E. Maurice Bloch decision. We shall probably have it in a few days—Those that heard the argument think it must be in our favor.... Warner's optimism was indeed short-lived. On June i ith the Supreme Court, the presiding judge dissenting, declared the American Art-Union lottery system to be illegal and unconstitutional. In subsequent appeals, the judgment in one case was reversed; in the other, upheld. In the first case—the People against the Art-Union—a judgment for the confiscation of all the pictures intended for distribution in December 1851 was reversed on the ground that the property legally belonged to the subscribers, who were innocent of any attempt to violate the State constitution. In the second case—The Governors of the Alms Houses against the Art Union—the Court of Appeals confirmed the judgment whereby "three hundred dollars, being three times the value of a picture entitled 'The Huguenots going to worship in Charleston Harbor,' [were] forfeited to the plaintiffs according to the provisions of the revised statutes entitled, 'Of raffling and lotteries.' '"* Thus ended the history of the American Art-Union as it operated from 1839 to 1852—an active organization involved in the occupation of buying works of art from the artists themselves and distributing them to an eager public, of maintaining a perpetual free gallery for the exhibition of such works, and of developing a patronage for artists that was importantly realized by the many who benefited and were supported by it. The Union tried for a time by other methods to continue in its encouragement of American art and artists, but its activities were now so reduced as to render the institution almost completely ineffectual. That the loss of the Art-Union was deeply felt and regretted in many quarters is adequately evidenced in many of the written and published statements that appeared in the years following 1852. Addressing Andrew Warner from The Hague, October "Henry R. Selden, Reports of cases argued and determined in the Court of Appeals of the State of New York . . . (Albany: W. C. Little & Co., 1854), III: 228-240. 357