The history of Art proves that, when the nobler walks of Painting and Sculpture reach a high standard of execution, decorative character, and poetic insight, Art, as applied to manufactures, makes corresponding progress. Decorative and poetic art in painting as seen in the works of Leighton, Watts, Burne Jones, Rossetti, Mason, Richmond, Albert Moore, Walter Crane, and others is, therefore, of special interest to a manufacturing town like Birmingham. So long as these men exhibit the possibilities of decorative art, their work must be fraught with good to those engaged in applying similar principles to art manufactures, and (what is of equal importance) must educate those who are to be users of art productions. BIRMINGHAM ARTISTS.--The names of at least two Birmingham men will ever hold a prominent place in the annals of English Art,--David Cox and E. Burne Jones; and as, from his residence here and his being a member of the Royal Society of Artists in this town, George Mason may also be fairly considered a local man, Birmingham may be said to have produced three great Masters--each perhaps the highest in his particular branch--in the three most characteristic phases and developments of English Art. Of this the town may be justly proud. DAVID COX.--David Cox was born in Birmingham in 1783. His birth-place was near to “The Old Crown,” a noted ancient timbered house in Deritend. He received his early art instruction from Joseph Barber, who conducted an academy close to the site of the present Municipal School of Art. In the mastership of that academy, Joseph Barber was succeeded by his son, J. Vincent Barber. A few doors away, Samuel Lines carried on a drawing school. These were the only means of art instruction in the town until the formation of the Society of Arts, whose work is now continued in the above-mentioned Municipal School. Cox was apprenticed for eighteen months to a miniature painter on lockets and snuff boxes. Owing to the bankruptcy of his master, his engagement was terminated at the end of that period. He afterwards became scene painter at the Birmingham Theatre, then under the management of the elder Macready. John Varley, the famous water-colour painter, and Müller also gave him a few lessons in water-colours and oils, respectively. Thus Cox received what was for his day a fairly good education in art, if in this we include his initiation first into miniature painting and then into scene painting. In 1813 he was elected a member of the Society of Painters in Water Colours. During his whole career, he seems to have possessed a strong affection for his native place; and, as soon as he was freed from the worries and anxieties of teaching, he came to Greenfield House, Harborne, where he spent the last eighteen years of his life, working at his beloved art, and paying visits, from time to time, to favourite Bettws-y-Coed. He died in 1859.