This is not one of Mr Clarkson Stanfield's best years. We prefer this careful and able artist on a grander scale than that of the comparatively small pictures he this year exhibits. Nor do we think he has been particularly happy in his choice of subjects. His scene from Macbeth, viewed as a landscape--for we do not take into account the figures, which are insignificant, and might as well have been left out--is a good picture, but not in his happiest taste. We prefer his _Scene on the Maas_, and his _Bay of Baiæ_, which are both excellent. No. 288, _Near Foria_, is not a very good subject. But Mr Stanfield is a pleasant, natural painter, quite free from affectation, and a most excellent representative of the English school. Mr Roberts is another favourite of ours. Belgium and the East, Egyptian temples and Catholic shrines, furnish subjects for his seven pictures. What we particularly like in him is the strong impression of correctness and fidelity conveyed by his representations of distant scenes. Without having seen the places, one feels convinced of the accuracy of his delineations, and that he gives the real effect of the objects depicted--just as, in certain portraits, one feels certain of the resemblance without knowing the original. The subjects of his pictures this year do not demand any detailed criticism, and his good qualities are so universally appreciated as to render general commendation superfluous. Before passing on to landscapes and portraits we will glance at a few pictures of various classes, which happen to have attracted our attention, and which deserve better or worse than to be left unnoticed. Diving into the gloom of the Octagon, we are struck by the very remarkable merit of two pictures, which ought never to have been placed there. Only by kneeling or sitting upon the ground is it possible to examine Mr Van Schendel's poacher detected, No. 633, _Un Braconnier au moment qu'on vient le prendre_. Of ordinary visitors to the Exhibition, not one in five will notice the existence of the picture--not one in twenty, probably, will go through the painful contortions requisite to get even a bad view of it. Very few, if any, critics will have sought it out or written a comment on it. Yet this is a picture on which greater talent and labour have been expended than on dozens that hang in conspicuous places and good lights. A dark picture, too--a night scene--it required a strong light; and it was most unjust to put it thus in the very darkest nook, and in the lowest range of the whole Academy. For hospitality's sake to a foreigner, this excellent painting should have been differently placed. The only other picture which we noticed in the Octagon--there may be others of great merit, but we never have patience to linger long in the gloomy closet--is No. 586, _Flowers and Fruit_, by T. Groenland--an artist far superior to Lance, who seems to us to fall off instead of improving. Fruit and