At intervals, the drawing ceases, while most charming music serves to keep the crowd together, and possibly to drive for the moment, from many a heart, the pangs of disappointment or despair. Now there is some excuse for ignorance on this subject, among those poor people, for there are no means by which they can be enlightened and warned of the evil. But in this country, where the press is free, and the means of information abundant, it would be sad to reflect that such things can, under any name or phrase, long continue unmasked and unshorn of their power. There is consolation in the belief, that however prosperous this species of gaming may be, the time is not far distant when its true character and tendency will be made manifest; and when the unseen but certain operations of the moral sense of our people will put an end to its inglorious career; if not directly, through the action of the laws, yet indirectly, by withholding the necessary contributions to its further support. This parallel between Art-Unions and Lotteries is drawn that the character of the former may be more readily comprehended by the reader. In the recent drawing of the American Art-Union there were distributed _one thousand works of art_, making about one prize to sixteen blanks. But where did all these "thousand works" come from? and what are they? Have they all been executed by living American artists? Are they paintings, or sculptures, or engravings, purchased from the artists who made them, and who have received an adequate price for them? We know from their advertisement that _sixty_ of them are "impressions from the large engravings after Col. Trumbull's pictures of the _Battle of Bunker Hill_ and the _Death of Montgomery_." Now the purchase of these engravings from the pictures of a long deceased painter can be of no possible service to the painters living and laboring among us, nor to the progress of art in any way. As well might the Art-Union purchase for distribution sixty copies of Dunlap's History of the Arts of Design, or of Allston's Lectures on Art, or any object pertaining to the subject that may be procured at any time of the book or print sellers. It is true, they must manage to offer a number of small prizes, the best way they can, that they may in some plausible way meet the expectations of their very extended lists of subscribers, to which, it seems, they never attempt to set a limit. Here is another proof that they are mere speculators upon the labors of artists, and only seek to enlarge their subscriptions, and usurp a power and control over the great body of artists, which should never, with their consent, be allowed to any, no matter how respectable, body of men.