gue to your liking, as toward him who had imported the materials of
which it was composed? The King of the French seats artists at his
dinner-table, bestows the 'legion of honor' upon them; pays them liberally
for their works, and settles pensions upon them. Artists with us, as
artists, do not often find their way into our upper circles; if they are
respectable in their habits and associates, they are rather countenanced
for their respectability than noticed for their genius. We know a
whiskey-distiller who refused his daughter to a portrait-painter, unless
he would abandon his profession; simply because it was a low calling.

It is very common with us to call the French triflers; but it is one of
the many bad habits which we have inherited from the English, and the
sooner we free ourselves from it, the better will it be for us. We shall
never be ambitious to excel a people whom we pretend to despise. If doing
small things well be trifling, then the French are triflers. But what must
we call them for their great works? There is no art, no science, no
department of learning in which the English excel them. They are the best
architects in Europe; the best physicians; the best chemists, the best
astronomers. They have cut off the head of one king and banished another;
what more have the English done? But they can afford to be called any
thing: they set the fashions of the whole world. Queen VICTORIA is as much
a subject of LOUIS PHILLIPE in her dress as any lady in France. With all
her immense territory, her great authority, she cannot change the fashion
of a bonnet.

The difference between French and English art is as great as the
difference between the Louvre and the National Gallery in Trafalgar
Square; and about the same relative difference prevails with regard to us.
At the last exhibition of the Louvre there were four thousand paintings
offered; at the last exhibition of the National Academy there were about
four hundred. This is not a very correct method of judging of the artistic
excellence of a nation, but it is not far from correct in this case.

H. F.

A PICTURE BY MURILLO.--The time has yet to arrive when the march of empire
_westward_ will bring in its train our portion of those chef d'oeuvres of
painting and sculpture which adorn the princely palaces of Europe, and
confer distinction upon the possessors of wealth and taste in humbler
abodes.