their effect. Night attacks are always subject to many contingencies, especially if they are crippled by complicated movements. Different points cannot be reached at the specified and desirable moment. Unexpected obstacles will arise; delays not anticipated become unavoidable, and mistakes not only as to positions, but also as to the friendly or hostile character of troops concentrated in the darkness, very probable, and the firing in different quarters wrongly interpreted. The dense fog made this in reality a night attack, and hence subject to all the casualties of one. As a primary cause, therefore, not anticipated by Washington, he very naturally, and might very truly, regard it the true one. Had the morning been clear the result would, doubtless, have been different. But it must be remembered that the very fog which confused the Americans, confused still more the enemy. The former knew perfectly well what they were about, while the latter were wholly ignorant of the number of their assailants, or where the weight of the attack was to fall. After going over all the different authorities the great mistake, it seems to me, lay in halting at Chews' house. Had the advice of Pickering, Lee, Hamilton, and others been taken, and a regiment left to occupy those in the building, should they attempt to make a sally, all the other casualties would have effected nothing in the general result. Howe's army would have been destroyed, and this calamity following so rapidly the capture of Burgoyne at Saratoga, finished the war with a clap of thunder. An unexpected heavy firing in the rear of an army, while the commander-in-chief is absent, will always prove disastrous. It was clear as noonday that the inmates of Chews' House, finding themselves watched by a regiment with artillery, would never have dared to sally forth on the rear of a victorious army, and the Battle of Germantown was lost by the very conduct which constitutes a martinet. Knox was the only general officer in the consultation held upon the building, and it was natural that Washington, who had, and justly, a high opinion of his military skill, should place more confidence in his judgment than in that of his young aids. But in battle, rules should never arrest fortune, or be used to stem the current of events, when setting favorably. Impulse in the heat and excitement of close conflict is often wiser than the sagest experience. At all events in this case it was applying a general rule where it did not belong, and arresting the whole practical action of a battle by a mere technicality, and although Washington attributes the failure to Providence, Providence will always be found against such bad management as that halt at Chews' House most indubi tably was. Knox and Providence are by no means one and the same, and had the opinion of the general been less scientific and more practical, the course of Providence would have taken a far different, and more satisfactory direction. Not that I would intimate that Providence does not overrule all our actions and bring about the best results in the end. I mean simply to say what no man doubts, that blunders, bad management, and unwise conduct, Providence generally allows to work mischief to those who are guilty of them. It is not a difficult matter now, when every thing is understood, to fix the turning point of the battle, or to locate the blame, but it is quite another thing to say how great, under all the circumstances, that blame was. Finding his entire army enshrouded in a dense fog; knowing by the heavy and constant firing that the troops were nearly out of ammunition, and fearing to get entangled in a net-work of just such houses as that of Chews', Washington may have well hesitated about advancing, unless he could make a clean sweep as he went. But so far as the regarding of this single house as a fort or castle, it is palpable as noon-day that the junior officers were right, and Knox totally, fatally wrong. The whole upper part of the building would scarcely hold a regiment, while not a hundred men could fire to advantage from it at a time. After the field in front had been swept, a flag sent to it would not have been fired on, and a valuable officer lost his life. Still, though chagrined, the troops were not dispirited. They had attacked the veterans of England, and exjoyed the pleasure of chasing them in affright from their own encampment. Neither did Congress mourn over the defeat. Almost a victory was rather a subject of congratulation, for it gave confidence to the troops, and lessened their fear of the enemy. The British confessed it was the severest handling they had yet received, and although Howe, as usual, made his loss but trifling, it evidently amounted to about eight hundred men. Mr. Sparks thinks that this battle had nearly as much to do in fixing the wavering determination of France, respecting the recognition of our independence, as the capture of Burgoyne, remarking that Count De Vergennes said to one of our commissioners in Paris, "that nothing struck him so much as General Washington attacking and giving battle to General Howe's army; that to bring an army raised within a year to this promised every thing." This may have had its weight in the French Councils, but such a remark was doubtless more complimentary than serious, for one cannot imagine what an army is raised for, except to attack the enemy, and that, too, within less than a year. ALL types exist, originally, in nature. The highest art is the vision of those types, and the ability to make mankind see them. There are two classes of art that take their rise from the power of imagination. The one produces objects addressed to the imagination, the other, objects addressed to the power of perception. The art addressed to the power of perception is that of gardening, or creating landscape. In this department of art the designer is limited in his creation by nature. His chief province is to correct, improve, and adorn. As he cannot repeat his experiments so as to observe future effects, he must call up in his imagination the scenes which he wishes to produce, and apply to them his taste and judgment; or to a lively conception of visible objects he must add a power of judging beforehand of the effects they would produce if they were exhibited to his senses. This power has been appro priately and beautifully called the prophetic eye of taste. High art as applied to landscape painting occupies a more extended ground. The object of the artist in both cases, is the highest evolvement of truth and beauty. In the first case he makes a landscape as near nature as possible, or by the means of art lifts his idea up to the mirror of nature. In the second case he copies what may seem to him to be the most striking and interresting features of nature, and breathes into them his own warm, high feelings; or, in other words, nature sits to him for her portrait. And while thus rapt he listens to her wild stories of the battling of tempests, of the going and coming of leaves, flowers, colors; of the preaching of trees; of the dances of wood-nymphs and ghouls; of hope, love, beauty, wisdom, God; he seizes his pencil and makes a hundred pictures of her beautiful face. In historical painting the original idea must be formed in the imagination, and, in most cases, the exercise of imagination must concur with I perception before the picture can produce that effect on the mind of the spectator which the artist has in view. But the landscapist, though he copies his landscape from his imagination, the scene which he wishes to exhibit is addressed to the senses, and may produce its effects on the minds of others without much effort on their part of either imagination or conception. Landscape painting is not considered to be of so vast an extent as historical; yet it requires much study, and great natural talent-great genius. The historical painter belongs to what the Germans call the objective school; the landscapist, to the subjective. The historical painter aims at representing his ideas and feelings independently of himself, through imaginary beings. The landscapist aims at expressing his feelings effectively and harmonizingly, by means of natural objects. and the imagination, in forms and attitudes above the comprehension of the mass. The landscapist, who is true to his own inspirations, exerts on his age a wholesome, high, and holy influence. He becomes in love with nature; her lefty teachings lift his being above the gross and petty things of life, and refine his intellect till it becomes diamond-pointed-so polished that the dust of evil can rest not upon its surface. Amid the realms of rocks, and woods, and flowers, and clouds, and colors, he weaves his chaste and beautiful fabrics, and hangs our festive walls with soul-inspiring, heart-lifting pictures, that would otherwise never glad our eyes. When the drop-curtain of nature is down, behind which the flowers, and leaves, and herbs, have gone to await the return of sol: when the winter tempest lashes our creaking dwellings, we can feed our eyes on these lovely and refreshing portraits of departed bloom and beauty, till the ear of Fancy is again charmed with music of birds, and her vision rapt in the hues of softest summer. Through the whole reign of sleet and storm, and snow, and clouds, they preach to us of nature, and returning bloom and beauty. Durand is properly what the schoolmen call in art a realist, which signifies the faculty of truthfully recalling the familiar and significant in nature. In all his works we have the same cling Landscape painting may be divided into three departments, the real, the allegorical, and the historical. Durand, in the highest sense, represents the first, and, in some degree, the second and third; Frederick and Cole, the second; Turner, Claude Lorraine, Salvator, Tintorretto, and Poussin, the third. The chief study of the landscape painter is the physical and vegetable worlds-earth, air. water, rocks; the floral king-ing, unquestioning, satisfied love of nature, of dom, architecture, all require his careful thought and study. None know how to make such use of the world of colors as he. None can hear such fine pulse-throbs; none drink so deeply the music of the spheres; none comprehend the language of the woods; none stand so rapt in the eloquence of nature as he. None combine these attributes into such thought-inspiring, soullifting harmony. Landscape has for its aim our mental and spiritual instruction. It cultivates our minds by giving us ideas of form, color, space, infinity. It elevates our spirits by enabling us to discern through the wonders of creation the might and majesty of the Creator, and teaches us every gradation of the beautiful and sublime. The department of landscape painting is only inferior in its influence to the historical, inasmuch as it is further removed from the common sympathies of human life. Real landscape presents us little more than a faithful transcript of nature, vivified with a calm, beautiful, holy sentiment tality, with now and then a rustic figure, a fairy, or wood-nymph. It gives us no scenes that stir the volcanoes of passion and quicken the blood into lava. Allegorical landscape exhibits to us only a copy of nature, peopled with the beings of the brain her forms, of her details, of her general quiet effects. It is always summer, always tranquility, always pensive contemplation upon his canvas. His pictures breathe peace, faith, calm, sweet self-reliance. In them we see loiterers by the glades, and listeners by waterfalls, broad meadows dotted with cattle, groups of heavily-foliaged trees, rippling or smooth-flowing streams, a leafhidden spire, a range of graceful highlands, whose outline swims away into the dreamy distance. Durand finds his parallel in poetry, in the descriptive, pastoral school. He ranks with Bryant, Thompson, and Wordsworth-with those poets who have deep sympathy with the obvious aspects of nature, and the power of a clear, complete expression of their truth and beauty. He has not wielded nature as a symbol to express some great moral lesson, or volcanic meaning of his soul, but that which he has conscientiously and earnestly felt in nature, he has put into soft, lovely, graceful forms. His pictures do not smite us with the suspicion of some great unrevealed thought, concealed among the massive foliage; or of some golden dream of fancy, floating along the haunted horizon; but through thin, soft, sunny transparency, truth and beauty are ever visible. We love to hang his landscapes on the walls where we live, and listen to their high, holy preachings, through the long tedium of the day. temperament-his gentle manners-and the high moral character he has sustained in all the relations of life, have won for him the warm approbation of all who have the honor of his acquaintance. His life beautifully illustrates our creed— That none but Virtue can steady the steps of Genius up its rough and thorny ascent—that Purity is the only safe and sure passport to the highest seat in the Temple of Fame. Our artist was one of the original founders of the National Academy of Design; and on the resignation of Professor Morse, was elected its president, which office he now holds. As a testimonial of his artistic eminence, and as an expression of gratitude for his long and faithful services as presiding officer of the National Academy of Design, the members of that institution proposed, in April last, to give him a then presented him a service of plate, which he reluctantly accepted. We append his reply for its own merits. "DEAR SIR,-The beautiful service of plate accompanied by your letter of presentation in behalf of a number of my friends, was placed in my hands on the evening of the 25th inst. Asher Brown Durand was born in 1796, at Jefferson Village, New Jersey. He is of French descent, his great grandfather, a surgeon and Huguenot, having sought an asylum in this country, on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. His father was a watchmaker, and had remarkable aptitude for mechanics. It was in his shop that the future artist imbibed a taste for engraving. Ciphers were often required for spoons and other household implements, and on these he began to exercise his skill. Having seen the cards inserted in the cases of watches, he imitated the designs, hammered cents into plates on which to engrave them, and invented such tools as were requisite for their execution. His success was such as to attract the attention of an ama-public dinner, which he promptly declined. They teur on a chance visit to his father's shop, who interested himself to procure him a situation where he could enjoy greater advantages. Through his aid he was apprenticed to one of the most prominent engravers of the time, and he finally attained the first place in that profession in this country. To be a painter had always been Mr. Durand's chief aim in life, and he looked upon engraving but as a means to that end, and as success crowned his efforts in this, he devoted his leisure hours to that branch of art in which he is now so distinguished. On the establishment of the institution, in 1825, of which he is now president, he first exposed a picture for exhibition, a portrait of his child, and from that In endeavoring to fulfill the various obligations, period until 1834, though still pursuing his pro-social and professional, which have devolved on fession as an engraver, he found time to con- me, whether in reference to the National Acadetribute one or two small pictures, either land- my of Design or otherwise, I have never expected scape or figure-pieces, for the yearly exhibitions nor desired other recompense than that which of the National Academy. In 1835 he abandon- results from conscientious discharge of duties, ed engraving as a profession, his last work of and the sympathy of those who, with myself, are If I canany importance being the "Ariadne," after Van- deeply interested in a common cause. derlyn. Two years previous to this period his not fully acquiesce in the generous estimate of pictures had attracted considerable notice, and such services, which my friends, through you, among others that of Mr. Luman Reed, and it have expressed, I may, at least, claim all that is was chiefly from his advice that Mr. Durand due to earnestness of purpose and the conviction abandoned the graver for the brush. Mr. Du- that no unworthy motive has ever controlled the rand's early contributions to art are mostly por- dictates of my heart. traits, with an occasional figure-piece and landscape. But the latter being more in accordance with his taste, and facilities for its study being greater, he finally adopted that department of art, and in which he holds the first place in this country. Durand has been married twice. By his first union he has three children; a son and two daughters. By his second he has two; both sons. He enjoys a high social position. His undisputed artistic merits his serene and poetical This signal evidence of their regard, coming as it does from so many of my brother artists, as well as friends with whom we are all in habits of social intercourse, gives rise to emotions and feelings of such a character that I am at a loss in what terms to express my grateful acknowledgments. Throughout my professional career, a period of thirty years and upward, I have enjoyed the confidence and esteem of many true and generous friends-more true, more generous, fow could boast. The remembrance of their kindness is deeply imprinted on my heart, and I should distrust my nature if any souvenir were needed to preserve or freshen the associations connected with their names. In conclusion, let me assure you that this testimonial is most gratefully appreciated, both as a remembrance of the past and an earnest for the TO THOS. S. CUMMINGS, Esq., A. B. DURAND. Sabbath Bells, in possession of G. Kimble, Cold FIGURE PIECES.-The wrath of Peter Stuyvesant, from Knickerbocker's History of N. Y., in possession of the New York Gallery. Dance on the Battery, in presence of Peter Stuyvesant, from the same, in possession of T. H. Faile, N. Vice-President of the N. A. of Design." The impulse that moved Mr. Durand's friends Y. Harvey Birch and Washington, from Cooper's toward him was noble; its actuation in bad Spy, in possession of Mr. Marsh, Vt. Capture taste. A thousand dollars' worth of plate could of Major Andre, in possession of H. K. Paulnever stir very violently the heart of true genius.ding, N. Y. A Passage in the Life of Woman, If his friends had ordered a picture, in his best manner, for some national purpose that would have given it a name and a habitation as enduring as his country, they would have exhibited better taste, and harmonized more with the feelings of their gifted friend. A presentation of silver, or gold, or any other worldly goods, to persons of high intellectual capacities and attainments, has always seemed to us inappropriate. The donors intend such gift to be a pledge of their appreciation of great merit, or of their gratitude for services rendered; while the recipient can but regard it as a pledge of their ignorance of his mental and spiritual needs. He is ever giving out soul of the subtlest essence, he craves soul in return-not gold, or silver, or earthly trappings. He has no use for these. Let the donors give them to those whose intellectual and moral deficiencies they can supply. Their glitter can add not one ray to genius -its absence subtract not one beam from it. The following is a list of some of our artist's principal works: in possession of the Artist. H. Pappagallo, in ENGRAVINGS.- Declaration of Independence, The number of Durand's works is surprising, Morning and Evening of Life," is, we believe, his only attempt in allegorical landscape. It is not painted with so free a hand as some of his later works, but is in sentiment suggestive and pleasing. "God's judgment on Gog," is, as far as we can learn, his only effort in historical landscape. This seems to us to be one of his most remarkable pictures. The conception is bolder, and the handling more free and vigorous than in any of his works. It is free from the excessive detail and finish perceptible in many of his early pioThe chiaroscuro is managed with contures. summate skill. Shakspeare's Church at Stratford on Avon," point of perspective and warm, rich coloring, is the most perfect of all his small pictures. The scene is truthfully given. LANDSCAPES.-Morning and Evening of Life, a pair of allegorical landscapes, in possession of Frederick Betts, Newburgh, N. Y. Lake Scene at Sunset, in possession of Mr. Gardner, Baltimore. The Rainbow. Scene from Thanatopsis, at Historical Society, N. Y. An Old Man's Reminiscences, at Gallery Fine Arts, Albany, N. Y. Mountain Stream, in possession of Mr. School-in craft, Albany. The Stranded Ship, in possession of James Brown, N. Y. Kindred Spirits, a wild scene, with portrait figures of Bryant and Cole, in possession of Park Godwin, N. Y. Scenery of Dover Plains, in possession of Mr. Seaman, N Y. God's Judgment of Gog, in possession of Jonathan Sturges, N. Y. Valley of Oberhasle, Switzerland, do. do. Shakspeare's Church, Stratford on Avon, do. do. Indian Vespers, in possession of Chauncey Shaffer, N. Y. A Wood Scene, in possession of A. M. Cozzens, N. Y. "Scenery of Dover Plains," and "A Wood Scene," are among his most popular pictures. They are strongly drawn and painted. "Primeval Forest," is Durand's richest picture in trees-"Strawberrying," the most highly finished of all his landscapes. "A June Shower," in possession of H. K. Brown, the sculptor, is, from our point of view, one of the most perfect and pleasing pictures of |