The announcement of the entrance into the local trust field of a new company with large capital and influential backing probably had some unfavorable effect on the stocks of the companies recently started. This new concern will be a strong bidder for business, and while it is expected to work in a field of development, it is not unlikely to receive some business which would have gone to the other companies. This field of trust seems to be a favorable and a profitable one, however, for large combinations of capital. * * * * * We spoke in our last issue of the opportunity that was about to be given to erect a fine and lasting monument to the memory of the Confederate and Federal soldiers who lost their lives on the battle-field of Antietam. This opportunity presented itself early in January to the judges in charge of the competition for a commemorative monument, or statue, for the erection of which ample funds were voted by the Maryland Legislature. We had some misgivings as to the artistic merits of the sketch that would be chosen,—owing to the fact that such awards are usually left to the taste of artistically incompetent persons, instead of to men whose training and experience guarantee that the work shall be, if not great, of at least a fair average quality,—but we had no idea that even judges selected at random (as these evidently were) would be willing to put themselves on record as approving a design that, while not out of place for a summer-house or a soda-water fountain, is altogether so in a memorial erected to the glory of our dead heroes. If these gentlemen paid for the monument out of their own pockets and offered it to the State as a gift, it still ought to be refused as utterly unworthy the subject, or of public acceptance, but it is nothing less than outrageous to force the taxpayers of Maryland to accept and to furnish money for such a travesty on good taste. To make matters even worse, and that, strange to say, the judges found was entirely possible, the award was given to a New England contractor, so that we are not only to have a most inappropriate monument, but an inappropriate one made in another State for which an important sum of money must be paid by the people of Maryland. We are not narrow-minded in these matters, and believe that, to fittingly honor our brave dead, we should have the best sculptor or architect that can be procured, no matter whence he comes, but it can hardly be claimed in this case that it was necessary to go outside the State. In fact, it seems to us, it would hardly have been possible to find anything more trivial or unsuitable, even had a prize been especially offered for that purpose. That such things are accepted with so little complaint by the press and public almost justifies one in abandoning hope that we shall ever see any real improvement in our muddled way of looking at questions of this sort. * * * * *