THE DECORATIVE ARTS IN AMERICA.

The growth of the fine arts, commonly so called, in this country, has been a fruitful subject of congratulatory observation in the last dozen years. The opera in that time has gained a permanent home here, and our sculptors and painters have gone out into the old fields of art, and claimed equality with their masters—an equality which Italy, Germany, France, and even England, slowly and reluctantly in some cases, but in the presence of the works of Powers, Crawford, Greenough, Leutze, and others, have, at length, confessed. In painting, as everybody knows, with few exceptions our best works have never been seen abroad, and the advance of design here is therefore to be studied only in our own exhibitions, hung with the productions of Durand, Huntington, Eliott, and the crowd of young painters coming forward every season to claim the approval of the people. The general taste keeps pace with every achievement. We hear that the Art-Union was never visited so much as this year; and private galleries, and those of every dealer in works of art, are thronged. The existence in our principal cities, under the control of men of cultivation, of stores for the sale of works in the fine arts, is a fact eminently significant. That of Williams & Stevens, in Broadway, for example, could be sustained only by a community in which there is a refinement of taste such as a few years ago could be found only in limited circles in this country. Beginning with efforts to introduce the finest forms and combinations in looking-glass and picture frames, the proprietors of this establishment have made it a great market-house for artists, and the display upon its walls and in its windows is frequently more attractive to the connoisseur than the exhibitions of the Academies or the Art-Unions. And it is astonishing how many of the best works of the European engravers—works which may justly be called copies of the master-pieces of contemporary foreign art—are sold here, to adorn houses from which the tawdry ornaments in vogue a few years ago have been discarded. The same observations may be made in regard to furniture. The graceful styles and high finish to be seen at many of our stores, and in our recently furnished houses, illustrate a progress in elegance, luxury, and taste, not dreamed of by the last generation. And in all these things it is observable that the advance is in cheapness as well as in beauty. In this respect indeed we have scarcely kept pace with the French and English, but the cost at which a man of taste and a little tact can now furnish a house, so that it shall illustrate not only his own refinement but the condition of the best civilization of the time, is astonishingly small, compared with what it was a few years ago. The fine engraving, with its appropriate frame, to be bought for thirty dollars, is to be much preferred before the portrait or indeed before any painting whatever that is purchasable for a hundred dollars; and though silver is unquestionably silver, the imitation table furniture, of the most classical shapes, that is sold now for a fifth of the cost of the coinable metal, looks quite as well upon a salver. The arts by which beauty is made familiar in the homes of all classes of people are of all arts most deserving of encouragement, and it is among the happiest of omens that they are receiving so much attention—far more attention now than they have ever before received in America. We shall hereafter attempt a more particular exhibition of this subject.