrimony of the race.

The only distinction that England derived from the war with the Confederate States was, the ignominy of having fought against liberty. The spirit of freedom spreading, she had again to do the dirty work of despotism on the soil of France. Her old resources being not sufficient for this new combat, she had recourse, as history bears witness, to the tricks of falsehood. She persuaded her people and the unthinking world at large, that she fought in the name of religion and humanity, nay, of liberty herself! The devil, to entice the mortal, often puts on the aspect of a saint. England knows the value of the apparel: it has served her well on more than one occasion. The real cause, however, that led her to this new struggle was the fear for rotten aristocratic institutions, and the income of her money-gathering manufacturers. To cap the climax, she, about the same time, shed tears over the fate of free Poland! For twenty-one successive years England under these pretences carried on war against France, at the expense of the lives of seven hundred thousand Britons, and of one billion, six hundred and twenty-three millions of pounds sterling, from her treasury. Other crowned heads of Europe, from similar motives, have joined her in this conflict, making use of the same false pretences, and taking advantage of the unchristian, national antipathies which kings have been abetting for many ages. Even poor Germany was made to believe that she was fighting for her national honor and liberty! But times have changed since! Is there an honest, generous-hearted Englishman or German who does not now regret that his ancestors should have been so grossly deceived as to aid the tyrants to rivet chains upon humanity? Poland, Republican France and Napoleon have been buried; and monarchs congratulated themselves upon the event, for they believed that Liberty was sleeping an eternal sleep in the same grave.

The cunning are more foolish than either they believe themselves, or others take them to be. Short-sighted that they were! The spirit of freedom does not die; it is a contagion of the soul for which no monarch ever will be able to devise a quarantine or a grave. The

subjects of those that were brought to assail freedom spread the contagion the wider, even in despite of themselves. The world has seen evidence enough of this fact. That exclusive feeling of nationality which made one man look upon another as a foe because he chanced to be born in another clime and speak another language, and which was chiefly fanned by kings, and made use of for evil purposes, is fast dying away, and the good of all countries are ashamed of it. Men begin to feel that the well-being of one nation righteously pursued, enhances the happiness of another; so that despotic rulers are beginning to experience greater difficulty in enlisting one people against another, than in former days. They who have spilt human blood enough to crimson all the waters of this globe in carrying out the schemes of their selfish, personal aggrandizement, or in oppressing the people, at last find themselves obliged to entice and to conciliate by various stratagems the very multitude they once were wont to despise. Even the French Revolution, that scene of almost unmitigated horrors, is now considered by all philosophic thinkers as only the terrible and natural reaction of as terrible though more silent tyranny, and it is only the minions of power that do not join the good Robert Hall and the great Carlyle, in blessing it for having secured a signal triumph to humanity.

Since that time, kings have never rested on beds of roses; their victories, instead of rendering them more secure, have only alarmed them the more. After a struggle of four hundred years the Greeks finally succeeded in establishing their independ ence; but king-craft, whose pretensions have become greatly abated, had yet power enough to spoil this work of Providence, and to force upon Greece the modern invention called a constitutional king. Bad as it was, yet something was gained; much was conceded to the grow ing spirit of freedom.

When despotic rulers were congratulating themselves upon the general pacification of Europe, Spain-ignorant and priest-ridden Spain-arose, spoke for her rights, and held forth a second time to the people her Constitution of 1812. Ever since, she has been the victim of the intrigues of the Holy Alliance, the Constitutional Kings, and the Pope; for she offended them all without ceremony. She is even now suffering much at their hands, struggling, perhaps, at more grievous dis

advantage than any other nation in Europe. Ignorance, folly and faction have made sad work with her; we cannot tell if her star be still rising, but we have hopes of her destiny. This Spanish Constitution, this bill of rights of Spaniards, shows in a very remarkable manner the advances that had been made by public opinion in Europe since the last century.

Portugal, following in the track of Spain, was also agitated, crying for light and freedom; but as she did not entirely know what she wanted, her tutors easily satisfied her with semblances, for this while at least; and after the exile or imprisonment of thousands of her better children, the good old order was restored, not however without an occasional outbreak.

The world thought that Italy was dead; but in 1820 she gave signs of returning life; and, notwithstanding the efforts of Austrian care, the patriarchal love of the Pope, and the pleasant attendance of an imperial executioner and Jesuit confessor, the convulsed and shrunken limbs may yet be endued with the full vigor and beauty of womanhood.

Thus the spirit of Freedom was quietly progressing on all sides. But the most remarkable phenomenon of its power yet seen was the French Revolution of the Three Days of July. The people having learned their own strength for the first time, were no longer, as in former days, obliged to resort to a savage carnage; by their mighty word of command the inglorious creature, Charles X., left the soil of France. From this precedent, other nations might learn an important lesson. There is always strength enough in every nation to expel its tyrant, if only the people be made conscious of it. Unanimity and energetic attitude in a nation rising at one instant in all its majesty, with the single emphatic BEGONE! on its lips, would drive out every tyrant. Then there could not be much occasion for bloodshed. Tyrants are only strong because the people are foolish and disunited. Let there be harmony and a wise feeling of united interests among the people, and the tyrant's arm is completely paralyzed.

The confidence the French showed in themselves on the outset of this revolution, unfortunately abandoned them, instead of strengthening daily. As a natural consequence, they faltered, and raised to the throne a man of energy and capacities enough, but doubtful and double

faced, the Citizen King, by way of compromise between the old and new ideas. It was a step forward, yet a very insignificant one, for so momentous an opportunity. This freak of fancy, citizen, daubed on the royal visage, was quite an innovation upon the old usage, and a homage to the spirit of freedom, quite displeasing to the old crowned heads around him; the grimaces they made is an amusing page in the history of the era.

But, as might have been foreseen, the Citizen-King, in due time, began to rub off from his royal visage the plebeian plaster, and the entente cordiale between him and the legitimates is daily on the increase. The next move the French make-and they will inevitably make one-will be wiser. Taught by experience, they will be more on their guard against deception. It is strange, that after so many ages of experience, men yet should trust to the promised liberal action of hands accustomed to the sceptre.

The power of the spirit of freedom is sometimes miraculous; at least it seems so to us in the case of Belgium. A nation that never before had an independent political existence, threw off the Dutch yoke, erected a constitutional throne, according to fashion, and called to it a man who is less dangerous to the liberties of the people than the "Citizen-King."

The spirit of freedom did not stop here. On the banks of the Vistula a mighty voice arose, calling on the people in the name of God and country; and the clang of arms followed. It was a glorious effort of the Poles, rich in results to future generations, although the policy of regal power was again successful in thwarting it for the time being. The Polish Revolution of 1830 makes a new period in the progress of freedom. It gave it a new impulse, that was felt throughout the civilized world; and while it drew European nations nearer towards each other, it caused their rulers to enter into more close alliance with one another, that they might together resist the next popular shock that is preparing for them. The greater the resistance, the better; for the greater and more complete will be the downfall of the old régime!

In due time we will recur to the Polish Revolution again; but at present we will only notice that a restless spirit manifested itself from one extremity of Europe to the other. Even the drowsy Turk began to open his eyes, and suggest to himself the possible need of reform. Unfor