the best representative of the national art, M. Siemiradski,
has chosen for the two paintings which have deservedly won a medal of
honor subjects from ancient Rome--the one an amateur hesitating in his
choice between two articles of equal value--namely, a chased cup and a
female slave--and the other representing a soiree of Nero. The subject
of this last is horrible. The tyrant, crowned with flowers and
surrounded by women and freedmen, descends from his palace. Attached to
long poles and besmeared with pitch, ready for the fatal flame, are the
living bodies of wretched Christians which will illumine to-night the
gardens of Caesar. _Living Torches_ is the title of the picture, which is
one of the most successful paintings of the Exposition, and has given
its author a high rank among contemporary artists.

The painters of the United States naturally feel the inspiration of the
country of their sojourn, be it France or Italy or Germany, for most of
them study abroad; but it is to be hoped that they will, after their
return to their own beautiful land, find motives for grander and more
picturesque studies than these hackneyed Old-World scenes of ours can
afford. Mr. Bridgman has painted--and well painted too--the _Obsequies
of a Mummy upon the Nile_, but why could he not as well have gratified
us with some equally impressive scene from the life of the pioneers in
the Far West, where wondrous landscape and romantic incident might so
well combine to furnish a new sensation to the amateurs of London and
Paris? Mr. Du Bois deserves our thanks for his _View upon the Hudson_,
and so does Mr. J.B. Bristol for his upon Lake Champlain. The
admiration which these two pictures have excited, amongst critics as
well as the public, is evidence enough that these two painters, or Mr.
Wyatt Eaton or Mr. Swain Gifford or Mr. Bolton Jones, may, if they so
will, make American landscape the _mode_ in Europe. Mr. J.M.L.
Hamilton has, to say the least, damaged his prospects of success by a
strangely inconsiderate choice of subject. Critics do not deny that his
_Woman in Black_ is firmly and solidly painted, but they are quite
unanimous in the opinion--in which everybody agrees with them--that the
composition is in the worst possible taste. I have a vague recollection
of having seen this painting in Philadelphia, and Americans may
recognize it by the general description of a woman smoking a cigarette
and holding her knee with both hands. Altogethe