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fame of his learning soon spread, so that he received from Pope Sergius, in an epistle still extant,* a pressing invitation to come to Rome. But we must leave prefacing, and come to our subject.

Some time ago, an American lady(not Mrs. Grant of Laggan)-published a brochure, entitled "An Address to the Public, particularly to the Members of the Legislature of New-York, proposing a Plan for improving Female Education," which was no less than a college or university for the instruction of ladies. Before this announcement, however, prejudices our readers against our fair authoress, we beg for her a patient hearing; and we must with the same view premise that her style, both of writing and thinking, are very transatlantic, though she has less of Mary Wolstonecroft than might have been anticipated.

"In calling on my countrymen," says Miss Emma Willard," to effect so noble an object, the consideration of national glory should not be overlooked. Ages have rolled away-barbarians have trodden the weaker sex beneath their feet-tyrants have robbed us of the present light of heaven, and fain would take its future also. Nations, calling themselves polite, have made us the fancied idols of a ridiculous worship, and we have repaid them with ruin for their folly. But where is that wise and heroic country which has considered that our rights are sacred, though we cannot defend them? That, though a weaker, we are an essential part of the body politic, whose corruption or improvement must affect the whole? And which, having thus considered, has sought to give us, by education, that rank in the scale of being to which our importance entitles us? History shows not that country. It shows many whose legislatures have sought to improve their various vegetable productions, and their breeds of useful brutes; but none whose public councils have made it an object of their deliberations to improve the character of their women. Yet, though history lifts not her finger to such an [a] one, anticipation does. She points to a nation, which, having thrown off the shackles of authority and precedent, shrinks not from schemes of improvement, because other nations have never attempted them; but which, in its pride

VOL. I.

of independence, would rather lead than follow in the march of human improve ment; a nation, wise and magnanimous to plan, enterprising to undertake, and rich in resources to execute. Does not every American exult that this country is his own? And who knows how great and good a race of men may yet arise from the forming hand of mothers, enlightened by the bounty of that beloved country, to defend her liberties, to plan her future improvement, and to raise her to unparalleled glory.

"As evidence that this statement does not exaggerate the female influence in society, our sex need but be considered in the single relation of mothers. In this character, we have the charge of the whole mass of individuals, who are to compose the succeeding generation; during that period of youth, when the pliant mind takes any direction, to which a forming hand steadily guides. How important a power is given by this charge! Yet, little do too many of my sex know how either to appreciate or improve it. Unprovided with the means of acquiring that knowledge, which flows liberally to the other sex, having our time of education devoted to frivolous acquirements, how should we understand the nature of the mind so as to he aware of the importance of those early impressions which we make upon the minds of our children?-Would we rear the human plant to its perfection, we must first fertilize the soil which produces it.' If it acquire its first bent and texture upon a barren plain, it will avail comparatively little, should it be afterwards transplanted to a garden."

Such are the objects which Miss Willard recommends to the Americans, and nobody will deny that they are laudable and praise-worthy, whatever may be thought of the mode by which she proposes to accomplish her design. To this we shall therefore now attend, and give our readers an opportunity of contemplating the skeleton of Miss Willard's female university. The first requisite, of course, is an edifice, with commodious rooms for lodging and recitation, apartments for the reception of apparatus, and for the accommodation of the domestic department. There must also be a library of useful books; musical instruments; some good paintings to form the taste and serve as models;

* William of Malmsbury de Gestis Regum.

maps, globes, and other philosophical apparatus. The branches of instruction proposed, our authoress divides into religious and moral, literary, domestic, and ornamental. In the first, it is proposed that the pupils shall be taught, by example as well as by precept, the importance of female duties; and, by lectures, the evidences of christianity and a course of moral philosophy. Upon this head she is very brief, though it appears to us to be the most important of all the others, insomuch as it comprehends the doctrine of the passions and temper, which ought to be early explained and impressed upon the minds of those who are likely to have the charge of a family.

The literary department is that which will give rise to the most obstinate discussion, should the plan ever be carried into effect. The difficulty Miss Willard complains of, is not that she is at a loss as to what sciences ought to be learned, as that females have not proper advantages to learn any. Many writers have given excellent advice what should be taught, but no legislature has provided the means of instruction. Not, however, to pass over this fundamental part too slightly, she goes into a brief mention of intellectual and natural philosophy. Of the first, she seems to know nothing, probably because she was debarred on account of her sex from the honours of a university education. “Natural Philosophy," she says, "has not often been taught to our sex. Yet, why should we be kept in ignorance of the great machinery of nature, and left to the vulgar notion, that nothing is curi

ous but what deviates from her common course? If mothers were acquainted with this science, they would communicate very many of its principles to their children in early youth. From the bursting of an egg buried in the fire, I have heard an intelligent mother lead her prattling inquirer to understand the cause of the terrific earthquake!!! But how often does the mother, from ignorance on this subject, give her child the most erroneous and contracted views of the causes of natural phenomena views, which though he may afterwards learn to be false, are yet, from association, ever ready to return."-Sufficiently common-place, though strangely illustrated.

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Domestic instruction should be considered important in a female seminary. To superiutend the domestic department, there should be a respectable lady,

experienced in the best methods of housewifery, and acquainted with propriety of dress and manners. Under her tuition, the pupils ought to be placed for a certain length of time every morning. A spirit of neatness and order should here be treated as a virtue; and, the contrary, if excessive and incorrigible, be punished with expulsion. There might be a gradation of employment in the domestic department, according to the length of time the pupils had remained at the institution. The elder scholars might then assist the superintendant, in instructing the younger, and the whole be so arranged, that each pupil might have advantages to become a good domestic manager, by the time she has completed her studies. system of principles should be philosophically arranged, in a systematic treatise on house-keeping, and taught, both in theory and practice, to a large number of females, whose minds have been expanded and strengthened by a course of literary education; and, those among them, of an investigating tura of mind, would, when they commenced housekeeping, consider their domestic operations as a series of experiments, which either would prove or refute the system they had been taught.”

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As to ornamental branches, Miss Willard is by no means novel in her recom mendations of painting, elegant penmanship, music, aud the grace of motion. Needle-work is not mentioned, because the best style of what is useful in this branch, should either be taught in the domestic department, or made a qualification for entrance. The use of the needle for other purposes, besides the decoration of a lady's person, or the convenience and neatness of her family, she regards as a waste of time, as it uffords little to assist in the formation of the character. We should be disposed to say as much, or more perhaps, in respect to elegant penmanship, which we think has a strong tendency to render the mind punctilious, little, and vacant of firmness. We think we have observed this very strongly, in those who have, by dint of perseverance, acquired the art of forming fine letters. We think it was the Emperor Honorius, alias the Chicken-feeder, who was distinguished by the title of Kadrygados, or the beautiful penman. This is enough. "Perhaps the term allotted for the routine of study at the seminary, might be three

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No. I.-The Three Presidents-Reynolds, West, and Lawrence.

IN making some observations on the merits of the three Presidents, who have successively filled the chair of our Royal Academy of Painting, it is not our intention to bestow fulsome eulogium on the President now living, or to depreciate the merits of those who are dead; we wish, in a candid and brief manner, to lay before our readers the opinion we have formed of their distinct excellencies, praising them for those qualities of art which are really meritorious, and fearlessly censuring them on points, where we think they are defective.

When the President of an Academy is elected to that highly honourable and important situation, by the unanimous yotes of the members of whom the body is composed; and when they are uninfluenced, in their selection, by any private motives, it is to be understood that the person so chosen possesses qualifications which all acknowledge and admire. He may, therefore, be looked upon and criticised as a fair specimen of the merits of the Academy, and his works may be considered as examples of the style of art in which the Academy is likely to excel. The President being voted a man of superior attainments, he becomes consequently a man of consideration in the eyes of the publie; the rising and unfledged generation of artists look up to him with profound respect and admiration; they regard his works as objects of unquestionable excellence; endeavour to imbibe his peculiarities, and are often blind to his defects. A President, then, let him be a good or a bad one, is an important personage in the eyes of the multitude;

and, while his good or bad example, during his reign, is calculated either to facilitate or retard the progress of those who are guided by him, it is necessary that his real value should be generally understood. In our present sketch, we will glance at the three Presidents in rotation, and speak of their merits and demerits, just as it pleases us to do so.

It has often been held forth, as a rea son for the depressed state of the arts in England that the climate is unpropitious-that the genius of the fine arts is stifled and sickened by the damps and fogs of our November mornings, and that, in short, an artist in this country is like a fish out of its element-but Winckleman and du Bos, when they prated such absurdity, shewed them selves to be a pair of impertinent blockheads; their assertions have been long since most satisfactorily confuted, by the rapid intellectual strides that our native artists have made in the inven tive, as well as the mechanical parts of their profession. Those French or high Dutch speculators must never have reflected on the causes that produced excellence in the fine arts on the continent, or they could not have advanced such foolish assertions as to the influence of climate: and, of course, we shall not in this place discuss opinions that are so evi❤ dently ill-founded.-The English school is the only one at present in existence, that is of a decidedly original character; the want of that encouragement, in what is termed the grand historic style of painting, has fortunately been the cause of our artists striking on a new path for themselves, and producing works more

accordant with good English taste, and more suited to the sympathies of those unsophisticated admirers who are 'desirous to receive real pleasure from the arts. What do we want with such pictures as humbug connoisseurs called the grand historic; which, in general, represent nothing more agreeable than the sufferings of " grizly saints, and martyrs hairy"-such works suited the taste of the ages in which they were executed-they were necessary for certain purposes-the artists who tortured best, were, in several instances, the most encouraged. Guido transfixed St. Sebastion with arrows, and Titian roasted St. Lawrence on a gridiron-we can forgive the cruelty on the part of the artists, because they were nothing but the hired executioners on the occasion, and painted to gratify the taste of their employers -but modern painters in this country should not cry out and petition Parliament at not being encouraged in giving fulsome and second-rate repetitions of such revolting subjects-the thing is preposterous.

The inimitable Hogarth may be justly styled the inventor of English art— he started in his singular career like an inspired being, unfettered by rules, and unbiassed by the examples of those that had gone before him; he taught by his works, that the study of nature was the true source of originality, and that expression was the most enchanting requisite of art.

For a considerable time previous to the appearance of this meteor of art, all here was darkness; painters were looked upon as mere ornamenters of sign-posts, and libellers of the "human face divine" in the way of portraits; and, such was the state of taste in the country, that (to speak elegantly and figuratively in the style of the New monthly,) the muse of painting became an itinerant outcast, and reduced nearly to pauperism. In this state of public feeling towards the arts. Hogarth, that powerfully sarcastic moralist, roused the public taste by touching on its sympathies-he amused while he instructed; and, like a sterling genius, made himself eminent in his pursuits, at a time when circumstances were apparently calculated to depress his exertions. Some time after Hogarth, camè Reynolds, but operating in a different walk of his profession. Though it was Hogarth that struck the first blow, yet it fell to the part of Reynolds

to complete the revolution in taste, and establish the arts of England on a sure foundation. This great artist, at an early period of his life, visited Italy, where he formed his taste on the best models of ancient art, and industriously laid up materials for his future advancement. He appears to have made the best possible use of his time-he studied with judgment by copying with selection, for instead of wasting his hours in the dull and fruitless drudgery of copying every thing that came in his way, he took merely what suited his purpose, -by which means he imbibed what was good in the works of the different great masters, and much of the result of this judicious and fruitful process we may observe in his most celebrated works.

Sir Joshua Reynolds was a man of great discernment and knowledge of the world. At the commencement of his professional carcer, after his return from the continent, he saw the state of public taste-knew the extent of his own acquirements, and had the good sense to fix at once upon the branch of his profession which afforded him most likelihood of success; this he exercised with unremitting perseverance, and was rewarded by unparalleled good fortune. His great talents as an artist, and his amiable qualities as a man, collected around him most of the distinguished personages of the age, as friends and admirers; his house was a rallying-place for men of wit and learning, and his painting-room was frequented by all the beauty and fashion of the metropolis. Though we have sometimes heard Sir Joshua say lively things in conversation, yet he was certainly not a wit-he had, however, a happy turn for giving good dinners, which some very witty men of the present day do not do, and of which wits of every day have no objection to partake. Amongst the most remarkable of his numerous excellencies as a portrait-painter, are grace and propriety of character-his portraits were always identical representations of persons in their happiest moments of expression; his portraits of Sterne, Dr. Hunter, Sam Johnson, and Oliver Goldsmith, are standard specimens of excellence in this particular, and several others we might name, which are worthy to rank with Titian and Velasques. Those pictures which are called his fancy compositions, have little or no fancy in them, and his historical pictures are decided failures. In bis

fancy pictures, however, he shows hime self to be an artist of the greatest ingenuity and skill," in grouping, colouring, and vigorous effect of light and shadow -he has frequently managed, with singular adaptation, to unite in his own pictures several of the excellent qualities of different old masters; making them always accord so well with his subject, and so much subservient to his own peculiar feeling, that they produce a perfect harmony which charms the spectator to look upon; there is a glow and a fascination in his colouring, a gracefulness in his attitudes, a playful sweetness of expression in his females and children, for which he justly merits the reputation of being one of the greatest masters of modern art. While he has afforded the world so much enjoyment, by the excellence to which he has attained in the higher qualities of his pursuit, it will be, perhaps, but fair to overlook his having made classical, the eternal pillar and red curtain, which have been since his time introduced in almost every portrait, or fancy picture, that have been painted by our artists; but, in pardoning this mannerism, we cannot so willingly excuse him for the foppery and humbug that induced him to sigh, and express his grief from the president's chair, at his not having been permitted, by circumstances, to follow in the footsteps of Michael Angelo. At the moment that he uttered such sentiments respecting Michael Angelo, (which it is impossible he could have felt,) he must have been perfectly aware, that there can never be another Michael Angelo, until the same circumstances concur to produce him, a circumstance about as likely to take place, as that the age of Leo X. will return. Sir Joshua, with all his good sense, was silly enough to wish the world to believe, that nature had intended him for a nobler walk of art than that which fortune had obliged him to pursue; but no one, after seeing his attempts at pure historical composition, could be duped into the idea that he could, under any circumstances, have attained to any high degree of eminence in historical painting. It is a singular fact, and one not easily accounted for, that in portraiture he always gave an air of dignity and refinement to his subjects-but when he attempted history, he seemed to have lost all power in that respect, and made his characters more common-place and even meaner looking, than the models from

which be copied them, But, with all their faults, his historical pictures are better than those of the president who succeeded him.

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We cannot bring ourselves to look upon West as a British painter-he was born in America; when young he visited Italy, where he collected some stale notions of historic art, besides a large quantity of prints, and laid the foundation of his mediocrity. His first efforts of painting in this country were feeble and highly laboured, without much taste, and still less of feeling-his native industry, however, soon made amends for the deficiency of original talent; and his ardour was kept alive by a sincere love of his art, which accompanied him in his career until the latest hours of his life. first pictures of his that gained him any high degree of notoriety in this country, were his compositions of the death of General Wolf, and the battle of La Hogue. In these pictures, he had the temerity to differ from the usual mode of representing modern heroes in classic costume, by painting his figures in the dresses which they actually wore, for which effort of originality he was rewarded with the encomiums he deserved. Our late excellent sovereign, George III. was fond of quakers, and as West was of that persuasion, and, moreover, a man of approved and increasing eminence in his profession, his majesty bestowed upon him his warm patronage, and employed him in extensive works at Windsor and other places, and, in course of time, this fortunate artist attained the honour of filling the president's chair of our academy, which he did with as bad a grace as can well be imagined. He was a man of a very limited education, had an aukwardness of manner, the consequence of his secluded habits, and a plentiful lack of thoughts and words, with a hesitation and a smacking of his lips, that made him a perfect bore in conversation. West was intimately acquainted with the works of the Italian painters, and built his style of art upon them; he knew, in fact, every thing that had been done by the painters of every school and country this knowledge, however strange it may seem to some of our readers, was, we are confident, one of the great causes of his not succeeding in historical painting, where originality of design is indispensible to the reputation of a great artist. In his compositions he exerted his

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