lding in silence many thousands of anxious
hearts, the cortege, preceded by Royalty itself, ascends, and is seated
in the order of its dignity. In front of the throne are placed, upon
pedestals, two large revolving globes half filled with tickets, and by
the side of each stands a page, in magnificent costume, blindfolded.
Then commences the distribution of the prizes, in the usual way, by
drawing numbers from the globes, by the hands of the pages, which are
announced from the throne, and so along to the ears of the most distant
in the multitude. At intervals, the drawing ceases, while most charming
music serves to keep the crowd together, and possibly to drive for the
moment, from many a heart, the pangs of disappointment or despair. Now
there is some excuse for ignorance on this subject, among those poor
people, for there are no means by which they can be enlightened and
warned of the evil. But in this country, where the press is free, and
the means of information abundant, it would be sad to reflect that such
things can, under any name or phrase, long continue unmasked and unshorn
of their power.

There is consolation in the belief, that however prosperous this species
of gaming may be, the time is not far distant when its true character
and tendency will be made manifest; and when the unseen but certain
operations of the moral sense of our people will put an end to its
inglorious career; if not directly, through the action of the laws, yet
indirectly, by withholding the necessary contributions to its further
support.

This parallel between Art-Unions and Lotteries is drawn that the
character of the former may be more readily comprehended by the reader.

In the recent drawing of the American Art-Union there were distributed
_one thousand works of art_, making about one prize to sixteen blanks.
But where did all these "thousand works" come from? and what are they?
Have they all been executed by living American artists? Are they
paintings, or sculptures, or engravings, purchased from the artists who
made them, and who have received an adequate price for them? We know
from their advertisement that _sixty_ of them are "impressions from the
large engravings after Col. Trumbull's pictures of the _Battle of Bunker
Hill_ and the _Death of Montgomery_." Now the purchase of these
engravings from the pictures of a long deceased painter can be of no
possible service to the painters living and laboring among us, nor to
the prog