There is dignity of character, fine expression, delicate design, correct drawing, and beautiful conception, in all Mr. Fulton's paintings. All which qualities can only spring from an elevated mindsuch a mind that could only be benefited by the works of the great Benjamin West, who was one of the most celebrated classical painters the world ever produced, second only to the immortal Raphael, and who exceeded all other historical painters (except Rubens) in the number and variety of his productions.

Mr. Fulton's attachment to the fine arts led him to conceive the design of inducing his countrymen to purchase the works of Mr. West, the principal part of which that great artist was then willing to part with. For this purpose he wrote an address to the citizens of Philadelphia, urging them to establish an Institute for the Fine Arts, similar to the one which now exists in that city. After exhibiting with great force and animation the advantages to be derived from the cultivation of a taste for painting and sculpture, and portraying the character and merits of Mr. West with all the warmth of friendship and admiration, Mr. Fulton says: "I now have the pleasure to offer you a catalogue of the select works of Mr. West, and with it to present the most extraordinary oppor

tunity that ever was offered to the lovers of science. The catalogue referred to is a list of all Mr. West's productions, portraits excepted. No city ever had such a collection of admired works from the pencil of one man, and that man is your fellow-citizen. The price set on the collection is fifteen thousand pounds sterling-a sum inconsiderable when compared with the objects in view, and the advantages to be derived from it."

Mr. Fulton then proceeds to propose means for raising the necessary funds, and to suggest arrangements for the establishment, which he wishes might be called the Westinian Gallery.

This proposition could not have been made without the assent of Mr. West. If it were so, it is curious to remark that he was then willing to part with his whole collection, which must have contained the works of the prime of his life, for little more than he has since received for a few of his celebrated paintings.

Every man to whom this proposition was addressed, must now deeply regret that it was not accepted; and the more so because we learn, from this same address of Mr. Fulton, that had the offer been accepted, and the plan proposed by Mr. Fulton carried into execution, Mr. West would proba

bly have returned to and have spent the evening of his life in his native country.

At the sale of the pictures of the Royal Academy, in 1805, Mr. Fulton purchased West's Ophelia and his King Lear: for the first of these he gave one hundred and twenty-five, and for the other two hundred and five guineas. In such estimation were the works of West, that the English seemed to have been unwilling to spare us even these specimens of his talents. A periodical work published in London at this time, thus notices the purchase of Mr. Fulton:

"We have to regret that the two last-mentioned pictures, which are the most happy productions of the truly classic mind of Mr. West, are going out of the country. They have been purchased by an American gentleman, (Mr. Fulton, of Philadelphia,) and are to be the first ornaments of a gallery which is to be established in that city. We cannot part with them without feeling interested in the fate of the beautiful Ophelia, whose charming elegance, mingled with delirious wildness, fills the soul with the most lively sentiments; nor with the majestic Lear, whose heart seems torn with ingratitude and the sense of complicated evils. There is a grandeur of conception and spirit of execution in this picture, which has been seldom surpassed, and which can only be enjoyed by men of cultivated taste and elevated minds. In such paintings we are not to look for delicate complexions, smooth and polished surfaces, or fine colours-nor do we look for such qualities in the works of Raphael; but for correct drawing, fineness of touch, fine flow of drapery, dignity of character, and movement of soul, all of which are treated in these pictures with the

highest order of intellect, and will rank them among the most distinguished works of art when Mr. West will be no more. Feeling as we do, it is with reason we regret that those pictures are to leave this country; but it must be highly gratifying to the Pennsylvanians to possess such works of their celebrated and much-esteemed countryman."

This eulogy on one of the earliest, best, and most respected friends of Mr. Fulton, will not be considered, it is hoped, as a too long, or as a misplaced digression. The genius of West and Fulton have secured them an immortal fame. It is possible that the humblest efforts to preserve memorials of either of them, may rescue from oblivion a performance of the slightest merit; and when succeeding generations shall view, with increased admiration, these productions of the first and greatest American masters improved by the hand of time, their histories will be most interesting, and will be thought to have been worth preserving.

In honor of the great preceptor of Fulton, we insert a short history of his life and works.*

* Benjamin West, President of the Royal Academy in London, who cast a splendour upon the age in which he lived, was born in Chester county, Pennsylvania, on the 10th of October, A.D. 1738. The old mansion house where he was born is still standing, and is now called "Westdale," about ten miles south-west of Philadelphia city. The farm was originally settled by his maternal

In 1797, Mr. Fulton took his lodgings in Paris, at an hotel in which Joel Barlow, our American

grandfather, and called "Springfield." The West family emi-
grated from England with William Penn, on his second visit to
Pennsylvania, in 1699, and belonged to the Society of Friends.
John West, the father of Benjamin, married Sarah, the daughter
of Thomas Pearson, about the year 1714, by whom he had ten
children: Benjamin was the youngest son. As early as June,
1745, he sketched with red and black ink a correct likeness of
his sister's child, whilst it was asleep in the cradle. The young
artist was not provided with better materials than pen and ink
until the following summer, when a party of Indians came to pay
their annual visit to Springfield, and being amused with the
sketches of birds and flowers which Benjamin showed them, they
presented him with the colours with which they painted their
ornaments, and they taught him to prepare the primary colours.
The mythologies of antiquity furnish no allegory more beautiful.
Here is the immortal artist instructed by nature; AND WE CAN-

NOT IMAGINE ANYTHING MORE PICTURESQUE THAN THE REAL
INCIDENT OF INDIANS INSTRUCTING WEST TO PREPARE THE
PRISMATIC COLOURS.

His first pencils he made of the fur of a cat, drawn tightly through a goose-quill. His first picture was painted for his mother, and was a composition from two engravings; and sixtyseven years afterwards, the artist had the picture in the same room with the sublime painting of "Christ rejected;" and he then declared that he had never been able to surpass some of the touches of art in his first and juvenile essay. His second picture was a landscape, which comprehended a picturesque view of a river, with vessels on the water, and cattle pasturing on the banks he afterwards presented it to his friend William Henry,

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