PREFACE. iv popularity, and at no period were its friends, correspondents, and contributors more numerous or more active in its interests than they have been during the progress of the present Volume, as its contents bear witness. We make these remarks rather in grateful recognition of the valuable aid we have received from all quarters, than in any spirit of vain-glory ; we make them because silence in relation to the zealous interest of so many friends would be insensibility. All these things proved long ago the need for such records of progress and such aids to progress as we have endeavoured to furnish; and they prove that hitherto we have not entirely failed. For the future, this is not the place for entering at large into promises or pledges. We intend that whatever has been found worthy of recognition and approbation in our programme during the past shall be retained and amplified in the future. Our own work will be the same, only conducted with augmented experience. We aim to bring under the attention of our readers everything which can in any way, intimately or remotely, affect the interests of the art or its devotees ; but we also aim to aid their judgment in relation to all that requires consideration and examination before acceptance, that they may “prove all things, and hold fast that which is good.” We are assisted in this work by a larger staff of regular and occasional contributors than we have before had the good fortune to possess, an augmentation of power of which our readers will continue to reap the advantage. Thanking our numerous correspondents and contributors for the valuable aid which, during the past year, we have received in an unusual and unprecedented degree, we wish them, our readers, and the art, a very prosperous new year. December 31st, 1868.