“We believe that by a judicious distribution of engravings more may be done for the culture of the public taste than by any other means whatsoever. One thoroughly good engraving, fairly established and domiciled in a house, will do more for the inmates in this respect, than a hundred visits to a hundred galleries of pictures. It is a teacher of form, a lecturer on the beautiful, a continually present artistic influence. Nor do we see any reason why the same system should not be extended to casts, which might be taken either after the antique, or some thoroughly good modern sculptor, such as Thorwarldsen. If such a system were carried out, matters might soon be brought to a state in which there should scarcely be any family which did not possess within its own walls the means of forming a taste, and that a genuine and a high one, both in painting and sculpture.” The second passage is still more to the point. It is from our contemporary, the _Saturday Courier_. “This Institution, [The Philadelphia Art-Union,] by its Free Gallery, and by its being a centre of action for artists and amateurs, is continually operating in a silent but most perceptible manner upon public taste. Every visit to the Free Gallery, every picture sold from its walls, every picture which it is the means of calling into existence, every print which it sends abroad into the community, is so much done toward the promotion of a popular taste for what is refined and elegant, and a consequent _dis_taste for what is coarse, illiberal, and depraved. Every man in the community has on interest—not merely a moral, but a pecuniary interest—in the promotion of a popular taste for the Fine Arts. It is a part of the moral education of society, which, like all other good popular education, adds at once to the value and the safety of every man’s property.” * * * * * REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS. _Lectures on the History of France. By the Right Honorable Sir James Stephen, K. C. B., LL. D.; Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge. New York: Harper & Brother. 1 vol. 8vo._