This year, the tiny, pleasing genre pictures are still very numerous, and in this respect the Exposition of 1878 is not unlike that of 1867, while in another aspect it is superior to it. If, on the one hand, we miss the names of the great masters of landscape, who, dying, have left no successors, we have, on the other hand, to hail the advent of some others who have risen above the level of genre and have returned to the traditions of high art: I refer to MM. Bonnat, J.P. Laurens and Baudry. Thanks to these great artists, one can assert with confidence that there has been an advance within the last ten years. And how art widens its borders and augments the number of its adepts! How many painters there are to-day!--of the second or of the third rank, to be sure, but masters of their business, skilful and conscientious. In 1867 the jury admitted but four hundred pictures. In 1878 it has had to receive eleven hundred! Evidently, French art is in the fulness of its summer bloom. Its decline will come, for Art, which knows no country, and has wandered from the East to the South, and from the South to the West, will doubtless travel still, and will some day leave Paris to dwell with other races and under other skies. But to-day her home is Paris--Paris, her well-beloved city. Since 1871 especially, we have witnessed a fresh starting into life, an activity, indeed, almost feverish. In 1871 and in 1874 the Minister of Fine Arts officially recognized a general return toward serious and vigorous work, and in 1876 he bore testimony to the exceptional brilliancy of the Salon, which showed the "influence and impulse of a genuine revival."