ABSTRACT
77[∵ The following paper bad been sent as a contribution to this publication scarcely more than a week before its author, Mr. John Orchard, died. It was written to commence a series of “Dialogues on Art,” which death has rendered for ever incomplete : nevertheless, the merits of this commencement are such that they seemed to warrant its publication as a fragment ; and in order that the chain of argument might be preserved, so far as it goes, uninterrupted, the dialogue is printed entire in the present number, despite its length. Of the writer, but little can be said. He was an artist ; but ill health, almost amounting to infirmity—hie portion from childhood—rendered him unequal to the bodily labour inseparable from his profession : and in the course of his short life, whose youth was scarcely consummated, he exhibited, from time to time, only a very few small pictures, and these, as regards public recognition, in no way successfully. In art, however, he gave to the “seeing eye,” token of that ability and earnestness which the “hearing ear” will not fail to recognize in the dialogue now published ; where the vehicle of expression, being more purely intellectual, was more within his grasp than was the physical and toilsome embodiment of art.
