It is painful to think how soon the paintings of Raphael, and Titian,
and Correggio, and other illustrious men will perish and pass away. "How
long," said Napoleon to David, "will a picture last?" "About four or
five hundred years!--a fine immortality!" The poet multiplies his works
by means of a cheap material--and Homer, and Virgil, and Dante, and
Tasso, and Moliere, and Milton, and Shakspeare, may bid oblivion
defiance; the sculptor impresses his conceptions on metal or on marble,
and expects to survive the wreck of nations and the wrongs of time; but
the painter commits to perishable cloth or wood the visions of his
fancy, and dies in the certain assurance that the life of his works will
be but short in the land they adorn.--_For. Rev._
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A Chinese novelist, in describing his hero, says, "the air of the
mountains and rivers had formed his body; his mind, like a rich piece of
embroidery, was worthy of his handsome face!" Pity he has not been
introduced among our "fashionable novels."
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