that Messrs. W. & S. are shortly to receive Winkelmann's exquisite color-print of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. This we owe to the liberality of an English connoisseur, Mr. Harford, of Blaise Castle. It has been executed, under the directions

of Lewis Grüner, at Berlin; and in a surface of three feet five inches by one foot six and a half inches faithfully represents the expanse of beautiful imagery which overarches the mighty shapes of the "Last Judgment."

THE

We ought to have in New York an Academy of the Arts, where the works of American genius could be worthily displayed, and so concentrated and honored as to vindicate their claim on the national regard, and exert their just influence on the national mind.

The small and scattered Exhibitions which have so multiplied of late years, only indicate the real wealth which we possess.

Look, for instance, at the collection now offered to the public in the Athenæum at Boston.

In the department of Sculpture, we have three new works which would be a welcome addition to any Gallery of Europe. At the door of the Reading Room, where the trig and well-bred citizens of the western Athens seek out their "something new," in a decorous quiet, unknown to their ancient prototypes, sits Mr. William W. Story's statue of his celebrated father. With hand extended, and the well-known smiling face bent slightly forward, the Judge is there, immortal in marble, as spotless as the ermine of his just and generous nature. There are no Rhadamantine terrors on his brow, as there were none in his heart; but the filial piety of the sculptor has perpetuated those traits of his father's character which propitiated for him the esteem of his contemporaries, and will attract to him the admiration of posterity. The artist was fortunate in the station of his subject. It is no longer true, as in the days of Fitz-Herbert, that "formalitie est la plus chief chose de nostre ley" but the Justices of the Supreme Court still sit a little apart from the mob of men, in the solemnity of the judicial gown, and Mr. Story has been able to invest his subject with the beauty of drapery without violating the truth of history. This drapery he has managed with great skill; his manipulation of the marble is decidedly fine, and he has produced a

AT BOSTON.

statue which will be always valuable, not only as a historical monument of an illustrious American, but as a thoughtful and impressive work of art. To the Gallery, which was already the most useful collection of sculpture in America, the liberality of a young Bostonian has contributed two admirable productions of the sculptor of the Orpheus. Mr. Crawford's Beethoven has already been noticed in our pages. It gains upon the spectator with every visit. The simple grandeur of the conception loses nothing even by a comparison with the magnificent antique of Sophocles, a fine copy of which adorns the same room. The metallic material, so appropriate to the subject, contributes a rich effect of light and shade to the work, and Mr. Crawford has managed the modern costume with surprising skill. In his conception of the composer's character, too, we think Mr. Crawford has been very happy. Beethoven has always been treated as a kind of dyspeptic Titan; but there is a gleam of grace and tenderness in the face of Mr. Crawford's bronze, a vague suggestion of Mozart, which does no more than justice to the author of the Adelaide, and of those sunny strains which so constantly break in upon us through the cloud and storm of the great symphonies.

In his group of Hebe and Ganymede, Mr. Crawford has treated, very pleasantly, one of these old themes of the Greek mythology, which, in the hands of genius, never will grow old. As subjects for the sculptor, these antique imaginations possess, indeed, a peculiar fitness. All faith and passion have passed away from them-their beautiful forms alone remain, and form is the sculptor's domain. They shine, like stars,

"Afar from the sphere of our sorrow;"

cool, and apart hey invite the passionless marble. In Mr. Crawford's group, the reluctant beauty, with drooping eyes, and sorrowful face, surrenders the insignia of

tical economy, furnish the varied range of subjects. Mr. SELLAR, late of Oriel, contributes a paper of remarkable excellence, upon Lucretius and the Poetic Characteristics of his Age, conceived in the highest spirit of philosophical criticism, and written in a style admirable for its clearness, strength, and dignity. Those who talk so glibly of the "verbal niceties of Oxford learning," will do well to read this paper. It is as full of life, and thought, and present interest, as the classical criticisms of Landor. The thoughtful reader will find no little instruction in the analogies constantly suggested between the age of Lucretius, in its relation to poetry, and our own. Lucretius was, indeed, a stronger Wordsworth fallen upon less fortunate days, and the poetic hopes that perished for Rome with his stern suicide, revive for us in the light of a more religious science and a larger destiny.

The brilliant speculations of the Essay on the Plurality of Worlds, with the honest but ill-natured and inadequate replications of Sir David Brewster, are discussed with spirit, candor, and great good sense, by Mr. SMITH of Baliol. Mr. F. T. PALGRAVE (the son of Sir Francis, and known in the literary world as the gentleman who exposed the fraudulent character of those pretended "Letters of Shelley," by which all the leading "Police of Letters" were so egregiously deceived a few years since,) appears as the author of a well-considered but not very remarkable paper on Alfred de Musset. Mr. COWELL gives us an interesting sketch of Persian literature, which ought to have been entitled a Sketch of the Mystical Poetry of Persia. The most important question of medical jurisprudence, that of the true nature and relations of insanity, is treated by Mr. THOMSON, who sets forth, very clearly, the pressing need of a revised and well-established doctrine of criminal responsibility. Hegel's Philosophy of Right forms the subject of an old-fashioned analytical article. The longest paper in the book, is a review of the actual state of the history and prospect of Oxford studies; and the shortest is an article containing suggestions "on the best means of teaching English history." This we owe to Mr. J. A. FROUDE, the younger brother of the renowned Puseyite, and himself well known as the author of a book, equally mournful and

beautiful-the "Nemesis of Faith"-a book likely to be remembered, not for its intrinsic merits alone, but for the distinguished honor paid to it by the Oxford authorities, who ordered it to be solemnly burned in one of the cloisters. Mr. Froude belongs to the Pre-Raphaelites of literature, and would send the student of English history to the original documents-to that transcript of the past, which is to be found in the "Statutes at Large." He proposes that the statutes "should be taken as a text-book, and minutely illustrated by the teachers, just as the text-books of ancient history are now illustrated." Mr. FROUDE believes that no better method of teaching can be found than that now practiced at Oxford; and he would encourage reform only in the direction of new and enlarged materials. We think he is right, and we are sure that nothing can be more admirable or feasible than his suggestions in regard to the statutes. Like Mr. Kingsley, of whom, indeed, he reminds us, by the ardor and movement of his fascinating style, Mr. FROUDE has a tendency to exaggerated statement, and truculent criticism; but this paper of his, alone, would suffice to give character to the publication in which it appears.

-The Duke of BUCKINGHAM AND CHANDOS, after spending a noble estate in the acquisition of an ignoble reputation, has, of late years, been trying to make himself useful by drawing up the Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George III., from family documents in his possession. He seems disposed to play the part of Sheffield, after filling that of Villiers. The third and fourth volumes, which complete the Memoirs, are not less valuable than the first. Strange and instructive is the light they shed upon the secrets of princes and of rulers. The petty piety and narrow-minded morality of King George, who was prepared to plunge Ireland and England into civil war rather than grant common justice to his Catholic subjects; the tergiversations of Mr. Pitt, who was willing to sacrifice political principles of the highest importance, in order to retain political power; the small and stupid tyranny of routine, which kept Sir Arthur Wellesley from being sent to Spain for three years after it was conceded that he, and he alone, ought to go; the animosity with which the English government regarded

republican France, and the bad faith to which they were willing to stoop in dealing with her rulers-all are here brought to the day. A peculiar interest attaches just now to the secret history of the Walcheren and Peninsular campaigns. The extreme publicity given to the affairs of the Crimean expedition has induced what we must regard as a much exaggerated popular estimate of the relative shortcomings and mistakes of that enterprise. This is the age of newspapers, and we forget that editors and correspondents are quite as likely to make blunders in their observations and their inferences, as military offiters to go wrong in their management. It is even now beginning to be admitted that gross injustice has been done to Lord Raglan, and we think that any thoughtful reader, who will take the pains to look over the Duke of Buckingham's accounts of the Dutch and the Portuguese expeditions, will be convinced that the mishaps of the Crimea are by no means equal to the disasters which routine and imbecility have inflicted upon England in the past. While Wellesley was contending for the fruits of his victory of Talavera, his Spanish alles left him unprovided and unsupported, and his own medical staff and commisariat were junketing at Lisbon! For one whole month his cavalry received only three deliveries of grain, and his infantry only ten days' bread. The 14th Light Division were actually dismounted by famine. The expedition to Walcheren was even more shamefully treated. Lord Chatham, who was no general, received no definite instructions, and loitered at Batz, giving no sign of his presence "but the green turtles that sprawled on their backs in his garden." He never appeared before 2 P. M., and lived in luxury, while his men were “bivouacking, without tents, in the water." Water to drink: they had none but what could be brought from England! The sick-list of the army of 30,000 men, rose, in a few weeks, to 5,000! The army expressed their opinion of their commander by pasquinades like the following:

Q. When sent on Flushing's shores new wreaths to reap,

What didst thou do, illustrious Chatham?
A.-Sleep!
Q-To men fatigued with war, repose is

It is a fact, curiously illustrative of the then prevailing character of British generals, that Lord Grenville should speak of Wellesley as "a man of considerable talents, though very rash!”

-It was on a very sultry day that we undertook to examine the Memoirs of J. J. Gurney, in two volumes, 8vo., by J. B. BRAITHWAITE, and we attribute it rather to the state of the weather than to any depravity inherent in ourselves, that we fell into the sin of Eutychus. Yet we have a suspicion that these Memoirs of the blameless and benevolent banker are a little tedious. "Mr. Gurney," says his biographer, "never missed an opportunity;" he used to read the Bible aloud in stage coaches, wrote very long letters in a very clear hand, and "practiced the art of sketching from nature." He was a warm friend to the slave, but held forgers in such natural abhorrence that he writes to Sir J. Mackintosh, "if the law would but help me to put such offenders on the tread-wheel for a couple of years, I should feel the highest satisfaction in availing myself of its provisions!" In short, he was a worthy but rather weak man, who preached indifferent discourses, and gave capital dinners, and was unlucky enough to be the cynosure of a circle of rather foolish people, who thought it a wonderful thing that Mr. Gurney, on a journey, "should seem to enjoy his wash and his breakfast as much as any of themselves!" He was as careful in looking after his conscience as his cash-account, and always imagined himself to be receiving a call to some stupendous duty. Upon his sincerity and honesty, no slur, we believe, was ever cast. But it suggests some reflections in regard to the efficiency of such a training as he gave his family, when we find his representatives in the house of Overend, Gurney & Co., insisting one week that Berlioz shall not perform his symphony of "Childe Harold" at Exeter Hall, unless the name be changed to "Harold, in Italy;" and the next week appearing in the courts as participators in the transactions by which the house of Strahan, Paul & Co. had been defrauding their clients.

-Mr. WRIGHTSON'S History of Modern Italy, from the first French Revolution to the year 1850, is one of Bentley's handsome publications, and is designed to fill a place not before occupied in English literature.

It is a work of less extensive pretensions than Mariotti's, and of a wider range than Farini's Stato Romano, of which Mr. Gladstone is now giving us so excellent a version. Mr. Wrightson's object is to give a clear and succinct outline of the revolutionary movements in the different Italian States, with such observations upon the morale and the management of Italian affairs as may help to put an intelligent Englishman or American in a position to form a just and impartial judgment on men and things in the peninsula. Such a book has been very much needed-particularly in America. Madame d'Ossoli had prepared her views of modern Italian history, but they were swallowed up, with their gifted and noble author, by the angry sea. Passages of Mme. d'Ossoli's work were communicated by the writer, long before her departure from that Italy which had become her second home; and, although we are still unable to accept her estimate of the abilities and the merits of many of the recent revolutionary leaders, we are sure that, in her work, she had done braver and better justice to the character and the capacity of the Italian people than they have received from any other writer in England or America. Mr. Wrightson's sketch-for such it is-is not to be compared, either in depth of thought, or in brilliancy of style, with the pages so sadly lost; but he has shown no ordinary skill in constructing a clear and connected narrative of the important events which have brought Italy to her present state of confusion, discontent, and feverish impatience. Mr. Wrightson is an English constitutionalist; but, though he does not hesitate to avow his distrust and dislike of the Maz

zini republicans, he is by no means wanting in candor, and we are disposed to agree with him in his conviction, that the conspirators" and theoretic democrats of Italy have played into the hands of the despots, foreign and domestic, who oppress that magnificent country. At the present moment, when every steamer brings fresh rumors from the peninsula, we should be glad to see a well-edited republication of Mr. Wrightson's book in America.

--Handsome, high-born, and wealthy, Mr. AUBREY DE VERE is as happy in his nature as in his name and in his circumstances. All students of the higher order of English poetry know him as the most accomplished, imaginative, and thoughtful of the scholars of Wordsworth. And yet it would be wrong to class among purely philosophic poets a man of a genius so warm and lyrical. Mr. De Vere is a close student, and a genial interpreter of nature; he is a religious and noble gentleman, and, as a master of the melodies and harmonies of verse, not far beneath the highest. He is not one of those who serve the idols of the passing hour, and he has achieved no noisy and frivolous success. It will be long before the Waldenses shall reach, like Mr. R. Montgomery's "Satan,” a twenty-eighth edition! But there must be not a few among our readers who will be glad to know that Mr. De Vere has issued a new volume of poems, chiefly of a lyrical and occasional character. We find, in this volume, a magnificent poem, entitled the Tear of Sorrow," which, at the time of its first publication, in Blackwood's Magazine, led many thoughtful readers into the belief that "Old Ebony" must have made the "amende honorable" to Alfred Tennyson.

It is a pleasant feature in the panorama of Broadway, to note the groups which gather around the windows of the great picture dealers. The windows and the walls of Messrs Williams & Stevens, and of Goupil & Co., have taken the place of the old free exhibitions of the Art-Union. These are, in some sense, national institutions, for the good which there is silently dispensed is carried away into many homes, and passes quietly into the constitution of American life.

If the passenger who pauses to muse upon the gatherings around the front of one of these establishments will take the trouble to go in, he will find some reason to question the frequent assertion of our extreme national indifference to art. For he will find them filled not merely with prints, but with fine prints, with whatever is new and excellent in all departments of the engraver's art.

At the Messrs. Williams's we found the hottest morning of August slip unperceived

away, as we turned over the portfolios of fresh English prints. Prominent and most numerous, of course, were the contributions of Landseer. "There are" to whom Landseer is tedious and who weary of his beasts. But we are not of the number. A painter, of a facility at once so firm and so fine, of tastes so manly, and of such genuine feeling, can do nothing that is not worthy attention and that does not reward admiration.

He paints in animals what those who love animals find in them, and he will retain his hold on the interests of mankind as long as dogs shall be true and horses noble. Happy is the man who can afford to be indifferent to the affection of a terrier! He may scorn, alike, Landseer and Rosa Bonheur .The rest of us will continue to rejoice that the beasts have found their painters. We may wish, however, that Landseer's conscious power would not lead him to handle subjects necessarily distressing or unpleasant. To pictures of strife and suffering we have a rooted objection. There is enough of these in ordinary life. And so that famous print of "War," to the admirable fidelity of whose terrible details Mr. Kinglake bore witness, in his account of his first Crimean battle-field, has less of attraction for us than of pain. The same was true of the powerful painting in the Vernon Gallery, in which a baited stag stands fiercely and desperately at bay. Equally painful in conception, but in the details less trying, are two new and magnificent works of Sir Edwin, which have just reached our shores. "Night" and "Morning" depict a short and savage history. The engravings are unusually large, and in execution among the finest which have come from the band of Thomas Landseer. In the "Night" we see two gigantic stags, with antlers hopelessly interlocked, straining out their last remains of strength in the death-struggle. They fight upon the rugged, rocky shores of a Scottish lake. The deep mists of midnight are shaken in the sky, before a stormy wind which lashes the lake below into fury, and through the rifts of cloud and vapor lets in the fitful gleams of the moon to touch, with sharp and sudden light, now the crests of the waves, and now the antlers of the combatants.

"Morning" shows us a tranquil change.

To the lake and the landscape has come the peace of morn; to the hot and angry foes the peace of death. The mists roll up the distant mountain-sides, the day broadens over the waters. Stiff and stark lie the giant shapes of the stags, less life now in their gaunt bulk than in the scanty herbage about them. A curious fox, the moralist of the scene, has stolen up from his covert, and gazes, with all the self-satisfaction natural to a cunning gentleman in a whole skin, upon the smitten heroes. High over the lake, a vulture, with swift and steady wing, sweeps onward to the Highland Aceldama.

What lover of pictures does not know Landseer's "Monarch of the Glen?" In a new and larger composition, the artist has brought this king of stags again before us; but this time he comes royally attended, no longer, in lonely grandeur, canopied with mists, but erect among his lieges, he threads the dread defiles of his mountain dominion. Landseer has been a faithful student of the Highland landscape, and, in this picture, one knows not which most to admire, the vast, uncertain vistas of the distance, or the bare and rocky masses of the foreground.

There is much, too, that is fine, in Landseer's large picture of "Wellington revisiting Waterloo, in company with his daughter-in-law, the Marchioness of Douro." This was painted for the nation, and has been admirably engraved. The Duke and his daughter-in-law, capitally mounted, and upon well-contrasted steeds, occupy the middle of the picture. In the foreground, on the left, we have a group of Belgian peasants gathered around what we take to be the materials of the ducal luncheon. They are chatting with each other, and with a German bursch whose gaiety and huge meerschaum proclaim the pilgrim from Heidelberg or Bonn. The distance to the right reveals the ungainly mound of the slain, topped by that more ungainly Belgian lion, which the French soldiery wanted to knock to pieces on their march to Antwerp in 1831. A little girl, armed with the eternal collection of "Donze Vues de Waterloo," and the basket full of crosses, eagles, buckles, and buttons, presses her wares upon the hero's attention. Sic transit gloria mundi! the hero of Waterloo, in his own lifetime, is