UPRIGHT, DOWNRIGHT, AND STRAIGHT-FORWARD. of workmen; the endearing word "wife" is not banished from his vocabulary for that of "lady;" and "man" is a word of dignity and significance with him, instead of being degraded to imply something the opposite of a gentleman. If a man who is not habitually downright were to say a tithe of the strong things that he may say with impunity, he would get knocked down for his frankness; but the very audacity of the downright man takes the world by surprise, and forces it into admiration. It forgives his insolence for the sake of the courage, and the harshness for love of the sincerity. He, moreover, has a clear head for detecting a sophism, and a knack of getting at the gist of a dispute, though it may be swathed about in redundancies and circumlocutions. He clinches an argument with homely common sense, and drives a truth into the mind of an antagonist with as much force and as little ceremony as a carpenter drives a nail into a block. He is a man, to use a very common phrase, who will "stand no nonsense" -and would rather a thousand times be thought rude, boorish, and disagreeable (which he very generally is), than call a spade other than a spade, compromise an opinion, or abandon a prejudice that he had once defended. In every condition of life, in the very extremity of distress and poverty, a man may be upright, and will be the better for it; but to be downright is not over prudent in him who has his fortune to make, or any worldly advantages to expect from his fellows. If a man be rich, his downrightness is not much in his way. It may even become ornamental to him, and pass for caustic wit and interesting eccentricity. The worst that will be said of him is, that his ill-nature is extremely piquant and original. If he be poor, it will receive no such honorable appreciation, but be universally condemned as unjustifiable misanthropy. It is rather a dangerous weapon in any one's hands, but doubly dangerous in the grasp of those who have not high birth or station, or the right of rich revenues, to privilege them to wield it. The straight-forward man has the candor of the downright man without his incivility. He uses clear and intelligible language on all occasions, but does not 11 hold himself bound to select the harshest phrases which can be found. Integrity also belongs to his character; but, being more conspicuously marked by straightforwardness, no one thinks of speaking of his uprightness. The notable points in the straight-forward man are the directness and openness with which he acts in his intercourse with the world. He takes the broad highway, and not the crooked path. His objects may partake of the usual business character of selfishness, but he does not make them worse by attempts to disguise them. No: he says, "I am here a man of business, and pursue my interests, leaving others to do so too, as they have a right to do." Thus everybody knows at once" what he would be at ;" and arrangements are made and bargains struck with half the trouble which they would cost in other hands. Sometimes this straight-forwardness is felt as a little out of taste; but all are sensible of its being extremely convenient, and generally acknowledge in the long-run that his mode of doing business is the best. It is amusing to see a circumambient man come into dealings with him. He is apt to be confounded by the very transparency of the other's mind. It puts him out. He could manage admirably with one who took cunning ways too, however much he might be upon his guard; but straight-forwardness is a new mode of fence, and he sinks under it. It is the same way with the sophist and the man who has a bad cause to defend by clever arguments: the arrow-flight directness of his common sense overthrows him at the first encounter. Straight-forwardness is not always combined with wisdom; but when it is, it becomes a masterful power. Even by itself it can hardly fail to elevate its possessor in the esteem of mankind. As a rogue is defined to be "a fool with a circumbendibus," so may one who has no bad designs and no circumbendibus about him be said to possess a kind of wisdom. In Don Quixote," we see straight-forwardness united with hallucinations; and it is interesting to reflect how that one good quality— the good faith, simplicity, and thorough honesty of the poor hidalgo-makes him respectable amid all his absurdities. Gen The social condition of his erally, however, the straightforward man ceedingly infrequent, and where few inis no fool, but one in whom all the ele-centives existed, except the beauties of ments are well combined, with a keen eye, natural scenery, to develop and foster a a clear head, a good heart, a passionate taste and genius for the practice of any of love of truth, and an unfaltering determi- the fine arts. His education was of that nation to pursue it. practical and utile kind so common and so We trust, as the world gets older, up-commendable among the excellent sect (the right and straightforward men will in- quakers) to which his family belonged; crease among us, and downright men be- and aside from the substantial features come more scarce. The first qualities are which it impressed upon his intellect, it unquestionably virtuous; but the last is was but little calculated to give wings to at the best an unpleasant characteristic. imagination, or encourage its flight into Downright men do not see things quite in the apparently unreal domains of the pictheir true light. They are oddities in our torial art. social scene. The soft words which they deprecate, and which they never will consent to use, what are they but the result of an improved civilization? In a ruder age, when bad actions were more frequent and of a grosser nature than now, it would have been cowardice and baseness in any who could see the evil to speak of it mildly. But now, when a tolerably equal standard of good conduct exists in all classes aiming at being called respectable, and when a vast tribunal instantly condemns any occasional aberration, softer terms are sufficient; and merely to express surprise at any little delinquency, conveys, in these days, a severer reproof than would have been borne two hundred years ago by a violent public declamation. BENJAMIN WEST. HE life of BENJAMIN early years afforded to him none of those stimuli to the pursuit in which he afterward became so pre-eminent, which then as now propel (if we may be allowed the expression) the youth of Europe forward in the path of excellence in the arts of design, surrounded as they then were and still are by all the beauties and wonders of ancient and modern art. A few badlyexecuted prints, such as picture-dealers are wont to display in prominent places because of their gaudy colors, to attract the vulgar eye, was the extent to which young West had been permitted to study the fine arts, when he first took up the pencil and made his initial step toward the temple of fame. And he had prejudices also of the most formidable kind to overcome at home, the prejudices of his peculiar sect against a pursuit that seemed to foster a vain spirit, and a love for ornament, and worldly-mindedness-a pursuit that seemed to them unnecessary to the welfare of men, and hence measurably sinful. And when finally these home prejudices were overcome, and he was permitted to go abroad, the prejudices of European society were arrayed against Americans. To many, America was a terra incognito; and a learned cardinal, to whom young West was introduced in Rome, was astonished to find him white, believing all Americans were Indians! And when his superior genius had broken down these cial condition, and the prejudices of cus-prejudices in Italy, and he had fortified tom, which are presented in such bold relief upon almost every page of human history. His birth was within the interior of our then new and sparsely-settled country, where the intercourse between the few cities of the Atlantic coast was ex himself for coming labors by a zealous study of all that he saw in Rome, Florence, and other depositories of ancient art, and he boldly wended his way to England, he was then obliged to encounter a prejudice of triple force-prejudice against his arts. country, his sect, and the peculiar path which he marked out for himself in the pursuit of his vocation. But his superior genius, aided by indomitable perseverance, soon conquered them all, and won for him the crown of universal esteem. Like Angelo, he was not content to follow a beaten track in the mediocre departments of his profession, where doubtless immediate pecuniary reward was far more certain; but he turned his face toward the far-off goal of supreme excellence, and grappled at once and vigorously with the difficulties and duties that beset and devolve upon the laborer in the higher departments of the He turned to the volume of Holy Inspiration, and delved deep into the mines of classic lore, for his subjects; and for thirty years, under the fostering encouragement of George III., he transferred to canvass portraitures of the most remarkable events in the history of our race, with a rapidity and beauty, boldness of conception, and truthfulness of execution, never before witnessed since the days of BuonarAnd finally, when old age dimmed his eye and palsied his hand, and he quietly and peacefully left his easel and undressed for the grave, the tears of a nation bespoke its love, and his pall was borne by nobles and academicians. Such is the triumph of genius over all that the world calls great and powerful; and by its moral force the child of poverty and even of cial wretchedness is irresistibly borne forward to the high places of human grandeur. In view of this fact, let no one faint by the way. Hope on, labor on; let your motto be," Never give up"-and the prize will assuredly be won. roti. SO POMPEII AND HERCULANEUM. RAILWAY carried us from Naples to Annunciata, a small town about two miles from Pompeii.Here we encountered a motley throng of hackmen, who were as bland as zephyrs toward us, but would turn upon each other with the deep hoarse growl* of a tempest, which we soon lulled to repose by mounting the coach which chanced to be nearest. The instant we were seated, our charioteer cracked his whip and went off at full gallop, singing at the top of his voice one of the wild, sweet, Anacreontic airs of his country, with a spontaneity of soul which assured us that the man had never known an anxious hour or a trou bled thought. We approached the disinterred city through an avenue of tombs rising above the road on either side. On approaching the gate, the first object to be noticed is an inn, such as country people still, in all the world, know well how to use, in order to lessen the expense of a visit to the city. At each side of the gate are sentry-boxes. Passing within, we found ourselves in one of the principal streets of the city. The houses are generally but one story high; the roofs have quite disappeared, crushed beneath the weight of the volcanic ashes; but the walls stand perfectly firm. The streets are very narrow, and the pavement, composed of pieces of lava, is deeply indented by the wheels of Pompeian carriages. Many of the houses are built of lava, the fiery stream of some ancient eruption, long before the brief records of man began to So well known are all the details of the life of Benjamin West, that we deem it unnecessary to repeat them here; and we have penned the foregoing remarks chiefly for the purpose of introducing a graphic picture of the family of West, from a paint-note the awful voice and action of Vesuing by himself. AFFECTATION.-Affectation in any part of our carriage, is lighting up a candle to our defect, and never fails to make us be taken notice of, either as wanting sense or as wanting sincerity. vius! Pompeii was destroyed, not by lava, but by ashes--which accounts for the admirable preservation of the objects found. Exquisitely soft and tender as is the Italian lan guage, its deep guttural sounds are adapted to the most ferocious invective; and it is said to abound more than any other language in disparaging epithets. I never have heard such scolding in any other language. t This fellow may be taken as a type of the people of this country, who in the enjoyment of the present hour regard neither the past nor the future. |