the countenance. No interpolations of the painter would it possess; no false touches; no flattery. As the magnetic telegraph, in these progressive times, has to a great extent annihilated distance and enabled us to communicate almost instantly with our dearest friends in the remotest regions, so the daguerreotype has, with magic nearly equal, annihilated time and bestowed on our posterity, when they shall have come upon the stage, the ability of beholding us, their respectable ancestors, almost face to face.

Still it must be admitted that, with all its correctness, this art, in some respects, falls short of the pencil. It is not capable of showing off the same variety of countenance. Some bright, sprightly expressions, often the most characteristic, and therefore seized on with avidity by the painter for his ivory, it cannot catch at all on its plates. They are too evanescent to wait out its awful half minute required of patient, head-supported, stationary sitting. A dread feeling withal, is apt to creep over the subject at the time, from the solemnity of his position. He feels conscious that he is holding up his face, not before a mirror for himself to see, but before a camera obscura, to be looked upon by his absent friends, and, in aftertimes, to be scrutinized, and, he hopes, admired, by the impartial eyes of posterity. Solemn occasion! He cannot help attempting to put on his most penetrating look, his most serious suit of features. The apparatus itself too, it must be added, has a strong tendency towards presenting the awfully dismal, which it is the constant endeavor of improvers to overcome. In the way of cheerfulness, it can seldom reach, in its pictures, beyond a pensive smile. Its plates, moreover, have not yet been divested fully of their metallic glare. In certain positions, with all their improvements, they still present us with a ghastly spectre, the sombre ghost of the original. The sun too, I would speak it respectfully, is not altogether impartial in his impres sions. We can almost fancy we can detect something still of the old Phoebus in his disposition. Pindar surely knew his taste when he described him as having been smitten by the violet-colored hair and dark eyes of Evadue. The Muses too, that same poet tells us, were adorned with the same dark-colored tresses. No wonder then that, in his musical capacity, the golden-haired god of day was charmed with their society, and that, at the celestial banquets, he was wont to strike his lyre in unison with their singing. Can it be possible, because in modern times he has been deprived of that instrument, and because he is no longer invoked by poets and musi

cians as the inspirer of their lays and strains, that he has taken umbrage at their neglect, and to show that he really has a decided turn for the fine arts, he has assumed to himself the whole depart. ment of landscape and miniature sketching? Be that as it may, we know he still retains his old partiality for the same style of female heads. He prefers for his pictures the brunettes, the darkeyed daughters of the South, his own favored clime. He may not absolutely flatter them falsely, but he takes care to show them off always in their best features. He is pleased with their pensive expressions. Towards your blonds, however, he is not so warmly drawn. Their blue eyes and light complexions he is disposed to disparage. Their freckles he blotches. He has a pique at their eyes. He cannot abide their mirth. He would not have posterity behold their dimples.

It must be borne in mind too, that this art, with all its beauties, can no longer be classed with those which are styled, par excellence, the Fine. All that was liberal about it has been assumed by the sun, and what is left for the operator, though requiring much taste and skill, is wholly mechanical. The man of plates feels not the same absorbing interest in your goodly looks. He does not, like the painter, by feasting on your features in fancy, make them his own and then recreate them, perhaps improved, on his ivory. For every advancement we are making in the useful arts, it seems to me, we are generally losing something in the romantic. For every actual possession we are acquiring in Terra Firma, we are giving up some ground in Terra Fabulosa. Let us not then plume ourselves too much on our present attainments. Let us still look back with reverence on the Past. Let us study its hallowed architecture, its rich poetry, its mellow paintings, its delicate miniatures. Not for the purpose of resuscitating their arts. In their pristine glory, at any rate, we can never recall them. They belong to ages that are gone. Nevertheless by feasting on their ambrosia, our humanities may be more fully developed, our imaginations may be strengthened and hereafter, if not ourselves, our posterity at any rate may put forth improvements surpassing any that have gone before, on account of their partaking largely, not only of the physical and mechanical, but also of the aesthetical, the morally beautiful and sublime. W. M. N.

ART. XV.-KIRWAN'S LETTERS.

Letters to the Rt. Rev. John Hughes, Roman Catholic Bishop of New York. By Kirwan. First Series 1847. Second Series 1849. New York.

THE two small tracts which go under this title, have obtained, as is generally known, a very wide circulation. They appeared originally, as a series of communications, in the New York Observer, and were copied from this into a great many other religious papers. Their popularity led subsequently to their being printed as pamphlets; in which form they have been still more extensively scattered over the length and breadth of the land. They have been counted worthy of translation into other languages, and their fame may be said to have gone out to the ends of the earth. Vast praise has been bestowed upon them on all sides; to such an extent, indeed, that their author must have required no inconsiderable amount of grace, not to fall into the easy snare and condemnation of thinking more highly of himself than he ought to think. The religious press has rung the most flattering changes on the theme of his merits, one organ vying with another, apparently, in some cases, to show its own theological acumen, by heaping laudations on his head. His wit and learning have been trumpeted to the skies. He has been hailed as a second Junius in letters, more worthy of admiration in many respects than the first. All sects and parties have delighted to do him honor. A new era was supposed to have broken upon the history of Protestantism, by the bold onset of the "great unknown" on the pride and strength of the Roman Church. The whole controversy was made so level to the common understandind, so squeezed into nutshell dimensions, so shut up to the offhand alternatives of every-day sense, so bountifully sprinkled with the vivacity of the drawing room or the exchange; it seemed as though a full end of it were taken to have been made at once, and no room could be found for any farther argument in the case. The tomes of musty learning which had been given to it in other days, might have been necessary before; but all occasion for them seemed now to be fast coming to an end.

With a shepherd's sling, and a smooth small stone from the brook, Kirwan had gone forth to battle, and the philistine of Gath lay dead at his feet. To believe the puffs in the newspapers, his primers were worth, if not their own weight in gold, at least all the folios of Chemnitz and the Magdeburg Centuriators put together.

All this, of course, serves to clothe these "Letters" with importance. Their significance is not to be estimated by their size, we must look at their current reputation and credit. We feel bound also, to admit in their favor much more than a simply outward claim in this way to our notice and respect. They come, according to general uncontradicted acceptation, from a most respectable source; their author is one, whom we have long been accustomed to honor, and love, as an able and faithful minister of Christ. In the work before us, too, his general character stands in favorable contrast with much that we are doomed to meet in the current controversy with Rome, as conducted by other hands. The low bred vulgarity, the blackguard polemics, which, too, often come in our way under such form, (reminding one of the vagrant mendicancy of the Roman Church itself,) are not allowed to offend us from the pen of Kirwan. He shows throughout the air and bearing of a gentleman. As a general thing, moreover, he breathes a spirit of kindness; even when he may be unjust and harsh in fact, it is easy to see that it springs not from a directly malignant temper towards those who are wronged. He sins out of ignorance, in such cases, more than out of fanatical hate. He ceases not to be goodnatured, however we may feel too often that he is neither sufficiently earnest nor fair. His frivolity carries with it a certain dignity, and sets upon him with well bred ease. It is not such as delights in the companionship of fools. His style abounds with sprightly vivacity and wit, and is well adapted to popular impression; though not exactly with an eloquence and earnestness to remind us, as his partial editor and copy-right holder remarks "of some of the most celebrated passages from the Irish bar." There is besides a tolerable amount of true and solid thought, embraced in the general argumentation of his Letters; which, it is to be hoped, may not fail to exert a good influence

where they are read, and from whose value and force we have no wish certainly to detract. A certain degree of glory also has been reflected upon the whole position of the writer by the palpable advantage he has had over Bishop Hughes. This gentleman managed his part of the controversy badly, displaying in it but little of the tact and skill which he is generally supposed to possess. He could never have intended seriously to follow Kirwan in the details of his attack. Still, he seems to have felt it necessary to take notice of it in some way, at least indirectly. This, however, gave him the aspect, before the public, of one who had accepted the challenge he was here called to meet; and when the demonstration ended as it did, without being carried out apparently to its own proper end, it seemed naturally enough to betoken a sense of actual confusion and defeat, in the particular controversy he was thus found to waive. Such was, of course, the construction put upon the whole proceeding, by Kirwan and his friends. Bishop Hughes, the great champion of the Pope in America, was held to have been fairly silenced, because he had nothing whatever to say. He was taken all a-back by the prodigious novelty and power of this assault, and published his own shame by going to Halifax to hide it. All this, we say, has contributed to invest these Letters of Kirwan with a halo of glory, such as few pamphlets of the same size have ever been able to win and wear. The author comes before us like a conquering chief, with laurels on his brow, and roses in his path.

Kirwan's Letters, then, may be considered a very fair and respectable representation of the whole popular style of Protestantism, in whose interest they appear; and, in this view especially, they challenge respectful criticism, while they furnish at the same time a desirable opportunity for exposing at least some of the flaws and defects, under which this popular system labors. In dealing with Kirwan, we have to do, in fact, not with a couple of twelve penny pamphlets simply, but with the reigning tone of Protestant thought as it stands at present in this country; lie has the mass of opinion and feeling, in all directions, on his side; this is the great secret of his popularity and credit. And all will admit, that the reigning fashion in this respect could not