oy, carrying a little black morocco trunk, that
contained a four-row box of Reeves's colors, with an assortment of
camel's-hair pencils, half a dozen white saucers, a water cup, a
lead-pencil and a piece of India rubber. Mr. Gummage immediately
supplied her with two bristle brushes, and sundry little shallow earthen
cups, each containing a modicum of some sort of body color, massicot,
flake-white, etc., prepared by himself and charged at a quarter of a
dollar apiece, and which he told her she would want when she came to do
landscapes and figures.

Mr. Gummage's style was to put in the sky, water and distances with
opaque paints, and the most prominent objects with transparent colors.
This was probably the reason that his foregrounds seemed always to be
sunk in his backgrounds. The model was scarcely considered as a guide,
for he continually told his pupils that they must try to excel it; and
he helped them to do so by making all his skies deep red fire at the
bottom, and dark blue smoke at the top; and exactly reversing the colors
on the water, by putting red at the top and the blue at the bottom. The
distant mountains were lilac and white, and the near rocks buff color,
shaded with purple. The castles and abbeys were usually gamboge. The
trees were dabbed and dotted in with a large bristle brush, so that the
foliage looked like a green frog. The foam of the cascades resembled a
concourse of wigs, scuffling together and knocking the powder out of
each other, the spray being always fizzed on with one of the aforesaid
bristle brushes. All the dark shadows in every part of the picture were
done with a mixture of Persian blue and bistre, and of these two colors
there was consequently a vast consumption in Mr. Gummage's school. At
the period of our story, many of the best houses in Philadelphia were
decorated with these landscapes. But for the honor of my townspeople I
must say that the taste for such productions is now entirely obsolete.
We may look forward to the time, which we trust is not far distant, when
the elements of drawing will be taught in every school, and considered
as indispensable to education as a knowledge of writing. It has long
been our belief that _any_ child may, with proper instruction, be made
to draw, as easily as any child may be made to write. We are rejoiced to
find that so distinguished an artist as Rembrandt Peale has avowed the
same opinion, in giving to the world his invaluable little work on