=78. Water Colors.= Much improvement has taken place in this style of painting during the last few years. Fanny Corbeaux is mentioned as a superior English painter in water colors, of the present century. =79. Painters of Dial Plates.= This is rather an artistic employment, but poorly paid. All the clock faces used in the East are said to be painted by women. Men would not do it for the prices that are paid. In Boston is a large factory where a number of girls are employed in painting hard dial plates--that is, enamelled. I saw a Swiss lady in New York who paints silver-faced dial plates. She and a gentleman in Hoboken (she told me) are the only persons in this country who paint that style. The drying of hard dial plates she thought to be bad on the health, because of the great heat to which a person is exposed in placing the enamel in the furnace, and attending to it while there. Mixing the enamel could be done by women. When learning to paint dial plates in Switzerland, she paid $3 a week for instruction and board, but for a sleeping room separately. =80. Picture Restorers.= E. says he has been thirty years engaged in restoring paintings and engravings. He thinks it is more of a natural gift than anything else. He has made money by it. His sons, who have been ten years employed as draughtsmen, cannot succeed, with all the instruction he has given them. To succeed requires the talents and experience of an artist. He never adds paint when any is left, but merely restores it. If it is gone, he supplies it. B. says, restoring paintings is a work of all time. The prospect of a lady succeeding is poor. She cannot use the heavy iron (twenty-five pounds) necessary for ironing the lining on the picture. (But that part is merely mechanical work, and can be done by a man.) The greatest aim with most restorers is to imitate the old masters. Mrs. C., whose husband is a picture liner, says there is a great wear and tear of mind in that business. A restorer may injure a picture, and have it thrown upon his hands, and have to pay ten times its value. Restoring is the most difficult, lining the most laborious. She never heard of any one being taught. I should think a restorer would find it desirable, if not essential, to visit the galleries of Europe, and study the works of the old masters. The business requires considerable artistic taste and knowledge, but, in our large cities, may after a while present a field for qualified women.