NEW YORK CORRESPONDENCE.
August 30, 1847

  I have just returned from the exhibition room of the National Academy of Design, and have gazed for an hour on the "Greek Slave," to which the genius of Powers has given immortality.

  It is a marvellous image of grace and purity. Every line and lineament of the figure conveys ideas of loveliness and beauty which impress themselves upon the soul forever. It may justly be placed side by side with

"The statue that enchants the world."

  At the first glance, and when viewed at a distance, the statue seems to lack the high expression which you look for in such a subject. It seems inanimate. But as you gaze upon it, and, approaching nearer, study it, as you must, with deepened interest, the subduing pensiveness of the beauteous captive sinks at once into the heart.

  Here Art has indeed magnified its office. The sorcery of genius has expelled far-hence every impure emotion. Even the dullest spirit owns the influence of this untainted atmosphere, and for a time the imagination and the heart cease to be of the earth, earthy.

  I rejoiced to perceive, in the crowd of the fairer sex which thronged the exhibition room, evidence of the great progress which has been made in the scale of social refinement. There was but one prude in the room—a boarding-school miss, probably, whose disgusting affectation of superior delicacy forcibly reminded me of the anecdote of the French and English lady, who visited the gallery of the Louvre in company. "Oh! la! that is a very indelicate picture!" exclaimed the English prude, as the party stood before one of the most exquisite paintings in that famous gallery. "I think the indelicacy is in the remark, not in the painting!" replied the pure-minded daughter of France.

  Once on a time, so runs the tale, the ladies of Boston put calico petticoats on Greenough's little angels. It is evident that in New York more correct notions of art begin to prevail; "to the pure all things are pure."

  But, alas! in the midst of the pleasing emotions excited by this admirable work of art, there came sad thoughts of the wondrous hardness of that nature which can weep at sight of an insensate piece of marble which images a helpless virgin chained in the market-place of brutal lust, and still more brutal cupidity, and yet listens unmoved to the awful story of the American slave!

  There were fair breasts, that heaved with genuine sympathy beneath the magic power of the great artist, that have never yet breathed a sigh for the sable sisterhood of the South!

  As this eloquent statue traverses the land, may many a mother and daughter of the Republic be awakened to a sense of the enormity of slavery, as it exists in our midst! Thus may Art, indeed, fulfill its high and holy mission! Let the solemn lesson sink deep into the hearts of the fair women of the North and of the South! Waste not your sympathies on the senseless marble, but reserve some tears for the helpless humanity which lies quivering beneath the lash of American freemen.