When we come to a consideration of animal painting in this period of our æsthetic culture, we find that it is the most barren of good results of any branch of our art. We are at a loss to account for this, especially as the evidences of promise are also less prominent than in landscape and _genre_. Not only has the number of the artists who have pursued this department been proportionately small, but the quality of their work has been of a low average, and lacking in the originality elsewhere apparent. In the painting of pastoral scenes, with cattle, Peter Moran, of Philadelphia, probably shows the most originality and force; and Thomas Robinson, of Boston, has displayed exceptional vigor in painting the textures of cattle, but without much invention in composition. James Hart for the past twelve years has made a specialty of introducing groups of cattle into his idyllic landscapes. They are often well drawn and carefully painted, and are in general effect commendable, although, like most of our animal painters, Mr. Hart does not seem to have got at the character of the animal as Snyders, Morland, or Landseer would have done. Mr. Dolph has painted some creditable cats and pugs in combination with interiors; and two young artists, Messrs. George Inness, Jun., and J. Ogden Brown, have executed some promising cattle pieces. Miss Bridges must be credited with developing a charming and original branch of art, of which thus far she seems to enjoy a monopoly. There is exquisite fancy, as well as capital art, in the method in which, with water-colors, she composes stalks of grain or wild-flowers in combination with field birds, meadow-larks, linnets, bobolinks, sparrows, or sand-pipers, balancing on the apex of a wavering stalk, or flying over the wheat or by the sands of the sea-beat shore. Mr. Frank Rogers, who is still a very young man, takes especial interest in painting dogs, although not intending to confine himself to that branch of animal life, and has already achieved considerable success in his attempts to represent canine traits. He has trained several dogs to pose for him for ten to fifteen minutes at once. In the decided ability and success already shown by Mr. Rogers we can see that it is now possible for our artists, availing themselves of influences already at work here, combined with an intense love of nature and the ideal, to do strong original work without devoting half their lives to foreign study, and thus carry on to a higher stage the national art for which so many clamor unreasonably, not considering that new schools of art are not born in a day, nor evolved without the conditions which have invariably prepared the way for the national art of other people. Art travels by no royal road. [Illustration: "LOST IN THE SNOW."--[A. F. TAIT.]]