Consider, too, the growing love for art in practical America; remark the crowds of newly rich who deck their houses with pictures and busts, even though they cannot always appreciate them; remember that nearly every prominent town in the country has its theatre; that the opera, the most refined luxury of European civilization, considered for long an affectation beyond every other, is relished here as decidedly as in Italy or France. In New York, Boston, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and New Orleans, there are buildings exclusively appropriated to this new form of art, this exotic, expensive amusement. These opera-houses, too, illustrate most aptly the progress of other arts. They are adorned with painting and gilding and carving; they are as sumptuous in accommodation as the palaces of European potentates; they are lighted with a brilliancy that Aladdin's garden never rivalled; they are thronged, with crowds as gayly dressed as those that fill the saloons of Parisian belles; and the singers and actors who interpret the thoughts of mighty foreign masters are the same who delight the Emperor of the French when he pays a visit to the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. Orchestras of many instruments discourse most eloquent music, and involuted strains are criticized in learned style, in capitals thousands of miles from the seashore. And there is no appreciation of art in all this! there is no embodiment of the love of the age for material magnificence, there is no poetry incarnated into form, in this combination of splendors rivalling the opium-eater's visions! The Americans are a dull, stupid people, immersed in business; art has no effect upon them; it is despised among them; it can never prosper here! The stage, indeed, in its various forms, seems more fully to manifest and illustrate the artistic influence among Americans than any other art. It often addresses those whom more refined solicitations might never reach. Those who would turn from Church's or Page's pictures with indifference are frequently attracted by the representations in a theatre. The pictures there are more alive, more real, more intense, and fascinate many unable to appreciate the recondite charms of the canvas. The grace of attitude, the splendid expression, the intellectual art of Ristori or Rachel may impress those who fail to discover the same merits in colder stone, in Crawford's marble or the statues of Palmer; and they may sometimes learn to relish even the delicate beauties of Shakspeare's text, from hearing it fitly declaimed, who would never spell out its meaning by themselves. The drama is certainly superior to other arts while its reign lasts, because of its veriness, its actuality. He must be dull of imagination, indeed, who cannot give himself up for a while to its illusions; he must be stupid who cannot open his senses to its delights or waken his intellect to receive its influences.