Excerpt from The North American Miscellany and Dollar Magazine, 1852, Vol. 4 Angel Eyes, Antiquities of London, anti-stay-at-home Society, American at Florence (ah), American Ideas Practical American Ships. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from Holden's Dollar Magazine, 1849, Vol. 3 The Engraving, which we present our subscribers this month, represents one of the most charming scenes to be found in the State of New York. It is taken from one of the latest pictures of the lamented Cole, one of the greatest of American landscape painters, and is classed by connoisseurs among his most felicitous productions. The picture was kindly loaned to us for the use of our Magazine, by its owner, Prosper M. Wetmore, Esq., one of the most liberal and intelligent patrons of the fine arts in this country, who has probably done more for the cause, since he has occupied the position of President of the American Art-Union, than any other individual in the country. The scene represented in the engraving is on the Genesee River, near Geneseo, a wild and picturesque spot, peculiarly American in its character, and one of those subjects in which the genius of the artist always delighted. Our rivers abound in such wild uncultivated spots, which now lie out of the high road of travel, and are therefore overlooked by searchers after the picturesque. Of late years our young artists have taken their sketching materials in hand, and with a camp-stool and a knapsack, have gone all over the country in search after scenes of picturesque beauty. The results of their intimacy with nature have been not only a greater number of beautiful pictures which have been distributed over the Union and created a new interest for art, but they have made our people familiar with the places best worth visiting in their own land, and saved many an enthusiast from the trouble and expense of going to Europe in search of scenes which may be found at home in greater beauty. - Among those who first taught Americans to love American scenery was Cole. Although not a native of the soil, his soul seemed to glow with delight in contemplating the grandeur and loveliness of our river and mountain scenery. Until he transferred to his glowing canvass a semblance of our gorgeous forest scenery when first smitten by the frost, the wild and solemn magnificence of our lonely lakes and rivers, our majestic mountains, and green vallies, no American artist had ever attempted to represent American nature. All that landscape painters had attempted was to reproduce European pictures. Even the landscapes of Alston were painted after Italian models - nobody seemed to have looked upon the wilderness of American scenery as suitable for pictorial embellishments. The appearance of Cole's landscapes, in which the prominent features of American scenery were so truthfully and beautifully portrayed, gave a new impulse and a new direction to art in this country. Let critics differ as they will in respect to the merits of Cole's paintings, there can be no difference of opinion as to the effects of his early works on American art. While he confined himself to such subjects as the one that forms the picture from which our engraving has been copied, he remained unapproachable by any of the many imitators of his style, and they were very numerous, who were called into existence by the exhibition of his pictures. It was only when he attempted other kinds of landscape that other artists came near him. He was in art what Cooper was in literature - he first directed the mind of America to the wealth of romantic beauty which abounds in its primeval forests, by the woody banks of its nameless lakes and rivers, its roaring cataracts, and boundless prairies. In the picture which we have had engraved, and given as the first of a series of American landscapes by American artists, all the features of the scene are peculiarly American; but the charm of color, the rich dark green of the foliage, the bright tints of the russet leaves, the clear depths of the blue sky, the bright, fresh, and glowing atmosphere of the whole, cannot be copied; but the engraver has performed his task well and given a faithful rendering of the original wor