FINE ARTS.
Time prospects of art already begin to brighten, cheered by the smiles of our young Queen. The first rays of royal favour have not all been intercepted by the Royal Academy a portion of them has fallen upon objects hitherto languishing under the cold shade of that upas of the arts.
The Queen has been graciously pleased to accept the Presidency of the Institute of British Architects, which is now incorporated by a royal charter. The society originated in the apathy and neglect with which this department of art has been treated by the Academy; and though it has been formed only a year or two, it has done more for the science of architecture in that time than the Academy has during the whole term of its existence.
The Queen has also appointed Mr. GEORGE HAYTER Historical and Portrait Painter to her Majesty. The artist may fairly attribute this honour to the insult and injury put upon him by the Royal Academy, who spitefully refused to exhibit his pictures at the National Gallery. Not that lie is unworthy of such a mark of royal favour on other grounds than his having been the Queen's instructor in drawing, but that on the score of merit only there are other artists at least his equals. The Academy cannot but feel the rebuke implied by this last mark of the royal favour bestowed on one whom they had proscribed. How mortified the court-paying clique must feel at finding they have spurned "the man whom the Queen delighteth to honour!" Had Vicroars been on the throne at the time, they would hardly have ventured to fly in the face of the Sovereign—piqued as they were at the Heiress Pre- sumptive having chosen for her teacher an artist who was not only not of the Academy, but actually under its ban. Their discomfiture would be complete were the Queen to countenance HAYDON. We congratulate the great body of artists on these favourable signs of the Queen's desire to encourage art, and to protect its professors from the petty despotism that has too long " soaked up the King's countenance." Academic influence has no longer the ascendancy at Court.
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