Most of the oil paintings are so injured, that it is scarcely possible to make out what they are intended to represent, which, after all, is no great loss.

The only thing respectable about them is their venerable antiquity.

A startling contrast is produced by the copies of them made by the students.

If the colours in the old pictures are faded, in the modern ones they blaze with a superfluity of vividness; red, yellow, green, etc., are there in all their force; such a thing as mixing, softening, or blending them, has evidently never been thought of.

Even at the present moment, I really am at a loss to determine whether the worthy students intended to found a new school for colouring, or whether they merely desired to make up in the copies for the damage time had done the originals.
There were as many blacks and mulattoes among the students as whites, but the number of them altogether was inconsiderable.
Music, especially singing and the pianoforte, is almost in a more degraded position than painting.