When we turn to the department of animal-painting, we discover what has been hitherto the weakest feature of American art, both in the number and quality of the artists who have pursued this branch of the profession. T. H. Hinckley at one time promised well in painting cattle and game, but his efforts rarely went beyond giving us Denner-like representations of stuffed foxes with glass eyes. The hairs were all there, the color was well enough, although perhaps a little foxy--if one may be permitted the term in this connection; but there was no life, no characterization, there. William Hayes showed decided ability in his representations of bisons and prairie-dogs and other dogs. Weak in color, he yet succeeded in giving spirit and character to the groups he painted, and holds among our animal-painters a position not dissimilar to that of Mount in _genre_. [Illustration: "SHIP OF 'THE ANCIENT MARINER.'"--[JAMES HAMILTON.]] Walter M. Brackett, who has been able rarely well to enjoy the triple pleasure of catching, painting, and eating the same fish on a summer's morning by the limpid brooks of New Hampshire, has justly won a reputation as an artistic Walton. If he would but paint his rocks and trees as cleverly as he renders the speckled monarch of the stream, his compositions would leave little to be desired. Henry C. Bispham has given us some spirited but sometimes badly drawn paintings of cattle and horses; and Colonel T. B. Thorpe, an amateur with artistic tastes, in such semi-humorous satires as "A Border Inquest," representing wolves sitting on the carcass of a buffalo, struck a vein peculiarly American in its humor, and carried to a high degree of excellence by William H. Beard, whose brother, James Beard, can also be justly ranked as an animal-painter of respectable attainments. Mr. Beard, although remarkably versatile, has made a specialty, if it may be so termed, of exposing the failings and foibles of our sinful humanity by the medium of animal _genre_. Monkeys, bears, goats, owls, and rabbits are in turn impressed into the benevolent service of taking us off, and repeating for us the old Spartan tale of the slave made drunk by his master as a warning to his son. Of the skill which Mr. Beard has exhibited in this novel line there can be no question. The "Dance of Silenus," the pertinacious, iterative, pragmatic ape called "The Bore," and "Bears on a Bender," are masterly bits of characterization. There is also a deal of comic satire in "The Bulls and Bears of Mammon's Fierce Zoology," which, with a multitude of struggling fighting figures, takes off the eccentricities of the Stock-exchange. Beard can justly be called the American Æsop. It is asserted by many that this is not art. The fact is that it is exceedingly difficult to draw the line, and to prescribe what subjects an artist shall choose. In art the result justifies the means. And this certainly seems as legitimate a subject for the brush of the