Who loves not winter's awful form?
The sphere-born music of the storm?
Yet who would choose, how grand soever,
The shortest day to last forever?

Montgomery.

MATTER.

MATTER, then, is the production of an almighty Intelligence, and as such entitled to our reverence; although from a just abhorrence of many ancient, and not a few modern errors, it has too often been regarded in a low and contemptible light. * * * It evinces in every part and in every operation the impress of a divine origin, and is the only pathway vouchsafed to our external senses by which we can walk

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Through nature up to nature's God;" that God, whom we behold equally in the painted pebble and the painted flower-in the volcano and in the cornfield-in the wild winter storm and in the soft summer moonlight.

J. M. Good.

MENTAL PORTRAITURE.

How many pictures of one nymph we view,
All how unlike each other, all how true!

Let then the fair one beautifully cry,

In Magdalen's loose hair and lifted eye,

Or drest in smiles of sweet Cecilia shine,

With simpering angels, palms, and harps divine;

Whether the charmer sinner it or saint it,
If folly grow romantic, I must paint it.

Come then, the colours and the ground prepare ! Dip in the rainbow, trick her off in air,

Choose a firm cloud before it fall, and in it

Catch, ere she change, the Cynthia of the minute.

Pictures, like these, dear madam! to design,
Ask no firm hand and no unerring line;
Some wandering touches, some reflected light,
Some flying stroke alone can hit them right;
For how should equal colours do the knack?
Chameleons who can paint in white and black?

Pope.

OUTLINE.

of

WHEN the Duke de Choiseul, who was a remarkably meagre-looking man, came to London for the purpose negotiating a peace, Charles Townsend, being asked whether the French government had sent the preliminaries of a treaty, answered, "He did not know, but they had sent the outline of an ambassador."

Anon.

IMITATION.

SUCH is the delight we have in imitation, that what would in itself give neither pleasure nor pain, may become agreeable when well imitated. We see without emotion many faces, and other familiar objects; but a good picture, even of a stone, or common plant, is not be

held with indifference.

No wonder, then, that what is

agreeable in itself, should, when surveyed through the medium of skilful imitation, be highly agreeable. A good portrait of a grim countenance is pleasing; but a portrait equally good of a beautiful one is still more so.

J. Beattie.

MAGNANIMITY.

If thou art beautiful, and youth
And thought endue thee all with truth-
Be strong;-be worthy of the grace
Of God, and fill thy destined place ;
A soul, by force of sorrows, high
Uplifted to the purest sky

Of undisturbed humanity!

Wordsworth.

ENTHUSIASM.

ENTHUSIASM is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it.

SKETCH.

Could I paint

Bulwer.

Her picture then! paint her voluptuous lip,
With its sweet curl of pride; the shaded eye
In its dark liquid lustre; the fair brow
With its light wandering veins, and raven braid
Contrasting with its whiteness; the faint blush

Upon her cheek, of maiden modesty,
And the rich outline, melting into grace,
Of her unmatched proportions: over all,
Could I but make the picture eloquent
With the deep, reedy music of her tone,
Or lend to you the golden leaf which bears
The sketch within my memory!

N. P. Willis.

SLATTERN.

THERE is a kind of anxious cleanliness which I have always noted as the characteristic of a slattern; it is the superfluous scrupulosity of guilt, dreading discovery, and shunning suspicion: it is the violence of an effort against habit, which, being impelled by external motives, cannot stop at the middle point.

Johnson.

TRUE TASTE.

To build, to plant, whatever you intend,
To rear the column, or the arch to bend,
To swell the terrace, or to sink the grot,
In all let Nature never be forgot;
But treat the goddess like a modest fair,
Nor over-dress, nor leave her wholly bare;
Let not each beauty everywhere be spied,
Where half the skill is decently to hide.
He gains all points who pleasingly compounds,
Surprises, varies, and conceals the bounds.

Pope.

BEAUTY AND VIRTUE.

BEAUTY is the mark God sets upon virtue. Every natural action is graceful. Every heroic action is also decent, and causes the place and the bystanders to shine. We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it. Every rational creature has all nature for his dowry and estate. It is his, if he will. He may divest himself of it; he may creep into a corner, and abdicate his kingdom, as most men do, but he is entitled to the world by his constitution. In proportion to the energy of his thoughts and will, he takes up the world into himself. *** Nature stretcheth out her arms to embrace man, only let his thoughts be of equal greatness. Willingly does she follow his steps with the rose and the violet, and bend her lines of grandeur and grace to the decoration of her darling child. Only let his thoughts be of equal scope, and the frame will suit the picture. A virtuous man is in unison with her works, and makes the central figure of the visible sphere.

W. Emerson.

PORTRAIT.

He who'd paint the fair

Must mix the blending colours, soft as air;-
To hit the piercing lustre of her eye,
Must catch the light and azure of the sky :-
To fill the piece with corresponding glow,
Must dip his pencil in the eastern bow;