essence and abstraction, are alike things too pure and bright and spiritual to be contemplated or understood by the eye of the body or the mind. It is only when they have some medium to act upon, some sorrow or difficulty to struggle with, some cloud to gild, that their glory and their beauty can be sensibly felt, and in part understood. Friendship's Offering.

ACQUIREMENTS.

MUCH knowleage of colour, much skill of hand, much experience in human character, and a deep sense of light and shade, have to be acquired, to enable the pencil to embody the conceptions of genius. The artist has to seek for all this in the accumulated mass of professional knowledge which time has gathered for his instruction; and with his best wisdom, and his happiest fortune, he can only add a little more information to the common stock, for the benefit of his successors.

A. Cunningham.

STANDARD OF ART.

FIRST follow Nature; and your judgment frame
By her just standard, which is still the same;
Unerring nature, still divinely bright,
One clear, unchanged, and universal light,
Life, force, and beauty must to all impart,
At once the source, and end, and test of art.
Art from that fund each just supply provides;
Works without show, and without pomp presides.

Pope.

GENIUS.

THE three primary requisites of genius, according to the Welsh, are an eye that can see nature, a heart that can feel nature, and a boldness that dares follow nature. Anon.

MOUNTAIN TOP.

THOU who wouldst see the lovely and the wild
Mingled in harmony on Nature's face,

Ascend our rocky mountains. Let thy foot
Fail not with weariness, for on their tops
The beauty and the majesty of earth,
Spread wide beneath, shall make thee to forget
The steep and toilsome way. There, as thou stand'st,
The haunts of men below thee, and around
The mountain summits, thy expanding heart
Shall feel a kindred with that loftier world
To which thou art translated, and partake
The enlargement of thy vision. Thou shalt look
Upon the green and rolling forest tops,
And down into the secrets of the glens,

And streams, that with their bordering thicket strive
To hide their windings. Thou shalt gaze, at once,
Here on white villages, and tilth, and herds,
And swarming roads, and there on solitude
That only hear the torrent, and the wind,
And eagle's shriek.

W. C. Bryant.

ARTISTS.

ADVENTURERS in Art are seldom adventurers upon any other ground;-if they travel, it is but to see. The organ of vision is to them the richest inheritance. A cultivated perception places within their reach objects of enjoyment from every quarter of the globe. The treasures of the land and of the deep, the ever-varying character of the seasons, and the phenomena of the elements, furnish the storehouse of the painter's imagination, from whence he draws those enchanting combinations of hill and dale, of mountain torrent, or of placid stream. But it is principally with the human form divine, and with the character and expressions of the mind under the various emotions of passions that swell the human heart, that he is most studiously concerned. It is with these elements of the soul that he must be conversant, in order to be able to cite them to appear at his bidding, and, by the magic of his pencil, to transfer them to the canvass. ** * The Artist resembles the philosopher in the singleness and abstraction of his pursuits, caring little for the chances and changes of things, if his colours do but flow with ease, and are not liable to fade or change. If he does not possess the splendours of life, the love of Art enables him to endure its privations. His hopes are fed, and his exertions animated by the reward of the judicious; and if not secure of contemporary applause, he consoles himself with the hope that posterity will do justice to his merits.

Library of the Fine Arts.

EYE OF TASTE.

THE Painter's eye, to sovereign beauty true,
Marks every grace, and heightens every hue;
Follows the fair through all her forms and wiles,
Studies her airs, and triumphs in her smiles;
Imagines wondrous scenes as fancy warms,
And revels, rich in all creation's charms.
His Art her homage, and his soul her shrine,
She rules his life, and regulates his line;
While rapt to frenzy as the goddess fires,
He pours to view the visions she inspires.

Presented to the cultured eye of Taste,
No rock is barren, and no wild is waste;
No shape uncouth or savage, but, in place,
Excites an interest, or assumes a grace;
Whether the year's successive seasons roll,
Or Proteus passion paint the varying soul;
Whether, apart considered, or combined,
The forms of matter and the traits of mind;
Nature, exhaustless still, has power to warm,
And every change of scene, a novel charm.
The dome-crowned city, or the cottaged plain,
The rough, cragged mountain, or tumultuous main;
The temple, rich in trophied pride arrayed,
Or mouldering in the melancholy shade;
The spoils of tempest, or the wrecks of time;
The earth abundant, and the heaven sublime ;-
All, to the Painter, purest joys impart,
Delight his eye, and stimulate his Art.

Nature for him unfolds her fairest day,
For him puts on her picturesque array;
Beneath his eye new brightens all her charms,
And yields her blushing beauties to his arms,
His prize and praise-pursued in shades or crowds;
He fancies prodigies and peoples clouds ;
Arrests in rapid glance each fleeting form,
Loves the mild calm, and studies in the storm.

M. A. Shee.

PORTRAIT PAINTING.

A VERY charming art-a right noble art, when nobly and worthily used, redeeming as it does, grace and beauty from the grasp of time and the mortality of the grave, and transmitting the lineaments of the good, the great, and the gifted, to the anxious and inquiring gaze of unborn generations. When we lay down the volume of a glorious poet, or study the works of a great artist, or read the sayings and doings of heroes, sages, navigators, statesmen, and all who, by deed or word, have raised themselves above the mediocrity of humanity, the dead level of commonplace, we naturally feel a portion of Lady Rosalind's curiosity-we wish to know "what manner of men they were"-we wish to look upon the grand and expansive foreheads the deep mysterious eyes the expressive mouths-in fine, we want reverentially to gaze upon the exteriors of intellect.

Portrait painting has one peculiar virtue. It has a stronger claim upon the affections than the noblest branches of art; its dull, literal, matter-of-fact transcripts