It has been said that our painters merely continue tendencies that have had their origin in Europe, and just as English and French painters are abandoning theories which they have exhausted, we are entertaining those theories as new discoveries, and repeating a discord that abroad has been outgrown. There is some truth in the charge, and we are not always well enough informed to anticipate the next development in the artistic world. While we are overrun by the maggots that have crawled out of the literary body of John Ruskin, the English painters, already emancipated from the bondage of that powerful sectarian, are working under new influences, and showing tendencies that, without subverting the truths so eloquently expounded by Ruskin, supplement them. Under the form of a continuation of the work begun by the great sectarian of English Art criticism, we have a literary exponent of the reaction; and the pictures of Mr. Whistler, an American almost unknown on this side of the Atlantic, have been taken by the late "London Fine Arts Quarterly Review" as examples of this reaction in practice. Mr. Whistler has been called the man of highest genius and most daring eccentricity in the new school; and Tom Taylor amiably writes that he is equally capable of exquisite things and gross impertinences. We give place to Mr. Whistler's name merely to indicate that artists anticipate critics. In the latest literature of Art we do not find positive reaction, but continuation. Mr. Philip Gilbert Hamerton, however, meets conditions and covers ground not treated by Ruskin, and more practical, but less eloquent, defines the relation of the painter to Nature and the limitations of imitation. Ruskin splendidly opened the campaign for modern Art, and he has found servile and ignorant executive officers; but Hamerton is an independent officer, who crosses the enemy's country, beats his foe in detail, and according to his own method. Ruskin is superb in his combinations; Hamerton exact in his method, and careful to protect his rear. Therefore the most _useful_ books that could be placed in the hands of the American Art public at present are Hamerton's "Painter's Camp" and "Thoughts about Art." The latter volume is most carefully considered, and is the result of unwearied practice in the study of Art and Nature. For Mr. Hamerton has studied Nature as a man indoctrinated with the ideas of Ruskin; he has generalized about Art as one who has emancipated himself from a master in thought; and he has enlarged his views by varied reading and familiarity with ancient and modern painting. In some respects Mr. Hamerton's books may be taken as the literary proof of a school which is said to include "many men of rare gifts and uncommon culture," and which, profiting by the reform introduced by Millais, Hunt, and Rossetti, yet also supplements that reform with a more catholic taste and a less ascetic manner than were