For several years past I have strictly devoted myself to the profession of the liberal arts and flatter myself that my efforts have not been detrimental to their interests. The reason why or wherefore I, an American artist, bearing with me an unblemished moral reputation, should have been selected for exclusion by both the American Academy of Fine Arts, as well as the self-denominated Academy of Design, appears mysterious and illiberal, and not in accordance with the principles of religion or democracy. Had not an enthusiastic love of and devotion to the Fine Arts guided my reason, at this day I should have become one of the most inveterate enemies to both institutions. Philosophy has made me what I now am, viz., the sincere friend of man and admirer of the works of his hands. As such I have,--written injuries as sand--favors on the tablet of memory. As one of the great body of artists of America I deem it an incumbent duty to advance the beauteous arts by all honorable means, and to chastise arrogance, presumption, ignorance, and wilful malevolence. With chagrin I have viewed the sinister and aristocratical proceedings of the National Academy, and the ill results that must eventually follow its longer continuance, and therefore have publicly deprecated its wickedness. As one of the regenerators of the old or American Academy of Fine Arts, I now make bold in saying to its directors a few things, which if duly weighed and followed must result favorably to its vitality and best interests, and be the medium of establishing the reputation of artists on firm and lasting basis, viz.: by collecting around the American Academy and with it all the genius and talent in the arts of design which our country possesses and creating a fund sufficient to all its wants and expenditures.