and patterns of calicoes and ginghams, which urges their sale more than any comparative excellence of the fabrics; and the country girl, who chooses her holiday dress, does an unwitting homage to the same genius the amateur admires in the finished picture. The cabinet maker, who judiciously copies most from the antique, will find the most ready demand for his furniture, even from those who never dream of being indebted to liberal art; and many an industrious mechanic, who has spent hard labour upon good mahogany, and wonders why his ware lingers upon his hands, might find the secret of his ill success in a disproportioned panel, a stumpy column, or a spindle leg. It is well known, that skilful Artists are employed by the manufacturers of useful articles in Europe, to suggest their forms and embellishments. Wedgewood, a Staffordshire potter, secured an unrivalled pre-eminence for his earthen-ware, by his fortunate engagement of young Flaxman to model his vessels. The Artist, thus introduced to notice, afterwards became the most gifted and spiritual sculptor of modern times; but not before he had made the fortune of his early patron, and improved the trade of England immeasurably; so that it may with truth be said, that the same genius, which has illustrated the sublime Homer and the pure Euripides, turned the clay of Staffordshire into more than gold. Our manufactures need such an influence from Art more than any thing else, and a liberal and far-sighted patronage of

Artists would soon render it unnecessary, in the judgment of all, to strain the constitution for the enactment of protective tariffs.

But we may look for the success of Art in the United States to higher causes. The remains of Puritan severity, and Quaker stiffness, with the incessant demands upon our enterprise, made by the circumstances of a new country, have not been favourable to the development of genius among us; yet enough has been seen to show that our people have a strong sense of poetry and eloquence. We have very few great poets, but we have very many whose artless fingers draw sweet and glowing strains from the lute and lyre. Our scenery, our noble rivers, rushing streams, limpid lakes, wild cascades, deep forests, gorgeous sunsets, clear atmosphere, and autumnal variegation, with the high aspirations which freedom awakens in every generous bosom, give us all the thoughts of poetry. The power of expressing thought in rapid and energetic language, is an American characteristic. To say nothing of the high eloquence which is heard in our legislative halls, our courts of justice and our pulpits, there is scarcely a man among us who cannot rise, upon a fitting occasion, and harangue in good set phrases. Our 'prentice mechanics meet at the close of the day's labour, to cultivate their talents in essays and debates. The crowds which have thronged this hall,* and other places of

*The Hall of the Musical Fund Society.

assemblage throughout the whole country, to listen eagerly, and with no small discrimination, to multitudes of clever orators, for years past, demonstrate a general appreciation of eloquence. What is Art but another form of poetry and eloquence? When do we feel the power of the bard or of the orator most? Is it not when he brings the idea he would impress, fully, as in a picture, before the eye of the mind? Phidias assured his countrymen that Homer was his master; and we can never enter as deeply into the spirit of the great tragic writers of Attica, as when we behold their thoughts made visible in the designs of Flaxman. Who that has looked upon the statue of the Dying Gladiator, but has felt the power of the sculptor and the poet to be of kindred source, when he remembered Byron's picture of the same victim!

"I see before me the Gladiator lie;

He leans upon his hand, his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony,
And his droop'd head sinks gradually low,
And through his side the last drops ebbing slow,

From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,

Like the first of a thunder shower; but now

The arena swims around him; he is gone,

Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won.

He heard it, but he heeded not-his eyes
Were with his heart, and that was far away;
He recked not of the life he lost nor prize,
But where his rude hut, by the Danube lay,
There were his young barbarians all at play-

There was their Dacian mother-he, their sire,
Butchered to make a Roman holiday-

All this rushed with his blood-Shall he expire

And unrevenged? Arise, ye Goths, and glut your ire!"

A young pupil of Thorwaldsen, has recently surprised and delighted the admirers of genius at Rome, by a figure of a girl, holding a sea-shell to her ear, and listening with childlike wonder to the mysterious sounds of the ocean she seems to hear from within it. A more exquisite subject for the chisel can scarcely be imagined; and it is most unlikely that the young German ever read Wordsworth's Excursion, yet, in that most natural poem, we find the same thought.

66
"I have seen

A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract
Of inland ground, applying to his ear
The convolutions of a smooth-lipp'd shell,

To which, in silence hushed, his very soul
Listened intensely; and his countenance soon
Brightened with joy; for murmurings from within
Were heard, sonorous cadences, whereby,

To his belief, the monitor expressed
Mysterious union with its native sea.
Even such a shell the universe itself

Is, to the ear of faith."

Here is a picture by a poet, the scenery of which a Claude should paint, and a Guido Reni put in the figure:

E

"As o'er the lake, in evening's glow,

The temple threw its lengthening shade
Upon the marble steps below,

There sat a fair Corinthian maid,
Gracefully o'er a volume bending;

While by her side a youthful sage
Held back her ringlets, lest, descending,
They should o'ershadow all the page."

I have not time for more instances, which are abundant. The coincidence between Art and Oratory, though equally striking, is more difficult of illustration; for the orator is ever pressing forward to his conclusion, and the pictures he presents to us, are moving, or he shifts scene after scene, as he follows thought with thought. Yet how fully does Massillon bring before us the Magdalene kneeling at the Saviour's feet, in the house of the Pharisee? What can be finer than the manner in which he contrasts the death of the sinner with that of the righteous person; how perfectly, with a painter's imagination, does he set off the lights of the one with the shadows of the other? But Massillon, in his Life of Correggio, proves how deep his sympathy with Art was. Barrow's description of the crucifixion, in his sermon on the passion of our Lord, might be studied by the Artist for a better picture than has ever been produced on the subject. Then, what noble illustrations of moral truth might be copied from portions of Burke's Speeches in Parliament? What force of