jeweler, astonished at not receiving the first six months' installment, appealed to the Queen. An investigation followed, and everything became manifest. The Cardinal was publicly taken into custody, to the prodigious indignation of the Prince de Condé, the Marshal de Soubise, the Princess de Marsan, and all the other branches and connections of the Rohan family, who had not yet recovered from the shock they had received at the tremendous bankruptcy, of the Prince de Guéménée, an important scion of that house. But all was in vain; nothing but the Cardinal's public disgrace could avenge the deeds of his insolent ambition and the scandal he had brought upon the names of his sovereigns. In vain did Pope Pius VI. claim for him, on the ground of his spiritual functions, exemption from trial by an ordinary court of justice. And though the result of this trial was the discharge of the accused, yet his reputation was ruined by the strange developments it occasioned. All the sums raised by his subjects for the restoration of the Chateau de Savergne had been shamelessly appropriated by its resident to far different purposes. thousand other peccadilloes came to light; a thousand epigrams, ballads, squibs were circulated against him. Even the children in the streets went about singing

Et l'innocente candeur

Du prélat de Savergne Va briller comme un docteur

Dans une lanterne.

A

As for the Countess de la Motte, des

pite her noble blood, she was sentenced to be flogged through the streets with a halter about her neck, to be branded on both shoulders, and shut up for the rest of her life in la Salpêtrière.

But where, all this while, was his Excellency the Count Alexander? Released from the Bastile for lack of legal evidence against him, his wanderings began anew. From London, by slow stages, he proceeded Italyward, till at last, in an evil hour for himself, he arrived in Rome. There he was arrested -on what charge does the reader suppose? Of nothing less than of being a Free Mason! Alas! all his subtilties and shifts could not avail him here; the facts were too strongly proven against him. Convicted upon this accusation, he was sent to prison for the remainder of his days, and in the year 1795 died in his dungeon. So perished the prince of liars and impostors, and one of the most ingenious of men, leaving behind him a reputation so parti-colored (according to the various lights in which it had been visible to men's eyes), that while nine-tenths of the world reviled him as a rogue and a charlatan, the remaining decimal part venerated him as a saint and a martyr. We have seen an engraved copy of his portrait-thousands of which were dispersed over Europe-bearing this modest inscription, of whose justice our readers may best judge:

De l'Ami des Humains reconaissez les traits: Tous ses jours sont marqués par de nouveaux bien

faits:

Il prolonge la vie, il secourt l'indigence;
Le plaisir d'être utile est seul sa recompense.

THE HE Academy opened its exhibition of this year under new circumstances, and, by an address prefixed to the catalogue, called the attention of the public to itself. Having sold its real estate, and, therefore, being free of all hindrances to any change of form or system of operations, it seems a fit time to examine into the nature of its relations to Art and the influence it has exerted among us, in order that the appeal implied in its address may be duly considered, and, if justifiable, responded to.

The appellation " Academy," assumed by it, is surely a misnomer, for it sustains in nowise the position of an institution for the education of artists. It has had life and antique schools; but those are small parts of the requirements of art-education, if, indeed, of positive use. It is like the Royal Academy in London, in imitation of which it was organized, simply and solely a society of artists united for mutual benefit. It was not the nurse but the child of American Art, and it still exists as such, doing in itself nothing to advance the Art, but always supported by the eminence of its members. It was, at its foundation, only the associated individualities of Morse, Inman, Durand, Cole and others, and had an existence for the public only on the walls of the exhibition room. So it is now -the names are somewhat changed since its formation, but it is still only an aggregate of individual talent, and the sole work accomplished by it is, to make its annual gatherings of new pictures. It is a burden borne by the artists-not an institution strengthening them-and is rather to be considered as an evidence of the vigor of American Art and the energy and talent of its professors, than as an agent in its progress. Organized in 1826, it has maintained itself and accumulated property by the attraction of its exhibitions; it has made known to the public some new artists and afforded the opportunity to see many fine pictures. As a society, having for its object the advancement of the interests of the artists, it is unobjectionable; but, as a school for bewildered and light-seeking talent, it has only a nominal existence. We do not say this in blame,

but to account for the apathy of the public towards it-to show why it has never been the recipient of any gratuity, appropriation or bequest whatever, from the State, the City, or from individuals." It has not labored for the public and the public has not, of course, paid it for working for itself.

Now, however, that it is at liberty to adopt new arrangements it seems worth while to ask if it can do more than it has done. Artists themselves must indicate the direction in which it can move with advantage to them, but we think that there can hardly be a doubt that, if the Academy were to establish some elementary schools on a liberal plan, free to all, and embracing more than mere antique and life schools, say, for instance, costume schools, elementary instruction in painting, including the methods of using the materials of Art so eagerly desired by all tyros and really of essential use in giving them confidence in their own ability, classes in perspective, and familiar lectures on the principles of design, particularly for mechanics and those who in their avocations need the application of those principles, the public would cheerfully sustain it in the work.

If this is not feasible, then nothing remains but that it should still exist as a society for the indirect encouragement of the Arts of Design, and, employing its means in the erection of new galleries, give us, year after year, its gatherings of the works of our artists, attempting no more and doing this conscientiously and well. We cannot spare the exhibition. It is the only means which the public at large has for learning the position and advance of Art among us, and the only opportunity our artists have of comparing their works. the walls of the Academy we have followed Cole through his progress, and seen Durand, year after year, working out his problem of originality, and Cropsey, Kensett, Church, and their brethren of the younger generation, growing up into notice and excellence. Each exhi bition has shown an increase of numbe.. in the artistic ranks, and a higher a. tainment of technical ability than the previous one manifested. We confess to a kind of respect for the institution,

On

but not so high a reverence that we would not willingly see it pushed away by something that would do a better work.

We do not, therefore, attribute any great influence to the institution itself, though we say that by its means the public has become acquainted with all of true and valuable that American Art has at present. We do not forget Allston, Vanderlyn, Trumbull, and their cotemporaries; but in their day Art was an exotic transplanted here, and refused to maintain its existence under the circumstances in which it found itself. The last leaves which fell from it were Vanderlyn and Cole. They were pendants of the old system, that of nutriment and treatment rather than of positive knowledge. They had their triumphs, but they were rather those which consisted in creditably rivaling their masters, than in developing new and peculiar features of artistic wisdom. Their faces were like all their earlier confreres, turned backward, and they dreamed in the past-in the Art of Claude and Titian-rather than lived in earnest, looking forward to unexplored fields. They were not new men-not American, therefore-but from the influence of that unreal art there originated one of positive vitality. Its professors were Durand, Inman, Mount, Edmonds, Huntington and others, painters, to a greater or less extent, of things real, and of which they knew.

It may seem strange that we should draw such a dividing line between Durand and Cole, yet, such is the relation of their minds that the latter must be classed as a sentimentalist, and inclined both by feeling and study to the masters of the last phase of landscape; while the former in all respects conforms to the modern spirit, based on reality, and admitting no sentiment which is not entirely drawn from Nature. Cole was, it is true, in many cases forced into a partial recognition of the natural, but generally he seems to have regarded the forms of Nature only as characters, by means of which he impresses on us his story, and thus his pictures, though they may be poetical, are certainly not picturesque. For instance, in the "Youth," there is not an individual object in the picture which ever had its prototype in the natural world-not a tree, shrub or mountain form is there, which is not palpably a

creation of the artist's imaginative brain. With Durand, on the contrary, there are no objects, with the exception occasionally of his cloud forms, which are not actual, real. This makes the distinction between the old school and the new-with that, things were types, and so long as they were understood, it matters not how imperfectly they were expressed; with this, they are individualities, with the rights of the individual, and its influence in the general result.

With this new school we shall have to do at present, as far as it appears on the walls of the Academy's exhibition. Wherever our artists have given themselves to the admiration and following of European masters, we shall leave them to the kind of appreciation they have sought for, that which finds its enjoyment in merely technical qualities, without regard to the thought or extent of knowledge possessed by the artist. This is a species of Art which our people can never amply sympathize with, because it is an idle thing, aimless, and without root or permanence. The Art which they will have, and in which, therefore, they will be benefited, is that which arises from a genuine feeling for the things with which the people have sympathy. It hardly matters whether or no the materialism of the times is an error. So long as it is the spirit of the age, Art, to be in any way successful, must carry it out. Rhapsodies, dreams, and studio vagaries will not satisfy a public sentiment accustomed to find in all other things some substantial, positive truth, something which the mind, grasping, holds ever after. If artists prefer to follow what they consider an ideal, and withdraw themselves from the appreciation of the men of their time, they may certainly do so, and perhaps, like Allston, work a mighty genius into dreams, or, like Vanderlyn, be forgotten as soon as dead. But if they seek encouragement, they must deal in wares the age has need of; and, to be immortalized, they must give their works vitality, that they may perpetuate their kind.

First among those "men of present labor" are Durand and Mount. The latter, however, is hardly represented in this exhibition, the only picture he attempts being the "Webster among the People," and this is unworthy of him in every respect. Durand appears to

better advantage than ever before, and, if we should select from the whole range of his works one which marks the man, it would be his large picture, "In the Woods," in the present exhibition. In sentiment, it appeals at once to our love of the wild and free, and leads us to a glade in the wilderness where, shut in by the eternal forest, whose giant children raise themselves around us, we see no light and hear no sound that remind us of civilization or humanity. Mouldering tree-trunks lie around us, with mosses and ferns thriving in the coolness of the shade, and a quiet brooklet welling out of the mould and winding its way among old tree roots. A squirrel crosses the stream on a prostrate tree, and on a beech tree a red-headed woodpecker is tapping. The picture might have been as carefully painted and still have only a botanical interest, but the summer has settled hazily among the trees, and the softened sunlight, falling down through the openings in the leafage overhead, breaks up the cool shade on the bolls of the trees, and warms the mossy ground with its gold. Follow the little stream into the further shade, and there, still more softened and dimmed, the light comes in with an occasional ray; and then through an opening in the forest we catch a glimpse of an outer world, a blue lake set with bluer hills, over which again dreams the sunlight, struggling in its sleep with the summer haze. In that sunlight is the poetry of the picture; and, if in Durand we should select one quality as more glorious, more worthy our love than others, it would be his feeling for sunlight.

We are tolerably well acquainted with the works of all the modern masters in landscape, but we do not know a man who could have painted that picture with, at once, the truth, the technical power and the loftiness of feeling for the subtler beauty of Nature that Durand has manifested in it. There are men who would have shown more mechanical excellence, others

who

would have given the details with greater minuteness, but in the combination of admirable qualities, and in the enjoyLent of the freedom of the scene, we do not believe there is a living artist who would equal him.

In as far as our younger landscapists have followed the lead given by Durand,

they deserve the most generous encouragement and the greatest forbearance on the part of critics. It is so easy to be superficial and striking, and so hard to be entirely true and faithful to nature, that it is a delicate task to deal with the

imperfections of a conscientious artist, and one which the critic most competent to undertake would enter on with the greatest reluctance. It will often happen that qualities, in themselves far from agreeable, have resulted from a most determined effort to be true. A conspicuous instance of this in the exhibition is a landscape by an artist whose name we do not remember to have seen before, A. W. Warren, a "View in the Country." At first sight, one would be tempted to pass it by; it seems cold and lightless; but it is studied with a most manly sincerity and devotion to truth, the only present results of which are to make the picture hard and chilly, and scarcely any one but a painter would see through that to the intention.

In Kensett's "October Day in the White Mountains," there is a mass of white stone partially veiled by herbage, with the white showing through in such a way that at first sight it might be mistaken for the blossoms of the blackberry bush. The effect is perplexing and injurious to the repose of the picture, otherwise very fine. Yet this is an honest attempt to render an actual phenomenon; and fails because it was not possible to render it more truly, perhaps. This picture is, however, one of Kensett's finest, if not the best he has painted. The autumnal haze in the sky, with the dreamy clouds, and the thorough painting of the distant mountains and the valley, through which winds the Saco, the literalness and general truthfulness of the whole scene, designate him as a man of the new school. His treatment is picturesque, his sense of color good, particularly in the grays and more quiet colors, and his light and shade artistic; but his perceptions are rather broad than minute.

Church is, in most respects, the reverse of Kensett, though even more decidedly of the realist school. His perceptions are uncommonly minute, going down into the microscopic range, his execution fluent and vigorous, and his color inclining always to the excessive, manifesting itself in a love for sunset effects, and, as in the present

exhibition, in the foreground of "The Cordilleras," by a profusion of gaily colored flowers and birds. His intensity of perception gives rise to an exuberance of material and fullness of detail which are rarely found. In no case

does this avail so much as in his skies, where, for want of studying cloud-forms, most artists are deficient. Compare, in this respect, one of Church's skies with the old school generally-even with Cole. The masses of gray and pale yellow color which with the latter pass for cloud, though without any distinct form, sink at once into mere paint beside Church's carefully elaborated clouds. But this minuteness carries him away from repose and simplicity. Instead of the simple, grand skies of the English Stanfield, (whom, in many respects, Church resembles,) drifting and driving at the beck of the wind, we have often a sky filled with individual forms, lacking in unity and repose. In the simpler skies, as in that of "The Cordilleras," this is not the case, and they are then very perfect. Church's great want is that of breadth,-his details too often start out of their place, and, unsought, claim our attention. His compositions too often lack the unity and singleness of interest proper to Nature. Study of the English artists, so generally ruinous to our painters, would benefit him much, by giving his works more largeness and simplicity in the arrangement of their

masses.

Cropsey is an example of the near approach of the old to the new school, bringing the sentiment which belonged to the former to the literalness of the latter. Compromises have everything to lose and little to gain; and so Cropsey, if he were entirely a realist, would be much more impressive than in dividing his force between story, or allegory, and pure Nature. Studio sentiment is a poor substitute for unadorned beauty of Nature, and what a landscape painter does not find in landscape, he had better leave where he finds it. His view of Mount Washington is, we think, his finest picture. There is a fine haziness about the clouds, and after-rain clearness in the atmosphere, with pure transparent shadows falling across the landscape. It is very artistic in its treatment, and fresh in feeling. In the "Mediterranean Sea-coast," there is some exquisitely truthful painting in the distance, including the gray, misty sky around

the rising moon, and the distant water. It expresses the gathering of the evening under the moist, vapory atmosphere of the sea-coast, as perfectly as anything that we have ever seen. The enjoyment conferred by rich passages of truth, is much greater and more enduring than that which any story could give; for it always comes to the mind with the freshness of Nature itself, ever grateful, while the story, once told, wearies in the repetition.

It is not our purpose, however, to criticise pictures, or even individual painters, but rather to indicate wherein our artists are fulfilling the requirements of a true school, and we have, we believe, said enough to point out the direction in which we should look for the signs of such fulfillment.

Mount's pictures are so well known, that to criticise him by those of past exhibitions would be useless, and the examples of his talent, in this, are scarcely to be characterized as his. We believe it to be a great mistake, however, to class his pictures as humorous. They are, in fact, as serious and truthful as any pictures we have, and, it seems to us, painted without the slightest intention of perpetrating a witticism of any kind, with the exception, perhaps, of one or two pictures, which are among his least successful. He has drawn from life as he sees it, and in the most earnest feeling. It may be that the incident is in some degree laughable, as in the "Boys Raffling;” but it is still a passage of genuine life, and regarded, so far as the author is concerned, with the utmost seriousness of which he is capable. If he ventures from his proper feeling, he fails, as in the "Webster," where he has attempted something in what he felt to be a heroic vein-something ideal in some way. Thus, his failure is a witness of the truth of our position, that Art, to be successful now, must deal with things which the artist actually knows or sees, and that an endeavor to attain something only felt will fall without result. If Mount had learned the ways of the old school, he might have made a fine composition, and have succeeded as they succeed; but the picture would have been worth no more than now, since the subject was out of his range, and on the subject alone depends the essential value of the work.

Darley, though not so natural in his