The Daily Spy

The following communication we insert with pleasure and can fully endorse its sentiments:

COURT OF DEATH,

Mr. Editor—I attended, last evening, the lecture by Dr. Colton, and the exhibition of Peale's painting of the "Court of Death," and experienced a degree of gratification which I little anticipated. I was not prepared to see the original painting of Peale—a painting which has become celebrated the world over—and yet there it was. No one, I think, can question the originality of this work who carefully examines it.

If speech be the glory of man among his original endowments, art that speaks to the eye is surely man's highest imitation of this gift. The love of its creations, therefore, is more than studied refinement or accidental taste; and the encouragement of such efforts, when they cluster scenes of universal truth, and minister to pure, wise, and moral ends, is our due homage to imitations of "the divine."

I am sure that no one of any susceptibility to the beauty which strikes the sense and inwardly instructs, as to the honor which successful skill sheds on the endowments which distinguish man, will regret having taken pains to secure the impressions which the Court of Death is so well fitted to print indelibly on the mind.—The embodiment of images of truth universally recognized, has been attempted by a chastened, but vigorous fancy, with very high success; where the painter has not been ashamed to employ, and be governed by the suggestions of the Divine.

Worcester, Aug. 9th, 1848.