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31 without instruction, it has been thought, that there was a peculiar talent for the arts in the Americans: but most of these were but examples of that mechanical ingenuity, which certainly is a general characteristic of the people. It may be difficult to convince the artist of this deficiency of mind; but let him place a landscape, for example, of almost any of the living painters by the side of one, of the old masters. He may find the drawing, coloring, and perspective as good, and perhaps better; but the difference between them is, that one is this work of [[strikethrough]] a [[/strikethrough]] the hand only, the other of the imagination; one shows, perhaps even less skill in the execution, and often in spite of injury and decay, a fine creation of the mind; the other a dull copy of what happened to be before the artist, or a composition of commonplace and unmeaning objects. The part of one seen selected to fill the canvass with picturesque forms and colors, those of the