dued with electrical powers. Of the torpedo there are two species-the old and new British torpedo; one of the Gymnotus electricus, or electric eel, as it is called; and two of the Malapterurus-viz. M. electricus of the Nile, called Raash, or thunder fish, by the Arabs, and the Malapterurus Beninensis-the smallest of the electrical fishes, found in the Old Calabar River, which falls into the Bight of Bénin on the coast of Africa. The latter fish is a comparatively recent discovery, having been known to us only some fifteen or sixteen years. We have no very good account of either of these latter fish. A specimen of the last was sent to me three or four years ago. It is a curious little fish about five or six inches in length, and very much resembles the Siluride in general appearance, about the head especially. It has long barbules, three on each side of the mouth, and has a very bloated, puffy appearance, caused, it is to be presumed, by the electric apparatus, which is deposited between the skin and the frame of the fish. In the torpedo the electric battery is placed in two holes, one on either side of the eyes. Here a number of prismatic cells are arranged in the fashion of a honey comb, the number being regulated by the age of the fish. These represent the jars in the battery, and they are capable of giving out a terrible shock, as many an incautious fisherman has experienced to his cost. We may trust also that the torpedos with which our coasts and harbours are likely to be thronged, will be capable of giving off even a severer shock; and though gunpowder and gun-cotton will be the shocking agents in these cases, yet electricity will play no unimportant part in their process. Formerly quacks galvanised their patients by the application of the natural torpedo, applying it to the joints and limbs for gout, rheumatism, &c. That the electricity is true electricity has been proved by a host of experiments. The electrometer has shown it, and needles have been magnetised just as if a battery had been employed. There are many other points of similarity which might be enlarged upon; but if one were to attempt to set down all the strange and various considerations which come under cognisance in this subject, they would soon swell the matter much beyond the limits of a magazine article. THE ROYAL ACADEMY EXHIBITION. F the present state of Art in England were to be judged solely by the prices now given at the picture sales of celebrated collections for the works of living or recently deceased British artists, there would be no difficulty in pronouncing it to be a most palmy one. So, if the number of the subscribers to the Art Union and other similar societies could be taken as a decisive proof of the general appreciation of art, it must be admitted that it has never been more extensively supported. But it may be questioned whether such patronage, either of the millionaire or of the million, is a sound test of a real love of art, or calculated, as at present afforded, to advance its best and truest interests. The competition carried on with so much vigour for the possession of certain pictures, in the fashionable auction rooms, may be taken as an indication of the enormous wealth of the country, and of the wish to expend some of it in a way to obtain a not uncreditable notoriety. In many instances, also, it may be explained as being entered on partly or mainly with a view to the profitable investment of superabundant capital. The prices now realised by the works of favourite masters exceed by many times the sums originally paid for them, with compound interest in addition. Nor is it likely these high prices will soon cease. The supply of such pictures must remain small, while, with the increasing prosperity of trade and commerce, the number of persons demanding them will be continually multiplying. The nouveaux riches of the next generation or two will probably go on paying higher and higher sums for fashionable works of art; and it will always be for the interest of auctioneers on the prices-to keep up the selling value of pictures by every method, legitimate or artificial. There will also always be variations in the quotations of price for the pictures of this or that painter-as it may suit the operations of dealers that they should go up or downand thus something even of the excitement of the Stock Exchange may be imported into regions which would at first appear to be quite secure from such influences; and a spirit of commercial speculation may be recognised which cannot fail in the long run to be fatal to real art. The 'knock-out' system, now said to be frequently practised at book sales in London and elsewhere, has not, we trust, yet found its way into the auction rooms chiefly dedicated to the sale of works of art. But there is danger even in that direction, and the non-commercial classes, here, as in so many other cases, must be vigilant to protect themselves in the eager strife for employment which, in the shape of multiplied commissions, agencies, and middlemen, is increasing the prices of all commodities, and eating up the legitimate and fairly earned profits of honest trade. Turning from the millionaire spending his thousands in King Street, to the units of the million subscribing their humble guinea to the tempting programmes of the Art Unions, it must be noted that all these institutions are tainted to the core with the element of gambling, and have, in fact, to be specially exempted from the general operation of the laws against all forms of public lottery. The mode of raising funds, however, can hardly be said to have any effect on the kind of art to be produced by their gratifying the taste of the million which may seriously be expected to exercise a deteriorating influence upon art. The subjects selected, and mode of treating them, must be such as are easily intelligible to all; and hence the distribution of common-place engravings, and the production of so many pictures of a low type of art, painted expressly to be exhibited, and to catch the eye and secure the fancy and patronage of some fortunate holder of an Art Union money prize. If any attempt were made by these Unions to educate the taste of their subscribers, and to raise it to a higher level than that at which it now stagnates, there might be a result of improved appreciation for a better and a truer kind of art. But as things are now managed, the works produced to be given away, and the method of selection in use, from exhibited works, tend to keep down and degrade the mind and genius of the artist to the moderate standard of excellence by which the great mass of subscribers are content to abide. For to have your picture selected for engraving from for an Art Union, or to be bought by a prize-holder from the walls of an Exhibition, is to make money by it-and therefore pictures will be painted down to the level which will fit them for these purposes, and thus the evil goes on multiplying and increasing itself, and art is deteriorated by what professes to be its most extensive support. Whether the causes thus assigned be the real ones, or whether there are other agencies at work, it must be confessed, with a sense of discouragement and regret, that the Exhibition of modern works at the Royal Academy scems year by year to tend towards a state of apparently hopeless mediocrity of excellence. There may be fewer very bad pic tures, but there are decidedly fewer pictures of that high mark of soul of admiration that cannot be restrained, and which when once seen can never be forgotten again. Yet there is evidence of thought, of much labour, and of considerable technical skill; so that it is with reluctance that we have to lament the frequent absence of really great results. Among the pictures exhibited this year in the galleries behind Burlington House, very few can pretend to claim admission to the highest place in art: and their pretentions must in each case be modified by a considerable amount of adverse criticism. Of these Mr. Watts' great diploma picture of the 'Death of Abel' is entitled to have the first notice, both on account of the previous high position of the painter, and on account of the grandeur and lofty intention of the work itself. It is, however, very far from being a finished picture, and much remains to be done before the execution of the painting could be pronounced complete. Cain stands in remorse over the prostrate body of his murdered brother, which lies almost at right angles to the plane of the picture, and exhibits a wonderful piece of foreshortening. The figure of Cain is grandly conceived, and is a fine piece of drawing. In the background a huge pyre of ruddy flame ascends from an altar, and gives a lurid glow to certain reflected lights, without affecting the general tone of colour in the picture. Overhead hangs a group of angels, descending head downwards from heaven to earth like an avalanche of embodied curses, and denouncing the first murderer. They are thrown into attitudes which may remind the beholder both of Michael Angelo and of Blake. The intrepid and masterly drawing of these figures belongs to the highest region of art; but there is an element of the ab normal, and of the immense in con tion, which is strongly suggestive of William Blake. They are such figures as Victor Hugo might have described, and which perhaps none but he could describe in words; and the courage and genius shown by Mr. Watts in attempting them upon canvas must add largely to his already great reputation, and must, if it stood alone, redeem the school of modern British art from the charge of being unable to produce a work of the highest class of distinction. In Mr. Poynter's Perseus and Andromeda' we have another picture of lofty aim, and a work of which English art may well be proud. The figure of Andromeda is as fine an example of good drawing and technical skill in colouring as could be afforded, and amply repays the long study given, and the previous sketches made, in anticipation of it. The Perseus is less satisfactory. His air is hardly that of a hero engaged in deadly combat with a supernatural monster. He is delivering a thrust in carte down the dragon's throat as quietly and deliberately as if he were aiming at the fencing master's plastron in a school of arms. The monster, indeed, is not a very formidable Saurian, but a 'most ridiculous 'most ridiculous monster,' hardly worthy of such an antagonist as Perseus, provided as he was with weapons of marvellous power by the gift of all the gods. Yet the monster is as good as any other representation of the same subject, including that in Benvenuto Cellini's bas-relief at Florence, and probably the only mode of evading the difficulty of painting a mythical creature would be by concealing the greater part of him from view, as indeed Mr. Poynter has to some extent done. The arrangement of the three figures along the rocks is open to much objection, seen as they are in line, and in no way grouped, and might have appeared in a presentment in an ancient masque, or as they might now appear before the foot-lights in a modern pantomimę. All the indications in the background are good. There is a fine classical tone about the whole picture, and Mr. Poynter may be well congratulated on his upward and onward course in the path of art. Mr. W. B. Richmond boldly attempts a great subject in his large canvas of Ariadne.' The poor deserted lady is telling her woes to the winds on the sea-shore, and makes a remarkable picture. Mr. Richmond has shrunk from no difficulties in the drawing of the figure, face, extremities, and drapery and indeed has created some which do not add to the beauty of the pictureand comes out with credit from the arduous task he has proposed to himself. It is indeed a picture of high intention and full of poetry. More simplicity in the convolutions of the drapery would be desirable; but we have no doubt that every fold has been carefully and conscientiously worked out, and the lower part of the dress suggests much study from the antique well and profitably made. The colouring is not agreeable, and is possibly intended not to be so. But as the most intense anguish may be described by the poet in words of beauty, so should the painter learn to use the materials in which he works; not sacrificing truth to beauty, but rather employing beautiful means to express the truth. With a young artist like Mr. Richmond devoting so much time to such a subject as this, we cannot altogether despair of the future of art in England. It is a worthy sacrifice to the higher powers of art; not likely, as we imagine, to be attended by any immediate pecuniary return, as it does not belong to the class of works loved by cotton lords, scribers, but is one which denotes hard study and devotion, and from which still better things may be confidently augured to come. Mr. Rivière's picture of 'Daniel in the Lions' Den' is also most worthy to stand among the real works of high art in the present Exhibition. Like all such performances, when rightly considered, it displays the synthesis of the ideal and of the real. It is the union of poetry and of truth. The conception satisfies the longings of the imagination, and yet the scene is commended to us with a probability and vraisemblance which we do not remember to have seen in any other representation of this frequently repeated subject. The Ninevesque sculptures on the wall give locality to the picture, and the narrow entrances in the background leading to the inner dens of the confined beasts explain how, by raising bars or grated doors, the animals could be turned out upon the Hebrew prophet without risk to their keepers. The lions are among the finest ever seen upon canvas, and each exhibits a different mode of yielding to the spell which reduces them to submission and worship. Neither Rubens nor Landseer has painted lions with better drawing or grander and more varied expression. The king of the family is resigned to inaction with an air of dignity, acknowledging a superior power to which he seems almost proud to submit. Crouching subservience, fawning inferiority, abject fear, or impotent rage are typified in the others. The figure of Daniel is magnificent, and reminds one of the appearance a prophet of our own days, in his years of more robust strength, might have presented in similar circumstances. Thus would he have confronted the lions, and with such a show of calm and confident strength in the power conferred upon him to subdue lower natures and silence the howling multitude. Daniel's hands are bound the exhibition of physical helplessness is complete in its contrast with the supernatural domination exercised by him. The back only of the figure is shown, and the artist has thus skilfully, and with allowable license, avoided the difficulty of throwing into the face the expression which would be required of it by the spectator to account for the power wielded over the royal beasts. Why, however, should the type of human form adopted be so strong and massive? It is grand in the extreme, and such that if fairly matched with a single lion, and aided by any weapon, in the open arena, the man might be expected to get the better of the beast. Daniel, however, was not a warrior, but a statesman and minister-a man of the pen rather than of the swordand the large hands and feet seem out of character in the highlycultured Hebrew premier of the Assyrian monarch. In Mr. Millais' triple portrait-picture he has endeavoured to combine portraiture with some of the character of a subject picture, and has rather audaciously chosen for imitation a well-known picture by Sir Joshua. Three fine specimens of modern young ladyhood-charmingly dressed in the height of the fashionradiant with bright looks and fresh millinery, are playing at dummy whist in a conservatory. There is a full blaze of sunlight and brilliant flowers. The furniture and accessories are all painted up to the highest point of finish and scenic effect, affording no rest or repose to the eye on any portion of the canvas. Indeed, there is such an absence of light and shade, that but for the colour of the picture, it would be totally unintelligible. The execution is marvellous, but the result is almost altogether unsatisfactory. It is a picture which starves and insults the imagination by undertaking to represent every |