spent some pleasant hours, is Locust Hill Seminary, Yonkers; a seminary whose play-grounds might easily remind those poetically inclined of the Fairy Queen's fabled shrubbery. The principal of this is a lady, Miss Emily A. Rice; yet so little afraid is she of criticism; so far is she from believing that we would do injustice to herself or her assistants, that she politely invites us, more than once, to hear her recitations. And this she does not do as a personal friend; she did so before she had ever seen us, or known any thing of us, further than to have read our criticisms on educational institutions. Miss Rice has no such affectation, and makes no such pretence as that her students would be frightened, or even seriously embarrassed, at the presence of a stranger. She has too much faith in her teaching to entertain any such apprehension; in a word, she is aware, from long experience, that knowledge is self control and ease of deportment, as well as power, in its ordinary or objective sense.

And so it proved in this case. We were present at recitations in Latin, French, English literature, geometry, algebra, arithmetic; and we observed no more embarrassment or confusion than we did in any other seminary or school, male or female, where the system of teaching is equally enlightened, progressive, and thorough.

or six years, will make sufficient progress, by means of "highly skillful object teaching," as to be able to distinguish a smoothing-iron from a saucepan in one week! Let the reader please observe that the price for all this is only $100 per annum; all in advance, for obvious reasons; paregoric extra. To us it is unaccountable that only the same small fee is charged in the "class for boys," except the secret of it be that boys require no paregoric. If any doubt that all this, and more, are done at Gramercy Park, let them read the couleur de rose "testimonials" thereto appertaining.

Still more marvellous, if possible, are the virtues of D'Aert's Institute, "beautifully located in the upper part of the city." As one of the evidences, which are at least" presumptive," that young ladies will receive the right training at D'Aert's, the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher is referred to by "special permission. (Vide Circular.) Here the price is only $800, exclusive of "higher accomplishments" and finishing touches, which are given at the operator's rates, and may not exceed perhaps $200, thus rendering the tout ensemble wonderfully cheap!

We beg leave to remark here, parenthetically, that it is but a vulgar error that female students, under proper training, are more likely to be embarrassed or confused at their recitations than male students possessing similar advantages. As well might it be said that ladies in the drawing-room are not as much at ease in their conversation and general deportment as their brothers or husbands. Those who are not thus at ease, and cannot help displaying their gaucherie, whether in drawing-room or parlor, only show that, however long they may have been at school, they are utterly devoid of culture. Their case is just the same as that of the awkward, blundering young men described by Chesterfield in his celebrated Letters to his son. If there be any difference, it is in favor of the former, it being well known that the female sex have from youth to age a natural vivacity and grace of deportment which fall to the lot of but very few of the rougher sex.

So much were we pleased with the recitations in general that we wished to know the names of the principal teachers in order that we might mention them as worthy of distinction. But they are not given in the modest circular of the Seminary, and we do not wish to incur the risk of seeming too curious about the names of ladies, especially when their physical charms are quite in keeping, as in the present instance, with their intellectual attainments and abilities. We can only remember the name of the Latin teacher, Miss Palmer, the recitation of whose class in Cicero would have put to the blush many a pretentious male professor. This highly-accomplished young lady is the daughter of Mr. Joseph H. Palmer, a veteran teacher, now retired, a graduate of our State Normal School, and at present school commissioner for the first district of Westchester County. We take this liberty with the fair Ciceronian's father, because it was our good fortune to meet Mr. Palmer at the Seminary, and to have the pleasure of his company, and of his assent to our views, at each recitation.

But none of the exercises pleased us better than the little

ones of the junior class reading their tiny compositions, and all the more advanced classes practising light gymnastics. Both of these departments are under the direction of a Massachusetts young lady, whose success in each is obvious and remarkable.

At Locust Hill Seminary, as well as at every other institution in which we have found the educational work, mental and physical, well performed, the principal is a thorough and zealous educator. What reminded us most forcibly of this during our visit was the recitation of Miss Rice's own class in geometry, which we cannot better describe by the passing remark we can now devote to it, than to say that the lady's easy familiarity with the principles of that beautiful science, and the lucidity and graphic force with which she explained whatever puzzled the students, really surprised us.

ART. VIII.- Various Catalogues, Illustrated and Unillustrated; Chromos, Engravings, Frescoes, Statuary, Vases, etc.

OUR object in the present article is simply to take a discursive glance at some of the various means by which the attractions of home are increased, and in which the useful is combined more or less happily with the ornamental. None, we hope, will infer from this that we are about to treat them to an essay on the perfections of our enterprising tailors, shoemakers, hatters, dry-goods dealers, mantua-makers, manufacturers of blank books, furniture manufacturers, manufacturers of hoop-skirts, fabricators of paste jewels, makers of "immense sacrifices," and others, who happen to have made sufficient money by their respective commodities to enable them to appreciate eulogies on the same at their full value. This sort of pantheism we beg leave to commit to such of our daily journals as have stomachs sufficiently strong to indulge in it. Let ours be the humbler, less ambitious, and more restricted task of jotting down our impressions of the influence of things

which we can neither eat nor drink, nor wear on our person, nor sit, nor lic upon-things, in a word, which concern neither the stomach nor the back, nor even the cranium, but exclusively the mind, especially the taste and the judgment. The ouvrages de vertu which we prefer to admire are those which may be regarded as belonging to some department, however modest, of the fine arts. Without further preface, then, we turn to our notes and proceed.

We spent several hours last May in the Chromo galleries and laboratories of L. Prang & Co., of Boston, and it is but seldom that we have devoted so much time more agreeably. No other similar establishment in this country produces so large a variety of pictures. It is not, however, for the number, but for the excellence, of its chromos it is distinguished; otherwise it would receive no place in this article as a source of "home æsthetics." The chief object of our visit was to judge, as best we could, whether those productions deserve to be styled, as they are, by way of eminence, "American chromos." Nor was it merely to gratify our own curiosity that we wished to be thus informed; although we can truly say that there is nothing that exercises any permanent or important influence on public taste in which we do not take a personal interest, as a private citizen, altogether independently of our duties as a public writer. But many of our readers had long evinced as strong a desire as ourselves to determine, as approximately as might be, whether it was to the credit or discredit of our country, in an artistic or scientific point of view, that the Prang chromos should everywhere bear the prefix "American."

Mr. Prang, or any one associated with him in his enterprise, we had never seen; nor have we to this day. We should not know one or the other if we met him this moment unannounced. But we are not the less willing on this account to bear testimony to the fact that, having seen and carefully examined all we took an interest in, we felt impressed that, if all who apply the epithet "American" to the results of their labors, in cultivating the beautiful, vindicated their claim to it

as well as Mr. Prang, there would be good reason to anticipate improvement and progress in the future; we might even say of them in no equivocal sense,

"Studious they appear

Of arts that polish life, inventors rare."

We think our readers would hardly thank us for a dissertation at this time on the various processes by which the finer class of chromos are produced. We imagine that even the derivation of the word chromo, from the Greek, through a large variety of labyrinths, will readily be dispensed with, especially when it is borne in mind that it would involve a more or less elaborate discussion of that troublesome, though highly interesting, branch of optics known as chromatics, and which treats of the mathematical relations of colors. Thus, for example, the ladies would scarcely care to be told, while getting ready for shopping at Christmas time, that the mean distance between two waves in a ray of light is .0000225 of an inch, or that the distance in red rays is .0000266, while the distance in violet-colored rays is only .0000167. Nor should we expect to please much better did we enter into particulars. in regard to the curious metal, chromium, which is so called from its tendency to impart beautiful colors more or less indelible to its various compounds, each differing in shade according to the nature of the substance combined with the metal, or with its oxides or its acids.

In order to be able to appreciate a good chromo, however, it will be necessary to understand how its coloring is rendered at once so natural, so well-defined, and so permanent. When chromium is used alone, it produces different shades of green according as it is more or less pure. Combined with the peroxide of tin and chalk, in certain proportions, it forms that fine, fresh color known as English pink, and used chiefly on porcelain. Chromic acid is found in beautiful crystals of ruby-red; these fuse slowly on being exposed to the air; if heat be then applied, the fluid assumes a very beautiful color, almost black, but having a peculiar lustre. In short, there is