Others, like vessels gilt with burnish'd gold, CROSSING THE ALLEGHANIES. As look'd the traveller for the world below, The lively morning breeze began to blow; The magic curtain roll'd in mists away, And a gay landscape smiled upon the day. As light the fleeting vapours upward glide, Like sheeted spectres on the mountain side, New objects open to his wondering view Of various form, and combinations new. A rocky precipice, a waving wood, Deep, winding dell, and foaming mountain flood, Each after each, with coy and sweet delay, Broke on his sight, as at young dawn of day, Bounded afar by peak aspiring bold, Like giant capp'd with helm of burnish'd gold. So when the wandering grandsire of our race On Ararat had found a resting-place, At first a shoreless ocean met his eye, Mingling on every side with one blue sky; But as the waters, every passing day, Sunk in the earth or roll'd in mists away, Gradual, the lofty hills, like islands, peep From the rough bosom of the boundless deep, Then the round hillocks, and the meadows green, Each after each, in freshen'd bloom are seen, Till, at the last, a fair and finish'd whole Combined to win the gazing patriarch's soul. Yet, oft he look'd, I ween, with anxious eye, In lingering hope somewhere, perchance, to spy, Within the silent world, some living thing, A charnel-house, where all the human race THE OLD MAN'S CAROUSAL. DRINK! drink! to whom shall we drink? Go seek them in heaven, for there they abide. A bumper, my boys! to a gray-headed pair, down, WASHINGTON ALLSTON [Born, 1779. Died, 1843.] MR. ALLSTON was born in South Carolina, of a family which has contributed some eminent names to our annals, though none that sheds more lustre upon the parent stock than his own. When very young, by the advice of physicians, he was sent to Newport, Rhode Island, where he remained until he entered Harvard College in 1796. In his boy. hood he delighted to listen to the wild tales and traditions of the negroes upon his father's plantation; and while preparing for college, and after his removal to Cambridge, no books gave him so much pleasure as the most marvellous and terrible creations of the imagination. At Newport he became acquainted with MALBONE, the painter, and was thus, perhaps, led to the choice of his profession. He began to paint in oil before he went to Cambridge, and while there divided his attention between his pencil and his books. Upon being graduated he returned to South Carolina, to make arrangements for prosecuting his studies in Eu rope. He had friends who offered to assist him with money, and one of them, a Scottish gentleman named BowMAN, who had seen and admired a head which he had painted of Peter hearing the cock crow, pressed him to accept an annuity of one hundred pounds while he should remain abroad; but he declined it, having already sold his paternal éstate for a sum sufficient to defray his lookedfor expenses; and, with his friend MALBONE, embarked for England in the summer of 1801. Soon after his arrival in London, he became a student of the Royal Academy, then under the presidency of our countryman, WEST, with whom he contracted an intimate and lasting friendship. His abilities as an artist, brilliant conversation, and gentlemanly manners, made him a welcome guest at the houses of the great painters of the time; and within a year from the beginning of his residence in London, he was a successful exhibitor at Somerset House, and a general favourite with the most distinguished members of his profession. In 1804, having been three years in England, he accompanied JOHN VANDERLYN to Paris. After passing a few months in that capital, he proceeded to Italy, where he remained four years. Among his fellow-students and intimate associates here, were VANDERLYN and the Danish sculptor THORWALDSEN. Another friend with whom he now became acquainted, was COLERIDGE. In one of his letters he says: "To no other man do I owe so much, intellectually, as to Mr. COLERIDGE, with whom I became acquainted in Rome, and who has honoured me with his friendship for more than five-and-twenty years. He used to call Rome the silent city; but I never could think of it as such, while with him; for meet him when or where I would, the fountain of 10 his mind was never dry, but, like the far-reaching aqueducts that once supplied this mistress of the world, its living stream seemed specially to flow for every classic ruin over which we wandered. And when I recall some of our walks under the pines of the villa Borghese, I am almost tempted to dream that I had once listened to PLATO in the groves of the Academy." In 1809 ALLSTON returned to America, and was soon after married at Boston to a sister of Dr. CHANNING. In 1811 he went a second time to England. His reputation as a painter was now well established, and he gained by his picture of the "Dead Man raised by the Bones of Elisha" a prize of two hundred guineas, at the British Institution, where the first artists in the world were his competitors. A long and dangerous illness succeeded his return to London, and he removed to the village of Clifton, where he wrote "The Sylphs of the Seasons," and some of the other poems included in a volume which he published in 1813. Within two weeks after the renewal of his residence in the metropolis, in the last-mentioned year, his wife died, very suddenly; and the event, inducing the deepest depression and melancholy, caused a temporary suspension of his labours. In 1818 he accompanied LESLIE to Paris, and in the autumn of the following year came back to America, having been previously elected an associate of the English Royal Academy. In 1830 he married a sister of RICHARD H. DANA, and the remainder of his life was tranquilly passed at Cambridgeport, near Boston, where he was surrounded by warm and genial friends, in assiduous devotion to his art. He died very suddenly, on the night of the eighth of July, 1843. As a painter ALLSTON had no superior, perhaps not an equal, in his age. He differed from his contemporaries, as he said of MONALDI," no less in kind than in degree. If he held any thing in common with others, it was with those of ages past, with the mighty dead of the fifteenth century. From them he had learned the language of his art, but his thoughts, and their turn of expression, were his own." Among his principal works are "The Dead Man restored to Life by Elisha;" the "Angel liberating Peter from Prison;" "Jacob's Dream;" 66 Elijah in the Desert;" the "Triumphant Song of Miriam ;" "The Angel Uriel in the Sun;" "Saul and the Witch of Endor;" "Spalatro's Vision of the bloody Hand;"«Gabriel setting the Guard of the Heavenly Host;""Anne Page and Slender;" "Rosalie;" "Donna Marcia in the Robber's Cave;" and "Belshazzar's Feast, or the |