Portrait painting is the forte, as it has always been the passion of this country. Happily for the inquisitive stranger, every rich man has all his progenitors and relatives on canvass. The walls of every public institution are crowded with benefactors and pupils, and no town hall is left without the heads of the corporation, or the representatives of the borough. The same impulse that prompts us to gaze with avidity on the persons of our cotemporaries, if there be any thing prominent in their character, or peculiar in their history, leads us to turn a curious and attentive eye on the likenesses of the "mighty dead," whose souls as well as faces are thus in some degree transmitted to posterity. Next to my association with the living men of genius who render illustrious the names of Englishmen, no more sensible gratification has accrued to me from my residence in this country, than that of studying the countenances of their predecessors; no employment has tended more efficaciously to improve my acquaintance with the history of the nation, to animate research, and to quicken the spirit of competition.
I quitted Oxford with a fervent wish that such an establishment might one day grace our own country. I have uttered an ejaculation to the same effect whenever the great monuments of industry and refinement which Europe displays exclusively, have fallen under my observation. We have indeed just grounds to hope that we shall one day eclipse the old world.
| "Each rising art by just gradation moves, Toil builds on toil, and age on age improves." |
The only paper in the Didactics, to which we have any decided objection, is a tolerably long article on the subject of Phrenology, entitled "Memorial of the Phrenological Society of —— to the Honorable the Congress of —— sitting at ——." Considered as a specimen of mere burlesque the Memorial is well enough—but we are sorry to see the energies of a scholar and an editor (who should be, if he be not, a man of metaphysical science) so wickedly employed as in any attempt to throw ridicule upon a question, (however much maligned, or however apparently ridiculous) whose merits he has never examined, and of whose very nature, history, and assumptions, he is most evidently ignorant. Mr. Walsh is either ashamed of this article now, or he will have plentiful reason to be ashamed of it hereafter.
COOPER'S SWITZERLAND.
Sketches of Switzerland. By an American. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea and Blanchard.
These very interesting sketches are merely selections from a work of much larger extent, originally intended for publication, but which, as a whole, is, for private reasons, suppressed. There is consequently on this account, and on some others, several vacuums in the narrative. Mr. Cooper commenced the year 1828 in Paris, whence, after a short stay, he paid a visit to England. In June he returned to France by the way of Holland and Belgium. The narrative embraced in vol. i commences at Paris after his return from England, and terminates at Milan. The remainder of the year 1828, and the years 1829, 1830, and 1831, with part of 1832, were passed between Italy, Germany, France and Belgium. Volume ii recommences at Paris, and a great portion of it is occupied with matters relating to other countries than that which gives a title to the book.
We either see, or fancy we see, in these volumes, and more particularly in the Preface affixed to them, a degree of splenetic ill humor with both himself and his countrymen, quite different from the usual manner of the novelist, and evincing something akin to resentment for real or imaginary ill usage. He frankly tells us among other things, that had the whole of his intended publication seen the light, it is probable their writer would not have escaped some imputations on his patriotism—for in making the comparisons that naturally arose from his subject, he has spoken in favor of American principles much oftener than in favor of American things. He then proceeds with a sneer at a "numerous class of native critics," and expresses a hope that he may be permitted at least to assert, that "a mountain fifteen thousand feet high is more lofty than one of fifteen hundred, and that Mont Blanc is a more sublime object than Butter Hill." We quote a specimen of the general tone of this Preface.