made at that point. It is of a deep rich coloring, smoothly and
delicately finished,--a painting that no one has yet been able to find
fault with. Rev. Samuel Longfellow, who knew almost every picture in the
galleries of Europe, considered it equal to a Ruysdael, and he liked it
better than a Ruysdael.

In the letter above referred to Cranch also writes:

"Since your letter (a long time ago) I have written you a good many
epistles (in a kind of invisible ink of my invention) which probably you
have never received.

"The truth is, I am a distinguished case of total depravity in the matter
of correspondence. Letters ought to flow from one as easily and
spontaneously as spoken words. But then one must write all the time and
report life continuously, as one does in speech. A letter does nothing
but give some little detached morsel of one's life--and we say to
ourselves what is the use of holding up to a friend three thousand miles
off such unsatisfactory statements, such dribblings and droppings? 'Write
what is uppermost,' says one at your elbow. Ah, if we could only say what
is uppermost; as I sit down for instance to write (say this letter) I am
caught into a sort of whirl of thoughts, in which it is impossible to say
exactly what is foremost and what is hindmost. Then if I only attempt to
narrate events, where am I to begin--so you see (I am theorizing about
letters) a letter must be a sort of epitome of a friend's being and life
or else nothing. Applying the theory to myself, finding myself unable to
shut my genie in a box and carry him on my shoulders, I simply go and
state that there is such a box with a genie supposed to be in it, lying
at the custom-house, and here is the roughest sort of sketch of it," etc.