England has produced, owing to the effects of this class of admirers of art, two admirable, and five hundred very clever portrait-painters. How many _artists_? Let the reader count upon his five fingers, and see if, living at the present moment, he can name one for each. If, from this examination of our own worthy middle classes, we look to the same class in France, what a difference do we find! Humble _cafés_ in country towns have their walls covered with pleasing picture papers, representing, ‘Les Gloires de l’Armée Française,’ the ‘Seasons,’ the ‘Four Quarters of the World,’ ‘Cupid and Psyche,’ or some other allegory, landscape, or history, rudely painted, as papers for walls usually are; but the figures are all tolerably well drawn; and the common taste, which has caused a demand for such things, undeniable. In Paris, the manner in which the _cafés_ and houses of the _restaurateurs_ are ornamented, is, of course, a thousand times richer, and nothing can be more beautiful, or more exquisitely finished and correct, than the designs which adorn many of them. We are not prepared to say what sums were expended upon the painting of ‘Véry’s’ or ‘Verfour’s,’ of the ‘Salle Musard,’ or of numberless other places of public resort in the capital. There is many a shopkeeper whose sign is a very tolerable picture; and often have we stopped to admire (the reader will give us credit for having remained _outside_) the excellent workmanship of the grapes and vine-leaves over the door of some very humble, dirty, inodorous shop of a _marchand de vin_.