Comparing the Johnston sale with some of the famous auctions of the past four years at the hotel Drouot, we find that in the Paturle collection twenty-eight canvases bought $90,000, being all works of masters. The general prices were not higher than the Johnston prices, but Ary Scheffer's Marguerites brought 40,000 and 35,000 francs; a Troyon, 63,000; and Leopold Robert's admirable "Fishers of the Adriatic," 83,000 francs. The gallery of the Pereires brought 1,785,586 francs, which was rather higher than the Johnston total, but I believe there were more masterpieces. A head by Greuze brought 32,500 francs. The highest prices seemed to be carried off by the Dutch painters, who were in force, and three works by Hobbema, a country residence, a forest scene, and a windmill, brought respectively 50,000, 81,000, and 30,000 francs. The prices for good pictures, taking into account agreeableness of subject and state of preservation, seem to be much the same in New York and Paris, though French newspapers fancy American taste for art to be at barbarian pitch. They should learn otherwise from the American painting and sculpture in Paris, London, Vienna, Florence, and Rome; they might learn otherwise from the discriminating appreciation of their own artists at such sales as Mr. Johnston's. The worst statuary as well as by far the best at Philadelphia last year was Italian, and some of the worst painting as well as the best was Spanish. There is some monstrous governmental art, no doubt, with us, but as for popular taste, there is nothing in America so vulgar as the cheap glass necklaces, tin spangles, and painted trinkets on the sacred images in the churches of Southern Europe. American travellers speak of the contrast between the beautiful cathedral and its hideous painted images bedizened with trash to which dollar-store jewels are gems of art; and the approaches to a splendid church or castle are very likely bedecked with clumsy, unvolatile angels, most terrestrial and unlovely. It is true that the decoration of temples and the adoration of images, whether under heathen or Christian auspices, has always fostered art; but American popular taste, low as it is supposed to be, would hardly set up in churches statues of painted wood only fit for tobacco shops. In Rome, where American taste is looked down upon, they have annual shows of painted wooden figures of saints and angels, in all hues, each uglier than the other, to be sold for putting upon the altars as votive offerings. In fact, wherever the "Latin race" is, the popular taste runs to blocks of the Virgin and Child resembling the lay figures in a tailor's shop.