Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by Ticknor andFields, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District ofMassachusetts.
Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes movedto the end of the article. Table of contents has been created for the HTML version.
OUR FIRST GREAT PAINTER, AND HIS WORKS.
DOCTOR JOHNS
ROGER BROOKE TANEY.
THE MANTLE OF ST. JOHN DE MATHA
NEEDLE AND GARDEN.
NOTES OF A PIANIST.
GARNAUT HALL.
THE PLEIADES OF CONNECTICUT.
ICE AND ESQUIMAUX.
THE OLD HOUSE.
MEMORIES OF AUTHORS.
THE CHIMNEY-CORNER.
PRO PATRIA
A FORTNIGHT WITH THE SANITARY.
ART.—HARRIET HOSMER'S ZENOBIA.
REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
On the 8th of July, 1843, Washington Allston died. Twenty-one years havesince gone by; and already his name has a fine flavor of the past addedto its own proper aroma.
In twenty-one years Art has made large advances, but not in thedirection of imagination. In that rare and precious quality the works ofAllston remain preëminent as before.
It is now so long ago as 1827 that the first exhibition of pictures atthe Boston Athenæum took place; and then and there did Allston firstbecome known to his American public. Returned from Europe after a longabsence, he had for some years been living a retired, even a recluselife, was personally known to a few friends, and by name only to thepublic. The exhibition of some of his pictures on this occasion madeknown his genius to his fellow-citizens; and who, having once felt thestrange charm of that genius, but recalls with joyful interest the happyhour when he was first brought under its influence? I well remember,even at this distance in time, the mystic, charmed presence that hungabout the "Jeremiah dictating his Prophecy to Baruch the Scribe,""Beatrice," "The Flight of Florimel," "The Triumphal Song of Miriam onthe Destruction of Pharaoh and his Host in the Red Sea," and "TheValentine." I was then young, and had yet to learn that the quality thatso attracted me in these pictures is, indeed, the rarest virtue in anywork of Art,—that, although pictures without imagination are withoutsavor, yet that the larger number of those that are painted aredestitute of that grace,—and that, when, in later years, I should visitthe principal galleries of Europe, and see the masterpieces of each