icture, that it seems as if an unhandsome act
would be impossible in its presence. It embodies the ideas of mother's
love, womanly beauty, and earnest piety. As some one said of the
picture: "It looks as if a bit of Heaven were in the room."

Picture-fanciers pay not so much for the merit, as for the age and the
rarity of their works. The poorest may have the _seeing eye_ for beauty,
while the rich man may be blind to it. The cheapest engraving may
communicate the sense of beauty to the artizan, while the
thousand-guinea picture may fail to communicate to the millionaire
anything,--excepting perhaps the notion that he has got possession of a
work which the means of other people cannot compass.

Does the picture give you pleasure on looking at it? That is one good
test of its worth. You may grow tired of it; your taste may outgrow it,
and demand something better, just as the reader may grow out of
Montgomery's poetry into Milton's. Then you will take down the daub, and
put up a picture with a higher idea in its place. There may thus be a
steady progress of art made upon the room walls. If the pictures can be
put in frames, so much the better; but if they cannot, no matter; up
with them! We know that Owen Jones says it is not good taste to hang
prints upon walls--he would merely hang room papers there. But Owen
Jones may not be infallible; and here we think he is wrong. To our eyes,
a room always looks unfurnished, no matter how costly and numerous the
tables, chairs, and ottomans, unless there be pictures upon the walls.

It ought to be, and no doubt it is, a great stimulus to artists to know
that their works are now distributed in prints and engravings, to
decorate and beautify the homes of the people. The wood-cutter, the
lithographer, and the engraver, are the popular interpreters of the
great artist. Thus Turner's pictures are not confined to the wealthy
possessors of the original works, but may be diffused through all homes
by the Millars, and Brandards, and Wilmotts, who have engraved them.
Thus Landseer finds entrance, through woodcuts and mezzotints, into
every dwelling. Thus Cruikshank preaches temperance, and Ary Scheffer
purity and piety. The engraver is the medium by which art in the palace
is conveyed into the humblest homes in the kingdom.

The Art of Living may be displayed in many ways. It may be summed up in
the words,--Make the best of everything. Nothing is beneath its care;
even common and little t