"The artist," says Madame de Merlin, "is assimilated to the artisan, and art is measured by the yard, like merchandise. They do not cultivate music or painting, or even flowers. Do you wish to inhale the perfume of a flower? you must buy it at a high price: it is an article of trade, and only to be found at the nurseryman's. I am not aware of a single picture in the United States, unless it be in the Pantheon, where several memorable epochs of the American Revolution are rudely represented upon some old panels of wall. In this country, all that is beautiful is forbidden: the beautiful is not useful. The grace of the human form, music, poetry, painting, flowers, are blessings vouchsafed by Providence to man to soften the bitterness of his days of mourning, to alleviate the burthen of his chains; they are gleams of joy amidst long years of struggle, brilliant flashes through the gloom of night; they are the luxury of human life." Less elegant and eloquent than Madame de Merlin, M. Marmier resumes in greater detail, but with equal force, nearly the same idea:-- "The Americans may say to me, 'We are not a polite people it is true; we seek not to be affable or attentive, it must be owned; and the foreigner who comes amongst us may well be shocked by our coldness. But if we disdain, as frivolous, the elegant habits of European society, we have an audacity of enterprise, and a rapidity of action, which must astonish Europe. To start from the spot where we now are (on the Hudson.) In less than forty years, we have covered this desert river with steamers and vessels of every kind, we have cleared and peopled its banks, converted its hamlets into flourishing cities, dug harbours and canals, laid down railroads, given life, movement, and commercial prosperity to the whole district. Before us is Albany, which, in the seventeenth century, was a mere fort, and which now has a population of forty-two thousand souls; and down yonder is the commercial metropolis of New York, the first in the world after Liverpool. Nothing equals the spring of our activity and the boldness of our conceptions. Things that you in France take years to combine, and which you lengthily discuss in the tribune and the newspapers, we accomplish in a turn of the hand. In a couple of months we shall establish a line of steamers to Havre, and another to England. Already we have similar communication with Germany by the port of Bremen, with the Antilles and the Pacific Ocean. Not a corner of the globe is there where our flag does not wave. How many projects have there not been elaborated in your old Europe for cutting through the Isthmus of Panama? England and France sent thither their engineers, who published long reports--reports which were examined by councils of ministers, submitted to commissions,