“——­fills
  The air around with beauty.”

It has fixed the reputation of Powers, and made his fortune.  The possessor of the statue, a Mr. Grant, has refused to dispose of it, except to a public institution.  The value which is set upon it, may be inferred from this circumstance, that one of the richest noblemen in England told the person who had charge of the statue, that if Mr. Grant would accept two thousand pounds sterling for it, he should be glad to send him a check for the amount.  Some whispers of criticism have been uttered, but they appear to have been drowned and silenced in the general voice of involuntary admiration.  I hear that since the exhibition of the statue, orders have been sent to Powers from England, for works of sculpture which will keep him employed for years to come.

The exhibition of paintings by the Royal Academy is now open.  I see nothing in it to astonish one who has visited the exhibitions of our Academy of the Arts of Design in New York, except that some of the worst pictures were hung in the most conspicuous places.  This is the case with four or five pictures by Turner—­a great artist, and a man of genius, but who paints very strangely of late years.  To my unlearned eyes, they were mere blotches of white paint, with streaks of yellow and red, and without any intelligible design.  To use a phrase very common in England, they are the most extraordinary pictures I ever saw.  Haydon also has spoiled several yards of good canvas with a most hideous picture of Uriel and Satan, and to this is assigned one of the very best places in the collection.  There is more uniformity of style and coloring than with us; more appearance of an attempt to conform to a certain general model, so that of course there are fewer unpleasant contrasts of manner:  but this is no advantage, inasmuch as it prevents the artist from seeking to attain excellence in the way for which he is best fitted.  The number of paintings is far greater than in our exhibitions; but the proportion of good ones is really far smaller.  There are some extremely clever things by Webster, who appears to be a favorite with the public; some fine miniatures by Thorburn, a young Scotch artist who has suddenly become eminent, and several beautiful landscapes by Stanfield, an artist of high promise.  We observed in the catalogue, the names of three or four of our American artists; but on looking for their works, we found them all hung so high as to be out of sight, except one, and that was in what is called the condemned room, where only a glimmer of light enters, and where the hanging committee are in the practice of thrusting any such pictures as they can not help exhibiting, but wish to keep in the dark.