But it is in historical and allegorical painting that HUNTINGTON has made the reputation which will live the longest; although he says, the class of pictures which were painted with the greatest interest are those which were meant to convey a moral lesson, and were ideally treated, such as the “Sacred Lesson,” “Alms Giving,” “Piety and Folly,” “Faith,” “Hope,” etc. This we can very easily imagine; for it must be to the spirit of a painter, like the enlargement of a caged bird, to escape the confines of buckram, broadcloth, and modern costume, and feel that “no pent up Utica” confines the powers, and they can range from the trammels of the real to the delicious _abandon_ of the ideal. To transfer to canvas the feelings of our nature, and embody, as it were, the moral sentiments must indeed be a triumph to the artist, and we think it has been achieved by HUNTINGTON. The picture which has acquired the most extended reputation for this artist, is by no means his best or even one of his best. It has become popularized by having been engraved for the American Art Union two years since, and is the “Signing of the Death Warrant of Lady Jane Grey.” We think it fortunate that the lovers of art in our country, who do not enjoy the privilege of visiting the large collections in our cities, are to have a better specimen of HUNTINGTON’S talent, and his peculiar ideality of composition in the engraving of his “Mercy’s Dream,” by the Philadelphia Art Union. This will, we think, be one of the most popular plates ever distributed. To enter upon a critical analysis of HUNTINGTON’S style would be but a historical sketch of his artistic career; for his advancement in finish, and his impressiveness in composition, are marked and graded on each succeeding painting which he has started from the canvas. There is “no retiring ebb” to his genius—he always improves upon himself, as the result of close attention and indefatigable study. So happy is he in his historical, dramatic, and allegorical subjects, that they associate themselves with the very facts they intend to delineate, to the exclusion almost of the records of the past—his ideality takes the place of the written chronicle; and it seems as if the olden tradition glowed beneath his pencil. HUNTINGTON is as graphic on historic canvas, as MACAULAY is on the historic page. We must accord to him a high rank, for he has merited it. In every department of his art, from the dull routine of portrait painting to the study of the Florentine Sybil, or to his latest inspirations, “St. John the Evangelist,” and the “Marys at the Sepulchre,” there is the same loveliness of composition, boldness of handling, and delicacy of conception.