very animated in conversation. Like most Poles, he speaks low and very slowly. I remarked that he was particularly polite and attentive to young people, which in a man, who, from his various misfortunes and trials, can take but little interest in general society, is, I think, very striking. The Princess, who must be almost thirty years younger than the Prince, is very lady-like and prepossessing in her manners. She is much beloved by her compatriotes: her efforts to relieve those who are in distressed circumstances being unceasing. She employs all her leisure hours in embroidering; and her embroidery, which is more beautiful than any thing of the kind I have ever seen, is sold at a bazar, which is opened during the last week of every year; new-year's day being the time when the French make those presents to their friends which in England and in our country are made on Christmas day. All the ladies of the Princess's acquaintance of course contribute to her bazar; and those who are remarkable for their beauty or their talents, are invited by her to keep the stalls. . MRS. B. - whose son, a lad of about sixteen, is now engaged in attending the cours de religion, or religious lectures of M. COQUEREL, one of the clergymen of the Reformed Church of Paris, took me this morning to hear one of the lectures. M. COQUEREL is the nephew of the celebrated HELEN MARIA WILLIAMS, by whom he was educated. He is the most eloquent, and I believe the most learned, clergyman in Paris. I had been much pleased with his sermons, and was therefore very glad to have an opportunity of hearing one of his lectures. His class was composed of about thirty young men, of different ages, from sixteen to twenty-five. He has written a little book called Cours de Religion,' which he makes use of in his lectures. The method he adopts is this: He reads a paragraph from this little volume, and then comments upon it, and explains or developes it, often relating interesting anecdotes suggested to him by the subject, or asking questions which the foregoing lectures enable the scholars to reply to. The young men take notes, write them out at home, and bring these papers to Mr. COQUEREL at the next lesson. The lectures for young men take place twice a week, from October to May, and those for young ladies at different hours during the same period. The scholars are admitted to take the sacrament at Pentecost. M. COQUEREL is a most active and industrious man. Beside several volumes of sermons, and innumerable papers for different religious journals, he has published a very useful work, called 'Biographie Sacrée,' in which every name mentioned in the Bible is to be found. His manner is very animated; and as each lecture lasts but an hour, it is impossible that the attention of the young hearers should become weary. .. APRIL 19th. Went to the exhibition of paintings by living artists, which is now open at the Louvre. The most beautiful picture there, is one by M. COGNIET; TINTORETTO painting his dead Daughter.' The biographers of the great master inform us, that he had a daughter who evinced great talent for painting, to whom he was devotedly attached, but who died when young. M. COGNIET has chosen the moment when TINTORETTO, rising from his easel, on which rests the unfinished portrait, stands gazing on his beloved daughter, who is lying on a bed in the fore-ground of the picture. The father is almost de face, but the lower part of his figure is concealed by the bed. A crimson curtain falls behind him, and forms a rich but not gaudy back-ground to the picture and, by throwing a slight reflection on the daughter's face, relieves the whole from that disagreeable effect, which, with less judgment and good taste on the part of the artist, it must have produced, without taking from it the solemnity which the subject required. This is, on the whole, almost the only picture of the modern French school which pleases me entirely; in which there is no exaggeration of expression or gesture, and which deserves to be compared to those of the modern school of painting in Germany. I have no doubt that the circumstance of an exhibition taking place every year is a great disadvantage to young artists, who hurry to finish a picture for that occasion, in order that their names may be mentioned in the journals, and that they may obtain a celebrity which lasts but a few weeks. If the exhibition took place but once in five years, I am convinced we should see more fine pictures at the Louvre. Among the portraits I remarked one of

Major POUSSIN, who resided for so many years in the United States. It is painted by Mademoiselle GODEFROID, a pupil of GERARD, and is a very good likeness. I was struck by a portrait of M'lle de FAUVEAU. This lady is of a noble family of Brittany, and is well known for her devotion to the cause of the DUCHESS DE BERRI, and for the talent she has displayed in the art of sculpture. She is neither young nor handsome; she is dressed in the costume of a peasant of Brittany, a sort of blouse or loose frock, with her hair cut short in a strait line across her forehead, as we sometimes see it in the portraits of the early French kings. There is a portrait of the DUKE OF ORLEANS at the Louvre. It was painted from memory by SCHEFFER, a very clever artist. Some of the fruit-pieces and portraits, au pastel, in colored chalks, are very beautiful. Indeed, the French excel in this style of drawing Among the paintings on porcelain we particularly admired a Holy Family, copied from one of the old masters. It is a perfect bijou. day after our visit to the Louvre, Mrs. R- took me to the atelier of Mr. HEALY, the young American artist. His portrait of WASHINGTON, copied from one by STUART, gave great satisfaction to LOUIS PHILIPPE, and has been placed in one of the historical galleries at Versailles. Mr. HEALY has now a beautiful picture of two of Colonel THORNE'S daughters, which he is retouching, at his room. The attitudes, particularly that of the eldest of the young ladies, are very graceful, and the whole picture in very good taste.'

The

THE IRISH SKETCH-BOOK. This capital work by Mr. M. A. TITMARSH,' otherwise W. M. THACKERAY, Esq., author of 'The Yellowplush Correspondence,' has just been published by Mr. WINCHESTER, at the 'New World' office, in a very neat little pamphlet-volume, illustrated with numerous engravings, from the pencil of the author. Our readers have had repeated evidences of the high estimation in which we hold the writings of Mr. THACKERAY; and they may trust our judgment in this, that they will find the volume before us to be second to no previous work of the writer. It is, in fact, Ireland on canvass; its various cities and towns; its ludicrous modes of travel, and more ludicrous travellers; its wretched poverty, its generous hospitality; its suffering, and its indomitable good-humor. We were not until now aware that Mr. TITMARSH was 'given to song' as well as to romance and painting; but his Peg of Limavaddy,' a handsome kettlescrubber, who handed him his 'rummer' of ale, and laughed so joyously at an accident which befel it, establishes the 'soft impeachment: '

We repeat,

• Witnessing the sight
Of that dire disaster,
Out began to laugh

Missis, maid, and master.
Such a merry peal.

'Specially Miss Peg's was

(As the glass of ale

Trickling down my legs was)
That the joyful sound

Of that ringing laughter

Echoed in my ears

Many a long day after.

'Such a silver peal!

In the meadows listening,
You who 've heard the bells
Ringing to a christening;
You who ever heard

Caradori pretty,

Smiling like an angel

Singing 'Giovinetti,'

Fancy Peggy's laugh,

Sweet, and clear, and cheerful,
At my pantaloons

With half-a-pint of beer full ! '

the Irish Sketch-Book' is a capital work, and cannot fail of very general popularity. The author possesses a delicate appreciation of the beautiful, as well as a lively perception of the ridiculous; a felicitous combination of faculties, since the union of fine taste and strong humor seldom takes place in the same individual.

'MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE.'- Some twenty-five years ago, a work in two or three volumes, under this title, was republished in this city from an English edition. One of these volumes lies before us; and if it be a fair representative of its companions, an American publisher would not find it amiss to put forth a new issue of the book; for it abounds in keen satire, playful wit, and pleasant humor. We have segregated from its numerous divisions a few passages for the entertainment of our readers. A good deal of what is termed 'criticism' upon works of art has lately been expended in this meridian upon an undiscerning and unheeding public; yet we propose to add to the amount, by copying the remarks of one Mr. NED TESTY upon an exhibition of paintings and statuary, similar, we may suppose, to the annual collections of our 'National Academy of Design;' similar, certainly, in many of the points touched upon by the critic. After a consideration of the Landscapes, 'with their meagre subjects, lying perspective, and timid handling; their frittered lights, lumpy shadows, indigo skies, and saffron sands; their forward back-grounds, and backward fore-grounds; with trees and meadows carefully colored from an emerald, and water of such an hue and surface, that forgetting for a moment the season represented, one looks narrowly after the skaters!' - after a discussion of these, en masse, we are favored with the subjoined 'hits' at a particular' Family Piece:

A YOUNG man who 'wants encouragement,' had immortalized family affection, by representing papa standing up at one end of the picture, (his lips glued to each other, and his bullet eyes wide open, though evidently seeing nothing,) and mamma at the other; the peace being kept between them without the loss of an inch of space, by their endless progeny, whose heights and ages the artist has most accurately registered, by stringing them strait out, closely linked together in a descending series, like the reeds of Pan's pipe, which they farther resemble in the lank uprightness of their figures, and the billious deadness of their complexions. The next of these Domestic Scenes reproaches the idleness so remarkable in the foregoing, by the great variety of employment which it exhibits, with the additional advantage of allowing more elbow-room to the fancy of the painter; who in the first place has contrived to record, in the mother of the family, a truly exemplary instance of notability, combined with maternal tenderness; for she is seen, at the same point of time, engaged in nursing one child in her lap, rocking with her foot the cradle of another, hearing the task of a third, and eyeing the frolics of a fourth; and all this without seeming at all distracted from her needle, which she has just drawn out at the utmost stretch of her arm. The remaining children are all liberally supplied with such occupations or amusements as, when followed at proper times and places, must be allowed to become their sexes and ages, but which we are not exactly prepared to see going on as here, all at once in the same parlor. The young ladies of this extraordinary family can study their maps and globes, pore over their books, and even practice their music-lessons, without appearing once to know that those boisterous and unruly little dogs, their brothers, are cracking their whips, beating their drums, scampering about the room with their wagons, etc.; the very baby in the cradle, instead of being frightened out of its wits, as might reasonably be expected, only appearing to be lulled into a still sounder sleep, by the riotous gambols going on.'

Outraging nature is as common in art now as it was in the era of NED TESTY. Here you may see the picture of 'a lady in full length, gayly and archly tripping out in a hurricane by herself, in thin fluttering muslin, without cap, hat, or bonnet, by the side of a raging sea; where, if one may judge by the disposition of her limbs, and the archness of ⚫ her countenance, she is practising an allemande to the music of the thunder-claps which seem bursting over her in all directions; yet without the slighest mark of concern in her looks, or apparent apprehension of taking cold, after dancing under such discouraging circumstances of dress and weather; there stares a young miss strait out of the picture, with one hand grown to her side, and the other to the monstrous head of a Newfoundland dog, sitting up exactly as high as she stands; and near by, in another frame, a parcel of Months or Hours, in petticoats, are smiling and dancing jigs round an emblem, in the shape of a good-looking woman in green, who is supposed to be Spring.' The critic wonders 'why they have n't got to changing the Minutes, Seconds, and other inferior parts of clock-work into little fluttering urchins.' But pause for a moment, reader, with hushed respiration, while we set before you a specimen of the Awful! There is an appropriate 'power of words' in the description of the 'grouping,' and doubtless the coloring was 'in keeping;' as much so, perhaps, as in DICKENS's picture of the Wise Men

of the East worshipping in a pink manger, or the Prodigal Son coming home in red rags to a purple father and a sea-green calf, waiting to be roasted :

'HERE is a piece equally stupendous in size and subject, bearing the semblance of having been furiously thrown upon the canvass in the dark, from the disordered pallets of all the painters in the Universe; a sort of maniac's vision, embodied into a rolling chaos, turbulently brewed up out of the warring rudiments of smoke! blood! fire! night! whirlwind! earth! and water; a ruinous huddle of every thing spiritual and material, real and conjectural, within and without the precincts of possible Nature; and of every mingling shape, shade, color, quality, and consistence; the whole congregated mass of discordances tumultuously wheeling, dashing, boiling, and thundering together, in one giddy storm of- NOTHING!' The figures of this landscape are entirely in keeping with it; ambiguous and reserved innuendos of beings, fluctuating somewhere among the shadowy and unsettled nomenclatures of incantation; demon, wizzard, griffin, goblin, demigorgon,' etc.

After a few more examples of 'single criticism' in this kind, we are favored with a 'running commentary' upon the ostracised paintings which adorn the upper tiers, and spaces over the doors: " 'An upward glance of your eye introduces you to those poor creatures in reduced sizes, who are sent to Coventry at the top of the room, and strung along, by way of cornice, close under the ceiling; figures! but what language can adequately report them!— their wooden features, their mortified complexions; their sneaking, disconsolate, condemned looks; their quizzical head-dresses, and paste-board draperies; their brick-dust curtains, increasing by contrast the chalkiness of their cheeks; and that general and inveterate hardness of manner which instantly chases away all idea of the elasticity of the flesh, and the flexibility of cloth or linen. Hard!-adamant is pap to it!' The Crayons afforded striking examples of worse styles, by the help of worse materials;' there were still-born efforts in black-lead pencil, from the hands of academical tyros; wan historical sketches in water-color, by young ladies; imaginary elevations of bridges that will never be built; naked fronts of huge white houses, that sicken all eyes but those of the architect and the owner; and chuckle-headed busts in plaster, of obscure, pudding-faced moderns; likenesses in India-ink, done in this manner' for almost nothing; etc., etc. An exhibition of this sort is certainly proved to be one of the miseries of human life, 'by good witness.' But other miseries are enumerated; and chief among them, the humbugeousness of quack advertisers, and the gullibility of the public; and a medical sample is cited, which would do honor to any 'pill' or 'sarsaparilla' puff, of the present day:

'I SHOULD be the most ungrateful of mankind, were I to delay for a moment to return my heartfelt acknowledgments for the blessings I have derived from your inestimable pill. Before I was so happy as to hear of its miraculous effects, life had long been a burden to me. I was an object no less horrible than piteous to behold, being so entirely covered, or rather crusted, from head to foot, with the most virulent blotches and humors, that I ought rather to have been called an Ulcer than a man. I was at the same time so miserably emaciated, that my bones rattled audibly as I moved, and my head itself seemed to hang to my shoulders by a thread. In short, to such a condition was I reduced, that, on being carried to my own door upon a litter, on my return home after a short absence in the vain search after ease, my wife, who chanced to meet me in the passage, insisted that they had brought me to the wrong house, for that she had never seen me before! The sound of my voice, however, but too cruelly undeceived her; and I was then conveyed to the bed on which I continued to lie, without stirring hand or foot, for more than thirty years. During this awful period matters were constantly and rapidly going on with me from bad to worse; scarcely an hour passed but some new and still more deplorable disease was added to the complicated list of maladies which were devouring me up piece-meal, in a manner; and it was a lucky day when I could say that one or more of my bones had not dropped clean out of the socket! Sleep at one time, I had none, for sixty-nine successive nights, unless I may call by that name a series of swoons, brought on by my agonies, and the weakness consequent upon my reduced condition. About this period, the flesh began to drop in large collops from my back and shoulders; and from one hollow which formed exactly beneath my left pap, my heart was absolutely naked and visible, by which my inquisitive surgeon was gratified, at my expense, with a living display of the whole process of systole and diastole, as I think he called it. In this state of things, my case having been pronounced absolutely hopeless by every physician in the land, my friends began to think it was high time to call your invaluable remedy to my aid: and invaluable indeed it proved to me! No sooner had I begun to use it, than the most surprising alteration came on: while I was swallowing the first pill, I could plainly feel, to my inexpressible astonishment and delight, that a new and perfect growth of healthy flesh was rapidly forming in every part of the skeleton to which I was now wasted down; and before I had taken the third, I had reason to suspect, from certain strange and indescribable sensations, as if of some hard substance pushing or shooting forth in different places, that the numerous cavities left by the bones I had lost, were about to be filled up by a new process of ossification; which, sure enough, was presently found to be vigorously and prosper

ously going on. My appetite, too, very shortly became so dangerously keen, that it was reckoned prudent to refuse me a third fowl at my dinner. But not to trouble you with too many particulars, which to you, indeed, must be mere shadows of a thousand still more extraordinary cases,) Í will simply say, that by persevering in the course for one week more, I felt not only that every symptom of disease had absolutely vanished as if by magic, but that I was suddenly able, (which I had never been in the best days of my youth and strength,) to perform the most athletic feats in leaping, wrestling, boxing, etc., without the slightest sensation of fatigue. To express the full extent of my gratitude to you, my dear Sir, for this almost incredible restoration, is a task which I must give up in despair; suffice it to say, that to Providence (under your pill) I shall ever acknowledge myself indebted for the felicity I now enjoy.' 'P. S. Please send me without delay, by the next coach, six dozen of the largest boxes of your Scorbutic Pills; though, indeed, I have not the smallest apprehension of ever having occasion to use them again."

It would puzzle few of our readers, in town or country, to make a familiar application of this satire upon the prevailing style of quack advertisements.

GOSSIP WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS.-In an admirable paper upon 'The Poetry of the Bible,' written for the KNICKERBOCKER some years since by Rev. WILLIAM T. BRANTLEY, President of the 'College of South Carolina,' there was an incidental allusion to the proofs of the authenticity of the Sacred Word, as contained in the fulfilment of the 'prophecies concerning the nations.' A dilapidated book-stall volume before us, with the title-page gone, and the author's name nowhere to be met with, (facts in themselves noteworthy in this connection,) thus illustrates the position of our valued correspondent: The primitive Christians regarded the Scriptures as their chief and dearest treasure; and often laid down their lives rather than deliver the sacred records to their enemies, who used every art of terror to seize and destroy them. Then, as now, different parties and sects existed, who all appealed to the Scriptures for proof of their several opinions; and these must have been so many checks upon each other, to the general exclusion of mistake and fraud. But aside from this, look at their predictions, in the case of the chosen and peculiar people.' The separation of the Israelites from the rest of mankind, not for their own sakes but for the sake of all, and their preservation amidst their enemies, what a display is it of the divine power! This great scheme of wisdom and goodness was carried on by its omnipotent Author' with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.' 'He sent a man before his people, even JOSEPH, who was sold to be a bond-servant. He increased his people exceedingly, and made them stronger than their enemies. He sent MOSES his servant, and AARON; and these showed his tokens among them, and wonders in the land of Ham. He sent darkness, and it was dark, and turned their waters into blood. Their land brought forth frogs, yea, even in their king's chambers. He gave them hail-stones for rain, and flames of fire in their land. He spake the word, and locusts came innumerable, and devoured the fruit of their ground. He smote all the first-born in their land, even the chief of all their strength. He brought forth his people from among them. He spread out a cloud to be a covering, and fire to give them light in the night season. He rebuked the Red Sea also, and it was dried up so he led them through the deep as through a wilderness. At their desire he brought quails, and filled them with the bread of heaven. He opened the rock of stone, so that rivers ran in dry places. Yet within a while they forgot his works, and tempted GOD in the desert. Then the earth opened and swallowed up DATHAN, and covered the congregation of ABIRAM. The plague also was great among them. Then, being chastised, they turned to their God. He led them over Jordan: the waters divided to let them pass. He discomfited their enemies. At His word the sun abode in the midst of Heaven; and the moon stood still, and hasted not to go down for a whole day; so He gave the kingdoms of Canaan to be an heritage unto his people; that all the nations of the world might know that the hand of the LORD is mighty, and that they might fear the LORD continually.' Such was the result of a scheme determined by divine goodness, planned by divine wisdom, foretold by divine knowledge, accomplished by divine power. The things of the earth were changed into things of the water, and the thing that did swim went upon the ground. The fire had power in the water contrary to his own virtue, and the water forgat his own kind to quench. Thus the elements were changed among themselves by a kind of harmony, as when one tune is changed upon an instrument of music, and the melody still remaineth.' How graphic also is the description of the 'gift of tongues,' conferred upon the Apostles! 'And they were all amazed, and marvelled, saying one to another: 'Behold, are not all these which speak, Galileans? And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born? Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, the dwellers VOL. XXII. 11