sociated with it the idea of durability and exactitude. Though the most common offspring of sculpture, it is one of the rarest in perfection. Few sculptors can copy na. ture so faithfully as to give us the very lineaments wholly free from caricature or embellishment. Those who have an eye for the detail of expression, often fail in general effect. To copy the form of the eye, the texture of the hair, every delicate line of the mouth, and yet preserve throughout an air of veri-similitude and that unity of effect which always exists in nature, is no ordinary achievement. The requisite talent must be a native endowment; no mechanical dexterity can ever reach it. "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever." This sentiment spontaneously fills the heart in view of the great products of the chisel. We contemplate the Niobe and Apollo, as millions have before us, with growing delight and the most intense admiration. They have come down to us from departed ages, like messengers of love; they assure us, with touching eloquence, that human genius and affection, the aspirations and wants, the sorrow and the enthusiasm of the soul, were ever the same; they invoke us to endure bravely and to cherish the beautiful and true, as our best heritage. So speak they and so will they speak to unborn generations. In the silent poetry of their expressive forms lives a perennial sentiment. They keep perpetual state, and give the world audience, that it may feel the eternity of genius, and the true dignity of man. It is delightful to believe that sculpture is destined to flourish among us. It is truly the art of a young republic. Let it perpetuate the features of our patriots, and

people our cities with images of grandeur and beauty. Worthy votaries of the art are not wanting among us: on the banks of the Aruo, they speak of Greenough and Powers; from the studios of Rome come praises of Crawford, and beside the Ohio is warmly predicted the fame of Clevenger. Let us cherish such followers of the art with true sympathy and generous patronage. The national heart will not then be wholly corroded by gain, and a few places will be kept green for repose and refreshment, upon the great highway of American life.

THE WEATHER.

I HAVE just parted with one of those insensible beings who profess perfect independence of the weather,—a class, one would think, by their manner of treating this popular topic, differently organized from the majority of mankind. It is really provoking to remark the complacency with which they declare that the atmospheric vicissitudes affect them not, that they are too busy to note the course of the wind, and that half the time they know not whether it rains or shines; as if it were a fit subject for congratulation-this unnatural insusceptibility to what human beings should, from their very constitution, consciously feel. Much pleasure do these weather-despisers lose. It is true, they suffer not the throe; but, be it remembered, they enjoy not the thrill. Welcome are they to their much vaunted indifference to the state of the elements. Better, methinks, to suffer somewhat, and even fancifully, from the weather, than to be wrapped up in a mantle of unconcern-to walk forth regardless of the temperature, and without any more interest in the existent face of the heavens, than if they were changeless and

stony, like the mood of such spirits. This independence argues an insensibility.' A hopeful token, in truth, is a just susceptibility to the weather. There is reason in its universality, as a subject of discussion; there is a real benefit in being alive to its influences. Dr. Johnson indeed, with characteristic hardihood, boasted of his immunity from skyey influences;' but Milton confesses that his poetical vein flowed only between the autumnal and vernal equinox. Thomson declared his muse was most docile in the fall; and Byron always felt most religiously disposed on a sunny day. Hear the stout Ashyre ploughman

'How stan' you this blae eastlin wind,
That's like to blaw a body blind?

For me my faculties are frozen.

In Naples, they have a saying, when any literary production is very bad, that it was written during a sirocco.

The air and sky are a common heritage--they greet all the living impartially; and, while the changes of all things else affect only certain classes and individuals, their variations influence us all. It is well that there is thus a theme of universal sympathy, about which men, as such, can exchange opinions. The weather is essentially a republican subject; and of all topics, whereby to get over the awkwardness of a first interview, it is de. cidedly the most convenient. What idea would answer to begin a colloquy with, had we not the weather? If the elements were as fixed, or as regular in their changes, as the earth, what an available starting point in conver. sation should we be deprived of! After being introduced

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to an individual of whom we know nothing, what could we find to talk about, were this elemental theme not ever-present? To speak of literature or music, without knowing the taste of our new acquaintance, might prove a damper; to begin chatting about other people, might betray us into scandalizing the kindred of our auditor; but to allude enthusiastically to the beauty of the even. ing, or sympathetically to its coldness, would, in all probability, advance us at once far on the pleasant track of sociability. Besides it is altogether so natural and human to talk about the weather-to tell how we feel under its prevailing influence-and to listen, with profound interest, to the details our companion may give as to its effect on him. In this way we glide, with transcendant ease, into a sympathizing vein; glimpses of mutual char. acter are incidentally afforded, and then the way to more familiar communion lies clear and open. Let the conceited non-observers of the weather, who are liable to find themselves at a non-plus in conversation, consider the remarkable adaptativeness of the theme; and for this, if for no better reason, hasten to excite their lukewarm zeal as amateur meteorologists.

Weather-wisdom is a consoling acquirement. I have often re-learned the lesson of human equality, in observing the complacency of an honest tar, as he interpreted the signs of the sky to some accomplished veteran in book lore. The poor sailor, only matriculated by some marine witchery on crossing the line for the first timeand who only graduated, after some fierce whaling adventure, from cabin-boy to seaman-thenceforth witless