was miscalled Rhetoric. But the impulse of by the honors and rewards bestowed upon men Bacon's genius has gradually quickened into distinguished for their genius and learning-the healthful activity the minds of succeeding gene- love of knowledge has been stimulated and susrations. He has freed them from the fetters of tained. Discoveries made in the laboratory or blind authority, and furnished them with a safe the closet-sometimes indeed the fruit of chance, guide for their advancing footsteps. No longer sometimes the results of careful induction-have confined to the dusty, beaten track of precedent, been promulgated to the world, and have led to fenced in by impassable walls of error and pre- the thousand inventions, to which we owe so judice, they have ranged abroad over the face of much of the safety, the comfort, and the elegance Nature, and penetrated beneath its surface; of modern life. The reproach, that the "spials gathering from every quarter the fruits of pa- and intelligencers of nature" were ill-paid, no tient and careful research into the common treas- longer exists: and the wise economy, which reury, and with laborious study, comparing and ar- moved it, is vindicated by the constantly increasranging the results of actual observation and ex- ing streams, which are poured out from these perience. When we boast of our superior know-"spring-heads" of intelligence, to refresh and ledge, when we survey the vast acquisitions of fertilize the fields of mind.

for their support, that comparatively few men, illustrious for talent, are found among their ranks. The clergy, in particular, are expected to encounter labor, privation, and responsibility of the highest character, while they receive a maintenance, which is often both scanty and precarious. For their case, however, in a country where happily a State religion is unknown, there can be no remedy, save in the increased liberality of

the two last centuries in the domains of natural There remain, however, two classes of learned philosophy, of chemistry, of mechanics, of agri- men, who have not yet been placed upon a level culture-when we read the earth's history in the with their brethren in other pursuits; we allude mighty records of geology, or trace the intricate to clergymen and judges. To none are more workings of animal and vegetable life that are important functions assigned, than to those who unfolded to our view-when we sweep the starry expound and administer the laws of the land, or heavens with telescopes that discover one uni- who teaches the sublime lessons of moral and verse after another, or annihilate time and dis- religious truth. No calling requires, for the tance by the aid of the new elements that have proper fulfilment of its duties, a longer or more been chained to the service of mankind-how lit- laborious training, a greater sacrifice of valuable tle do we reflect how much of all this had been time. Hence it is not surprising, when we conunknown, if Bacon had not taught the human in-sider the inadequate provision generally made tellect to burst its bonds, and put forth the free energies with which its maker had endowed it. Nor has this influence been felt in physical pursuits alone. The spirit of the true philosophy has been caught by the votaries of intellectual and moral knowledge. They too have learned "to prove all things." The fabrics of divinity, of law, of government, with all their supports in the mental constitution and moral sense of man, have been examined and scrutinized. Some portions voluntary contributions. But the other is within have been repaired, some altered, others levelled to the dust and rebuilt on surer foundattons. Not that we mean to assert the perfection of our attainments. Heresy, so false and arrogant, would be rebuked by the very faith which has led But to return to the topic from which we have us so far. We look upon our success only as an ear- digressed a little-the State of Virginia, while nest of still greater triumphs that await our suc- her efforts and achievements toward the promocessors-the herald of coming forces, which are tion of learning are lamentably inferior to what to extend our conquests indefinitely-until the they should have been, is nevertheless reaping a inscrutable wisdom of the Almighty shall deter- rich harvest from the seed which has been sown. mine, as it has done at other periods in the life The alumni of her colleges have established of the world, to arrest and roll back the advan- within the last twenty years, numbers of good eing tide of moral knowledge and power. schools in various parts of the commonwealth, Much of the improvement to which we have which otherwise had been unprovided with the referred is due, moreover, to the judicious adop-means of instruction. We know but little of tion of the means recommended by Lord Bacon the school system of Virginia, either in its legisfor enabling studious men to employ their time lative history, or its actual operation. We unand talents advantageously. By the liberal en-derstand it, however, to be for the most part, a dowment of colleges, by the establishment of very inefficient one. Public or common schools cabinets and museums-by the funds provided for do not flourish here as in New England. One philosophical and mechanical experiments-and cause of this is to be found in the scattered

the reach of legislative authority; and that narrow policy should be abandoned, which for the most part excludes from the judicial service of the state the highest intellects of the legal profession.

population of rural districts: another, in the gene- | such work I do not so much design for curiosity, ral ability of parents here, who appreciate the value or satisfaction of those that are lovers of learnof education, to afford the expense of tuition at ing, but chiefly for a more serious and grave private schools-while at the North, the mass of purpose; which is this, in a few words, that it the white population are necessarily dependent will make learned men wise in the use and adon the public schools, which are thus imperative- ministration of learning. For it is not St. Augusly required by the wants of the community. The tine's nor St. Ambrose's works that will make so changes, which are gradually taking place among wise a divine, as ecclesiastical history thoroughly us, will in the end bring about a similar state of read and observed; and the same reason is of things. As our white population increases, and learning. the country becomes more densely settled, we "History of Nature is of three sorts of nature shall feel more and more the duty and the neces- in course, of nature in erring or varying, and of sity of providing for the instruction of the young. nature altered or wrought: that is history of If we would qualify them for the duties which creatures, history of marvels, and history of arts. await them as men and citizens, if we would se- The first of these no doubt is extant and that in cure a beneficent use of the political power which good perfection; the two latter are handled so is daily passing into their hands, if we would not weakly and unprofitably, as I am moved to note desire to multiply our penitentiaries and poor them as deficient. For I find no sufficient or comhouses, in order to receive an increasing number petent collection of the works of nature which of felons and paupers-we must build school have a digression and deflexion from the ordihouses, employ teachers, and instruct children. And in this good work, as has been already remarked, we shall find ourselves much aided by those institutions of learning, which have supplied, and will supply, the schools of Virginia with competent and faithful instructors.

DIVISION OF HISTORY: IMPORTANCE OF THE
HISTORY OF LETTERS: HISTORY OF NA-

TURE-ITS IMPORTANCE-ITS DEFICIENCIES

uary course of generations, productions, and motions; whether they be singularities of place and region, or the strange events of time and chance, or the effects of yet unknown properties, or the instances of exception to general kinds. It is true, I find a number of books of fabulous experiments and events, and frivolous impostures for pleasure and strangeness; but a substantial and severe collection of the hetoroclites or irregulars of nature well examined and described

ITS APPLICATION TO AGRICULTURE AND THE I find not; especially not with due rejection of

ARTS.

66

History is Natural, Civil, Ecclesiastical and Literary whereof the first three I allow as extant, the fourth I note as deficient. For no man hath propounded to himself the general state of learning to be described and represented from age to age, as many have done the works of nature, and the state, civil and ecclesiastical, without which, the history of the world seemeth to me to be as the statue of Polyphemus with his eye out that part being out which doth most show the spirit and life of the person; and yet I am not ignorant, that in divers particular sciences, as of the jurisconsults, the mathematicians, the rhetoricians, the philosophers, there are set down some small memorials of the schools, authors and books; and so likewise some barren relations touching the inventions of arts and usages.

fables and popular errors; for as things now are, if an untruth in nature be once on foot, what by reason of the neglect of examination, and countenance of antiqiuity, and what by reason of the use, of the opinion in similitudes and ornaments of speech, it is never called down.

"The use of this work, honoured with a precedent in Aristotle, is nothing less than to give contentment to the appetite of curious and vain wits, as the manner of mirabilaries is to do; but for two reasons, both of great weight; the one, to correct the partialities of axioms and opinions, which are commonly formed only upon common and familiar examples; the other, because from the wonders of nature is the nearest intelligence and passage towards the wonders of art, for it is no more but by following, and as it were hounding Nature in her wanderings, to be able to lead her afterwards to the same place again. Neither "But a just story of learning, containing the am I of opinion, in this history of marvels, that antiquities and originals of knowledge, and their superstitious narrations of sorceries, witchcrafts, sects, their inventions, their traditions, their di- dreams, divinations, and the like, where there is verse administrations and managings, their flour- an assurance and clear evidence of the fact, be ishings, their oppositions, decays, depressions, altogether excluded. For it is not yet known, oblivions, removes, with the causes and occasions in what cases and how far, effects attributed to of them, and all other events concerning learn- superstition do participate of natural causes; ing, throughout the ages of the world, I may and therefore howsoever the practice of such truly affirm to be wanting. The use and end of things is to be condemned, yet from the specu

lation and consideration of them light may be world, and the policy thereof must be first sought taken, not only for the discerning of the offences, in mean concordances and small portions. So but for the further disclosing of nature. Neither we see how that secret of nature of the turning ought a man to make scruple of entering into of iron touched with the loadstone towards the these things for inquisitions of truth, as your north, was found out in needles of iron, not in majesty hath showed in your own example; who bars of iron. with the two clear eyes of religion and natural "But if my judgment be of any weight, the philosophy have looked deeply and wisely into use of History mechanical is of all others the these shadows, and yet proved yourself to be of most radical and fundamental towards natuthe nature of the sun, which passeth through ral philosophy; such natural philosophy as shall pollutions and itself remains as pure as before. not vanish in the fume of subtile, sublime, or deBut this I hold fit, that these narrations which lectable speculations, but such as shall be operahave mixture with superstition, be sorted by them-tive to the endowment and benefit of man's life: selves, and not be mingled with the narrations for it will not only minister and suggest, for the which are merely and sincerely natural. But as present, many ingenious practices in all trades, for the narrations touching the prodigies and by a connexion and transferring of the observamiracles of religions, they are either not true or natural, and therefore impertinent for the story

of nature.

tions of one art to the use of another, when the experiences of several mysteries shall fall under the considerations of one man's mind: but furFor history of Nature wrought or mechani- ther, it will give a more true and real illuminacal, I find some collections made of agriculture, tion concerning causes and axioms than is bithand likewise of manual arts; but commonly with erto attained. For like as a man's disposition a rejection of experiments familiar and vulgar. is never well known till he be crossed, nor ProFor it is esteemed a kind of dishonor unto learn- teus ever changed shapes till he was straitened ing to descend to inquiry. or meditation upon and held fast; so the passages and variations of matters mechanical, except they be such as may nature cannot appear so fully in the liberty of be thought secrets, rarities and special subtilties: nature, as in the trials and vexations of art." which humour of vain and supercilious arrogan- Here we are presented with the key, which cy is justly derided in Plato; where he brings in unlocked the system of the Baconian philosoHippias, a ranting sophist, disputing with Soc-phy, and admitted us into the rich store-house of rates, a true and unfeigned inquisitor of truth; useful knowledge. The vice of the old schools where, the subject being touching beauty, Socra- was speculation. The virtue of the new was its tes, after his wandering manner of inductions, practical experience. The essence of the forput first an example of a fair virgin, and then of mer was excessive generalization-immense hya fair horse, and then of a fair pot well glazed, pothesis reared upon a narrow basis of observawhereat Hippias was offended, and said, "More tion-a huge fabric built up in unstable.equilibrithan for courtesy's sake, he did think much to um-a castle in the air, tottering and ready to dispute with any that did allege such base and fall with every blow that would test the strength sordid instances." Whereunto Socrates answer- of its foundations. The principle of the latter ed, 'You have reason, and it becomes you well, was its ample and solid support. Its ground plan being a man so trim and neat in your vestments, embraced a spacious area, enclosed and travers&c.,' and so goeth on in an irony. But the ed by massive walls, fixed in the primeval rocks truth is, they be not the highest instances that of earth, every stone of which was to be fitted give the securest foundation; as may be well by actual measurement, cemented by untiring expressed in the tale so common of the philoso- labor, and settled by the lapse of time into firmpher, that while he gazed upward to the stars ness and union. Upon this secure basis was to fell into the water: for if he had looked down, rise a mighty structure, course after course in he might have seen the stars in the water, but slow but sure succession, until vast halls were looking aloft, he could not see the water in the developed, fitted to receive the varied treasures stars. So it cometh often to pass, that mean of science, and adorned with all the decorations and small things discover great, better than great of tasteful art. The great work has made much things discover the small: and therefore Aristo- progress. Generations of skilful artisans have tle noteth well, "that the nature of every thing followed one another, trained in the experience is best seen in its smallest portions." And for of their predecessors, and faithful to their own that cause he inquireth the nature of a common- allotted tasks. We survey with admiration the wealth, first in a family, and the simple conjuga- results of their labor. May we enjoy its benefits tions of man and wife, parent and child, master with becoming gratitude and humility, and disand servant, which are in every cottage. Even charge with persevering industry, in our turn, so likewise the nature of this great city of the' the duties which devolve upon ourselves.

intend to notice, is not a very extensive one, and we shall, therefore, not only comment upon the peculiarities of those who have already established their reputations, but of those also who, in our opinion, are certain of establishing a good name in their beautiful art.

The subject of our first paragraph is the President of the National Academy of Design, A. B. Durand. This gentleman has long borne the amiable reputation of being our best engraver of the human figure, as the Ariadne after Vanderlyn will testify. It is also a well known fact that he has executed some fine pictures in the way of portraiture and fanciful history; but for the last few years he has devoted himself exclusively to landscape painting, where his merits were at once recognized. His better pictures are truly American, and for that reason truly classical. His knowledge of drawing and coloring is coextensive with his love of art, and few are the men in any country who have lived the life of an artist more faithfully. We think him destitute of what is generally termed the imaginative faculty; but he has a passion for the poetry and more beautiful sentiment of the external world. He cannot, like Salvator Rosa, dash off a bold, wild picture at one heat, and people it with robbers; but with Claude he would wander amid the more charming scenes of the country, like a timid but affectionate lover, portraying only those features in the sky, and upon the earth, which fill the heart with peace. He is a true poet, but one who loves the shady woodlawns of a cultivated country, more than the beetling crag and deep caverns of a mountain land. He has ever been a devoted student of nature, and has learned from experience, that our great mother "never did betray the heart that loved her." Few men have spent a more laborious life, none can claim a greater number of warmly attached friends, and in every particular, he is fully deserving of the many praises which are showered upon his head. His name and works are among the treasures which the people of this land should cherish with peculiar

care.

Mr. Durand has visited Europe, and hence it is that his productions, which are quite numerous, possess a great variety of attractions. Not only has he portrayed some of the finer points of Swiss scenery, but he has given as beautiful views in England, and an occasional prospect of the ocean. Among his American pictures, however, are to be found his master-pieces; but these are too numerous to be described in detail, and we shall therefore endeavor to give an idea of the class by describing too specimens.

We purpose in the present paper to indite a few brief remarks upon our living landscape painters, with a view of informing the uninitiated in matters of this sort, of the present condition of the landscape art in the United States. Those who would acquaint themselves with the past history of the art, so far as our country is concerned, are referred to the productions of the late Thomas Cole, as well as to a portion of those bequeathed to his country by Washington Forenoon and Afternoon, for example, are the Allston. The interesting brotherhood we now unpretending titles which this artist has given to

a pair of his largest and best pictures. In the labor, but it is a labor of mind more than of the first we have a cluster of forest trees, evidently pencil, and though executed with great care, on the side of a hill, whence may be seen a long, they are handled in a vigorous and manly manbroad valley, through which a majestic river ner. In summing up Mr. Durand's peculiarities, sweeps onward to an unknown sea. For many as a landscape painter, we should pronouce his miles its course seems to be through a lovely forest land, but it finally loses itself among a brotherhood of mountains. The sky is distinguished for a blueish grey, which makes us feel that the coolness of morning is just about to be lost in the bright effulgence of a midsummer-noon. Across the foreground of the picture glides a sparkling rivulet; on the margin of which a solitary farmer is dragging a large log with a yoke of cattle. These are the only figures, and the idea is that the farmer's residence is not far off, and that he has been in the forest after the trunk of a tree which he will either transfer into lumber or cut up for winter fuel.

trees, their foliage and bark, and his rocks of a very high order, and he unquestionably excels all his cotemporaries in the appropriateness of his figures. His coloring is brilliant, his drawing invariably correct, and his taste exceedingly poetical and refiued. His studies from nature are the most elaborate and beautiful that we have seen. As a man he is beyond reproach, and none know him but to love him for the many qualities of his heart and mind.

Another of our masters in landscape, to whom we would direct attention, is Thomas Doughty. The whole of his life has been devoted to his In the second picture we have a cluster of beautiful art, and his productions are very nufelled trees, and a peaceful lake, hemmed in with merous. The great majority of them have been mountains, which appear in a state of cultiva- exhibited to the public with no appended recomtion. The season is midsummer, and the time mendation but the unpretending titles of "A of day about two hours before sunset. In the Landscape," "A Waterfall," or "An Autumn foreground is a pool of water, where a number Scene." He has long been a favorite with the of cows are drinking, while others, with a few public, and is unquestionably one of the most sheep, are standing about in various languid at- accomplished of our painters. He has accomtitudes, as if tired of wandering over the fields. plished much in the way of creating a taste for On the shore of the lake a sail-boat is moored, the poetical in nature. Finishing, as he gener in which a party of young people have been ally does, with peculiar care, and employing the spending the day, and who are now returning richest of colors, it always gratifies the eye to home apparently well fatigued, but nevertheless look upon his pictures; but it is obvious that he in great glee. Everything in the picture informs has never painted much from nature, for there is a us that they had a glorious time; but we feel monotony in his touch, which cannot escape the that there was a long and tiresome calm about criticism of the attentive student of foliage, grass noon, and that there were but few fish captured, and earth. While we would not affirm that his on account of the loud and clear peals of laugh-coloring is more brilliant than that of nature, we ter which ever and anon echoed along the bo-do maintain that he idealizes nature by bringing som of the sleeping wave. The glowing sun- together upon one canvass none but the more light which floods the whole picture is true to nature and very beautiful.

interesting and beautiful objects. His trees and rocks are usually without any distinctive charIn an artistic point of view, these landscapes acter, and in producing his effects, he resorts not are remarkable for the union of a number of ad- to solid painting, but to the art of scumbling. mirable points. They are graceful and well- But some of the important features of landscape balanced in design and in color exceedingly rich have been completely mastered by him, and in and mellow. There is an agreeable combina-one or two particulars we think him without a tion of earthy and grassy colors, and a fiue effect rival. His skies are most faithful and charming; of light and shadow. As the trees are the most and his atmospheric effects are always full of prominent, so are they by far the most masterly poetry, often exquisitely conceived and executed. objects in both pictures. They are strongly He also excels in rendering falling water, and characteristic, accurately drawn and happily in- his waterfalls, which are quite numerous, are troduced. In the one we have a magnificent beautiful to a marvellous degree, and utterly inoak and a field beech, a maple and a hickory, describable. Good figures are the principal things while the leaves and the various barks are al- wanting in many of his pictures to make them most as distinctly marked as in nature itself. perfect, and his inability to paint is undoubtedly The tranquil water is good, but the running wa- one of the reasons for the sameness of his subter superb, and immediately fills the mind with jects. But after all there is so much of gladness images of wary trout and red-breasted flies. and beauty in his productions, that it is repulsive These pictures are evidently the fruit of much to our feelings to lisp a critical word against them,

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