Have you never seen them in the Academy,--these dear young ladies, who are so constantly foreseeing new Raphaels, Claudes, and Rembrandts? Positively, in this year's Exhibition they are better worth study than the paintings. There they run, up and down, critical or enthusiastical, as the humor strikes: Laura, with big blue eyes and a loud voice, pitying Isidora because she "has never met" that dear Mr. Herkimer, who paints such delicious, dreamy landscapes; and Emily dragging everybody off to see Mr. Smith's great work, "The Boy and the Windmill," which--so surprising is his facility--he actually painted in less than twelve days, and which "promises so much for his success and the future of American Art," says this sage young critic, out of whose gray eyes look the garnered experiences of almost eighteen summers.
Whoever desiderates cheap praise, let him cultivate a beard and a sleepy look, and hang a picture in the Academy rooms. Elkanah received it, you may be sure. It was thought _so_ romantic, that he, a fisherman,--the young ladies sunk the shoemaker, I believe,--should be _so_ devoted to Art. How splendidly it spoke for our civilization, when even sailors left their vessels, and, abjuring codfish, took to canvas and brushes! What admirable courage in him, to come here and endeavor to work his way up from the very bottom! What praiseworthy self-denial,--"No!! is it _really_ so?" cried Miss Jennie,--when he had left behind him a fair young bride!
It was as though it had been written, "Blessed is he who forsaketh father, mother, and wife to paint pictures." But it is not so written.
It was as if the true aim and glory of every man in a civilized community should be to paint pictures. Which has this grain of truth in it, that, in the highest form of human development, I believe every man will be at heart an artist. But then we shall be past picture-painting and exhibitions. Don't you see, that, if the fruit be thoroughly ripe, it needs no violent plucking? or that, if a man is really a painter, he _will_ paint,--ay, though he were ten times a shoe-maker, and could never, never hope to hang;--his pictures on the Academy walls, to win cheap wonder from boarding-school misses, or just regard from judicious critics?