"My life's employment and my leisure's charm, My soul's first choice, my fancy's early flame; My chance of fortune and my hopes of fame." _Shee_. There is no subject on which mankind more unhesitatingly decide, than upon the productions of the pencil, and none perhaps upon which the people of our own country especially, are so little qualified to form a correct judgment. Few works of any excellence ever reach us, and these are for the most part confined to the large cities, where those who visit them are more attracted by the _subject_ than the _execution_ of the painting. A striking illustration of this, may be found in the crowds which rushed a short time since, to see the immodest and demoralizing exhibition of our _first parents in a state of nudity_--an offence for which Ham was accursed to be a servant of servants to his brethren; and yet our modest maidens, attended by their equally modest beaux, hastened in company to view this production of Parisian profligacy. At the same time, the splendid painting of "Christ rejected" by the eminent West, scarcely attracted notice; and the beautiful "Star of Bethlehem" by Cole, twinkled in an empty hall. Still no one doubts his own intuitive knowledge of the arts!--He does not, indeed, profess to understand the _modus operandi_, by which they are perfected,--but yet he knows exactly what _delights_ him, and with equally becoming modesty, knows how to _censure_ what he does not like,--although to the real _connoisseur_, the work condemned may perchance be one of superlative beauty and value. There are some who fall into raptures at Cimmerian darkness and obscurity in a picture; they have heard that the works of the old masters are very dark,--_ergo_, all black pictures must be very good. Some have heard that Reubens and Rembrandt, painted with a bold free pencil,--and every daub is therefore free and bold; and there are others the very antipodes of these, who would have the canvass ivory smooth, and always test the excellence of a picture with their finger's ends. Such are the arbiters of taste, to whom the artist must look for patronage and favor; to whose critical acumen he must sacrifice the highest professional attainments, and all the poetry of imagery, for the prosing portraiture of vulgar nature as the uninstructed eye perceives it. Against such critics, Sir Joshua Reynolds warned his young academecians. "Study not," said he, "to please the many, but the few of cultivated taste." Alas! how few in any age, have given that attention to the subject which is essential to the formation of a correct judgment. They say,--do we not see and understand what nature is, and can we not tell when the artist has truly represented her?--We answer no. The eye unaccustomed to _contemplate_ nature, cannot perceive the ever changing beauty of her scenery,--her lights and shades more various than the Dolphins hues; nor can it discern that play of the thoughts and passions in the