all good, and should complete the scene--we may have "too much
for our money." The cows and occupation going on within, in an inner
stall, are too conspicuous and a picture within a picture, and therefore
would be better out. His black and roan, in the "Country Bait Stable,"
are perfect nature. A picture by Mr H. Johnston, "The Empress Theophane,
begging her husband Leo V. to delay the execution of Michael the
Physician," is well designed; has a great deal of beauty of design, of
expression, and of general colour, but not colour of flesh--nor is the
purple blue of the background good.

We take it for granted that artists are often at a loss for a subject,
and that they often choose badly we all know; but a worse than that
chosen by Mr G. Scott, we do not remember ever to have met with. It is
entitled "Morbid Sympathy," forming two pictures. In the one the
murderer is coming from the house where he has just committed the
diabolical act; in the other he is visited. The man is an uninteresting
villain and his visitors are fools. The object of the painter is
doubtless a good one; it is to avert that morbid sympathy which has been
so conspicuously and mischievously felt and affected for the worst, the
most wicked of mankind. But to do this is the province of the press, not
the pencil. It is a mistake of the whole purpose of art. It will not
deter murderers, who look not at pictures; and if they were to look at
these, would not be converted by any thing the pictures have to
show--nor will it keep back one fool, madman, or sentimental hypocrite
from making a disgraceful exhibition. We are not sorry to notice this
failure of Mr Scott's, because we would call the attention of artists in
general to "subject." Let a painter ask himself before he takes his
brush in hand, why--for what purpose, with what object do I choose this
scene or this incident? Can the moral or the sentiment it conveys be
told by design and colour?--and if so, are such moral and such sentiment
worth the "doing." Will it please, or will it disgust? We mean not to
use the word "please" in its lowest common sense, but in that which
expresses the gratification we are known to feel even when our quiescent
happiness is disturbed. In that sense we know even tragedies are
pleasing. We may, however, paint a martyr on his gridiron, and paint
that which is only disgusting; the firmness, the devotion through faith
of the martyr, are of the noblest heroism. If to represen