Among our exchanges is a little periodical entitled '_The New Path_, published by the Society for the Advancement of Truth in Art.' The members of this Society are otherwise known as 'Pre-Raphaelites,' in other words, as seekers of the Ancient Path, trodden before certain mannerisms had corrupted the minds of many painters and most technical connoisseurs. Their aims and principles are, so far as they go, pure and lofty. Truth in Art is a noble thing. But can these gentlemen find none outside of their own society? The face of nature is very dear to us, and during long years have we closely observed its forms, its changing hues and expressions. We do like when we look at a picture to know whether the trees be oaks, elms, or pines; whether the rocks be granitic, volcanic, or stratified; whether the foliage be of spring, midsummer, or autumn; even whether the foreground herbage be of grasses or broad-leaved weeds; but is there no danger that minutiae may absorb too much attention, that the larger parts may be lost in the lesser, that while each weed tells its own story, the distant mountains, the atmosphere, the whole picture, in short, may fail to tell us theirs in any interesting or even intelligible manner? In excess of surface details, may we not lose body, roundness; and, in matching exact color rather than the effect of color through the tremulous ether, may not the subtle mysteries of distance, of actually diffused and all-suffusing light, escape the painter? It is possible to possess the body and fail to grasp the life. Give us not blotchy nondescripts for natural objects, fling to the winds all narrow, school-made, conventional ideas, but, in giving us the real, give us the ideal also; otherwise we freeze, missing the spirit which should warm and shine through the letter. We fear lest in his zeal for truth, many a Pre-Raphaelite may be led to overlook beauty. To a finite mind the two words are by no means synonymous. There can be no _real_ beauty without truth, but many truths are not beautiful, and beauty, no less than truth, is an important ingredient in that complex resultant, Art. We quote from one of the articles of organization of the above-named Society: 'The right course for young artists is faithful and loving representations of Nature, selecting nothing and rejecting nothing, seeking only to express the greatest possible amount of fact.' Now we all know that the best way to stultify the mind and conception of a youthful student, in any branch of art, is to keep before him commonplace models. Indeed, what student gifted with genius, or even with any high degree of talent, will not (if unrestrained) himself select as studies, not any mere chronicle of desired facts, but the most significant forms (suited to his proficiency) in which he can find those facts embodied?