excels in depicting a certain kind of sentiment, and in the vulgar, which is often too the true, pathetic.

Steuben has painted many scores of Napoleons; and his picture of Napoleon this year brings numbers of admiring people round it. The emperor is seated on a sofa, reading dispatches; and the little King of Rome, in a white muslin frock, with his hair beautifully curled, slumbers on his papa's knee. What a contrast! The conqueror of the world, the stern warrior, the great giver of laws and ruler of nations, he dare not move because the little baby is asleep; and he would not disturb him for all the kingdoms he knows so well how to conquer. This is not art, if you please; but it is pleasant to see fat, good-natured mothers and grandmothers clustered round this picture, and looking at it with solemn eyes. The same painter has an Esmeralda dancing and frisking in her night-gown, and playing the tambourine to her goat, capering likewise. This picture is so delightfully bad, the little gipsy has such a killing ogle, that all the world ad

mires it. M. Steuben should send it to London, where it would be sure of a gigantic success.

M. Grenier has a piece much looked at, in the bourgeois line. Some rogues of gipsies, or mountebanks, have kidnapped a fine fat child, and are stripping it of its pretty clothes; and poor baby is crying; and the gipsy-woman holding up her finger, and threatening; and the he-mountebank is lying on a bank, smoking his pipe,-the callous monster! Preciously they will illtreat that dear little darling, if justice do not overtake them,-if, ay, if. But, thank Heaven! there in the corner come the police, and they will have that pipe-smoking scoundrel off to the galleys before five minutes are over.

1056. A picture of the galleys. Two galley-slaves are before you, and the piece is called, " A Crime and a Fault." The poor "Fault" is sitting on a stone, looking very repentant and unhappy indeed. The great "Crime" stands grinning you in the face, smoking his pipe. The ruffian! That pipe seems to be a great mark of callosity in ruffians. I heard one man whisper to another, as they were

looking at these galley-slaves," They are portraits," and very much affected his companion seemed by the information.

Of a similar virtuous interest is 705, by M. Finart. "A Family of African Colonists carried off by Abdel-Kader." There is the poor male colonist without a single thing on but a rope round his wrists. His silver skin is dabbled with his golden blood, and he looks up to heaven as the Arabs are poking him on with the tips of their horrid spears. Behind him come his flocks and herds, and other members of his family. In front, principal figure, is his angelic wife, in her night-gown, and in the arms of an odious blackamoor on horseback. Poor thing-poor thing! she is kicking, and struggling, and resisting as hard as she possibly can. 485. "The Two Friends." Debay.

"Deux jeunes femmes se donnent le gage le plus sacré d'une amitié sincère, dans un acte de dévoûment et de reconnaissance.

"L'une d'elles, faible, exténuée d'efforts inutilement tentés pour allaiter, découvre son sein tari, cause du dépérissement de son enfant. Sa douleur est comprise par son amie, à qui la santé permet d'ajouter au bonheur de nourrir son propre enfant, celui de rappeler à la vie le fils mourant de sa compagne."

M. Debay's pictures are not bad, as most of the others here mentioned as appertaining to the bourgeois class; but, good or bad, I can't but own that I like to see these honest, hearty representations, which work upon good simple feeling in a good downright way; and if not works of art, are certainly works that can do a great deal of good, and make honest people happy. Who is the man that despises melodramas? I swear that T. P. Cooke is a benefactor to mankind. Away with him who has no stomach for such kind of entertainments, where vice is always punished, where virtue always meets its reward; where Mrs. James Vining is always sure to be made comfortable somewhere at the end of the third act; and if O. Smith is lying in agonies of death, in red breeches, on the front of the stage, or has just gone off in a flash of fire down one of the traps, I know it is only make

believe on his part, and believe him to be a good, kind-hearted fellow, that would not do harm to mortal! So much for pictures of the serious melo-dramatic sort.

M. Biard, whose picture of the "Slave-trade" made so much noise in London last year-and indeed it is as fine as Hogarth,-has this year many comic pieces, and a series representing the present majesty of France when Duke of Orleans, undergoing various perils by land and by water. There is much good in these pieces; but I mean no disrespect in saying I like the comic ones best. There is one entitled "Une Distraction." A National Guard is amusing himself by catching flies. You can't fail to laugh when you see it. There is "Le Gros Péché," and the biggest of all sins, no less than a drum-major confessing. You can't see the monster's face, which the painter has wisely hidden behind the curtain, as beyond the reach of art; but you see the priest's, and, murder! what a sin it must be that the big tambour has just imparted to him! All the French critics sneer at Biard, as they do at Paul de Kock, for not being artistical enough; but I do not think these gentlemen need mind the sneer: they have the millions with them, as Feargus O'Connor says, and they are good judges, after all.

A great comfort it is to think that there is a reasonable prospect that, for the future, very few more battlepieces will be painted. They have used up all the victories, and Versailles is almost full. So this year, much to my happiness, only a few yards of warlike canvass are exhibited in place of the furlongs which one was called upon to examine in former exhibitions. One retreat from Moscow is there, and one storming of El Gibbet, or El Arish, or some such place, in Africa. In the latter picture, you see a thousand fellows, in loose red pantaloons, rushing up a

hill with base heathen Turks on the top, who are firing off guns, carabines, and other pieces of ordnance, at them. All this is very well painted by Monsieur Bollangé, and the rush of red breeches has a queer and pleasing appearance. In the Russian piece, you have frozen men and cattle; mothers embracing their offspring; grenadiers scowling at the

enemy, and especially one fellow standing on a bank with his bayonet placed in the attitude for receiving the charge, and actually charged by a whole regiment of Cossacks,— a complete pulk, my dear madam, coming on in three lines, with their lances pointed against this undaunted warrior of France. I believe Monsieur Thiers sat for the portrait, or else the editor of the Courrier Français,-the two men in this belligerent nation who are the bellige rentest. A propos of Thiers; the Nouvelles à la Main have a good story of this little sham Napoleon. When the second son of the Duke of Orleans was born (I forget his royal highness's title), news was brought to Monsieur Thiers. He was told the princess was well, and asked the courier who brought the news, "Comment se portait le Roi de Rome?" It may be said, in confidence, that there is not a single word of truth in the story. But what of that? Are not sham stories as good as real ones? Ask M. Leullier; who, in spite of all that has been said and written upon a certain seafight, has actually this year come forward with his

"1311-Héroïsme de l'Equipage du Vaisseau le Vengeur, 4 Juin, 1794.

"Après avoir soutenu longtemps un combat acharné contre trois vaisseaux Anglais, le vaisseau le Vengeur avait perdu la moitié de son équipage, le reste était blessé pour la plupart: le second capitaine avait été coupé en deux par un boulet; le vaisseau était rasé par le feu de l'ennemi, sa mature abattue, ses fiancs criblés par les boulets étaient ouverts de toutes parts; sa cale se remplissait à vue d'ail; il s'enfonçait dans la mer. Les marins qui restent sur son bord servent la batterie basse jusqu'à ce qu'elle se trouve au niveau de la mer; quand elle va disparaître, ils s'élancent dans la se. conde, où ils répètent la même manœuvre; celle-ci engloutie, ils montent sur le pont. Un tronçon de màt d'artimon restait encore debout; leurs pavillons en lambeaux y sont cloués ; puis, réunissant instinctivement leurs volontés en une seule pensée, ils veulent périr avec le navire qui leur a été confié. Tous, com. battants, blessés, mourants se raniment: un cri immense s'élève, répété sur toutes les parties du tillac: Vive la Republique ! Vive la France.. Le Vengeur coule..les cris continuent; tous les bras sont dressés au ciel, et ces braves, préférant la mort à la captivité, emportent tri

omphalement leur pavillon dans ce glorieux tombeau."-France Maritime.

I think Mr. Thomas Carlyle is in the occasional habit of calling lies wind-bags. This wind-bag, one would have thought, exploded last year; but no such thing. You can't sink it, do what you will; it always comes bouncing up to the surface again, where it swims and bobs about gaily for the admiration of all. This lie the Frenchman will believe; all the papers talk gravely about the affair of the Vengeur, as if an established fact and I heard the matter disposed of by some artists the other day in a very satisfactory manner. One has always the gratification, in all French societies where the matter is discussed, of telling the real story (or if the subject be not discussed, of bringing the conversation round to it, and then telling the real story); one has always this gratification, and a great, wicked, delightful one it is, -you make the whole company uncomfortable at once; you narrate the history in a calm, good-humoured, dispassionate tone; and as you proceed, you see the different personages of the audience looking uneasily at one another, and bursting out occasionally with a "Mais cependant;" but you continue your tale with perfect suavity of manner, and have the satisfaction of knowing that you have stuck a dagger into the heart of every single person using it.

Telling, I say, this story to some artists who were examining M. Leullier's picture, and I trust that many scores of persons besides were listening to the conversation, one of them replied to my assertion, that Captain Renaudin's letters were extant, and that the whole affair was a humbug, in the following way.

"Sir," said he, "the sinking of the Vengeur is an established fact of history. It is completely proved by the documents of the time; and as for the letters of Captain Renaudin of which you speak, have we not had an example the other day of some pretended letters of Louis Philippe's which were published in a newspaper here? And what, sir, were those letters? Forgeries!"

Q. E. D. Every body said sans

culotte was right; and I have no doubt, that if all the Vengeur's crew could rise from the dead, and that English cox-or boat-swain, who was last on board the ship, of which he and his comrades had possession, and had to swim for his life, could come forward, and swear to the real story, I make no doubt that the Frenchmen would not believe it. Only one I know, my friend Julius, who, ever since the tale has been told to him, has been crying it into all ears and in all societies, and vows he is perfectly hoarse with telling it.

As for M. Leullier's picture, there is really a great deal of good in it. Fellows embracing each other, and holding up hands and eyes to heaven; and in the distance an English ship, with the crew in red coats, firing away on the doomed vessel. Possibly, they are only marines whom we see; but as I once beheld several English naval officers in a play habited in top-boots, perhaps the legend in France may be, that the navy, like the army, with us, is caparisoned in scarlet. A good subject for another historical picture would be Cambronne, saying, "La Garde meurt mais ne se rend pas." I have bought a couple of engravings of the Vengeur and Cambronne, and shall be glad to make a little historical collection of facts similarly authenticated.

Accursed, I say, be all uniform coats of blue or of red; all ye epaulets and sabertashes; all ye guns, shrapnels, and musketoons; all ye silken banners embroidered with bloody reminiscences of successful fights: down-down to the bottomless pit with you all, and let honest men live and love each other without you! What business have I, forsooth, to plume myself because the Duke of Wellington beat the French in Spain and elsewhere; and kindle as I read the tale, and fancy myself of a heroic stock, because my uncle Tom was at the battle of Waterloo, and because we beat Napoleon there? Who are we, in the name of Beelzebub? Did we ever fight in our lives? Have we the slightest inclination for fighting and murdering one another? Why are we to go on hating one another

from generation to generation, swell→ ing up our little bosoms with absurd national conceit, strutting and crowing over our neighbours, and longing to be at fistycuffs with them again? As Aristotle remarks, in war there are always two parties; and though it often happens that both declare themselves to be victorious, it still is generally the case that one party beats and the other is beaten. The con queror is thus filled with national pride, and the conquered with national hatred and a desire to do better next time. If he has his revenge and beats his opponent as desired, these agreeable feelings are reversed, and so Pride and Hatred continue in sæcula sæculorum, and ribands and orders are given away, and great men rise and flourish. "Remember you are Britons!" cries our general; "there is the enemy, and d- 'em, give 'em the bayonet!" Hurrah! helter skelter, load and fire, cut and thrust, down they go! "Soldats! dans ce moment terrible la France vous regarde! Vive l'Empereur!" shouts Jacques Bonhomme, and his sword is through your ribs in a twinkling. "Children!" roars Feldmarechal Sauerkraut, “men of Hohenzollernsigmaringen! remember the eyes of Vaterland are upon you!" and murder again is the consequence. Tomahee-tereboo leads on the Ashantees with the very same war-cry, and they eat all their prisoners with true patriotic cannibalism.

Thus the great truth is handed down from father to son, that

and therefore put down here in a new fashion). Why do you laugh. forsooth? Why do you not laugh If donkeys' ears are a matter of laughter, surely we may laugh at them when growing on our skulls.

Own

Take a couple of instances from "actual life," as the fashionable novel-puffers say.

A little, fat, silly woman, who in no country but this would ever have pretensions to beauty, has lately set up a circulating library in our street. She tends the five-franc editions of the English novels, as well as the romances of her own country, and I have had several of the former works of fiction from her store: Bulwer's Night and Morning, very pleasant, kind-hearted reading; Peter Priggins, an astonishing work of slang, that ought to be translated if but to give Europe an idea of what a gay young gentleman in England sometimes is; and other novels-never mind what. But to revert to the fat woman.

She sits all day ogling and simpering behind her little counter; and from the slow, prim, precise way in which she lets her silly sentences slip through her mouth, you see at once that she is quite satisfied with them, and expects that every customer should give her an opportunity of uttering a few of them for his benefit. Going there for a book, I always find myself entangled in a quarter of an hour's conversation.

This is carried on in not very bad French on my part; at least Ï find that when I say something genteel to the library - woman, she is not at a loss to understand me, and we have passed already many minutes in this kind of intercourse. Two days since, returning Night and Morning to the library-lady and demanding the romance of Peter Priggins, she offered me instead Ida, par M. le Vicomte Darlincourt, which I refused, having already experienced some of his lordship's works; next she produced Stella, Valida, Eloa, by various French ladies of literary celebrity; but again I declined, declaring respectfully that however agreeable the society of ladies might be, I found thein mauka a little insinid The fact

positions of the French romanceresses

pall on the palate.*

"Madame," says I, to cut the matter short, "je ne demande qu'un roman Anglais, Peter Priggins: l'avez vous? oui ou non ?"

"Ah!" says the library-woman, "Monsieur ne comprend pas nôtre langue, c'est dommage."

Now one might, at first sight, fancy the above speech an epigram, and not a bad one, on an Englishman's blundering French grammar and pronunciation; but those who know the library-lady must be aware that she never was guilty of such a thing in her life. It was simply a French ball, resulting from the lady's dulness, and by no means a sarcasm. She uttered the words with a great air of superiority and a prim toss of the head, as much as to say, "How much cleverer I am than you, you silly foreigner! and what a fine thing it is in me to know the finest language in the world!" In this way I have heard donkeys of our two countries address foreigners in broken English or French, as if people who could not understand a language when properly spoken could comprehend it when spoken ill. Why the deuce do people give themselves these impertinent, stupid airs of superiority, and pique themselves upon the great cleverness of speaking their own language?

Take another instance of this same egregious national conceit. At the English pastry-cook's-(you can't readily find a prettier or more graceful woman than Madame Colombin, nor better plum-cake than she sells) - at Madame Colombin's, yesterday, a huge Briton, with sandy whiskers and a double chin, was swallowing patties and cherry-brandy, and all the while making remarks to a friend similarly employed. They were talking about English and French ships.

"Hang me, Higgins," says Sandywhiskers, "if I'd ever go into one of their cursed French ships! I should be afraid of sinking at the very first puff of wind!"

What Higgins replied does not matter. But think what a number

of Sandy-whiskerses there are in our nation,-fellows who are proud of this stupid mistrust,-who think it a mark of national spirit to despise French skill, bravery, cookery, seamanship, and what not. Swallow your beef and porter, you great, fat-paunched man; enjoy your language and your country, as you have been bred to do; but don't fancy yourself, on account of these inheritances of yours, superior to other people of other ways and language. You have luck, perhaps, if you will, in having such a diet and dwelling-place, but no merit. And with this little discursive essay upon national prejudices, let us come back to the pictures, and finish our walk through the gallery.

*

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*

In that agreeable branch of the art for which we have I believe no name, but which the French call genre, there are at Paris several eminent professors; and as upon the French stage the costume-pieces are far better produced than with us, so also are French costume - pictures much more accurately and characteristically handled than are such subjects in our own country. You do not see Cimabue and Giotto in the costume of Francis the First, as they appeared (depicted by Mr. Simpson, I think) in the Royal Academy Exhibition of last year, but the artists go to some trouble for collecting their antiquarian stuff, and paint it pretty scrupulously.

M. Jacquard has some pretty small pictures de genre; a very good one, indeed, of fat "Monks granting Absolution from Fasting;" of which the details are finely and accurately painted, a task more easy for a French artist than an English one, for the former's studio (as may be seen by a picture in this exhibition) is generally a magnificent curiosity-shop; and for old carvings, screens, crockery, armours, draperies, &c., the painter here has but to look to his own walls, and copy away at his ease. Accordingly Jacquard's monks, especially all the properties of the picture, are admirable.

M. Baron has "The Youth of