THE GREAT MORAL PICTURE.94
[“Resolved that this Board will visit the Academy of Arts, for the purpose of viewing a painting, now on exhibition there, from the pencil of Mr. Rembrandt Peale, and that it be recommended to our fellow-citizens generally to go also.”]
Extract from the Minutes of the Common Council, Dec. 26, 1820.
hen the wild waters from the deluged earth
Retired, and Nature woke to second birth,
And the first rainbow met the patriarch’s gaze,
In the blue west—a pledge of better days;
What crowded feelings of delight were his
In that bright hour of hope and happiness!
What tears of rapture glistened in his eye,
His early tears forgot—his life’s long agony!
So did the heart of Mr. Rembrandt Peale,
The “moral picture-painter,” beat and feel,
When by the Mayor and Aldermen was passed
That vote which made his talent known at last,
And those wise arbiters of taste and fame
Pronounced him worthy of his Christian name.
Long did he linger anxiously, in vain,
Beside his painting in the classic fane
Of science (where, arranged by Scudder’s hand,
The curiosities of every land,
