FINE AU-S.
THE .11.0iYA.L A_CA D E HY.
.Tan long-vexed question of the relation of engravers to the Academy seems on -the point of receiving a solution. A memorial from the en- gravers, praying for admission..to the rank of Academicians, instead of to that of "Associate Engravers" merely, was presented sonic time ago; the Queen, as head of the Academy, has backed it; and the Academy is understood to have conceded the point. We presume that the Academi- cian Engravers will constitute an increase to the present Forty, not form a -portion of that-number, which would be a -manifest injustice to the other branches of art.
The impulse of generous feeling will side with the decision of the Aca- demy. At the same time, it may be well to remember that that body tends gradually more and more to become, in practice, a representative of an exclusive-pictorial interest. The position of the engravers is but one side of a larger question, affecting others, and more particularly architects as well,—that, namely, of -adhesion to or secession from the Academy. Perhaps an isolated decision in their favour may prove, after all, not the best fortune that could have befallen them.
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