The gloom of the picture, the utter dejection of the workers, relieved nowhere by a gleam of light--even the child (around whom Hope might have hovered) finding a grim plaything in the lint--all combine to tell the tale of what the artist evidently felt--the cruelty of war. Much interest was taken in finding out, amid the darkness, the different figures in their various attitudes of active or crushed woe. It spoke, though, a little sadly for the want of joyousness in East London entertainments that more than one sightseer, _before_ reading the catalogue or being helped by a verbal explanation, thought ‘it was a lot of poor people at tea.’ The frames of all the pictures excited wonder, sometimes admiration not accorded to the pictures themselves; and the oft-reiterated questions, ‘What, now, is it all worth? How much would it fetch?’ became a little wearisome, not the less so because expressive of one of the signs of the times. ‘All beautiful! and most of them [the pictures] done by machinery, I suppose,’ showed greater mechanical than artistic appreciation; while the cross-examination to which we were put as to why the Exhibition was held was sometimes interesting rather than edifying. ‘Oh, yes, it’ll pay, sure enough, if you only go on long enough,’ was one woman’s comforting assurance; and the answer, ‘I hardly see how, considering that it is open free,’ carried so little force to her mind that its only effect was to make her repeat her belief in a still more confidently cheery tone. But many and hearty were the thanks that were given at the end of some such chats; and the gentlemen who explained the pictures and talked to the little groups which quickly gathered round ‘some one who would tell about it all’ were more than once offered reward-money--a flattering tribute to their powers, and illustrative of the living sense of justice in the workman’s mind and the conviction that ‘the labourer is worthy of his hire.’ The pathetic pictures were, perhaps, the most generally appreciated. Israels’ ‘Day before the Departure,’ lent by Mr. J. S. Forbes, was described thus: ‘The widow, utterly sad, has shut her Bible and seems heartbroken and hopeless. The child does not understand everything, but she knows her mother is sorry; the toy is forgotten, while she nestles close in her desire to comfort. Her love may be the light which will brighten the future,’ often reduced the beholders to sympathetic silence; while warm was the praise given to Salentin’s ‘Foundling,’ a pretty picture of an old yeoman giving the forsaken babe into the arms of his kindly daughters. The bright evening sky, the tender spring-time, the interest of the farm-boy, and the curiosity of the sheep, all hopefully express that the little one’s short, troublous day is over, and that its happier spring-time has dawned.