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                                    I N T ROD U C T ION.
   Of all people in the world, we stand most in need of knowledge in the
Arts of Design.   If
in Europe, surrounded as they are by monuments of art, the accumulation of
ages, it has been
round necessary to make Drawing a part of common education, how much more
essential is it
here, where there is little or nothing of the sort.  We must learn to think,
and feel, and do, for
ourselves.  We must begin and carry out a new system of education in this
respect; and, once
placed in possession of a beginning, the energy and independent character
of our people, so
evident in everything else, will he made available to the cultivation of
national taste in art, and
the just appreciation of the sublime and beautiful.   Art, in its higher
efforts, will no longer suffer
from the pedantry of travelled quackery, but will be elevated in itself;
and elevated in its efforts,
by the existence of a fair, honest, and intelligent tribunal.  The cast-off
frippery of European
garrets and workshops will no longer find place beside our home productions
in the Fine and
Industrial Arts.    The vast resources of mind and matter with which a bountiful
Providence has
endowed our land, will be brought forth to add to its national greatness;
and, although we
have no vast cathedrals or regal palaces to fill with pictures and statues,
or adorn with works of
ornamental art, we have a vast, an independent and intelligent people to
appeal to: who need
only to be shown the truth, to know and maintain it.
   That a general taste for the Fine Arts does exist, however uncultivated
it may be, is evident.
Where is there the humblest cottage that has not its walls or mantlepiece
decorated with a picture
 or plaster figure?  However rude may be the work of art which hangs as "the
bright ~
of the cottage, yet the household care bestowed upon its preservation, and
the pleasure it
affords by its possession and contemplation, show an appreciation of its
worth, a decided taste,
that, if cultivated, would Jead to better productions; for the supply would
assuredly be improved
in character, in proportion to the demand.  A wooden clock sells the readier
for its picture,
and more especially, if that picture touch a chord of national pride.   Washington
and Mount
Vernon, although pictured with a most libellous pencil, have saved many a
worthless machine
from the rubbish-loft.
   What village school-girl is there, whose ambition does not reach to the
imitation of natural
objects in needlework? and, although it may often puzzle the most acute to
discover a rose from
a tulip, or a cat from a squirrel, in her worsted-picture, yet the taste,
the inclination-to try-is
there.  Could she be able to select subjects for imitation, from the boundless
resources of nature
with which she is surounded - could she have the means and opportunity afforded
her, by proper
instruction, of perpetuating, by her pencil or brush, the flower she has
reared, the home she has
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