the police were powerless in the face of innumerable acts of violence; to-day any form of disorderly conduct brings the offender promptly to a police-station. Hilarious young gentlemen cannot now capture door-knockers, carry off sign-boards, imprison night-watchmen in their boxes, or play similar pranks, without finding their misdeeds appearing in the police-reports. House-breaking as a lost criminal art is not due to the repression of criminal nstincts, but to the efficiency of the police, hich has rendered that sort of pastime alogether too dangerous to be indulged in. It s said that density of crime and population to together. Perhaps it would be more accuate to say that density of population and poice arrests go together. These facts and intances show how the criminal records may the increased without a real increase of crime. On the other hand, the thoroughness of the odern police organization prevents accesions to the criminal ranks, and is the indirect deans of keeping some young people to the aths of rectitude; but it is principally potent driving many persons from the commisson of crimes that fall under police jurisdic. on, to arts and tricks not amenable to law. Thile certain crimes decrease, dishonesty bay increase. While the law may render e and property more secure from direct atcks, we may all the time be the more exnsively victimized by the dishonest devices those who live by their wits. The crimiclass are forced to find out how to be iminal in such a way as to keep out of the inds of the law. Ingenious scoundrels do and hence people are prone in seeing one or earlier ages; it is searching amid the ruins of buried cities for precious art-memorials of the past, and placing the discovered treasures in places of honor; it is bringing into practical use ancient suggestions in decorative and ornamental art; it is, in fact, full of reverence for the great achievements of the imagination that have come down to it, and is instinct with pleasure in the stimulating and often daring productions of to-day. The literature about art is swelling ceaseless admire are eagerly listened to; and everywhere are the evidences of how large a place this form of poetic feeling holds with us. It is distinctly a poetic and not an unpoetic age. that evinces in so many ways its catholic and large-hearted sympathy for all the periods of imaginative creation in the various arts. Notwithstanding all the great practical activities of the age, the people are eagerly; teachers who instruct what and how to readers of imaginative literature. They listen not only attentively to the poets and singers of the time, but they are manifesting a marked disposition to go back and study periods of the past. There are signs of a revival of classic taste, and the early productions of English literature have now their hosts of students and admirers. While on one hand we see that realism is cultivated, we also note that higher forms of imaginative thought lead captive the whole rank of readers. Sentimentalism, such as marked the literature of the Minerva press, is honestly and vigorously detested; and, although the age has its affectations, yet elevation of thought and fidelity to one's own convictions are imperatively demanded of every leader of song. There have been more brilliant eras of dramatic and even of lyric literature, but none in which the poets have enjoyed so large a concourse of readers, none in which they have been permitted so freely to follow their individual poetic instincts, or have more ef t now resort to house-breaking; they get | fectually stirred the popular heart. Those Contract. They do not take to the high- | who look may see evidence of the truth of y; they go to Wall Street. However, it well if we can begin by driving crime t of the more open courses; perhaps byd-by we can reach it in its hidden places d under its plausible devices. Ir is repeatedly said that the age is unetic and unheroic. Such is the recent comint of a writer in a contemporary journal. it true? Poetry and heroism change some their aspects from age to age, and it may that those who lament their decadence are aply failing to discern those virtues under ir new guise. It may, moreover, be sussted that the very fact of lamenting the ith or the decay of certain qualities is alst proof that they still flourish among us. ose who admire poetry enough to feel a iciency of poetic feeling show by this very et their poetic sympathies; and those who ider their suffrage of praise to the heroic quite certain to find their quiet opportuy for enacting some form of true, unobsive heroism. The age is really neither unpoetic nor unroic, but it is manifold and many sided; these assertions on every hand. The inter- Art also is inspired with both realistic Heroism no less than poetry takes its place in this many - sided era. The loud proclamation and noisy defiance of some of the earlier forms of heroism do not exist; men now believe it incumbent upon them to seek no opportunity for the mere display of their gallantry, but also to shrink from no occasion that exacts fortitude or involves self-sacrifice. That is emphatically not an unheroic age that with such zeal dares the wilderness of ice in the arctic seas and the wilderness of forest and swamp in the heart of Africa-that delights in conquering hitherto-inaccessible mountain-peaks-that penetrates everywhere, explores everywhere, and knows no such word as "fail" in its multitude of splendid enterprises. Recent wars showed no decline of that physical courage which in earlier ages was so worshiped; and in all the ordinary exigencies of life, fortitude, endurance, the courage to do and to suffer, evince no lack of the true spirit of heroism. We have been enabled to glance only at a topic large enough to admit of an extended essay. Our readers, however, will readily supplement many arguments and facts to those we have advanced, and will see that the age has neither lost imaginative sympathy, which is the essential spirit of poetry, nor the fibre of genuine heroism. IN a very quiet way-so quiet that even the English people seem to have scarcely noted it the whole judicial system of England has just undergone a change. Of a sudden, all those ancient and historic courts which have so long clustered around Westminster, Guildhall, and Lincoln's Inn, have dissolved into one august tribunal. The courts of Queen's Bench and Common Pleas, of Admiralty and Probate, of Arches and Chancery, have ceased to exist—or, at least, instead of being separate and independent branches, they each constitute but a division, a section, of the High Court of Justice. Sir Alexander Cockburn is the last of the Lord Chief Justices of England, and is already spoken of by the London papers as the "late Lord Chief-Justice." He is now more elaborately but less augustly termed "the President of the Queen's Bench Division of the High Court of Justice." In similar manner, the other presiding judges have come to be chairmen of judicial committees, detailed to a particular place for special duties. This revolutionary change, strange to say, has been effected without any strenuous opposition from any high legal quarter. Sir Alexander Cockburn has consented to be legislated out of his historic dignity without a murmur; and Tories as well as Liberals have acquiesced in the sudden metamorphosis. We bear of no protest from the gentlemen of the gown-albeit the legal profession in England is as obstinately conservative of old traditions, and as interested in opposing any change in the old order of things, as the Bench of Bishops itself. The change, however, is unquestionably one for the better. Not only are the several courts dissolved into one, but the powers of all are acquired by each. The Queen's Bench Division will have equity powers added to those of common law; the Chancery Division will apply common law as well as equity. Thus the suitor, to whatever division he resorts for redress, will be able to obtain complete justice in a single trial. It has long been a matter of complaint that, in many cases, a person had to go to chancery for an injunction, and to the common-law courts for compensation; that not seldom a suitor seeking justice would be forced to the expense of proceeding first in one court and then in another. It is, therefore, no nominal reform which unites in each tribunal all the powers requisite to develop all the rights and wrongs of a case, and to send the suitor from its doors satisfied that full justice has been done. ONE by one our great men pass away. In little more than a decade, so large a number of those conspicuous by their public position or their high abilities have been marshaled into the ranks of departed spirits, that authority, party leadership, and political guidance, have passed in this brief period into almost wholly different hands. Lincoln, Seward, Chase, Sumner, Stevens, Johnson, Wilson, is a list that includes nearly all the political leaders identified with the antislavery movement. The victory had been but little more than won ere the great captains laid down their bâtons. Some few who were conspicuous in forming public opinion still survive, but those who really fought out the bat. tle, those whose leadership achieved the victory, are all dead. The last of the group, who is just deceased, reflects honor upon our country, not so much by his political convictions as by his political integrity; and he illustrates the soundness of the political theo ry that permits the humblest citizen to aspire to the highest office by proving that one from the ranks may acquire place without the sacrifice of honor, may be ambitious for himself, and yet be faithful to the principles he has embraced, may, even from the shoemaker's bench, carry into politics personal dignity and highbreeding. HENRY WILSON will be remembered mainly because of his connection with the antislavery struggle. He is not identified with other public measures; he did not exhibit a knowledge of statecraft; nor did he display conspicuous gifts as an orator or a writer. His virtues were many; his rise from his lowly birth remarkable. If his talents were not of a brilliant order, he showed great persistency, marvelous industry, and a practical talent for leadership. THE future historian of these times may be induced to cite, as a striking instance of the "commercial spirit of the age," the invention and sale of spurious university degrees. It has long been customary in Italy, and perhaps in other countries, to sell titles of nobility; but it has been reserved to some American speculators to create phantom colleges and dispose of degrees supposed to proceed from them for a matter of five dollars. The honors so easily acquired do not, to be sure, entitle the purchaser to the peculiar privileges which, as we are informed, are enjoyed by the Oxford Masters of Arts, who, in virtue of that dignity, are permitted to smoke in the high-street, to drive a dog-cart without the written sanction of a provost, to dine at the Mitre, and to vote in convocation. Yet, while the mass of people are still inclined to respect the scholastic initials of honor, and to take them as testimonials of capacity and character in practical matters of life, it is well that some effort should be made to confine them to a bona-fide source. A real master of arts has, and should have, a better chance in procuring the headship of a school, than one who cannot show that credential of a full and liberal education; so, too, a doctor of medicine, who has won his certificate by long and successful study, has a right to be preferred to one who cannot call himself "doctor by reason of not having won it. But if every quack is able to procure this outward symbol of proficiency by a small money payment, and thus impose upon the public by an arrant imposture, it is time that the law should interpose, and punish the practice as it does all other forms of swindling. Literary. HATEVER his subject, any thing that WH fers to lab exte aere Mr. W. R. Greg may have to say is always worth listening to, and, indeed, is very a likely to force itself upon the attention. Few contemporary writers upon political and social topics have his breadth of culture and t comprehensiveness of knowledge, and none wield a more incisive and vigorous pen. He does not always convince, and his peculiarly uncompromising and aggressive style is very likely to awaken a sentiment of antagonism in those who do not entirely agree with him; but we may pick up any fragment of his writ ings with the absolute certainty of finding something that will set one to thinking. As Swinburne says of John Ford, you cannot merely shake hands with Mr. Greg or tip him a nod and pass on; if you encounter him at all, it is not easy to escape, and before parting he is very likely to shake one out of any little self-complacent intellectual jugglery in which he may have been indulging. No book with which we are acquainted is better adapted than his "Enigmas of Life" to compel the reader to examine into the basis of his social, political, and religious creeds. As we have said, we may not always accept his argu ments, but it is absolutely impossible to ig nore them. His latest work, "Rocks Ahead," is of less general interest than the one just men tioned, inasmuch as it deals with matters of an almost exclusively local character; but, though addressed particularly to the author's countrymen, it is worth the attention of all who are interested in the study of scientific politics. For the problems which present themselves for solution in England to-day are, with slightly-changed conditions, the problems which sooner or later must confront nearly every civilized nation of the world; and the "solidarity of mankind" is suff ciently true to render the experience of one great nation full of valuable lessons for all others. The object which Mr. Greg had in view in taking upon himself the unpopular role of Cassandra was to signalize "three especial dangers hanging over the future of England —three 'rocks ahead' on which the dignity and well-being of the country and the happiness of its citizens may not improbably be wrecked." These three national dangers are: 1. The political supremacy of the lower class es; 2. The approaching industrial decline of England; 3. The divorce of the intelligence of the country from its religion. None of these has as yet fully developed itself; but all are potential, and the first has already had its path cleared of nearly all logical obsta cles. The Reform Bill of 1867 effected s "transformation in the political constitution of these islands so complete and thorough that few revolutions in modern times have been more sweeping," the essence of the revolution consisting in this, that it takes the command of the representation out of the hands of the propertied classes, and pat * Rocks Ahead; or, the Warnings of Cassand By W. R. Greg. Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co. 21 The third or religious "rock" is of a different nature, but may readily combine with the other two to produce a national catastrophe. "I allege," says Mr. Greg, "that in England the highest intelligence of the nation is not only not in harmony with the nation's creed, but is distinctly at issue with it; does not accept it; largely, indeed, repudiates it in the distinctest manner, or, for peace and prudence' sake, discountenances it by silence, even where it does not demur to it in words." Now, sooner or later the thinkers of a people must inoculate and inter-penetrate that people with their thought; and when skepticism has extended to the lower classes, Christianity will have lost its police influence, and the poor of this world will no longer be content to trust to a future life for righting the wrongs and inequalities of this. On the contrary, he will soon reach the conviction that "if he is to rest, to be happy, to enjoy his fair share of the sunshine and the warmth of life, he must do it now, at once, without a day's delay;" and with this there will come a fierce resentment at the flagrant inequalities around him, the comparative (often positive) wretchedness in which he has hitherto remained, and the fables which he has been told to pacify him-till he will hate as well as envy those above him, and learn to regard their spoliation as an act of righteous restitution." it into the hands of the wage-receiving class-facturing and become an agricultural com- of his poems he seems to be arguing instead of singing; yet the thought is illumined by imagination, and its expression is nearly always musical. "The Bird and the Bell," which he places first, and which is, on the whole, the best piece in the volume, is evidently the kind of poetry in which he feels most at home. It touches upon religion and politics, denounces the Roman Catholic Church, wishes Italy God-speed in her strug. gle for freedom (the poem was written before the "War of Liberation"), and prophesies the final triumph of the spirit of progress. The amount of feeling with which parts of it are imbued would seem to belie what we have just said of Mr. Cranch's most characteristic verse; but the feeling is the fervent indignation of a thinker at the wrongs which have forced themselves upon his contemplation. So many of the allusions are to events which have already lost their interest, and so many of the prophecies have been either fulfilled or rendered impossible of fulfillment, that the poem has lost something of its first freshness; but, as the author says, "the thoughts and principles here embodied can never cease to interest all who care for liberty of thought and speech," while the verse will always retain much of its original charm. The tone is, on the whole, remarkably even and well sustained, but now and then a stanza rises above the general level and lodges itself in the memory. Here is an example: "The music of the soul can ne'er be mute. What though the brazen clang of antique form Touch the immortals own, he sings again, There are nearly a hundred poems in the collection, presenting specimens of nearly all the familiar measures, and exhibiting considerable mastery of the art of versification. Most of them are short, few being more than three or four pages long, and they were ap Such are the "rocks" which Mr. Greg signalizes to his countrymen; and it cannot be denied that the outlook which he offers them is a gloomy one. True, he is no mere prophet of evil, but believes that the worst dangers may be averted by dealing with them wisely and in time. It is evident, how-parently thrown off at varying intervals durever, that he has more faith in the reality of the dangers than in the probability of there being wisdom enough to cope with them; and, while he points out the antidote, he has little hope that the patient will realize his position until the poison has done its work upon his system. In a somewhat lengthy preface, Mr. Greg plays havoc with one or two of his "critics and objectors;" and the appendix contains an article in which Americans may have the pleasure of contemplating themselves in the rôle of political Helot. MR. CRANCH would hardly claim for himself a very high place in the choir of poets; yet his poems * are evidently the expression Closely connected with the preceding is he second or economic "rock" - the aproaching industrial decline of England. This ecline Mr. Greg regards as wholly inevitable, he sole question being as to how long it may e postponed, though any legislation increasg the cost of labor or diminishing its proactiveness would greatly precipitate its adent. The reason why such a decline is invitable is that the cheap coal which, comined with cheap labor, has made England e workshop of the world, must in time be xhausted, or at least drawn upon to such an Itent that it will no longer be cheap as comared with that of other countries. Omi. ous indications of the near approach of this eriod are already visible, and its sure result ill be that England will cease to manufactre for the rest of the world, even if she find profitable to continue to manufacture for erself-will, in fact, cease to be a manu- ! & Co. of mind sensitive to all forms of beauty, The Bird and the Bell, with other Poems. By ing a period extending from 1848 to the THE method of M. Taine in philosophizing on art, literature, or national character, is already familiar even to those who have not made a study of the works of this brilliant and fascinating writer. Given, the antecedents of a people, and its national character is an effect as easily deducible as any other natural phenomenon whose causes are known; and given, national character with its circumstances or surroundings-its milieu-and the art or literature of any period is a purely natural and therefore inevitable outcome. In fact, the most magnificent and apparently abnormal achievements of human genius are in reality subject to laws as fixed and unalterable as any in the domain of physics. Of course, in dealing with these phenomena as presented in any past epoch, their laws or philosophy are to be sought in history; and hence M. Taine's lectures on the philosophy of art can be much more accurately described as historical disquisitions than as art - criticism. His latest work, for example, "The Philosophy of Art in Italy" (New York: Henry Holt & Co.), touches scarcely at all upon matters pertaining distinctively and exclusively to art, while it gives an exceedingly graphic and vivid picture of Italy at the epoch of the Renaissancethat " glorious epoch which comprises, along with the last quarter of the fifteenth century, the first thirty or forty years of the sixteenth," and within whose narrow limits the most accomplished artists flourished—Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Andrea del Sarto, Fra Bartolomeo, Giorgione, Titian, Sebastian del Piombo, and Correggio. The history, indeed, is viewed throughout from the stand-point of art; but the reader finds himself invited, not to consider abstract principles, but to survey the wide field of Italian politics, religion, culture, and manners. According to M. Taine's theory, the first factor which demands our attention in the milieu of the Renaissance is the race of men among whom it arose : "In its kingdom, which is that of form, this race is sovereign; the spirit of other races, compared to it, is coarse and brutal; it alone has discovered and manifested the natural order of ideas and images." The second factor is the comparative intelligence and refinement of Italy at that period. While, throughout the rest of Europe, "the régime is still feudal, and men, like powerful savage brutes, think of but little besides eating, drinking, and physical activity, . . . Italy, on the contrary, is almost a modern country." Literature flourishes and is honored, and the arts of refined society are cultivated to a point probably never since attained. At the same time, this culture had not, as in our day, become overculture; the brain was not oppressed with ideas to the exclusion of images. "To make the arts of design flourish demands a soil which is not uncultivated, but, at the same time, which is not over-cultivated. . . . To have grand, simple forms fixed on canvas by the hand of a Titian or a Raphael, requires a natural production of these in the minds of the men around them; and to have them naturally produced in men's minds it is necessary that images be not smothered nor mutilated by ideas." There must also be picturesque surroundings to life, and a genuine and general love of picturesqueness; and both these were marked characteristics of the Italians at the period under notice. But in order that the art of the Renaissance should attain its preeminence it was necessary that the artists should select the human form for the principal subject of their picturesque talent; and that they should do this was the inevitable effect of a period in which physical prowess was essential to safety and physical beauty the most assured passport to fa vor. ... Wherever they turned, "healthy, powerful, energetic figures, which subsequent ages have only been able to find or to copy traditionally," met their eyes; and to reproduce these was the surest way to satisfy the art-instincts of the people. To sum up: "A picturesque state of mind-that is to say, midway between pure ideas and pure images-energetic characters and passionate habits suited to giving a knowledge of and taste for beautiful physical forms, constitute the temporary circumstances which, added to the innate aptitudes of the race, produced in Italy the great and perfect painting of the human form. It is not, as with us, a school production, an occupation of the critics, a pastime for the curious, an amateur's mania, an arti ficial plant cultivated at great cost, withering in spite of the compost heaped about it, foreign to the soil and painfully supported in an atmosphere made for maintaining the sciences, literatures, manufactures, policemen, and dresscoats; it forms a portion of a whole; the cities which cover their town-halls and their churches with painted figures, gather around it countless tableaux vivants more transient but more imposing; it is only a summary of these. The men of this day are amateurs of painting, not for an hour, for a single moment in their life, but throughout their life, in their religious ceremonies, in their national festivities, in their public receptions, in their avocations, and in their amusements." Never was the temperature requisite for the growth of the arts of design so favorable; never have a similar moment and similar surroundings been seen. "Analogous customs, but of their kind a little less perfect, produced, in establishing itself in Spain, in Flanders, and even in France, an analogous art, although altered or perverted by the original dispositions of the races among which it was transplanted; and we may come to this conclusion with certainty, that, to bring a similar art afresh on the world's stage, there must be a lapse of centuries, which will first establish here a similar milieu." The book is published in two styles-by itself in a small volume, and together with "Art in Greece" and "Art in the Nether lands," as the second series of "Lectures on Art" in the uniform library edition of Taine's works. DICKENS was never a very severe critic of his own work, and it is probable that any of his writings which he was willing to let drop into oblivion were scarcely worth the preservation. This inference is certainly true of the "Sketches of Young Ladies, Young Gentlemen, and Young Couples," an American edition of which is now for the first time published (New York: E. J. Hale & Son). The origin of the sketches is thus narrated in the editor's "Advertisement:" "The first series, 'Sketches of Young La dies,' was written by a young collegian under the nom de plume of 'Quiz,' and issued in s small volume shortly before its author's death. The great favor with which it was received, led the publishers-by whom 'Pick wick,' just then completed, had been issued in monthly numbers-to prevail upon Mr. Dickens to supplement it with two additional volumes, one devoted to 'Young Gentlemen' and the other to 'Young Couples."" It will be seen from this that their chronological position is contemporaneous with "Oliver Twist," and between " Pickwick " and "Nich olas Nickleby"-the period when Dickens was doing some of his best work; but it is also evident that they are mere hack-work the pattern of which had been cut out by another hand, and to which the author de clined to put his name. They have a certain interest, of course, as the production of great author; but they show simply that, even after "Pickwick" had made him fr mous, Dickens was ready to put his hand t any thing that would turn him an honest penny. Here and there in the volume, it is true, there are happy touches, but, on the haps the best thing in the volume are the MR. AVERY has lately returned from illustrations by "Phiz." These are much nearer the average level of Browne's work than are the sketches to that of Dickens. INTEREST has been excited by the discovery of a remarkable coincidence between the wellmown passage in Byron's "Childe Harold," Deginning Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll; Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain," nd certain stanzas in an "Ode to the Sea," y Chênedollé, a French poet, which are as ollows: - Dread ocean, burst upon me with thy shores, Fling wide thy waters when the storms bear sway; T Thy bosom opens to a thousand prores, Yet fleets with idle daring breast thy spray, Man dares not tread thy liquid way, r, should he force his passage there, The surge's vast unfathomed gloom Without a name, without a tomb. be banks are kingdoms, where the shrine, the throne, The pomp of human things are changed and past. he people, they are phantoms, they are flown, Time has avenged thee on their strength at last. ay billows idly rest on Sidon's shore, ad her bold pilots wound thy pride no more. me, Athens, Carthage! what are they? poiled heritage, successive prey; w nations force their onward way, And grasp disputed reign; on changest not, thy waters pour le same wild waves against the shore, here Liberty had breathed before, And Slavery hugs his chain. tes bow; Time's sceptre presses still Apennine's subsiding hill; trace of Time is left on thee, Uuchanging sea, ated thus, and still to be. แ !of Almightiness itself the immense End glorious mirror! how thy azure face news the heavens in their magnificence ! What awful grandeur rounds thy heaving space! o worlds thy surge, eternal warring, sweeps, 1 God's throne rests on thy majestic deeps!" edollé's ode may be found in LongfelPoetry of Europe," from which the e translation is derived. Some doubt exs to who was the plagiarist in this case, y plagiarism there is. The fourth canto Childe Harold," in which Byron's famous to the sea appear, was published in Chênedollé was born in 1769. In 1807 oduced "The Genius of Man," a poem ly admired; in 1820 he published a colon of his early odes, with some new ones. uncertain when the ode from which the ct above is given first appeared. his usual summer trip to Europe, and has brought home with him several dozen fine works, collected from the French Salon of the last season, from England, Munich, Berlin, and Belgium. A very pleasant and instructive hour can be spent at his charming rooms (No. 88 Fifth Avenue) looking at the paintings, and hearing his intelligent analyses of their qualities. Fortuny is represented by three or four sketches, and one elaborate painting; Blaise Desgoffe by two, one of which is from the Salon of this year. There are also an excellent Zamacoïs, two George H. Boughtons, a Jules Breton, a Delort, two or three charming paintings by Charnay, a young artist who has won great credit lately in France; a Schreyer, and a Gabriel Max. Knaus, whose works rarely find their way across the ocean, so greedily are they sought for abroad, is represented by a crayon-sketch of an old man. Mr. Avery has also a charming Diaz. A fine specimen by Merle of a girl of the middle ages can also be seen here, besides a Boldini, and paintings by other well-known artists. Among the more interesting of these pictures, where all are good, is the warm-hued painting by Gabriel Max. Munich is now taking such a prominent place in the art-world, and combines so much of the peculiar excellence of French study with the rich color of the Roman-Spanish school, and the elaborate detail of outline that has been the distinction of the German method, besides the Belgian specialty of chiaro-oscuro, that an artist of talent who paints in Munich subject to all these influences is sure to do very satisfactory work. The picture of Max to which we refer is one that, painted in France, would have been simply a costume-picture, while in Rome it might have been a bit of fine color; but in Munich it combines both qualities with a charming and delicate sentiment, and a delightful variety of texture in the various divisions of the picture; and all these are united under a melodious general light and shadow. The scene is an ordinary one of a blond lady in a velvet mantle, edged with gray fur, and with an olive-colored dress, standing in a room curtained with old tapestry, and bending over a carved oaken chair to contemplate a lute with a broken string, on the end of which a wreath of evergreen has been thrown; and by it, on the table, lies a pale-white rose. The empty chair, as well as the other incidents in the picture, suggests a death, but this fact is so little prominent as not to disturb the aesthetic conditions of the picture as a composition, while yet affording a sentiment sufficiently marked to give an apparent reason why the picture should have been made. As a painting, it is full of fine tones of olive-color, which hue plays over the half-drawn figures in the rich tapestry of the wall, dim with distance, and partially lighted by a golden filtering of yellow sunlight. The olive shade becomes greenish on a magnificent table-covering of heavy velvet-velvet which is as unmistakably such as the gray fur around the lady's mantle is furry, or the pale hair and the tender flesh of the throat are like to their own kina. Max is still a young man, but his pictures have long been highly esteemed in Europe for their excellence in the respects we have mentioned, and also because each of them is possessed of marked peculiarity of its own. One of these pictures, as different as possible from "The Broken Lute," represents a young blind girl sitting at the entrance to the Catacombs, just within the portals. She holds in her hand a lamp, with its lighted taper, and a group of these lamps are beside her. To every stranger who enters she presents a lighted lamp, that when he descends into the mystic chambers of the dead he may find his way. At her feet are branches of palms to strew upon the graves, and around her, in the dimly-lighted chamber, are the distinctive features of these peculiar structAnother picture that attracted great attention abroad is of Juliet when she lies in her trance on the morning in which her marriage should have been. A heaviness and pallor, almost of death, is in her form crushing back the pillows, and a pall-like gloom hovers in the misty darkness of the velvet draperies of her dim chamber, forming a great contrast to which is the view through her lattice window of the gay crowd drawn together for the wedding that might never be. ures. The American art-loving public are familiar with certain well-known foreign names, but to possess any adequate idea of the development of modern painting abroad, it is desirable to observe talent as it develops under different conditions and in various countries. Within a few years the relative importance of French art has undoubtedly changed, and Americans should no longer be content to number in their list of painters abroad only the students of the French school. Fortuny is well known here, and he is one of a very few who dispute with Gérôme, Merle, Bouguereau, and Meissonier, a preëminence which he in turn is likely to share with the Munich painters and with Belgian artists. Mr. Avery has been uncommonly successful in bringing out with him perhaps the most excellent Fortuny that has been seen in New York. It is often said by art-people unfamiliar with his best pictures, that Fortuny tells as much in his etchings as he can ever tell in paint. Some of the sketches, and certainly the few of his pictures that have been brought to New York, would give this impression. Subtile and interesting lines are very prominent in these etchings, but subtile and intricate tones of paint suitable to go with these lines do not usually appear. Mr. Avery has a little and very elaborate painting of two old men dressed in the French costume of a hundred and fifty years ago. Both are in satin coats, one pink and the other white, and in powdered wigs. The men themselves, it is needless to say, are full of life and expression, but their dresses are something excellent. A pink rose, with its petals crushed, its inner lining turned out to the light, and its outer leaves faded and purple or dried, could scarcely exhibit a greater range of lovely colors than this pink-satin |