Ages have passed away since the scene of glory. Luxury has enervated, vice has debased, and the strength of the mighty nation has consumed away. A barbarous enemy sacks the city. The heavens are darkened by a tempest, and the storm of war rages beneath, amid falling walls and colonnades, and the flames of temples and palaces.
The moon ascends the twilight sky, near where the sun rose in the first picture. The last rays of the departed sun illumine a lonely column of the once proud city, on whose capital the heron has built her nest. The shades of evening steal over shattered and ivy-grown ruins. The steep promontory, with its insulated rock, still rears against the sky, unmoved, unchanged; but violence and time have crumbled the works of man, and art is again resolving into elemental nature. The gorgeous pageant has passed; the roar of battle has ceased; the multitude has sunk in the dust; the empire is extinct.
6. Portrait of John Adams, (1735-1826.) (25X30.) _A. B. Durand._
7. Portrait of John Quincy Adams, (1767-1848.) (25X30.) _A. B. Durand._
8. Portrait of James Monroe, (1758-1831.) (25X30.) _A. B. Durand._
9. Portrait of Thomas Jefferson, (1743-1826.) (25X30.) _A. B. Durand._
10. Portrait of James Madison, (1751-1836.) (25X30.) _A. B. Durand._
From the original, by STUART, at Bowdoin College, Maine.
11. Portrait of Andrew Jackson, (1767-1845.) (25X30.) _A. B. Durand._
12. The Chess-Players--Check Mate. (56X44.) _George W. Flagg._
13. Marine View. (36X25.) _Thomas Birch._
14. View from Froster Hill, Gloucestershire, England. (24X18.) _Andrew Richardson._
15. The Goblet and Lemon. (27X32.) _W. Van Aelst._
16. Falstaff enacting Henry IV. (29X36.) _George W. Flagg._
_Prince Henry._--Do thou stand for my father, and examine me upon the particulars of my life.
_Falstaff._--Shall I? Content:--this chair shall be my state, this dagger my sceptre, and this cushion my crown.
_King Henry IV._, Part i., Act ii., Scene 4.
17. An Allegory--Death and Immortality--Antique. (18½X14½.) _Italian School._
18. Madonna and Infant. (16½X22½.) _German School._
19. Landscape--Composition--Italian Scenery.(54X37.) _Thomas Cole._
"O, Italy! how beautiful thou art! Yet I could weep, for thou art lying, alas! Low in the dust, and they who come, admire thee As we admire the beautiful in death."