For what positive lesson is taught to any by that yearly show of what we flatter ourselves by calling Art? Eight hundred and fifteen new paintings this year, shown by no less than two hundred and eighty-one painters. When you have gone patiently through and looked at every picture, see if you don't wish the critics _had_ eyes, and a little common sense, too. How many of these two hundred and eighty-one, if they live to be a hundred, will ever solve their great riddle? and once solved, how many would honestly go back to shoemaking? Why should they not paint? Because, unless some of them are poorer men than I think, that is not the thing they are like to do best; and a man is put into this world, not to do what he may think or hope will most speedily or effectually place him in the list of this world's illustrious benefactors, but honestly and against all devilish temptations to stick to that thing by which he can best serve and bless-- Whom? A city? A state? A republic? A king? No,--but that person who Is nearest to, and most dependent upon him. Look at Charles Lamb, and then at Byron and Shelley. The growth of a poor young artist into public favor is slow enough. But even poor young artists have their temptations. When Elkanah hung his first picture in the Academy rooms, he thought the world must feel the acquisition. Now the world is a notoriously stupid world, and never does its duty; but kind woman not seldom supplies its omissions. So it happened, that, though the world ignored the picture, Elkanah became at once the centre of admiration to a coterie of young ladies, who thought they were appreciating Art when they flattered an artist, and who, when they read in the papers the gratifying Intelligence (invented by some sanguine critic, over a small bottle of Champagne cider) that the American people are rapidly growing in true love for the fine arts, blushingly owned to themselves that their virtuous labors in this direction were not going unrewarded. Have you never seen them in the Academy,--these dear young ladies, who are so constantly foreseeing new Raphaels, Claudes, and Rembrandts? Positively, in this year's Exhibition they are better worth study than the paintings. There they run, up and down, critical or enthusiastical, as the humor strikes: Laura, with big blue eyes and a loud voice, pitying Isidora because she "has never met" that dear Mr. Herkimer, who paints such delicious, dreamy landscapes; and Emily dragging everybody off to see Mr. Smith's great work, "The Boy and the Windmill," which--so surprising is his facility--he actually painted in less than twelve days, and which "promises so much for his success and the future of American Art," says this sage young critic, out of whose gray eyes look the garnered experiences of almost eighteen summers.