I have not been made acquainted with the objects of this mission, but any assistance that you can offer Colonel ——, which will not interfere with your other duties, you are authorized to give.
Respectfully your obedient servant,
S.F. Dupont,
Rear-Adm. Comdg. S. Atl. Block. Squad.
To the Senior Officer present at the different Blockading Stations on the Coast of Georgia and Florida.
[D] "The effect was electrical. The Rebels were the best men in Ford's command, being Lieutenant-Colonel Showalter's Californians, and they are brave men. They had dismounted and sent their horses to the rear, and were undoubtedly determined upon a desperate fight, and their superior numbers made them confident of success. But they never fought with artillery, and a cannon has more terror for them than ten thousand rifles and all the wild Camanches on the plains of Texas. At first glimpse of the shining brass monsters there was a visible wavering in the determined front of the enemy, and as the shells came screaming over their heads the scare was complete. They broke ranks, fled for their horses, scrambled on the first that came to hand, and skedaddled in the direction of Brownsville."—New York Evening Post, Sept 25, 1864.
[E] "The colored regiments had nothing at all to do with it; they behaved with propriety throughout."—Boston Journal Correspondence. ("Carleton.")
"The negro troops took no part whatever in the perpetration of this Vandalism."—New York Tribune Correspondence. ("N. P.")
"We know not whether we are most rejoiced or saddened to observe, by the general concurrence of accounts, that the negro soldiers had nothing to do with the barbarous act."—Boston Journal Editorial, April 10, 1863.
A NEW ART CRITIC.[F]
It has been said that our painters merely continue tendencies that have had their origin in Europe, and just as English and French painters are abandoning theories which they have exhausted, we are entertaining those theories as new discoveries, and repeating a discord that abroad has been outgrown. There is some truth in the charge, and we are not always well enough informed to anticipate the next development in the artistic world. While we are overrun by the maggots that have crawled out of the literary body of John Ruskin, the English painters, already emancipated from the bondage of that powerful sectarian, are working under new influences, and showing tendencies that, without subverting the truths so eloquently expounded by Ruskin, supplement them. Under the form of a continuation of the work begun by the great sectarian of English Art criticism, we have a literary exponent of the reaction; and the pictures of Mr. Whistler, an American almost unknown on this side of the Atlantic, have been taken by the late "London Fine Arts Quarterly Review" as examples of this reaction in practice. Mr. Whistler has been called the man of highest genius and most daring eccentricity in the new school; and Tom Taylor amiably writes that he is equally capable of exquisite things and gross impertinences. We give place to Mr. Whistler's name merely to indicate that artists anticipate critics. In the latest literature of Art we do not find positive reaction, but continuation. Mr. Philip Gilbert Hamerton, however, meets conditions and covers ground not treated by Ruskin, and more practical, but less eloquent, defines the relation of the painter to Nature and the limitations of imitation. Ruskin splendidly opened the campaign for modern Art, and he has found servile and ignorant executive officers; but Hamerton is an independent officer, who crosses the enemy's country, beats his foe in detail, and according to his own method. Ruskin is superb in his combinations; Hamerton exact in his method, and careful to protect his rear. Therefore the most useful books that could be placed in the hands of the American Art public at present are Hamerton's "Painter's Camp" and "Thoughts about Art." The latter volume is most carefully considered, and is the result of unwearied practice in the study of Art and Nature. For Mr. Hamerton has studied Nature as a man indoctrinated with the ideas of Ruskin; he has generalized about Art as one who has emancipated himself from a master in thought; and he has enlarged his views by varied reading and familiarity with ancient and modern painting. In some respects Mr. Hamerton's books may be taken as the literary proof of a school which is said to include "many men of rare gifts and uncommon culture," and which, profiting by the reform introduced by Millais, Hunt, and Rossetti, yet also supplements that reform with a more catholic taste and a less ascetic manner than were shown by the immediate agents of the first great revolution in English Art. It follows that some account of Mr. Hamerton's writings is called for, and will be welcomed. He is at once able, useful, and representative of the latest tendencies of Art criticism.