or some other interesting object beyond.  The pencil of SAGEGREEN imbues canvases, both large and small, with infinite variety and force; and it is to SKETCHMORE that the great lakes owe their remarkable reputation as pieces of water with poems growing out of their broad lily-pads.  Very tender are the pastoral banks and brooksides of LEAFHOPPER.  ELFINLOCKS takes up his pencil, and lo! a hazy, mazy, lazy, dreamy vista where it has touched.  But hold!  Our critical Incubus has taken the bit between her teeth, and is beginning to run away with us.  Stop that; and let our readers enumerate the other first American landscape painters for themselves.

Not so strong are our artists in domestic incidents and compositions of life and character.  We have STUNNINGTON, to be sure, whose traits of American expression, whether white or colored, are most true to the life; and there’s BARLEYMOW, who will twist you an eclogue from the tail of his foreground pig.  Others there be; but space has its limits, and we forbear.

As for our portrait limners, their name is Legion, and that comprehensive name must go for all.  Like BENVENUTO CELLINI they shall be known for their jugs; and their transmission to posterity on the heads of families is a thing to be reckoned on as sure.

For the higher flights of art the American painter is by no manner of means endowed with the wings of his native eagle—­wings that agitate the cerulean vault, spattering it with splashes of creamy cloud-spray, and churning into butter the stretches of the Milky Way.  History has indeed been illustrated by American art, but has it been enriched?  The WASHINGTONS and the WEBSTERS, the CLAYS and the LINCOLNS, have had their memories dreadfully lampooned on canvas.  Allegory does not inspire the great American pencil.  Tall art there is, and enough of it “at that;” but of high art we have none to speak of, except the canvases that are placed over doorways in the galleries of the Academy, and, in the sense of elevation, may consequently be spoken of as high.  All this is wrong.  Alas! that we should write it.  Would that we could right it!  And to think of the musty subjects that our historical and allegorical men select.  Ho! young men—­away with your CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS; relegate your METAMORA to his proper limbo; let WASHINGTON alone; and LINCOLN; and OSCEOLA the Savage; and POCAHONTAS, and all the rest.  Leave them alone; and, taking fresh subjects, dip your brushes in brains, as old OPIE or somebody else said, and go to work with a will.  No fresh subjects to be had, you say?  Bosh! absurd interlocutor that you are.  Here’s a bundle of ’em ready cut to hand.  We charge you no money for them, and you may take your choice.

SUBJECTS FOR WORKS OF HIGH ART.

PROVIDENCE tempering the wind to the shorn lamb.

ABSENCE OF MIND marking a box of paper shirt-collars with indelible ink.

MILTON “going it blind.”

The late Mr. WILLIAM COBBETT teaching his sons to shave with cold water.