These self-imposed labors have not been assumed through any mercenary or selfish motives. His experience has taught him the precarious results of literary and publishing enterprises of the nature undertaken by him, in the present state of the Fine Arts in our country. The amount of capital and labor he has invested has been enormous, and the risks proportionate; his books admonish him that he has already embarked many thousands of dollars which he can never hope to regain. Still, what he has accomplished is to him a theme of pride and exultation; it has also been a labor of love. His reward is the consciousness of having done something toward awakening a love for, and an interest in art and artists, and that he will leave to his countrymen, for their delight and instruction, so many world-renowned and world-approved specimens of the highest art. Posterity must be his judge; but he cannot forbear to add, that can he now succeed in restoring the great works before mentioned, and leave them as a rich legacy to his country, for the promotion of the Fine Arts in coming time, he will have accomplished his every earthly aspiration. CONTENTS. Infelicities of Artists--an Extract from the American Edition of Boydell’s Illustrations of Shakspeare, containing anecdotes of Torregiano, Banks, Barry, Blake, Proctor, &c., 1 Advantages of the Cultivation of the Fine Arts to a Country, 6 Antiquity of the Fine Arts, 12 The Pœcile at Athens, 13 Mosaics, 15 The Olympian Jupiter, 17 Painting from Nature, 18 Apelles, 18 Apelles and the Cobbler, 23 Apelles’ Foaming Charger, 24 Apelles and Alexander, 25 Apelles and Protogenes, 25 Benjamin West’s Ancestry, 28 West’s Birth, 29 West’s first remarkable Feat, 30 Little Benjamin and the Indians, 30 West’s Cat’s Tail Pencils, 30 West’s First Picture, 31 West’s first Visit to Philadelphia, 32 West’s Ambition, 33 West’s first Patron, 34 West’s Education, 35