New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1857-05-16

and there are coarse broadsides OF which Two may
be- bought for penny. The taste for prints ranges
from enthusiasm for Raphael Morghens to pro-
pepsity for valentines. Photography has done its
work ard AZ we like 10 see Ourselves drawn, so We
like 70 sea all about us drawn also. We know
teeple who are in state Of continual reproduction
al the galleries. and who pass no inconsideraole
portion of their existence in direct range 6f
camera. They are taken in undress and IN fuil
dress as fathers and as citizens, as mllitiamen ana
as masens, with neckcloths and without them,
in cOlors and otherwise, sometimes IN their easy
chairs and sometimes in their collins. Their wives
f low the example. The children follow the ex-
mple. The servants follow theeIample; and John
the groom is tai en- with his currycOmb in hand,
golden sun, is handed down, warranted not
TO fade, and with saucepan in the back
ground, to the latest posterity. Times are indeed
changed since Sir Peter painted for golden guneas
the brazen Duchess of Cleveland. since Sir Joshua
transferred TO canvas the beautiful and the intel
lectual faces of England, since Copley rivsed
the tints of cheek and Of costume which he 80
deliberately copied. The portrait painter may fling
his color-box out of the window, and having i'm
paed himself upon his mallstick may die gracefully
in the arms of his lay-fgure; or, if he be less
Roman in his taste, may blow out his brains at
once, as poor Hayden died. To be sure, the hum
blest home has its gallery, in which are preserved
every member of the family who has had the good
fortune to live since the advent Of Daguerre, but
then the camera does all.
Ii will not do to sum up too hastily the advan-
tages or the disadvantages Of this characteristic OF
the times. That it has prOdigiously stimulated
every mechanical department of art cannot be
questioned. We turn indeed, with fond recur-
renee from these modern triumphs from the skill
which has reproduced upon wood the lights and
shadows of Rembrandt and has caught while con-
densing the glories of Raphael, to the humber
productions of Benick, who, in that little workshop
of his in Newcastle-u pon-Tyne, laid the founda-
ton Of all that is now excellent in the British de-
paItment of the art We remember how IN child
hood we bent over his pictures-the old hen with
her chickens; the sportsmen with his dog; the beg
gar by the roadside the peddler upon his donkey;
seashore and swamp meadow, and bosky dell.
Illustrated newspapers and penny magazines were
not so common then, and as decorator OF cheap
books Benick was long without rival. But with
all our fondness for the past, it would be
absurd for us to deny the great excellence
of the pictorial newspapers and other publica-
tions similarly adorned. Twenty-Five years ago
London annual, like those which Lady Blessington
and Aarc A. Watts and poor Miss Landon were
wont to edit, and which was vended for We do not
know how many pounds sterling, was thought to
be the ne plus ultra of sumptuousness and taste.
Now single number of Punch shows more talent
and is worth more, and is yet sold for sixpence
Rogers spent large sums in the ILLUSTRATION OF his
works. He would give Turner, Stothard and other
artists great prices for designs which he often, IN
stead of sending them to the engrayer, put quietly
into his portfolio. Yet notwithstanding bis pro-
fuseness. there are many books better decorated
than his. which are disposed of at half the cost.
The enterprise undertaken by Charles Knight, and
the London Society for the Diffusion Of Useful
knowledge, of giving to the people pleasant and
profitable books properly illustrated has resulted
i'll new public taste which those of the most
moderate means are able to crafty. Or the pre-
else value of this taste it is impossible as yet to
speak with accuracy. There may possibly be, in the
readiness with which it furnishes information to the
mind without the Intervention or necessity OF intel
lectus effort relaxing and facilitating effect akin
to that of an oyer-deyotOn to fiction. That the artist
relieves both the writer and the reader-the first
of the necessity of nice and accurate execution as
well a. vivid conception, aud the second oil close
attention and mental exertioD-seemst to be unques-
tonabe. We have had hundred paintings and
prints of the battles Of the Alma and OF lnker-
mann, of all possible degrees of excellence and
wretchedness, and yet we suspect that Froissart,
or Napier or Sir Walter Scott could have given
clearer notion of these fields than all the litho-
graphers who have sketched them, to those Of
mind robust enough to receive their word-plctures
The value of most of the illustrations in the
newspapers, we were about to say, depends alto
gether upon their accuracy, yet to the thousands
who buy these sheets Of what Importance can that
accuracy be! If the portrait Of Polly Bodne be
given as that of Mrs. Cunningham or that OF Eckel
be afterwards used to represent Mr.. Buchanan,
pray who Of all the purchasers is the worse Tor 1t
A landscape in Asia, after passing muster as view
in the Highlands, may possibly be retOuched and
published as scene upon the American pralrles,
and yet the fidelity in the first instance was so linn
tied that the print as likely not to be just as
well adapted to its supplementary uses. 1t is merely
intended to amuse the eye and fill page, and it
answers that purpose equally well by whatever
name il may be called. Pray who sketches so nicely
the views of sinking ships, OF land-sldes, of rail-
way accidents and Of colliery explosions which