change and Custom House. The ponderous marble and granite boulders in these senseless structures have their correspondents in many a lump of indigestible food; and the bizarreterie of the new Trinity Church have their correspondents in many a temple com. posed of macaronis and cocoanut candies.

We have grades of usefulness, but it is no easy matter to discover the principles upon which our scale of respect is graduated: money is not always the test of merit; it matters how you get it. If you earn it yourself, it will not entitle you to half the respect it would if your father or grandfather earned it for you. Any occupation which soils the hands or the clothes, is looked upon with disfavor by the upper classes. A broker who never does any thing that is either useful or ornamental, grows nothing, invents nothing, imagines nothing; who instructs nobody, amuses nobody, enriches nobody; who leaves the world in the same condition that he found it, may be called a gentleman, visit in the first circles, have those mysterious letters, E. s. Q., written after his name, and if he is rich, will be elected a member of more societies than will be agreeable to him. But a wig-maker who has invented a new spring for a toupée, or a new dye for the hair, and thereby really done mankind a service, could no more get into the first circles with us than he could go to heaven, like Mahomet, on the back of an ass. Shoemakers' wives and bakers' daughters are people of whose acquaintance nobody ever speaks boastingly. I once knew the nephew of a barber who always blushed when his uncle was named in his hearing. But an attorney's lady, or a banker's daughter, are often paraded in an ostentatious manner before one by their friends, and I have never known the nephew of 'a' soldier-officer, whose business is to take people's lives, blush at the profession of his relative. It cannot be expected that men will labor in callings that gain them only the contempt of their neighbors; and therefore while it is accounted disgraceful among us to do any thing that is useful, we must be content to remain dependent upon any people who have more sense in regard to this matter than ourselves.

We are very well aware that shoemakers and pastry-cooks are not the kind of people who compose the French court; but there can be no denial of the fact that certain kinds of artisans are treated by the French people with a greater degree of respect than they are with us. Very different from the dogged surliness of an Englishman, or the whocares-for-you manner of our own countrymen, is the air of conscious self-respect of certain classes of French tradesmen. In the present condition of our society, we hold it to be among the impossible things to make a decent pastry-cook out of an American citizen, or a decent citizen out of a pastry-cook. But is there any good reason why we should not! Do not pastry-cooks contribute as much toward human happiness as sugar-refiners or im porters of molasses? Should you not feel as well disposed toward the individual who had made a meringue to your liking, as toward him who had imported the materials of which it was composed? The King of the French seats artists at his dinner-table, bestows the 'legion of honor' upon them; pays them liberally for their works, and settles pensions upon them. Artists with us, as artists, do not often find their way into our upper circles; if they are respectable in their habits and associates, they are rather countenanced for their respectability than noticed for their genius. We know a whiskey-distiller who refused his daughter to a portrait-painter, unless he would abandon his profession; simply because it was a low calling.

It is very common with us to call the French triflers; but it is one of the many bad habits which we have inherited from the English, and the sooner we free ourselves from it, the better will it be for us. We shall never be ambitious to excel a people whom we pretend to despise. If doing small things well be trifling, then the French are triflers. But what must we call them for their great works? There is no art, no science, no department of learning in which the English excel them. They are the best architects in Europe; the best physicians; the best chemists, the best astronomers. They have cut off the head of one king and banished another; what more have the English done? But they can afford to be called any thing: they set the fashions of the whole world. Queen VICTORIA is as

much a subject of LOUIS PHILIPPE in her dress as any lady in France. With all her immense territory, her great authority, she cannot change the fashion of a bonnet.

The difference between French and English art is as great as the difference between the Louvre and the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square; and about the same relative difference prevails with regard to us. At the last exhibition of the Louvre there were four thousand paintings offered; at the last exhibition of the National Academy there were about four hundred. This is not a very correct method of judging of the artistic excellence of a nation, but it is not far from correct in this case.

H. F.

A PICTURE BY MURILLO.-The time has yet to arrive when the march of empire westward will bring in its train our portion of those chef d'œuvres of painting and sculpture which adorn the princely palaces of Europe, and confer distinction upon the possessors of wealth and taste in humbler abodes. To us, who have never visited those miracles of art, the sight of one of them is too gratifying to be passed over without imparting a share of the pleasure to our less fortunate readers. For the first time in our lives, we have enjoyed the delight of seeing at the house of a friend one of the grand pictures of MURILLO, which was obtained by a distinguished connoisseur at Lima, in 1828, from the cloister of an old convent, where it had hung for countless years in ignoble seclusion. It had probably been brought from Spain during the life-time of the painter, as it is not described by any of his biographers, who have carefully enumerated the works of his pencil. This idea is strengthened by the fact of his having inscribed his name upon the picture, which is not to be found upon any of his master-pieces at Madrid and Seville. Although it has not escaped the injuries of time and ignorance, it appears to have had the rare good fortune never to have passed through the hands of a restorer or scourer: the whole effect of its magical colouring remains unobscured, except a few touches of the brush of some dauber, who has tried the experiment of adding freshness to the rose.

The subject of it is the Holy Family, of life-size. Saint Joseph is seen in the background, with the infant SAVIOUR in his arms, presenting him to his mother, who is kneeling with extended hands to receive the precious burthen of love. Like most of his great scriptural pictures, the composition is simple and natural, exhibiting a familiar scene in domestic life, elevated by expression, and ennobled by beauty. The Saint's face, which is of the true Andalusian type, is fraught with benignity, as he graciously inclines toward the mother, with the infant resting tenderly in his hands as if supported by a bed of down. Nothing can surpass the graceful figure and attitude of the mother, whose features are literally overflowing with maternal affection, while she caressingly holds out her hands to receive her son. But the charm of the picture is the infant DEITY himself, upon whom the painter has lavished his art, and poured forth the inspiration of his genius. His position forms the centre of the group, and instantly arrests the attention and commands the admiration of the spectator. He looks as if just awakened from a deep slumber; his eye-lids are tinged with red, and the motion of his limbs betokens the sudden consciousness of suspended existence; his playful smiling features are radiant with joy at recognizing his mother, toward whom his hands are invitingly opened. His figure is foreshortened, and to such a degree that his legs are out of the canvass, instinct with life and motion. His flesh has the plumpness and transparency of perfect health, flushed with roseate tints; his appearance denotes a child of nine or ten months old, but without that expression of premature intelligence by which the infant SAVIOUR is distinguished in the pictures of RAPHAEL. He is, in short, just one of those angelic creatures fresh from the hands of the CREATOR, oftener found in the cradles of peasants than of princes. The hands and feet of all the figures are painted with warmth, and with such sun-light transparency, that the ruddy current seems actually coursing beneath the skin. Indeed the whole tone of the picture is so life-like, that for the moment

we cease believing it to be an illusion of lights and shadows reflected upon canvass. All the draperies are large and flowing, and broadly touched: that of the infant is a luminous white; the saint's is sombre; the mother's is of that violet tint, said to be peculiar to MuRILLO, styled by the French, lie de vin.

In the grand compositions of RAPHAEL, we often see the actors grouped into a pyramidal form. In this of MURILLO, they present a diagonal line; extending from the head of the Saint to that of the mother, and down to a pannier in the corner of the picture, which contains her needle-work attached to a cushion in the Spanish fashion. At her feet a small dog is seated, of the Mexican race, which appears alive. Saint Joseph is painted in shadow, and forms the second plan of the picture. Behind him are suspended some of the implements of his humble trade.

The fame of MURILLO out of his native country, has risen within these last ten or fifteen years to the highest rank, and his historical pictures are now classed with those of the greatest masters of the Italian school: as a colorist he is admitted to stand without a rival. This sudden extension of his merits is in some degree owing to the cheap acquisition of eight of his finest works by Marshal SOULT, when he was NAPOLEON's governor of Andalusia. These pictures have been seen and admired by all the world in Paris. Two of them, the Return of the Prodigal Son, and Abraham Receiving the Angels, have passed from the gallery of the illustrious Marshal to that of the Duke of Sutherland, for a consideration. The fine collection of pictures of the Spanish schools, purchased by Baron Taylor for Louis PHILIPPE, and now exhibited in the Louvre, has contributed to the same effect. It contains MURILLO'S Virgin de la Faxa, a perfect master-piece of coloring, which cost one hundred and thirty thousand francs.

None of his great compositions are taken from profane history or mythology. He was in a manner interdicted from using subjects derived from those copious sources, by a decree of the Holy Inquisition of Andalusia, which prohibited painters and sculpters, under the penalties of fine and excommunication, from displaying in their works any lascivious or naked images. His landscapes and flower-girls are painted in the highest style of beauty; and his beggars have never been excelled in all the loathsome attributes of misery and disease. The fact of his never having been out of his native country, disposed critics to believe that his works must be deficient in that highest order of merit which exclusively belongs to the classic schools of Italy: they would not admit that species of excellence which knew how to adapt the highest subjects of art to the unlearned. Yet such was MURILLO's influence over the human heart, that his genius enabled him to embellish truth, and to present it with all its graces and attractions to the understandings of all those who are endowed with an innate love of the beautiful. His pictures, like Gray's Elegy in a Country Church-yard, may with equal truth be said 'to abound in images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo.'

It is true that there is nothing academie to be found in his groups; no mysterious allegory; no theatrical display of the passions; very little of what is more talked of than understood, the beau-ideal. Nevertheless, he is always original, and never vulgar; his drawing is nearly faultless; his compositions are instantly felt and understood by all who have read the Scriptures, because they convey to the mind more of the evangelical character and attributes of Christianity than those of any other painter. On this subject some very characteristic remarks are made by the late Sir David Wilkie, in his letters from Jerusalem.* 'His Madonnas, his saints, and even his Saviours, have the Spanish cast; all his figures are probably portraits, and all his forms have a national peculiarity of air, habit, and countenance; and although he often adopts a beautiful expression of nature, there is generally a peasant-like simplicity in his ideas. He gives occasional instances of great sublimity of expression, but it is a sublimity which neither forces nor enlarges nature: truth and simplicity are never out of sight. It is what the painter sees, not what he conceives,

* SEE letter to WILLIAM COLLINS, Esq., Vol. 3., p. 424: ALLEN CUNNINGHAM's Life of Sir DaVID WILKIE.

They reached it without interruption, other than a short delay on the part of the doctor, who being of a beligerent disposition, was desirous of stopping to flog a man who had intentionally jostled him off the sidewalk. Kornicker, however, by urging upon him the situation of the girl, had induced him to postpone his purpose, not a little to the relief of the offender, who in insulting him had only intended to insult an inof fensive elderly person, who could not resent the affront.

'Can it be possible that any thing human tenants such a den as this?' said the doctor, looking at the half-hung door of the girl's abode, and listening to the wind as it sighed through broken window-panes and along the entry.

Come on, and you'll see,' replied Kornicker; and siezing him by the arm, he led him half stumbling up the stairs, and finally paused at the girl's room.

'Look in there, if you want to see comfort,' said he, with an irony that seemed almost savage, from the laugh which accompanied it. 'Isn't that a sweet death-chamber for one who all her life has had every thing that money could buy?'

The doctor glanced in the room, then at the fierce, excited face of his companion. Come, come,' said he, in a kind tone, taking Kornicker's hand; don't give way to these feelings. She'll be well taken care of now. Harry Harson never does a good action by halves. Come in.'

He pushed the door open very gently, and went to the bed. The girl seemed sleeping, for she did not move. He took the candle, and held it so that the light fell on her face. He then placed his hand gently upon her wrist. He kept it there for some moments, then held up the light again, and looked at her face; after which he placed it on the floor, rose up, and took a long survey of the room.

'It's a wretched place,' said he, 'speaking in a whisper. She must have suffered terribly here.'

This is the way the poor live,' said Kornicker, in a low, bitter tone; 'this is the way she has lived; but we'll save her from dying so.' The doctor looked at him, and then turned away and bit his lip: 'What are you going to do for her?' demanded Kornicker, after a pause: have you medicine with you?'

'She requires nothing now,' said the doctor, in a tone scarcely above a whisper. She's dead!'

Kornicker hastily took the light, and bent over her. He remained thus for a long time; and when he rose, his eyes were filled with tears.

'I'm sorry I left her,' said he, in a vain effort to speak in his usual tones. 'It was very hard that she should die alone. I acted for the best; but dn it, I'm always wrong!'

He dashed his fist across his face, walked to the window and looked out.

At that moment the door opened, and Harson entered, his face somewhat attempered in its joyous expression; and close behind followed the house-keeper with a large basket.

'How is she?' asked he, in a subdued tone.

Kornicker made no reply, but looked resolutely out of the window, and snuffed profusely. It would not have been manly to show that the large

our literary and scientific journals. He was distinguished as a warm-hearted philanthropist, and few men have more largely benefitted the community by their labors. His social virtues endeared him warmly to all by whom he was known. In the pathetic language of one by whom the intelligence of his death is communicated, he was truly the friend of the farmer-the friend of humanity.' We have the proceedings of a meeting of the New-York Agricultural Society, held in the State-House at Albany, on receiving the intelligence of the death of Mr. GAYLORD. The President, JOHN P. BEEKMAN, Esq., of Columbia county, passed a high and deserved eulogium upon the character of the deceased. The judgment of every intelligent farmer in the State,' he observed, 'will respond to the assertion that to no man whatever, excepting perhaps Judge BUEL, is the agriculture of the State more indebted than to Mr. GAYLORD. For myself, I can declare in all sincerity that there is no man whose writings caused within me a greater desire to be honored with a personal acquaintance. The character of WILLIS GAYLORD was in all respects what might be expected from his writings; benevolent, enlightened, elevated; yet plain, practical, unassuming. Every day of his useful life was marked, not merely by the exercise of his versatile talents on the multifarious subjects embraced by agriculture and the domestic arts, but by the acquisition and promulgation of knowledge in the wide range of science.' He was cordially esteemed by all who knew him; he had not an enemy in the world. Hon. CALVIN HUBBARD, of the Legislature, offered resolutions in testimony of the deep regret which the death of Mr. GAYLORD had created in the public mind, copies of which were ordered to be transmitted to the relatives of the deceased; after which, as a token of respect to his memory, the meeting was adjourned. A scholar, a gentleman, a christian, a friend of man, Mr. GAYLORD lived universally beloved, and died universally lamented.' IT has been assumed lately by certain of the political and financial enemies of the late NICHOLAS BIDDLE, Esq.,-an accomplished gentleman and scholar, whose pen has often entertained and instructed the readers of this Magazine that he had little power of style, and that his intellectual rôle was a limited one. Nothing could be farther from the truth. That point however we are not now to discuss. We merely wish to ask the reader's attention to the subjoined remarks of Mr. BIDDLE upon the besetting sin of our American style, oral as well as written: A crude abundance is the disease of our American style. On the commonest topic of business, a speech swells into a declamation-an official statement grows to a dissertation. A discourse about any thing must contain every thing. We will take nothing for granted. We must commence at the very commencement. An ejectment for ten acres reproduces the whole discovery of America; a discussion about a tariff or a turnpike, summons from their remotest caves the adverse blasts of windy rhetoric; and on those great Serbonian bogs, known in political geography as constitutional questions, our ambitious fluency often begins with the general deluge, and ends with its own. It is thus that even the good sense and reason of some become wearisome, while the undisciplined fancy of others wanders into all the extravagances and the gaudy phraseology which distinguish our western orientalism.' A specimen of this ‘orientalism' we gave in our last number. Here is another example of a somewhat kindred character. A western orator recently delivered himself of it from the summit of a sugarmaple stump at a political barbacue:

...

'WHAR, I say whar, is the individual who would give up the first foot, the first outside shadow of a foot of the great Oregon! There aint no such individual. Talk about treaty occupations to a country over which the great American eagle has flew! I scorn treaty occupation; d-n treaty occupation! Who wants a parcel of low-flung, 'outside barbarians,' to go in cahoot with us, and share alike a piece of land that always was and always will be ours? Nobody. Some people talk as though they were afeard of England. Who's afcard? Have n't we licked her twice, and can't we lick her again? Lick her! Yes! just as easy as a bear can slip down a fresh-peeled sapling! Some skeery folks talk about the navy of England: but who the h-Il cares for the navy? Others say that she is the mistress of the ocean. Supposin' she is? aint we the masters of it? Can't we cut a canal from the Mississippi to the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, turn all the water into it, and dry up the d-d ocean in three weeks? Whar then would be the navy? It would be no whar! There never would have been any Atlantic ocean if it had n't been for the Mississippi, nor never will be, after we 've turned the waters of that big drink into the Mammoth Cave! When that's done, you'll see all their