command fail to embody
all he would express, his suggestive faculty is generally of force
sufficient to reach all beholders, even those of feeblest imagination.

In standing before the _Falls of Niagara_, one can, in fancy, feel the
cool moisture of spray, rising, incense-like, through a rainbow of
promise, from the inspired canvas, together with the earth's tremor at
the roar of mad waters rushing headlong to a desperate death. This
inestimable quality of suggestiveness is preserved in Mr. Church's
pictures when deprived of the aid of color and reduced to mere black and
white in engraving, a fact bearing equally conclusive testimony to their
inherent correctness of lines and elegance of composition.

Mr. Church's prominent characteristics of hardy vigor and adventurous
treatment of a subject, seem to have monopolized his artistic nature, to
the frequent exclusion of tenderness, either in idea or in the handling
of color. The painting, in our eyes, least open to this objection, is
_Twilight in the Wilderness_--a dreamy picture of inexpressible sadness,
of a tearful silence that is felt, and of a loneliness too sacred to be
profaned by human intrusion. The gorgeous panorama of the _Heart of the
Andes_, its snowy mountain peaks, and plains glowing with tropical
verdure, is too bewildering in its complicated grandeur to excite dreams
of beauty so tender and sadness so touching.

In contemplating this last-named picture, the demands on the attention
are so numerous and weighty,--in the first place, to comprehend the
situation, and exchange at a moment's notice the stagnation of the
temperate zone for the emotional excitement of the tropics; then to
separate and classify the many points of beauty, to rise to the summits
of distant mountains, sublime in their snowy crests, and sink again to
earth at the foot of the rustic cross, by whose aid we may one day rise
to sink no more,--to follow the painter successfully through this maze
of thoughts, without the guiding light of his own matchless color, would
seem a difficult and displeasing task. But the task has been
accomplished with complete success, in an English line engraving of the
_Heart of the Andes_, recently arrived in this country; which indication
of popularity abroad conduces materially to the ever-growing fame of the
artist. The same test, we believe, is in store for the _Icebergs_--with
what result, time will show. Meanwhile, the picture itself will, on
foreign s