its possessor to estimate justiy the course, sat down contented with merits of an artist and the pro- indiscriminate applause it received ductions of art, particularly the for trifles, made no farther advancart of painting, may sound strange es, and the art itself is even to be to some, who have indulged them- begun. This country has indeed selves in fancying, that the people giveu birth to West and Stewart, of this country have a natural geo Copely and Trumbull ; names nius for this art; to prove which that stand in the first rank of Eubelief, they will say, that we can ropean artists ; but these were not go into few houses without seeing self-taught, the shoots of skill and pictures, and that some of the first dexterity were engrafted on them modern painters are natives of in another country, where their America,...a land famous for the natural talents were nourished and production of self-taught geniuses. carefully raised to maturity : had It is true, that prints and pictures, they continued here, they never being considered as part of the would bave got beyond the rudifurniture of a house, few that can ments of their profession, and must furnish houses, neglect to embel- have been content with that porlish them in this manner ; but tion of short-lived praise, which the common and motley collections, usually falls to the lot of a selfwe generally find, shew plainly, taught genius. These observa. that fashionable decoration is the tions are not made to discourage only object ; and that taste is nei- young men of talents who are inther consulted in the selection, nor clined to exert them in the pursuit gratified by the exhibition. Of of art; but to warn them of the self-taught genius, and the won- evil consequences, which result ders it has performed ; the en- from mistaking the voice of comcouragement it has met with, and mon praise, for the commendation the recommendation it carries of the judicious ; to induce them with it, we have heard enough, to give some other direction to from those who have never thought their abilities ; or go where the on the subject, to sícken every arts flourish in maturity, where the one, who has extended his ideas works of the great masters may far enough to conceive the extent be studied, where schools are form. of art, who knows how little can ed, and genius safely guided in the be done by one mind towards that road to excellence. degree of excellence, which re- The attempts that have been quires the combined efforts of made, and are now making at Phiy many, and the progressive experi. ladelphia and New York, to estabence of ages. « Ars longa, vita lish schools of painting, are, in the brevis," is a sentence we seem to present state of the country, exhave forgotten, or never to have ceedingly premature ; and must known', hence that praise has been inevitably prove futile and nugalavished on those, who have made tory. The ground must be clear. shift to learn their letters without ed, and opened to the vivifying going to school, which could only ray, must be weeded and dressed, have been deserved by the student, the soil made rich by patient infar advanced in academical knowl- dustry, before the seeds of delicate edge ; hence emulation, instead of flowers can be sown ; and then, being excited to great attempts, incessant care, attention, and skill and deep researches, has been ar- is necessary to perfect the gay rested in the beginning of: the parterre, which is to gratify the

SILVA,

Illic purpurels tecta rosariis

Omnis fragrat humus, calthaque pinguia
Et molles violas et tenues crocos
Fundit fonticulis uda fugacibus. -PRUDENTIUS.

derer, perhaps warmer, than for the latter; but fondness is poorly repaid. Love is sorrily rewarded with esteem or respect. Love unless it kindles love, flashes, and is gone forever. Fondness, unless it excite fondness, soon dead

idle to read. Why does the Ayr shire bard always charm? To what is it owing, that the oftener I read the Cotter's Saturday Night, the more my kindly, gentle affec. tions ripen, and refine. Learning he most certainly wanted; but as Dryden said of "nature's darlingens into indifference. What were child," the immortal bard of Avon, Burns needed not the spectacle of books to read nature. He looked inwards, and he found her there. God had also given him a soul, which the heavy, reluctant clouds of low birth and narrow fortune could not darken.

'Cauld blew the bitter-biting north
Upon thy early humble birth,
Yet cheerfully thou glented forth
Amid the storm.

Burns is so different from any of his cotemporaries, that if I were required to point out a poet, who in any two respects resembles him, I should hesitate long, I fear to no purpose. Bruce may perhaps be more tender and delicate; but he moves no laughter; he thrills no horrour; his wit is filtered through too much learning; it trickles meagre and rapid. His sublimity is alway's debased by some circumstance of meanness. I do not say that Bruce wants genius far from it; he does not want it. He is full of genius. His poetry glows with the warmest words, and sparkles with the brightest thoughts of a warm, glowing imagination, of a bright, sparkling fancy.

Compared with Burns, Cowper dwindles....I am almost afraid to speak my opinion; the ink hardly moves through my pen; it turns pale and seems to sicken when I say, that compared with Burns, Cowper shrinks into nothing. The Nine may have loved Cowper as well as Burns. Indeed, their affection for the former was at first ten

the awkward, ceremonious bows of Cowper, compared to the "feltering, ardent kisses" of Burns? What were a modest, timorous Englishman's professions of regard, compared to the feelings of an open, honest Scotchman, who, in protestations of gratitude,sighed his very soul?

BEN JONSON AND COWPER.

In his second Masque of Beauty, the counterpart of his first of Blackness, Ben Jonson introduces and presents Boreas,..." In a robe of russet and white mixt...fuled and bagged, his hair, and beard rough and horride...his wings gray and full of snow and ycicles...and in his hand a leaf-lesse branch, la den with ycicles." From this representation of Boreas, Cowper without doubt caught the leading distinguishing images and circumstances of his beautiful personification of Winter.

Oh Winter, ruler of th' inverted year,

Thy scatter'd hair with sleet like ashes fill'd,

Thy breath congeal'd upon thy lips, thy cheeks
Fring'd with a beard made white with other.
Than those of age, thy forehead wrapt in clouds
A leafless branch thy sceptre, and thy throne

snows

A sliding car, indebted to no wheels,

But urged by storms along its slipp'ry way,

I love thee all unlovely as thou seem'st,
And dreaded as thou art ! &c.

MONITORY POEMS AND PROVERBS ‹
OF SOLOMON

THE monitory poems of Phocylides clearly recognizes the ime mortality of the soul, while the “Proverbs of Solomon" hardly hint at this great doctrine of natu

ral religion. I mention this fact,
because it is curious, and little
known. The Bishop of Glouces-
ter is my authority.

POPE AND GRAY.

SILVA.

GRAY, in his poem on the Pleas ures of Vicissitude, has happily imitated, perhaps he has more than equalled, a fine passage in the second epistle of Pope's Essay

on Man.

"Wilt thou break a leaf driven to and fro ?" This touching question of Job came with all its force into my mind, as I was yesterday sauntering through the mall, and what can be more pathetick? A very old man was leaning upon his staff, as if weary. I asked him why, instead of standing in the sun, he did not sit beneath one of the elms. He raised his countenance to answer me it was pensive, but not gloomy; a faint, melancholy smile gleamed from his eye, and gave his features the expression of tranquil resignation. He told me that the shade recalled his sorrows; I am, said he, alone...But why do I complain? I deserved nothing; I have lost all-Feeling an interest in the man, I asked him what calamities had stripped him to poverty. He began to collect his thoughts, and without a single

word of complaint, related the eseventy years, and not a day ever vents of his life. He had lived passed without bringing some new misfortune. His voice, while he was speaking, was, for the most part, calm and even; but when he told me of the death of his wife. and only daughter, his utterance was choaked. His limbs are now palsied, his eyes are dim, his ears are thick. But though his senses are leaving him, he is not querulous; his God, he knows, is love. Surely there is another state. Who does not acknowledge, that unrepining patience deserves a reward higher,than earth can give? There is indeed a world, where sorrow and sighing shall flee away, where tears shall be turned into joy.

LEVITIES.

France the natives substitute the
In the province of Gascoigne in
letters B and V for each other;
which occasioned Joseph Scaliger
to say of them...Felices populi
quibus bibere est vivere.

We have often heard the anec-
dote of the boy, who being sent by
his master to heat his breakfast,
construed the direction into an or-
der to eat it, on the authority of
the old pedagogues, that " H was
not a letter."
without law on his side. In the
The lad was not
case of Shelbury, vs. Bupard. (Cro.
that the writ of error should abate
Eliz. 172.) in error, it was moved,
for a variance between the writ and
record, "for that the record was
"of lands in Colchester and the
"writ supposeth the lands to be
"in Colcester;" but it was held
to be no variance, because " H non
"est litera, sed aspiratio." Cro.
Eliz. 198. Case 18.