cap, but no such thing was to be had. I tried a second, and was told that no dealer in the town kept nightcaps, as the people did not use them. At Richmond I obtained one.' To the credit of Virginia let it be spoken, that it has one town in which nightcaps are both used and sold. This affair of the nightcap brings to mind, by the laws of association we presume, another passage in that part of the author's work, in which he is treating of national character. He is complaining of the want of exactness in the domestic and other common transactions of life ;' and here, we are sorry to say, he is alluding particularly to the ladies of these United States. 'This want of exactness,' he observes, is obvious in the deportment of female servants, whom I have seen, when not actually engaged in waiting on the company, leaning on their elbows near the door or window. Now it is evident, that their mistresses would teach them to adopt a more becoming attitude, if they themselves did not share in the prevalent carelessness. I am inclined to ascribe the custom of female servants not wearing caps to the same disposition. What can be said in excuse for their mistresses, who might surely persuade them to adopt a dress less disgusting, than that of heads of hair loose and dirty like mops? After they have finished their work, they are it is true sufficiently neat; but how is it possible to keep their hair in order without caps when engaged in it? Ah, indeed, how is it possible? This question we must leave to the American ladies to answer; desiring them, however, not to indulge any unkindly feelings towards the traveller for these gentle hints, as in numerous instances he has bestowed upon them a full measure of compliments for their remarkable qualities, and a profusion of thanks and expressions of gratitude for their civil and hospitable attentions to him.

In short, we are in sober earnest prepared to say, that the American must be hard to please, who can find it in his heart to censure the prevailing tone and spirit of this work. The author undertakes too much, and falls greatly short of his aims; had he confined himself to a narrower compass, and talked only of what he knew, he would have been more wise, and doubtless committed fewer mistakes. As it is, his volume is in all respects superior to three quarters of the books of travels written by Englishmen, which have been republished in this country. Why this has been suffered to pass by we know not, except from the cause suggested at the beginning of these remarks. It will do Americans no harm to hear their foibles, their national prejudices and follies exposed, by intelligent and candid foreigners; this will be one way of convincing us, that we are not the most enlightened people on earth, as it is said we boast of being; especially can we endure these things, when we have the privilege of laughing as much as we please at the ignorance, presumption, and self importance too often displayed

by the writers, who undertake to reveal our faults, and become the censors of our manners. Indignation must sometimes be excited by downright stupidity and impudence, but for the most part the effusions, which have gone out from the English press respecting America, have been worthy of little else than neglect for their worthlessness, or contempt for their vulgarity and falsehood.

We trust a better era is approaching; and, indeed, it may be reckoned as an encouraging symptom of the commencement of such an era, that American literature, such as it is, begins to be better understood than formerly in England. Many of our popular works are now reprinted and circulated in that country. Mr John Miller, publisher and bookseller in New Bridge Street, London, has recently brought out English editions of the Pilot,' 'Redwood, 'Lionel Lincoln," Poinsett's Mexico,' 'John Bull in America,' 'Percival's Poems,' and that interesting little tale, the Travellers,' by the author of Redwood. These we understand have all met with such success, as to be satisfactory to the publisher. Mr Miller deserves the commendation of our countrymen, for the strong interest he has taken in making our literature known to the British public. He has established a library, which he calls the 'American Library,' and in which he endeavors to collect all the valuable American publications of the day, and such books of anterior date as he can obtain. It will be doing a service to the literature of the country, if authors and publishers will keep this institution in mind, and send new works to Mr Miller, to be deposited in his library and open to the inspection of reading persons in London. The merits of many performances will thus become known there, which may be thought adapted to publication in that country, but which might otherwise never come to the knowledge of a London publisher. We may here add, that the circulation of our own Journal in England has increased much more of late, than at any former period. This is a slight proof, we flatter ourselves, that the edge of prejudice is wearing off. In France our book has the honor of being inserted on the proscribed list; and it is seized at the customhouse, whenever a straggling copy seeks hospitality in the dominions of his newly crowned majesty, Charles the Tenth. But we have the consolation of seeing its name in good company there, and as we do not write for the edification of kings, nor the slaves of kings, we shall not repine at this mark of disapprobation, with which our labors are branded by those, who fear the contagion of liberty and truth.

5.-An Address delivered at the Opening of the Tenth Exhibition of the American Academy of the Fine Arts. By GULIAN Č. VERPLANCK. New York. 1825. Second Edition.

6.-An Address delivered at the Opening of the Eleventh Exhibition of the American Academy of the Fine Arts, May 10th, 1825. By WILLIAM BEACH LAWRENCE. New York.

1825.

We cannot take notice of these performances without a deep feeling of mortification for our own city. We have been too much accustomed to believe, that our fellow citizens were prompt to perceive, and quick to promote any object of general utility, patiently to see them so outstripped as they have been in the cultivation of the arts, which embellish human life and elevate the human character. In Philadelphia and New York academies have been for several years established, which have contributed in no mean degree to the improvement of the public taste, and which afford ground for the best hopes for the advancement of the arts of design; while we have as yet taken no steps for the general diffusion of knowledge and correct taste, upon so important a branch of intellectual cultivation and national refinement. This appears to us the more remarkable, as it can hardly be doubted, we conceive, that there exist in this city abundant materials, as well of specimens to form a valuable collection, as of talent to increase and taste to enjoy them. The use of the means we already possess, would do much towards multiplying them, and we wish that those, whose taste is sufficiently cultivated to perceive and ridicule our deficiencies and faults, could be persuaded to use some effort to diffuse that skill, of the want of which they complain. A very slight effort only would be necessary, and it would be well rewarded.

It should be remembered too, that no moment can be so favorable as the present. We have among us artists, whose fine talents are acknowledged wherever they are known, whose genius ought to be encouraged by every appropriate reward, and whose future enduring fame will be rather a disgrace than an honor to us, if they are left to struggle with neglect. We are beginning to think it necessary to erect monuments to commemorate the great events of our history; and our public buildings are now constructed with more regard to durability than formerly. It will be a subject of regret, therefore, to many generations, if every effort be not now made to improve in purity of style, as much as in strength of structure. If a young man of talent determines to devote himself to the study of almost any department of the fine arts, the first thing he has to de

is to exile himself from his home, that he may have some means of education at his command. These means might to a considerable extent be easily furnished here; artists might at least be enabled to begin their course aright, and it would be no difficult matter to induce them to return from the studies, which it would still be necessary to pursue abroad, and thus render themselves as truly American in their works as in their birth.

These are some of the reasons for beginning an establishment for the promotion of the fine arts among us, and if there be any reason against it, we profess ourselves ignorant of it. There is enough of wealth, leisure, talent, and cultivation; it will be honorable to do it, and disgraceful longer to neglect it; we hope, therefore, soon to have occasion to exercise our critical talents upon addresses delivered before a Boston Academy. We should esteem it no slight advantage of such an establishment, if every year were to produce among us an address as agreeably written, and as full of correct principles of taste as that of Mr Verplanck. We wish we had room for much comment and quotation, but we must content ourselves with extracting the following eloquent passages.

'Pleasing and elevating as is the study of the elegant arts, considered simply as an exercise of skill and taste, it is besides capable of producing other and more admirable results. Its immediate

effect is to direct the attention more closely to the truth of nature. It next leads on its real votaries, from the pleasure derived from the mechanical imitation of nature's ordinary appearances, to the deeper delight afforded by the selection of whatever is grand or graceful in her forms, powerful or lovely in her expression. Then it is that new susceptibilities to some of the purest and most exquisite of mental pleasures awaken gradually in the breast, and we become conscious of sentiments and powers before dormant and unknown. We no longer gaze around with that gross, material sense, to which nought but material objects can be present and visible. A keener mental sight opens within. To the eye of sense, the whole earth may be cold and blank; while to the eye of cultivated imagination, every part of creation beams with rays of light, and glory, and beauty.

"In such moments--for alas! they are only moments—the world loses its hold, base cares and bad passions flit away, and the mind, though not redeemed from the thraldom of vice or the burden of sorrow, is for a time calmed and purified.'

vice.

'It is true that the Arts have been at times the inmates of corrupt and despotic courts, the flatterers of tyranny, the panders of But the alliance is not necessary,—it is not natural. If the fertile and spirited pencil of some of the ablest masters of the elder French school, wasted its powers in allegorical adulations of a

despot and a bigot,-if the higher genius of Italy could sometimes stoop to yet baser prostitution, let us remember that such is the condition of man. Every acquirement may be abused, all talent may be profaned. Poetry, science, history, have each in their turn been bent to serve some bad use. Boileau is the most abject of flatterers, Dryden panders to the profligacy of a licentious court, Laplace is the advocate of a blind and mechanical atheism, Hume lends his matchless acuteness and the never tiring fascination of his style, to cheerless skepticism, and to cold blooded defamation of the champions and the cause of liberty and conscience! What then? Is ignorance therefore necessary to virtue or to freedom? Is the cultivation of the imagination, the taste, and the reason,—of all those faculties, which distinguish man from his fellow animals, unfriendly to the improvement of the moral powers? Believe it not. Patriot, moralist, christian, think not so meanly of your sacred cause,—wrong it not by unworthy suspicions.'

The address of Mr Lawrence bears marks of being the work of a man less used to the toilsome effort of literary composition, less accustomed to the still severer task of thinking for himself. He bows with a little too much submission to the authority of great names, and Michael Angelo, Canova, and Jefferson seem to be to him a sort of synonymes for greatness. The propriety of introducing a discussion on commerce and manufactures into an address on the fine arts may also be questioned. But the author fairly tells us at the beginning, that being 'uninstructed as he is in the different branches of design, it is not his intention to incur the charge of presumption, by assuming the office of the professional critic. As a safer course, he confines himself to a cursory historical notice of 'some of the most interesting epochs of the arts.' In this undertaking he shows a wide knowledge of antiquity, and great industry in collecting facts suited to his purpose. The following biographical sketch of Canova may be taken, as showing the tone and character of his composition.

'In Venice, the artists had always been remarkable for gaudy splendor rather than for elegant simplicity, and the decline of commerce had withdrawn, in a great degree, the patronage by which they had been sustained. In a small town of the states of this republic was born, in 1757, Antonio Canova. Though his first years were passed in an obscure situation, the pursuits of his early life were, in some measure, connected with his future profession. His ancestors had been for generations marble cutters in the village of Passagno. Under the direction of his grandfather, Canova made considerable progress in the mechanical department of his art. Two years' instruction from those, who then sustained the best VOL. XXI.-No. 49.

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