the art of painting has not made much progress in the colonies. We _have_
painters, it is true, and one or two are said to be men of rare merit, the
ladies being very fond of sitting to them for their portraits; but these
are exceptions. At a future day, when critics shall have immortalized the
names of a Smybert, and a Watson, and a Blackburn, the people of these
provinces will become aware of the talents they once possessed among them;
and the grandchildren of those who neglected these men of genius, in their
day--ay, their descendants to the latest generations--will revenge the
wrongs of merit and talent, to the end of civilized time. It is a failing
of colonies to be diffident of their own opinions; but I have heard
gentlemen, who were educated at home, and who possessed cultivated and
refined tastes, affirm that the painters of Europe, when visiting this
hemisphere, have retained all their excellence; and have painted as freely
and as well, under an American, as under a European sun. As for a sister
art, the Thespian muse had actually made her appearance among us, five
years before the time of my visit to town in 1757, or in 1752; a theatre
having actually been built and opened in Nassau Street in 1753, with a
company under the care of the celebrated Hallam, and his family. This
theatre I had been dying to visit, while it stood, for as yet I had never
witnessed a theatrical performance; but my mother's injunctions prevented
me from entering it while at college. "When you are old enough, Corny," she
used to say, "you shall have my permission to go as often as is proper; but
you are now of an age, when Shakspeare and Rowe might unsettle your Latin
and Greek." My task of obedience had not been very difficult, inasmuch as
the building in Nassau Street, the second regular theatre ever erected in
British America, was taken down, and a church erected in its place. [12]
The comedians went to the islands, and had not reappeared on the continent
down to the period of which I am now writing; nor did their return occur
until the following year. That they were expected, however, and that a new
house had been built for them, in another part of the town, I was aware,