making a total of above forty-eight and a-half million franes, laid out by the king, during his reign, on national works, and the whole of which sum was drawn from his civil list. We need not expatiate on the immense impulse that such an expenditure as the above must have given to the fine arts; and we cannot but be struck with the ingratitude which the French people manifested when they upbraided their dethroned monarch with his conduct in this respect. "They seem," said the king, "to be desirous to make me regret having spent so much money on ornamenting buildings and parks which have reverted to themselves; but whatever they may do, they will never cause me to repent the good that I have done them." Whaver were the faults of the deceased monarch, let his good deeds and good qualities have their due place in the account from which posterity is to strike the balance of his char

acter,

Offer of a Baronetcy to Southey.--In 1835, Sir ROBERT PEEL wrote to SOUTHEY, informing him that he had advised the king to "adorn the distinction of the baronetage with a name the most eminent in literature, and which had claims to respect and honor which literature alone could never confer"that of SOUTHEY himself. He accompanied this with a private letter, begging to know if there was any way in which the possession of power would enable him to be of service to Mr. SOUTHEY. The latter replied, in a letter marked by the utmost propriety, declining the baronetcy, as he had not the means of supporting it, and asking for an increase of his pension, which was then £200. Sir Robert soon after

added to this a new pension of £300, on a public principle, "the recognition of literary and scientific eminence as a public claim."

Delaroche's Napoleon.-Delaroche's great picture of "Napoleon crossing the Alps," has reached London, where it is on exhibition. It is described as being wonderfully exact in copying nature, but as lacking elevation of purpose and the expression of sentiment. An officer in a French costume, mounted on a mule, is conducted by a rough peasant through a dangerous pass, whose traces are scarcely discernible through the deep-lying snow-and his aid-decamp is just visible in a ravine of the towering Alps. These facts, the Athenæum says, are rendered with a fidelity that has not omitted the plait of a drapery, the shaggy texture of the four-footed animal, nor a detail of the harness on his back. The drifting and the imbedded snow, the pendent iciele which a solitary sun-ray in a transient moment has made-all are given with the utmost truth. But the lofty and daring genius that led the humble Lieutenant of Ajaccio to be the ruler and arbiter of the destinies of the largest part of Europe, will be sought in vain in the countenance painted by M. Delaroche.

In Hindostan neither the English language nor the Roman letters make any progress. Among the native population newspapers are printed in five or six different alphabets, and in still greater variety of languages.-Dr. Pickering.

Grand Exhibition in Paris.-Preparations are in active progress for the grand exhibition of French pictures and sculpture at the Palais National, which is to commence on the 15th of December. The official notification which has been issued directs artists to send in their works from the 2d to the 15th of November. The exhibitors themselves are to choose the jury of selection, each exhibitor naming any one he may think fit. The first exhibition of the kind which ever took place in France was in 1673; and the first time a selecting jury was formed was in 1745. After the Revolution of 1848 the jury was abolished, and everybody was allowed to exhibit; but this was found to be impracticable for the future, and the present system of the artists electing the jury themselves came into operation the following year. For upward of a century, the members of the Academy of Painting and Sculpture enjoyed the exclusive privilege of exhibiting.

Railway Bridge between France and England.-A Frenchman, M. F. Lemaitre, has been astonishing the Academy of Sciences with an elaborated scheme of a true suspension-bridge for as true an atmospheric railway between Calais and Dover, the chains, peculiar in construction, to be suspended above from a formidable regiment of elliptical balloons, floating permanently (?) in the air, and below to be attached to heavily-laden barges under water, while abutments on the opposite shore will complete the suspension, so as to support a fairy railway bridge, under which, we presume, the Channel shipping traffic may have its usual free course to and fro! As to cost, M. Lemaitre calculates that 300,000fr. per 100 yards, or 84,000,000fr. in all, will suffice.

London Wells.-The deepest well in London is that sunk by Messrs. Combe and Co., the brewers, which measures 522 feet. The next is at the Excise Office, 500 feet. The well at Meux's brewery is 425 feet deep; that at Messrs. Elliot's, Pimlico, 398 feet. The Trafalgar square well is 383 feet deep, and the well at Kensington new workhouse 370 feet.