Pictures, unless it were now and then a scriptural or historical print, there would be none on the plain walls with their heavy beams; varnishing and frescoing would be but rare vanities, if indeed such could be anywhere discovered at all; as for rare vases, or bronzes, or marbles, such things were assuredly unknown. The austere simplicity of the place, the people, and the age, forbade not only a footing to the arts, but refused all nurture to imaginative growths. The Puritans especially had the lofty scorn of art which resented the idea of a picture or a statue in a church with as much indignation as they would have shown to the Pope had he invited them to return to the fold of Rome. [Sidenote: John Singleton Copley.] As there was very little literature for America to be proud of before the Declaration of Independence, so, in casting our eyes backward over the annals of art, we can discover but one notable native artist in the period between the early settlements and the Revolution. This was John Singleton Copley. He was born in Boston in 1738, and became the pupil of Smybert, an English artist of some talent, who had accompanied Bishop Berkeley across the Atlantic and had settled in Boston. The pupil soon eclipsed the master, and for years Copley stood alone as a popular portrait-painter in New England. [Sidenote: Historical Pictures.] But even the monopoly of his profession did not suffice to give him adequate support, or gratify Copley's ambition; and he was forced to seek in a more art-loving land the full recognition and reward of his genius. He left behind him many portraits which still exist as precious heirlooms in New England families, and just as the storm of the Revolution was gathering, he set sail for the mother country, which he never afterward left. Before he went, however, a son had been born to him in Boston, who was destined long after to reach the highest summit of English legal dignity and rank--Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst. Copley was especially great as a portrait-painter, but he also sometimes adopted historical subjects. Of these the best known is his "Death of Lord Chatham," which now hangs in the South Kensington Museum, in London. [Sidenote: Benjamin West.]