CASSELL's ART-TREASURES EXHIBITION.*
This slovenly-showy book of wood-cuts and letterpress will be repro- bated by all who do not desire to see the popularizing of art merged in its vulgarization. It is a false pretence on the face of it ; the title being a catchpenny got up on the credit of the Manchester Exhibition, with which the book has no intrinsic connexion at all—and some bom- bastic professions in the preface being fulsome in the extreme. The book is in reality a mere reehauffee, its substance consisting of wood- • John CasselPs Art-Treasures Rzhibition ; containing Engravings of the Princi- pal Masterpieces of the English, Dutch, Flemish, French, and German Schools, with Biographical Sketches of the Painters, and Critical Notices of their Produc- tions. Published by Kent and Co. cuts which have once been uncommonly fine, but are now pitifully. used up and patched up, after employment in various books, French and English ; wood-cuts of shcon'd 'and third rate quality ; and others, in considerable proportion, of the most abominable badness. The " cisms " are beneath criticism; brainless, when original,—and when se- lected, swept up haphazard, right and wrong. Art must not be cheapened by the same devices as tea and sugar. "Non guardare, e passa," is the word for such a book.
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