The Catholic World
Chapter 17 : How it may be with the English settlers in New Zealand, we feel by no means certain. If

How it may be with the English settlers in New Zealand, we feel by no means certain. If the present reckoning began with some voyage made round Cape Horn, then our Monday morning is New Zealand Sunday evening; but if with some voyage made round the Cape of Good Hope, then our Monday morning is New Zealand Monday evening. Probabilities are perhaps in favor of the latter supposition. We need not ask, "What's o'clock at New Zealand?" for that can be ascertained to a minute by counting the difference of longitude; but to ask, "What day of the week and of the month is it at New Zealand?" is a question that might, for aught we can see, involve very important legal consequences.

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From the Dublin Review.

RECENT DISCOVERIES IN THE CATACOMBS.

The chromo-lithographic press, established at Rome by the munificence of Pius IX., has issued its first publication, four sheets in large folio, _Imagines Selectae Deiparae Virginis in Caemeteriis Suburbanis Udo depictae_, with about twenty pages of text from the pen of the Cavaliere G. B. de Rossi. The subject and the author are amply sufficient to recommend them to the Christian archaeologist, and the work of the artists employed is in every way worthy of both. It is by no means an uncommon idea, even among Catholics who have visited Rome and _done_ the catacombs, that our Blessed Lady does not hold any prominent place in the decorations of those subterranean cemeteries.

Protestant tourists often boldly publish that she is nowhere to be found there. The present publication will suffice to show, even to those who never leave their own homes, the falsehood of this statement and impression. De Rossi has here set before us a selection of four different representations of Holy Mary, as she appears in that earliest monument of the Christian Church; and, in ill.u.s.trating these, he has taken occasion to mention a score or two of others. Moreover, he has vindicated for them an antiquity and an importance far beyond what we were prepared to expect; and those who have ever either made personal acquaintance with him, or have studied his former writings, well know how far removed he is from anything like uncritical and enthusiastic exaggerations. Even such writers as Mr. Burgon ("Letters from Rome") cannot refrain from bearing testimony to his learning, moderation, and candor; they praise him, often by way of contrast with some Jesuit or other clerical exponent of the mysteries of the catacombs, for all those qualities which are calculated to inspire us with confidence in his interpretations of any nice points of Christian archaeology. But we fear his Protestant admirers will be led to lower their tone of admiration for him, and henceforward to discover some flaw in his powers of criticism, when they find him, as in these pages, gravely maintaining, concerning a particular representation of the Madonna in the catacombs, that it is of Apostolic, or quasi-Apostolic antiquity. It is a painting on the vaulted roof of an _arcosolium_ in the cemetery of St. Priscilla, and it is reproduced in the work before us in its original size. The Blessed Virgin sits, her head partially covered by a short slight veil, holding the Divine Infant in her arms; opposite to her stands a man, holding in one hand a volume, and with the other pointing to a star which appears between the two figures. This star almost always accompanies our Blessed Lady in ancient paintings or sculptures, wherever she is represented either with the Magi offering their gifts, or by the manger's side with the ox and the a.s.s; but with a single figure, as in the present instance, it is unusual. Archaeologists will probably differ in their interpretation of this figure; the most obvious conjecture would, of course, fix on St. Joseph; there seem to be solid reasons, however, for preferring (with De Rossi) the prophet Isaias, whose predictions concerning the Messias abound with imagery borrowed from light, and who may be identified on an old Christian gla.s.s by the superscription of his name. But this question, interesting as it is, is not so important as the probable date of the painting itself; and here no abridgment or a.n.a.lysis of' De Rossi's arguments can do justice to the moderation, yet irresistible force, with which he acc.u.mulates proofs of {130} the conclusion we have already stated, viz., that the painting was executed, if not in Apostolic times and as it were under the very eyes of the Apostles themselves, yet certainly within the first 150 years of the Christian era. He first bids us carefully to study the art displayed in the design and execution of the painting; he compares it with the decorations of the famous Pagan tombs discovered on the Via Latina in 1858, and which are referred to the times of the Antoninuses; with the paintings in the pontifical _cubiculum_ in the cemetery of St. Callixtus, and with others more recently discovered in the cemetery of Pretextatus, to both of which a very high antiquity is conceded by all competent judges; and he justly argues that the more cla.s.sical style of the painting now under examination _obliges_ us to a.s.sign to it a still earlier date. Next, he shows that the catacomb in which it appears was one of the oldest,--St.

Priscilla, from whom it receives its name, having been the mother of Pudens and a contemporary of the Apostles (the impress of a seal, with the name _Pudens Felix_, is repeated several times on the mortar round the edge of a grave in this cemetery); nay, further still, it can be shown that the tombs of Sts. Pudentiana and Praxedes, and therefore, probably, of their father St. Pudens himself, were in the immediate neighborhood of the very chapel in which this Madonna is to be seen; moreover, the inscriptions which are found there bear manifest tokens of a higher antiquity than can be claimed by any others from the catacombs: there is the complete triple nomenclature of pagan times, e.g., t.i.tus Flavius Felicissimus; the epitaphs are not even in the usual form, _in pace_, but simply the Apostolic salutation, _Pax tec.u.m, Pax tibi_; and finally, the greater number of them are not cut on stone or marble slabs, but written with red paint on the tiles which close the graves--a mode of inscription of which not a single example, we believe, has. .h.i.therto been found in any other part the catacombs. This is a mere outline of the arguments by which De Rossi establishes his conclusion respecting the age of this painting, and they are not even exhibited in their full force in the present publication at all. For a more copious induction of facts, and a more complete elucidation both of the history and topography of the catacombs, we must be content to wait till the author's larger work on _Roma Sotterranea_ shall appear.

The most recent painting of the Madonna which De Rossi has here published is that with which our readers will be the most familiar. It is the one to which the late Father Marchi, S.J., never failed to introduce every visitor to the catacomb of St. Agnes, and has been reproduced in various works; the Holy Mother with her hands outstretched in prayer, the Divine Infant on her bosom, and the Christian monogram on either side of her and turned toward her. This last particular naturally directs our thoughts to the fourth century as the date of this work; and the absence of the _nimbus_ and some other indications lead our author to fix the earlier half of the century in preference to the later. Between these two limits, then, of the first or second, and the fourth century, he would place the two others which are now published; he distinguishes them more doubtfully, as belonging respectively to the first and second half of the third century. In one, from the cemetery of Domitilla, the Blessed Virgin sits holding the Holy Child on her lap, whilst four Magi offer their gifts; the other, from the catacomb of Sts. Peter and Marcellinus, represents the same scene, but with two Magi only. In both there is the same departure from the ancient tradition of the number of the wise men, and from the same cause, viz., the desire to give a proper balance and proportion to the two sides of the picture, the Virgin occupying the middle place. Indeed, in one of them, it is still possible to trace {131} the original sketch of the artist, designing another arrangement with the three figures only; but the result did not promise to be satisfactory, and he did what thousands of his craft have continued to do ever since, sacrificed historic truth to the exigencies of his art.

We trust our readers will be induced to get this valuable work and to study it for themselves; the text may be procured either in French or in Italian, so that it is readily accessible to all. At the same time we would take the opportunity of introducing to them another work by the same indefatigable author, which is also published both in French and in Italian. At least, such is the announcement of a prospectus now lying before us, which states that the French translation is published by Vives, in Paris. We have ourselves only seen the original Italian.

It is a short monthly periodical, ill.u.s.trations, _Bollettino di Archeologia Cristiana_, and is addressed not merely to _savans_, Fellows of Royal Societies, and the like, but rather to all educated men who care for the history of their religion and are capable of appreciating its evidences. De Rossi claims for the recent discoveries in the Roman catacombs the very highest place among the scientific events of the day which have an important religious bearing, and we think that the justice of his plea must be admitted. Unfortunately, however, the vastness of the subject, the multiplied engagements of the author, and (not least) the political vicissitudes of the times, have hitherto prevented the publication of these discoveries in a complete and extended form. We are happy to know that the work is satisfactorily progressing; but meanwhile he has been persuaded by the suggestions of many friends, and by the convenience of the thing itself, to publish this monthly periodical, which will keep us _au courant_ with the most important additions that are being made from time to time to our knowledge of those precious memorials of primitive Christianity, and also supply much interesting information on other archaeological matters. In these pages the reader is allowed to accompany, as it were, the author himself in his subterranean researches, to a.s.sist at his discoveries, to trace the happy but doubtful conjecture of a moment through all its gradual stages, until it reaches the moral certainty of a conclusion which can no longer be called in question; _e.g._, the author gives us a portion of a lecture which he delivered on July 3, 1852, to the Roman Pontifical Academy of Archaeology. In this lecture he maintained, in opposition to the usual nomenclature of the catacombs, and entirely on the strength of certain topographical observations, that a particular cemetery, into which a very partial opening had been made in 1848, was that anciently called by the name of Pretextatus, and in which were buried St. Januarius, the eldest of the seven sons of St. Felicitas, Felicissimus and Agapitus, deacons of St. Sixtus, Pope Urban, Quirinus, and other famous martyrs. Five years pa.s.sed away, and this opinion had been neither confirmed nor refuted; but in 1857, excavations undertaken for another purpose introduced our author into a crypt of this cemetery, of unusual size and richness of ornament, where one of the _loculi_ bore an inscription on the mortar which had secured the grave-stone, invoking the a.s.sistance of "Januarius, Agatopus (for Agapitus), and Felicissimus, martyrs!" This, of course, was a strong confirmation of the conjecture which had been published so long before; but this was all which he could produce in the first number of his _Bollettino_ in January, 1863. In the second number he could add that, as he was going to press (February 21), small fragments of an inscription on marble had been disinterred from the same place, of which only single letters had yet been found, but which, he did not hesitate to say, had been written by Pope Damasus and contained his name, as well as the name of {132} St. Januarius. In March he published the twelve or fourteen letters which had been discovered, arranging them in the place he supposed them to have occupied in the inscription, which he conjecturally restored, and which consisted altogether of more than forty letters. In April he was able still further to add, that they had now recovered other portions; amongst the rest, a whole word, or rather the contraction of a word (_episcop._ for _episcopus_), exactly in accordance with his conjecture, though, at the time he made the conjecture, only half of one of the letters had yet come to light.

We need not pursue the subject further. Enough has been said to satisfy those of our readers who have any acquaintance with the catacombs, both as to the kind and the degree of interest and importance which belong to this publication. Its intelligence, however, is by no means confined to the catacombs. The basilica of San Clemente; the recent excavations at San Lorenzo, _fuori le mura_; the postscript of St. Pamphilus the Martyr at the end of one of his ma.n.u.script copies of the Bible, reproduced in the Codex Sinaiticus lately published by Tischendorf; the arch of Constantine; ancient scribblings on the wall (_graffiti_) of the palace of the Caesars on the Palatine, etc., etc., are subjects of able and learned articles in the several numbers we have received. With reference to the _graffiti_, one singular circ.u.mstance mentioned by De Rossi is worth repeating here. Most of our readers are probably acquainted with the _graffiti_ from this place, published by P. Garrucci, in which one Alessamenus is ridiculed for wors.h.i.+pping as his G.o.d the figure of a man, but with the head of an a.s.s, nailed to a cross. P. Garrucci had very reasonably conjectured that this was intended as a blasphemous caricature of the Christian wors.h.i.+p; and recently other _graffiti_ in the very same place have been discovered with the t.i.tle _Episcopus_, apparently given in ridicule to some Christian youth; for that the room on whose walls these scribblings appear was used for educational purposes is abundantly proved by the numerous inscriptions announcing that such or such a one _exit de paedagogio_. We seem, therefore, in deciphering these rude scrawls, to a.s.sist, as it were, at one of the minor scenes of that great struggle between paganism and Christianity, whereof the sufferings of the early martyrs, the apologies of Justin Martyr, etc., were only another but more public and historical phase.

History tells us that Caracalla, when a boy, saw one of his companions beaten because he professed the Christian faith. These _graffiti_ seem to teach us that there were many others of the same tender age, _de domo Caesaris_, who suffered more or less of persecution for the same cause. Other interesting details of the same struggle have been brought together by De Rossi, carefully gleaned from the patrician names which appear on some of the ancient grave-stones, sometimes as belonging to young virgins or widows who had dedicated themselves to the service of Christ under the discipline of a religious community.

That such a community was to be found early in the fifth century, in the immediate neighborhood of _S. Lorenzo fuori le mura_, or, at least, that the members of such a community were always buried about that time in that cemetery, is one of the circ.u.mstances which may be said to be clearly proved by the recent discoveries. The proofs are too numerous and minute for abridgment, but the student will be interested in examining them as they appear in the _Bollettino_.

Another feature in this archaeological publication is its convenience as a supplement to the volume of Christian Inscriptions published by the same author. That volume, as our readers are already aware, contains only such inscriptions of the first six centuries as bear a distinct chronological note by the names of the chief magistrates, or in some other way. Additional specimens of these are not unfrequently discovered in the excavations still {133} in progress on various sides of the city; and these De Rossi is careful to chronicle, and generally also to ill.u.s.trate by notes, in the pages of his _Bollettino_. The chief value of these additions, perhaps, is to be found in the corroboration they _uniformly_ give to the conclusions which De Rossi had already deduced, the canons of chronological distinction and distribution which he had established, from the larger collection of inscriptions in the work referred to--whether as to the style of writing or of diction and sentiments, etc.--canons, the full importance of which will only be recognized when he shall have published the second volume of the collection of epitaphs bearing upon questions of Christian doctrine and practice.

In the earlier numbers of the _Bollettino_ for the present year there is a very interesting account of the recent discoveries in the Ambrosian basilica of Milan, where there seems no room to doubt but that they have brought to light the very sarcophagus in which the relics of the great St. Ambrose, as well as those of the martyrs Sts.

Gervasius and Protasius, have rested for more than ten centuries. The history of the discovery is too long to be inserted here, and too interesting to be abridged. One circ.u.mstance, however, connected with it is too important to be omitted. The sarcophagus itself has not yet, we believe, been opened; but, from the two sepulchres below and on either side of it, where the bishop and the martyrs were originally deposited, and where they remained until their translation in the ninth century, many valuable relics have been gleaned. We will only mention one of them--viz., portions of an _ampulla_ such as are found in the catacombs, and concerning which Dr. Biraghi, the librarian of the Bibliotheca Ambrosiana (to whose zeal we are indebted for the whole discovery, and for the account of it to his learning), a.s.sures us that it has been subjected to a chemical examination, and is shown to have contained blood. This, as De Rossi truly remarks, is the most notable instance which has yet come before us of this _ampulla_ having been placed in the sepulchre of famous and historical martyrs, and it is of very special importance as throwing a flood of light on those words of St. Ambrose about these relics so often quoted in the controversy on this subject--_Sanguine, tumulus madet; apparent cruoris triumphales notae; inviolatae reliquiae loco suo et ordine repertae_. And it is certainly singular that this discovery should have been made at a moment when the validity of these _ampullae_, as sure signs of martyrdom, has been so much called in question. The Sacred Congregation of Rites had only recently reaffirmed their former sentence on this matter; and this fact now comes most opportunely from Milan to add further weight to their decision, by giving a historical basis to an opinion which before had been thought by some rather to rest upon theory and conjecture. It will go far, we should think, toward _rehabilitating_ in the minds of Christian archaeologists the pious belief of former ages upon this subject, wherever it may have been shaken.

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MISCELLANY.

SCIENCE.

_The Mason-Spider of Corfu_.--A correspondent of a London journal gives an interesting account of certain habits of this insect, which belongs to the _mygalidae_ family. The mygales are chiefly found in hot climates, and include the largest specimens of spiders known. They are called mason-spiders, from the curious manner in which they build their houses. "The mygale nest," says the correspondent, "varies much in size, from one inch in length to three or four, and even six or seven inches. In the West Indies, where the spiders are crab-like, the insects measure six inches over. One nest, especially mentioned and minutely described by Mr. Oudouin, was three inches and a quarter long and eight-tenths of an inch wide. The nest, of cylindrical form, is made by boring into the earth; making his excavation, the next thing, having decided upon the dimensions of his habitation, is to furnish it, and most beautiful are his paper-hangings. The whole of the interior is lined with the softest possible silk, a tissue which the 'major domo' spins all over the apartment until it is padded to a sufficient thickness and made soft enough. Silk lining like this gives the idea of the mygale having a luxurious turn. This done, and the interior finished, the mygale shows his peculiarity by taking steps to keep out the [Greek text] of intruders by making not only a door, and that self-closing, but a door with swinging hinge, and sometimes one at each end of his nest, which shows that he has a very good opinion of his own work within, and knows how to take care of it. Not having met with any case where any one had seen the positive operation of making the door of these nests, I thought the details would be interesting, the more so as they corroborated preconceived ideas of their construction, and were noticed by a friend quartered at Corfu, who brought home the nest with him. The following is the description he gave me:

"Lying out in one of the sandy plateaux covered with olive groves with which Corfu abounds, enjoying his cigar and lounging about in the sandy soil, he came to a spider's nest. Examining it, he found the lid or door would not open, and seemed held firmly within by the proprietor--as if Jack were at home--so he applied forthwith the leverage of a knife-blade, upon which the inmate retired to his inner chamber. The aggressor decided not to disturb him any more that day, but marking the place--most necessary thing to do--thought he would explore further the next day, if fine.

"Accordingly, the next day my friend called early, intending to take off the door and to watch the progress of restoration, and how it would be accomplished. After waiting a long time, out came Monsieur Mygale, and looking carefully round, and finding all quiet, commenced operations by running his web backward and forward across the orifice of his nest, till there was a layer of silken web; upon this he ejected a gluten, over which he scratched the fine sand in the immediate neighborhood of his nest; this done, he again set to work--webbing, then gluten, sand; then again web, gluten, sand, about six times; this occupied in all about eight hours. But the puzzling part was that this time he was cementing and building himself out from his own mansion, when, to the astonishment and delight of his anxious looker-on, he began the finis.h.i.+ng stroke by cutting and forming the door by fixing his hind legs in the centre of the new covering, and from these as a centre he began cutting with his jaws right through the door he had made, striking a clear circle round, and leaving about one-eighth of the circ.u.mference as a hinge. This done, he lifted the door up and walked in. My friend then tried to open the door with a knife, but the insect pulled it tight from the inside. He therefore dug round him and took him off bodily--mygale and nest complete. The hinge is most carefully and beautifully formed; and there appears to be an important object in view when the spider covers over the whole of the orifice, for immediately the door is raised it springs back as soon as released; and this is caused by the elasticity of the web on the hinge and the peculiar formation of the lid or door, which is made thicker on the lower side, so that its {135} own weight helps it to be self-closing, and the rabbeting of the door is wonderfully surfaced. Bolts and Chub locks with a latch-key the mygale family do not possess, but as a subst.i.tute the lower part of the door has clawholding holes, so that a bird's beak or other lever being used, Mons. Mygale holds on to the door by these, and with his legs against the sides of his house, offers immense resistance against all comers."

_Instinct of Insects_.--One of the regular course of free scientific lectures delivered at the Paris Sorbonne this last winter, under the auspices of the Minister of Public Instruction, was by the distinguished naturalist M. Milne-Edwards, on the instinct and intelligence of animals. Taking for his text the saying of Linnaeus, _Natura maxime miranda in minimis,_ he spoke princ.i.p.ally of the instinct of insects, and especially of solitary bees. These hymenoptera, in fact, afford one of the most striking examples known of that faculty which impels an animal, either for its own preservation or for the preservation and development of its offspring, to perform the most complicated and intelligent actions, readily and skilfully, yet without having learned how to do them. One species, the carpenter-bee (_xylocopa_), bores in the trunks of trees galleries running first horizontally and then vertically to a considerable depth. She then collects a quant.i.ty of wax and honey. The honey she kneads into a little ball of alimentary matter, in the midst of which she deposits her first egg. With the wax she constructs a horizontal part.i.tion, formed of concentric annular layers; this encloses the cell. On this part.i.tion she deposits a second egg, enclosed like the first in the provision destined for the support of the future larva; and over it builds another part.i.tion of wax; and so on, to the top of the vertical cavity. Then she dies; she never sees her offspring. The latter, so long as they remain larvae, feed upon the honey which the maternal foresight provided for them; and so soon as they have pa.s.sed through their second metamorphosis and become winged insects, issue forth from their retreat, to perform in their turn a similar labor.

Another species of solitary bee, whose larva is carnivorous, resorts to a still more wonderful, but, it must be confessed, very cruel, expedient to supply the worm-like progeny with food. She constructs a gallery or tunnel in the earth, and crowns it with a chimney curved somewhat like a crosier, so as to keep out the rain. Then she goes a-hunting, and brings back to her den a number of caterpillars. If she kills them at once, they will spoil before her eggs are hatched; if she lets them alone, they will run away. What shall she do? She pierces the caterpillars with her venomous little dart, and injects into them a drop of poison, which Mr. Claude Bernard no doubt will a.n.a.lyze some day. It does not kill, it only paralyzes them; and there they lie, torpid and immovable, till the larvae come into the world and feast off the sweet and succulent flesh at their leisure.

Everybody is familiar with the habits and wonderful industry of hive-bees, wasps, and ants. These insects seem to be governed by something more than blind instinct: it is hardly too much to say that they give indubitable signs of intelligence. They know how to modify their course according to circ.u.mstances, to provide against unexpected wants, to avert dangers, and to notify to each other whatever is of consequence to be known by their whole community. Huber, the celebrated bee-keeper of Geneva, relates the following anecdote: One of his hives having been devastated one night by a large sphinx-moth, the bees set to work the next morning and plastered up the door, leaving only a small opening which would just admit them, one at a time, but which the sphinx, with its big body and long wings, could not pa.s.s. As soon as the season arrived when the moths terminate their short lives, the bees, no longer fearing an invasion, pulled down their rampart. The next season, as no sphinx appeared to trouble them, they left their door wide open.

_Ostrich-keeping_.--By late news from the Cape of Good Hope we learn that the farmers of that colony are beginning to find it profitable to keep flocks of ostriches, for the feathers of those birds are worth 25 sterling the pound. For thirty-five ostriches, there must be three hundred acres of grazing-ground. The plucking takes place once in six months; the yield of feathers from each bird being worth from 10 to 12, 10s. The original cost of the young ostriches is said to be 5 each. Some of the {136} farmers who have tried the experiment are of opinion that ostrich-feathers will pay better than any other produce of the colony.

_Extraordinary Inland Navigation_.--We hear from South America that a steamer built in England for the Peruvian government, for the exploration of rivers, has penetrated the great continent from the Atlantic side to a distance of ninety-five leagues only from the Pacific, or nearly all across. The vessel, which draws seven feet water, steamed seven hundred leagues up the Amazon, two hundred up the Ucayati, and thence into the Pachitea, which had never before been navigated except by native canoes. What a magnificent extent of inland navigation is here opened to commercial enterprise! The mind becomes somewhat bewildered in imagining the future of those vast river-valleys when hundreds of steamers shall navigate the streams, trading among millions of population dwelling on their banks.

_Is the Sun getting Bigger?_--It is known that various speculations have been put forward as to the cause or source of the sun's heat.

Among those who consider that it consists in the falling of asteroids or meteorites into the sun, is Mr. J. R. Mayer, of Heilbronn, who states that the surface of the sun measures 115,000 million square miles, and that the asteroids falling thereon form a ma.s.s every minute equal in weight to from 94,000 to 188,000 billion kilogrammes. It might be supposed that this enormous shower would increase the ma.s.s and weight of the sun, and by consequence produce an appreciable effect on the motion of the planets which compose our system. For instance, it would shorten our year by a second or something less. But the calculations of astronomers show that this effect does not take place; and Mr. Mayer states that to increase the apparent diameter of the sun a single second by the shower of asteroids would require from 33,000 to 66,000 years.

_Teaching the Deaf and Dumb to Speak_.--Dr. Houdin, director of an inst.i.tution for the deaf and dumb at Pa.s.sy, lately announced to the French Academy, that after twenty-five years' experience he had proved the possibility of communicating the faculty of speech, in a certain degree, to deaf mutes. A commission appointed by the Academy and the Faculty to investigate the subject, reports that the learned doctor has really succeeded in several instances in teaching these unfortunate beings to speak and even comprehend spoken language so well that it is difficult to believe that they are not guided by the ear. The patients conversed with the members of the commission, and answered the different questions put to them. They were found to be perfectly familiar with the use and mechanism of speech, though dest.i.tute of the sense of hearing, and they comprehended what was said to them, reading the words upon the lips of the speaker with a marvellous facility. Thus they become fit to enter into society and capable of receiving all manner of instruction.

But here is another case still more wonderful. What would you do if you had to instruct and prepare for first communion a child who was at the same time deaf, dumb, and _blind_? The case is not an imaginary one; it has occurred in an asylum for deaf-mutes at Notre Dame de Larnay, in the diocese of Poitiers. A nun was there charged with the instruction of a child in this unfortunate state, to whom she could appeal only by the sense of touch. Yet the child, who astonishes everybody by her sensibility and intelligence, has come by that means to a knowledge of the spiritual life, of G.o.d and his divine Son, of religion and its mysteries and precepts--has been prepared, in fine, for a worthy reception of the Eucharist.

ART.

The past winter in New York has scarcely kept pace with its immediate predecessor in the number and merit of the collections of pictures opened to public inspection or disposed of at auction. The unprecedented prices obtained for the really excellent collection of Mr. Wolfe, in Christmas week of 1863, seemed to have inoculated art collectors and dealers with what may be called a _cacoethes vendendi_, and until far into the succeeding summer the picture auctioneers were called upon to knock down dozens of galleries of "private gentlemen about to leave the country," varying in merit from respectable to positively bad. In these sales the moderns had decidedly the best of it, the few {137} "old masters" who ventured to appeal to the sympathies and pockets of our collectors being at last treated with proper contempt. But the prices realized by the Wolfe gallery, even when reduced to a specie basis, were too high to become a recognized standard of value, and gradually the interest in such sales, as well as the bids, declined, until the sellers became aware (the purchasers had become aware some time previous) that the market was overstocked and the demand for pictures had ceased. The contributions of the foreign artists to the New York Sanitary Fair brought probably less than a third of the money that would have been obtained for them had they been sold in January instead of June, and such collections as have been sc.r.a.ped together for sale during the present season have met with but moderate pecuniary success. It is gratifying to know, however, that our resident artists, both native and foreign-born, have for the most part been busily and profitably employed, and that in landscape, and in some departments of _genre_, their works have not suffered in compet.i.tion with similar ones by reputable European painters. Without wis.h.i.+ng in any respect to recommend or suggest a protective system for fostering native art, we cannot but rejoice that the overthrow of the late exaggerated prices for foreign works will tend to encourage and develop American artists.

The princ.i.p.al art event in antic.i.p.ation is the opening of next exhibition of the National Academy of Design in the building now hastening to completion at the corner of Fourth avenue and Twenty-third streets. It is to be hoped that the contributions will be worthy of the place and the occasion. Recent exhibitions have not been altogether creditable to the Academy.

Durand, the late president of the Academy, and one of our oldest and most careful landscape painters, has a characteristic work on exhibition at Avery's Art Agency, corner of Fourth street and Broadway. It is called "A Summer Afternoon," and is pervaded by a soft, pensive sentiment of rural repose. In the elaboration of the trees and in the soft, mellow distances the artist shows his early skill, albeit in some of his later pieces the timid handling inseparable from age is discernible.

A collection of several hundred sketches and studies of no special merit, by Hicks, has recently been disposed of at auction. The essays of this gentleman in landscape are not happy, and the specimens in this collection had better, perhaps, have been excluded.

Rossiter's pictures representing Adam and Eve in Paradise, now on exhibition in New York, have excited more remark than commendation. It may be said briefly, that they fail to do justice to the subject.

Curnmings's "Historic Annals of the Academy of Design" have been published, and const.i.tute an interesting addition to the somewhat meagre collection of works ill.u.s.trating American art history.

Mr. Thomas Ball, the well-known sculptor of Boston, is about to depart for Italy, with the intention of remaining several years in Florence, and executing there in marble a number of plaster models. Among these are a life-size statue of Edwin Forrest in the part of "Coriola.n.u.s,"

and busts of the late Rev. Thomas Starr King and Edward Everett. The latter is said to be an admirable likeness.

M. J. Heade, an American artist, formerly of Boston and Providence, is publis.h.i.+ng in London a work upon the humming-birds of Brazil, ill.u.s.trated from designs by himself.

The United States Senate was recently the scene of a somewhat animated debate on art matters, arising out of a proposition to authorize the artist Powell to "paint a picture for the Capitol at a cost not to exceed $25,000." The scheme was defeated, chiefly through the opposition of Senator Sumner, who thought the present an improper time to devote so large a sum to such a purpose.

A very remarkable picture by Gerome, the most original, and realistic of living French painters, is now on exhibition at Goupil's, in this city. It is ent.i.tled "The Prayer of the Arab in the Desert," and in a small s.p.a.ce presents a complete epitome of Oriental life.

In London the General Exhibition of water-color drawings, and collections of works of Holman Hunt, Madox Brown, and the late David Roberts, have recently been opened. The last named contains 900 pictures, drawings, and sketches, showing the amazing industry of the artist, and his skill as a draughtsman.

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A monument to Shakespeare, from penny subscriptions, is to be erected on Primrose Hill, near London.