ABOUT five years ago, Mr. EMIL SEITZ, a well-known printseller of this city, imported a magnificent imperial photographic copy of KAULBACH'S cartoon of "The Age of the Reformation," executed by Court-photographer Albert, of Munich. In every respect, except as to size, it was an exact reproduction of the artist's work, and gave a vivid and correct idea of his sublime conception. But the interest awakened by this splendid work was soon lost in the excitements of the time; and when, a few weeks ago, the original cartoon was brought to this city, it had for us all the surprise of a new picture, and attracted great attention. The work is generally regarded as Kaulbach's masterpiece, in conception and execution. The artist himself, we are told, regards it in this light, and considers it the crowning work of his life. It is more than a picture, in the strict sense of the word -it is the history of an era. In this grand composition, Kaulbach sought to portray the working of the moral, religious, scientific and intellectual forces that culminated in the Reformation. The conception is perhaps philosophical rather than artistic, but none but a great artist would have carried it into execution as Kaulbach has done. Let us examine it closely, following out a train of thought suggested by a German art-critic and friend of Kaulbach.

The scene chosen by the artist for the representation of the grand drama of the new age, is the interior of a vast cathedral. In the centre of the background the lofty choir confronts the spectator; on either hand open long and broad aisles, while the overarching dome gives unity to the whole picture. On the choir, and thus elevated above the other groups, stand the great Reformers of the age, whose work formed the central event of the new awakening of human thought and action. On the right of this group stands a soldierking, Gustavus Adolphus, one of the great champions of civil and religious liberty. On the left may be seen Queen Elizabeth, of England, surrounded by a courtly group, in which we recognize the faces of Essex, Sir Francis Drake, and Burleigh. In a semicircle behind this central group, sit Huss, Johann Wessel, Arnold von Brescia, and other precursors of the Reformation; they appear to be sunken in profound meditation, as if their souls caught the dim presage of the great events to come. In front of the grand organ, and above all these groups, a band of wor

shippers is preparing to sing Luther's noble hymn: Ein fester burg ist unser Gott. (A mighty fortress is our God.)

Several groups occupy the foreground. On the right, the leaders of liberal culture proclaim to the world the glory of ancient art and literature. From the mouldering ruins of the long-forgotten past, they disentomb the works of the master minds of Greece and Rome. "The grand ideas of antiquity," says the German critic above referred to, "awake from their slumber of ages and re-enkindle the sacred fire of genius in the souls of poets and philosophers. Philosophy and poetry, bursting the fetters of scholastic pedantry, are once more free to illuminate the lofty mountains and the lowly valleys of human life and thought." The artists, also, feel the inspiration of the new age; and we see them, in the background on the right, earnestly discussing the works of ancient genius. In the group we recognize the portraits of Albert Dürer, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michael Angelo, and others who reanimated art in Europe. Near them stand Guttenburg and Koster, to whose invention the Reformation is so largely indebted for its rapid diffusion among men. On the left of the foreground are grouped the early discoverers and naturalists-Columbus, Bacon, Harvey, and others; and in the aisle beyond them, Tycho Brahe, Galileo, Copernicus, and Kepler, are engaged in searching out the courses of the stars. The vastness and harmony of the universe are gradually unfolding to the human understanding; and the great principles of nature begin to be dimly discerned, looming in majestic outline through the breaking clouds of ignorance and superstition.

The central group in the foreground represents the conclusion of the truce between the Protestants and Catholics which, for a time, put an end to the bitter religious feuds which had desolated Germany. The advocates of peace point to the open Bible, held aloft by Luther, on whose page we read the second great commandment: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

In this manner, by means of these admira bly conceived groups of eminent personages Kaulbach has illustrated the age of awaken ing thought, the new era of mental activity, tracing its progress from the early discoveries in the various realms of nature and of intel lect, to its culmination in the religious awakening of the Reformation.

The picture is worthy of the closest study. Observe how faithfully and conscientiously all the details are wrought out, without disturbing the grand harmony and unity of the composition as a whole. By the magic of his pencil, the artist has recreated for us the men of the age, as they lived and labored among their fellows. These faces are veritable portraits, only so far idealized as to conform to the requirements of art. The groups are beautiful, taken separately; while the prominence given to the central group connects them all in the unity of one grand idea,that of the angelic song prophesying peace on earth and good will to men.

The Ratcatcher and his Dogs.-The story of JOHN CARTER, whose most celebrated work is now on exhibition in the picture gallery of Mr. Schaus, gives an interest to his pictures which, with all their acknowledged merit, they do not in themselves possess. He was the son of a common English laborer. His schooling was brief and imperfect. Up to the age of twenty-one, he led a wild and dissipated life, consorting with bad fellows, and proving a terror to peaceful neighborhoods. One night in May, 1836, with a few companions as reckless and dissolute as himself, he went to the seat of a well-known London banker, to steal young rooks from the rookery. While in the topmost branches of a tall fir-tree, he lost his hold and fell to the ground. He was picked up by his comrades and carried home, in an insensible condition. The doctors pronounced his case hopeless, and were positive he could survive but a few hours at most. He disappointed them by living fourteen years after the accident, but in a physical state which was little less than death. In falling he had sustained an injury to the spine which deprived him of life and motion in every part of his body except his head and neck. He could speak and hear, but he could not move an arm, nor a finger, nor a leg, nor could he even sit upright. The misfortune that deprived him of the use of his limbs, awakened a new life in his spiritual nature. He became docile, devout, and resigned; and when, after some months of weary inactivity, a plan was proposed whereby he could pass his time with pleasure and profit, he eagerly embraced it. This was learning to draw. To become an artist, we should think, would have been the most unlikely thing for a man without hands, and unable to raise himself from his couch. But John Carter, encouraged by the example of a lady who had learned to draw by holding the

He found

pencil in her mouth, and encouraged by his friends, resolved to make the attempt. He began by copying pictures of flowers and butterflies in water color, but, soon gave this up for a different and more expeditious method of working. On a desk placed almost perpendicularly over the couch on which he lay, was fastened the paper on which he drew, so near that he could easily reach it with a brush held between his teeth. His wife or sister, both of whom waited on him with unwearied love and patience, would fill the brush with India-ink, and place it in his mouth. With a peculiar motion of his lips and tongue, he would then whirl the brush round until he had thrown off all the superfluous ink, and brought the hairs to a fine point. He would then, by the action of his neck, execute the finest and firmest touches on the paper, rivalling the dexterity of the most expert draughtsmen. In this laborious fashion he continued to work till his death. Compelled to pause and rest after every stroke, he of course produced very slowly. Every touch had to be considered beforehand, as once made it was unalterable, many friends and patrons, and his work became very popular. But five of them are known to be extant, four in England, and one, "The Ratcatcher and his Dogs," in this city. Had this work been the production of an artist who enjoyed the full use of his hands, it would have deserved very high praise; what shall we say of it as the production of a man without the use of his hands, and who had never studied drawing until he learned the art by holding the brush between his teeth! The composition and grouping are excellent. Nothing of the kind could be finer than the attitude of the old ratcatcher as he sits watching his dogs. Landseer, a high authority in these matters, is said to have bestowed warm commendation on the drawing of the white dog, and that of the others is strong and decided. Not a stroke is wasted, every line and every dot tells. It makes one's neck ache to think of the many hundred strokes, painfully made, through days and weeks of patient application, required to execute this exquisitely finished drawing. How many of our artists who enjoy the full use of their hands could produce such a drawing as this?

Under Table Rock.-Mr. GIGNOUX has just completed a large picture called "Under Table Rock," a winter scene at Niagara Falls. The point of view is from the Canada side. The spectator looks directly under the over

hanging mass of rock into a sort of cavern formed by huge icicles and pillars of frozen spray Only a small portion of the cataract is shown, in the upper left-hand corner of the painting, and the depth into which it plunges is suggested by whirling clouds of spray and mist, in which the plunging waters are lost. The picture is broad and simple in treatment. We believe it is to be sent abroad to be chromo-lithographed by the same house that has succeeded so well with Mr. Bradford's "Crushed by Icebergs."

Easter Morning.-But if Mr. Prang continues to produce such beautiful chromos as that of Mrs. Hart's "Easter Morning," our artists will not be compelled to seek the aid of foreign establishments for the reproduction of their pictures. Mrs. Hart's picture, as our readers may remember, is a marble cross, on which hangs a beautiful wreath composed of fuchias, pansies, roses, heliotropes, orange blossoms, and other flowers. The great variety of tints rendered the reproduction of the wreath in chromo-lithography a task of extreme difficulty; but it has been accomplished by Mr. Prang with marvellous delicacy and fidelity to the original. We consider "Easter Morning" to be the best chromo he has yet published.

Landseer's Connoisseurs.—No one should fail to look at the engraving of LANDSEER'S portrait of himself entitled "The Connoisseurs," now at SCHAUS'. It is interesting not only as a beautiful picture, but as the only portrait of Landseer in existence, the great animal painter having refused to sit to any artist. He represents himself, in this picture, as sketching. Two splendidly-painted dogs are looking over his shoulder, watching, with immense gravity and show of sagacity, the progress of his work. The picture has been very beautifully engraved on steel by Mr. Samuel Cousens. The original is now the property of the Prince of Wales, by whom it was purchased from Sir Robert Peel.

Pictures at Goupil's.—Mr. KNOEDLER has lately added very largely to his importations from Europe. Among the new paintings is a large one called "Norwegian Mountain Scenery," by Professor HANS GUDE, a picture of much power. The rugged sides of the mountain are partially veiled by gray mists, that creep and twist among the jagged pines. A rapid stream plunges down through a narrow gorge towards the foreground, obstructed by rocks and the trunks of fallen trees. The sentiment of loneliness and desolation is very forcibly expressed in the figure of the solitary

hunter resting near the edge of the cata

ract.

Mr. Knoedler has also an exquisite flower picture by Robie, beautiful in composition and color; besides works by Carl Hubner, Colman, Zamacois, Gerome, Gifford, and other foreign and American artists.

Drawings by Peter Kraemer.-There is at WEISSMANN & LANGENFELD'S an interesting India-ink drawing by PETER KRAEMER, a German draughtsman resident here, representing a scene at the last Arion Ball. Mr. Kraemer draws with great dash and boldness, and his pictures lack finish and refinement. A sketch of his called "A Cavalry Charge," also at Weissmann & Langenfeld's, shows how much may be accomplished with a few touches, provided those touches are made by a master

Marshall's Portrait of Grant.-Messrs. TICKNOR & FIELDS have published Mr. MARSHALL'S steel engraving of his excellent portrait of General Grant. The General's most intimate friends declare it to be the only satisfactory likeness of him that has yet been made; it is certainly very characteristic, and is engraved with great skill.

Artists going Abroad.-MCENTEE and GIFFORD sailed on the 27th of May for the old world. The former will visit Egypt and the Holy Land, for the purpose of studying the grand monuments of ancient Eastern civilization, and his stay abroad may be prolonged for several years. Mr. Gifford will spend most of his time in France and Italy. A few evenings before their departure, these gentlemen were entertained by a select party of friends at a farewell dinner. We unite in the friendly wishes and regrets expressed by those who were present at the dinner, and trust that our friends may enjoy a good time abroad and a safe return.

We hear that Mr. JAMES HART still contemplates making a trip to Mexico this Summer. The field is a new one for artistic enterprise, and we have no doubt that Mr. Hart will make the most of it.

The Jarves Collection at Yale.-Mr. RusSELL STURGIS, Jr., has prepared a manual of the Jarvis collection of early Italian pictures deposited in the galleries of the Yale School of Fine Arts. It comprises a catalogue of the pictures, with full descriptions, together with biographical notices of artists, and an introductory essay on early. Italian art. Aside from its connection with the Jarves collection, this manual contains much information of in terest to readers in general, respecting Chris tian art in its earliest stages of development.

It is certainly creditable to Michigan, that in establishing her State University, the Legislature should have stipulated that there should be established a professorship of the Fine Arts. Every university ought to have an established professor of the Fine Arts, with a good working collection of casts of sculpture, copies of pictures (where the pictures themselves cannot be obtained), collections of engraving, drawings, and photographs, and models in cork or plaster of famous buildings, with casts of the best details of such buildings. A gallery of this sort need not be large; it only needs to be well selected; and by bearing this in mind, a good deal may be accomplished with a comparatively small sum of money. Such a collection would be a great addition to the resources and opportunities of a university, even without any professor at all, provided it were so arranged that the students had free access to it; and we are sorry to say that, judging from a pamphlet recently sent us by a Mr. Alvah Bradish, who appears to be Professor of Fine Arts in the University of Michigan, that institution of learning appears to have gained very little by the establishment of the professorship, whatever may be the result of the founding a Department of the Fine Arts. The pamphlet consists of the republication of a certain "Memorial" addressed in 1852 to the Board of Regents, in which the necessity for the establishment of a Fine Arts Department in the university is enforced by very commonplace arguments and unfortunate illustrations, and a plan of studies is marked out very inadequate to the end proposed. This "Memorial," however, crude and commonplace as it is, seems to have moved the Board of Regents to appoint the writer off-hand, to fill the chair of Professor of the Fine Arts. Mr. Bradish, who, with all his want of culture, seems to have a laudable enthusiasm, determined at once, that a series of Art Lectures would be a proper termination of a student's course in the university, and he accordingly "devoted the better part of twelve months exclusively to a course of historical and æsthetical studies to render himself competent in his own opinion to fill such a chair in a way its high importance demanded. For, it must be remembered that art-literature covers a field wide as the thoughts and civilization of man." We give Mr. Bradish's own words, taken from his preliminary "Remarks" upon his own "Memorial," in which that un

important paper is spoken of, and Mr. Bradish himself is spoken of, and the lectures are spoken of, in terms of the most egotistical vain-glory. We do not write this paragraph for the sake of breaking a butterfly on a wheel, but because we so heartily approve the action of the University of Michigan, and so cordially grant that action to be an honorable step forward, that we regret it should have, at the very beginning, entrusted the direction of the Department to hands so plainly incompetent -so incompetent, by his own naïf confession-to the task he has undertaken. When we remember that John Ruskin gave fifteen years of hard and unremitting study to the theory, and history, and practice of the Fine Arts, before he began to write his monumental book; and when we consider that the field to be surveyed is indeed, as Mr. Bradish says, "wide as the thoughts and civilization of man," so that, even in fifteen years, a student as diligent and unwearied as Mr. Ruskin does not pretend to have exhausted it-we may well smile at the pretensions of a man who tells us that he has devoted the better part of twelve months to a course of historical and æsthetical subjects to render himself competent to fill the chair of Professor of the Fine Arts in a State University. Why we speak at all about this matter is, that in one way and another the Fine Arts are getting this sort of treatment in many parts of our country. A professor at Yale, who does not pretend to any greater knowledge of the Fine Arts than a trip to Europe has given him, pronounced the pictures in the Jarves Collection worth very little, and his verdict had authority enough to risk the success of the negotiation by which Yale College has become possessed of a collection better than that which any great gallery in Europe north of the Alps had when it was founded, Writers for the newspapers and magazines feed our national vanity by exalting the praiseworthy but necessarily incomplete attempts of young American artists into masterpieces for the study and admiration of mankind. A young artist studies water-color drawing for a year, and, straightway, a "critic" says that his productions, "for all that is admirable in the art, will bear comparison with the best of English work." And so the work goes on, and more and more the growth of a really genuine art in America is hindered. What we need is criticism, not flattery; criticism for the sake

of art and the people, earnest and straightforward, written by men who have given their lives, and not the better part of any mere twelve months to the study of art, and who are above all national and individual prejudices. But such criticism in America is not easy to find.

How far back in our literature can the fancy be traced which Tennyson has enshrined in this verse of his "Talking Oak?"

"But, light as any wind that blows
So fleetly did she stir,

The flower she touch'd on dipt, and rose,
And turn'd to look at her."

This is Scott's,

"Even the slight hare-bell raised its head
Elastic from her airy tread,"

with an added fancy. Tennyson's flower, 66 turns to look at her."

It would seem that Shakspeare with his Elizabethan taste for conceits must have hit upon this one, but unless it be the

"Ye that on the sands with printless feet
Do chase the ebbing Neptune,"

or the

Tempest, V. I.,

"O! so light a foot

Will ne'er wear out the everlasting flint:
A lover may bestride the gossamers
That idle in the wanton summer air,
And yet not fall; so light is vanity."
Romeo and Juliet, II. VI.,

we cannot remember any passage that contains it. But the beauty and delicacy of the "printless feet" is better than a dozen lines of elaboration.

The conceit occurs in Ben Jonson's "Sad Shepherd" in a passage that deserves to be quoted. It is the opening speech in the poem.

"Here! she was wont to go! and here! and here! Just where those Daisies, Pinks, and Violets grow:

The World may find the Spring by following

her:

For other print her airy steps ne'er left:
Her treading would not bend a blade of grass!
Or shake the downy Blow-ball from his stalk!
But like the soft West-Wind, she shot along,
And where she went, the Flowers took thickest
Root,

As she had sow'd 'em with her odorous Foot. Perhaps the original of this fancy is found in Virgil's description of the warlike virgin Camilla in the seventh book of the Eneid:

"-prælia virgo Dura pati, cursuque pedum prævertere ventos, Illa vel intactæ segetis per summa volaret Gramina, nec teneras cursu læsisset aristas: Vel mare per medium, fluctu suspensa tumenti, Ferret iter, celeres nec tingeret æquore plantas."

THE barefaced dishonesty and shameless swindling of the officials who govern (by the consent, and with the approval, of the majority of the citizens), the city of New York, is so serious a subject to the minority, that any thing which enables us to laugh at our misrulers instead of anathematizing them, is to be looked upon as a godsend. Some club in New York, composed of gentlemen with more money than they know what to do with, has presented Mr. Supervisor Tweed with a very costly, and, we may say, a very ugly service of plate. On this plate appears everywhere as an ornament the head of a griffin or like monster, of the heraldic species, and on each piece, in addition, is elaborately engraved a coat-of-arms, purporting, of course, to be the arms of Mr. Tweed, bearing the motto, "Spare not," which motto, considering that this person never does spare any thing he can lay his hands on, appears to be very appropriate. It now appears that the whole of this heraldic paraphernalia is stolen goods, and that Mr. Tweed has no more right to the coat-of-arms, the crest, or the motto, than he has to the name of Jenkins. The arms are those of the Hay family of Scotland, a member of which family was made Marquis of Tweeddale in the time of George II. The arms of Hay are quartered with those of two heiresses who married into the family, and the whole shield, quarterings and all, is gravely copied on Mr. Tweed's pieces of silver, as if he had a right to it, as he, doubtless, thinks he has, having bought it, as he probably did, from some one of the so-called "heralds," whose business it is to gull rich nobodies who want to pass for somebodies. 'Tis a small comfort, but, to weak human nature, it is a comfort, that if Mr. Tweed as Supervisor has raised a great fortune at our expense, we can raise a great laugh, if nothing more, at his; and the joke is such a good one, that we doubt if the unfortunate Democrat, and would-be nobleman, will ever hear the last of it.

WE Congratulate ourselves on having found two blunders into which our countrymen