and produce a singular raised effect. The surface | moderate size, and through it is seen a large paintof these objects is very highly polished, and they ing representing some scene or celebrated locality. are introduced within the body of the lantern; a The light is thrown upon this picture from above,

strong light there falling upon them in a particular position is reflected from their surface on to a concave mirror, and thence through the lenses of the tube of the lantern on to the screen; thus the image is produced. The physioscope is apparently a modification of Sir D. Brewster's contrivance for the exhibition of what he calls the catadioptrical phan

through ground-glass; and arrangements exist, by means of shutters and blinds, to modulate the tone of the light cast upon the picture, so as to imitate with the nicest accuracy the natural effects of light and shadow. Some parts of the painting are transparent, permitting light from behind to be employed with great effect, where a chapel or such-like scene

tasmagoria. The visitors to the Royal Polytechnic is to be lit up at night. By having two pictures, Institution used nightly to be diverted by beholding the spectators are insensibly carried round to behold

a benevolent old gentleman's half-figure in gigantic proportions upon the screen. For their amusement this old gentleman used to drink wine, eat buns, gape and sneeze, all of course in the most life-like manner; and generally finished the exhibition by standing gradually up, and revealing a stature as tall as any of the monsters commemorated in fable or in song. This really remarkable exhibition is produced in the following manner:-In an apartment out of sight of the spectators are a large concave mirror, a powerful light, and the person whose figure is to be thrown on the screen. He is so placed that the rays of light reflected by his person are received by the mirror, and, collected by it, are reflected through a lens, and then directed on to the screen, where they appear in the form of a gigantic image. Other objects may be effectively exhibited by the same means; and some singular and startling effects are capable of being produced, such as the decapitation of a warrior, and restoring his head again, and such-like, by intercepting a part of the reflected rays from the mirror by means of a prism. In this, as indeed in all the other exhibitions, every

first one, and then the other. In some large continental dioramas several pictures are employed. Few who have witnessed the changes represented in a well-managed dioramic exhibition, would believe that the whole art consisted, as we have seen, in a skilful manner of operating with light.

Before concluding this article, we may be allowed to express pleasure at the rational amusement which may be afforded by means of the simple instrumentality here variously described, in addition to the lighter diversions also spoken of. The various sciences of astronomy, natural history, meteorology, botany, anatomy, geography-are all capable of the most beautiful illustration by the same means as, when amusement is the object, will develop all the phenomena of the phantasmagoria and dissolving views. Need we repeat it? This is simply the magic lantern fitted with the appliances of modern science. Well is it for our age that the powers conferred by science on man are no longer, as formerly, prostituted to enslave the mind in the bondage of heathen ignorance and superstitions. Far from feeling terror, even a child would now laugh

thing depends on the power of the artificial light; at what once made the stoutest heart quail in the

and the oxyhydrogen lime-light is the best for this purpose. The electric light, could it be made steady and permanent, would prove valuable. In exhibiting the human face, the glare has the disagreeable result of causing the eyes to blink, and thus in some measure interfere with the perfection of the image.

The last marvel of our modern optical magicians that we shall notice is the Diorama. This beautiful method of exhibiting optical effects, is, we believe, the invention of M. Daguerre and another gentleman. In the production of a life-like impression on the eye, this diorama is unequalled by any other contrivance; it is nature itself. All the accidents of the landscape-sudden gleams of sunshine,

courts of Grecian and Roman temples-the apparition of the so-called " divinity" on the wall of the building, or amid the fires of the sacrificial rites. There is every reason to believe that to ends base as these, as dishonoring to the Former of all things, as enslaving to the minds of the people, were the interesting phenomena of light and shade, of which we have here spoken, once, and for a protracted period, made subservient. The optical magic of our age, we may thankfully say, sets up no claim to the supernatural.

[WHY PREACHING IS INEFFECTUAL.]

WRITING from Paris, (March 10, 1766,) Horace

the passage of a cloud, the dim, diffusive light of early morning or approaching night, are all thrown in indescribable beauty and truthfulness upon the painting. The solemn, soul-subduing influence of some of the scenes which have been exhibited at the Regent's Park in the metropolis cannot be conveyed in words. The destruction of an Alpine village by an avalanche can never be forgotten after it has been once seen. The manner of effecting this representation is strikingly simple; the spec- tower, and both caressed and beaten, do they turn tatory is a darkened room, which revolves upon out a jot more tame when they are grown up?" rollers; the sight-aperture, or proscenium, is of | Letters, vol. 3, p. 159.

Walpole mentions a tract to laugh at sermons, written lively by the Abbé Coyer, upon a single idea. "Though I agree," he says, "upon the inutility of the remedy he rejects, I have no better opinion of that he would substitute. Preaching has not failed from the beginning of the world till to-day, because inadequate to the disease, but because the disease is incurable. If one preached to lions and tigers, would it cure them of thirsting for blood, and sucking it when they have an oppor tunity? No. But when they are whelped in the

From the Spectator.

THE FALL OF THE LEAF.

AUTUMN tinges the forest, and the deepening green fades into brown. The slanting sun sinks sooner to his bed; the rains are steadier and less hopeful of a break; and the day, like that of aging man, is graver. The wind is harsher-it beats and tears the trees in their waning life, and already begins to strip them of their summer glories, strewing the ground with the cast-off rags of verdure. The dahlia holds out the parting splendors of the summer, with an intense fire of its own, as though sunlight had been sown, and blossomed in color. The corn has been robbed of its golden crown. The gay season has passed, and autumn is leading us to winter, as life wanes and the sombred countenance of man foreshadows death.

strengthen our faith and our resolve. The despot himself becomes the instrument of unerring destiny; a Charlemagne consolidates the power of Europe; a Robespierre breaks the rule of the Bourbons; a Napoleon chains the monster anarchy. Conquest ploughs up dominions for the culture of civilization; revolutions are but the scattering of the forest.

The sap rises in the tree according to its law; the beast is directed to his appointed destiny by instinct; but among the formative forces of man is his intelligence, by which he knows the past and can so prepare for an expanding future. To him the recurring seasons speak not only of repetition but of an expanding destiny. Oak succeeds oak, palm follows palm, unaltered; if less is followed by greater, it is in an alien kind rooted upon a perished race, as fir succeeds moss and palm-tree fir; but, inspired with intelligence, man pursues a widening path of existence, so that Greek succeeds Egyptian, and to the multiplied nations of Europe a Humboldt dimly prophesies a more exalted future.

Death, the handmaid of life. The leaf falls to compose the life-giving earth for future foreststhe tree perishes to heap nurture round the root of the sappling; the glowing petal rots and is food for the seed of the bud; the corn is gathered to feed the race that survives many generations of To man, therefore, the seasons coming round corn and sees beyond its own mortality. Man should speak encouragingly of work unperformed witnesses these transitions with saddened senses for the servive of the future. They cannot tell to but an informed faith, spans the dark chasm be- the oak of seed unsown, but to man they do. The tween summer and summer, and borrows for the beast cannot retrace the history of his kind, and drear season the light of future years. Other creatures die; he is gifted with the sad knowledge that he dies, but he is able to recognize death as the frontier between life and life. Where the lichen with too faint a heart or too biassed a will. crept over the barren rock, the shrub has grown fall of the leaf might remind us how many a fruit to forests, the corn waves, and the voice of man still hangs to perish upon "Tyburn tree;" every breaks the silence of the desert, to sing the story English village has its Lucrezia Borgia, " only not of the world; that long story which began before handsome." Justice hunts a miserable murderer mankind awoke in its cradle, the tale in which across the sea, and we discover in him a man stuages are as seasons, and change is ever-increasing pid with ignorance; his accomplice, a vulgar glory. Lady Macbeth, absorbed in some ambition of

describe the pitfalls in which his kin have perished; but even our advance has not been all level and consistent. We struggle against our faults The

To the informed soul of man the fall of the leaf dressing finely. Prison-discipline is still discussed speaks not only of a resurrection, but teaches him by the learned on its first principles. Education how decay is but a process of regeneration; de- itself has made such little way, that it is still barstruction is the first half of improvement. When barously bookish, and those who cannot lavishly living nature has attained perfection in one type, it will not tolerate less, but each stage is made complete, and then the creature perfected after its

spend their youthful years in a wasteful schooling are kept from knowledge; the explanation of our "free" museums is still locked up in "catalogues,"

kind gives place to new perfection. As forests the weekly opportunity of the "sermon" is still, fall that more stately forests may rise, so human for the most part, barren of teaching, and in thoustates fall that greater states may rise. Persia sands of ways the channels of instruction are unand Egypt sank into the tomb on which Greece used. Political economy vaunts its wisdom, but built her temple, Rome propagated the civilization has not yet taught us how to disarm plenty of its

planted by Greece, and modern Europe rises on the ruins of Rome. Revolutions are but the fall of the leaf. Poland has rotted in the soil of Europe; but the emperor sitting at Warsaw can no more forbid the unborn nation, than the vulture perched upon the fallen oak trunk can forbid the oak which is growing beneath his feet.

terrors for the farmer. Medical police is but beginning to guard the health of our immense towns. Our colonies are passing from us before we have learned how to use them. In many things the recurring season finds us too little altered.

But not wholly so. As this year wanes, we see a better spirit awakening in Ireland, and in it the dawn of the first true hope for that disturbed

Evil-thinking alone is ignorant in its cunning and perishable in its power. Changeful and wan- land since the mythic times of its saintly prosperdering, the nations repeal the mistakes of their ity. A medical police has begun to combat pes predecessors, but keep the tried wisdom. The tilence, even that which is now with us. The thoughts of love and beauty and greatness, that same pestilence has drawn forth proof that utilitahave come down to us from the earliest times, still rianism with the vanities of the past has not destroyed the piety. The revolution which has ions of an intellectual age, he sat-as Governor shaken Europe, and is still unaccomplished, has McDowell said of John Quincy Adams-" that been as full of hope as fear-fuller; if republican- rare and picturesque old man," one of the lastism has not yet learned its own art, of constructing

colloquial oratory for such it deserved to be deliberation-from the influences of examination,

books grouped and arranged, not as if to be seen, of much congratulation to the painter Stuart, that but as if placed by the hand of one who had them he had caught the expression of Washington's face in every hour use. The ornaments of his apart-in such a moment, and that this constituted the ment were the picture and the bust--and these of charm and the fidelity of his portrait. pencilling and sculpturing indicating the true artist. Mr. Gallatin said he had seen most of the great And in the midst of these, the pleasant compan-men of his age, in this land and on the European

[Correspondence of the Britannia.]

Paris, 4 Oct. EXTRAORDINARY interest has been created here

continent. Washington was the only one whose presence inspired fear. He kept everybody at a distance, and had a reserve of manner amounting almost to stiffness and awkwardness. He had not by a theatrical scandal. The managers of the the manner which would be designated popular or Théâtre de la Porte St. Martin-a playhouse on fascinating. It was of the "born to command" a level with the London Surrey or Victoria-had school; very dignified, but incapable of familiarity. He kept everybody at a distance; and, indeed, Mr. G. said, that he believed Washington never loved but one man in his life, and that was Lafayette. He did not willingly bear to be opposed or contradicted.

If by any chance any of your readers should recollect an article written by myself for your columns some time since, on the Houdon statue of Washington, suggested by the examination of the copy in the Athenæuin at Boston, they may recollect how completely all these opinions of Mr. G. are verified by the look and expression of that statue of which John Marshall said, it was the most perfect resemblance that man could make of

man.

Illustrious in Washington's character was his great love of justice. It was almost overstrained, so rigid was he in respect to all its phases, so over nice in all that concerned punctuality, that he (Mr. G.) declined the offer which Washington made him of the agency of his Pennsylvania lands, lest he might in some unintentional manner offend or disobey him.

His cabinet was an ill-assorted one, as Jefferson and Hamilton were such master-minds as to be at ease only when in control. Mr. G.'s judgment of Hamilton I could not but think was a little colored, by the prejudice of the days of fierce partisan conflict. He thought that he tinctured the habits

the sublime impudence to make their playwrights dress up the Pope-the real, identical Pope of our days, Pius IX., late of Rome, now in exileand make him figure in his own name of Mastai as the hero of a melodramatic spectacle. There was the holy man making love, tippling brandy, and uttering oaths, as a soldier-the popular belief being (mistakenly, however) that he served in the army in his youth; then we had him in episcopal robes, quoting texts of Scripture, preaching, exhorting, and giving his blessing as Bishop of Imola; then he swaggered before us as cardinal, and we heard him shouting about liberty, independence, and all other standing topics of reform meetings and radical newspapers; then he came out as Pope with tiara and gorgeous robes, and a train of cardinals, and the whole population kneeling before him; next we had the worthy man making political concessions to his people-in return for which the people sent him to the right about; then we were introduced to the excellent M. Mazzini, who talked oh! such balderdash; and to the valiant "General" Garibaldi, who, if he is at all like the lout who personated him, is an ugly, dirty, offensive, impudent wretch; and, to give a pleasant melodramatic flavor of the sayings and doings of these distinguished individuals, we had the assassination of Count Rossi literally represented, with, if I mistake not, the identical dagger which the assassin used-we had also sundry grotesque ballets

of the statesman too much with those of the soldier, and as a boquet the capture and occupation of

and had, like Washington, a dislike of contradiction.

John Adams he characterized as the great man of the revolution-standing up when others faltered. Lafayette he thought not equal to the positions to which he was called an opinion, it may be recollected, precisely the reverse of that expressed by John Quincy Adams, in his Eulogy over Fayette, pronounced before both houses of Congress.

The memory of Mr. Gallatin-his power of expression-his choice of language, seemed to me like those of a man in the vigor of his days. There was just enough of the foreign accent in his pronunciation to make it agreeable; and he was, from the language not being his vernacular, careful and exact in his words. To listen to such a man-to hear history from one whose acts and opinions had contributed so largely to form it-to witness the pleasant, the delightful evening of a life so thronged with incidents befitting an elaborate scholar, an illustrious statesman; to know one who had been the friend of Washington*-these were, indeed, circumstances of this interview, which I must always regard as most valuable. SENTINEL.

*(?).-Living Age.

Rome by the French. All good Catholics were naturally horribly scandalized at seeing the holy father dragged in such a way on the stage; and, heretic though I am, I admit that it was a most infamous outrage. But it gave rise to a striking demonstration of the sentiments of the lower classes of Paris with respect to the Roman expedition; seldom have I heard such long-continued and hearty acclamation as greeted Mazzini and Garibaldi, and every word uttered by them that was hostile to the French; even the assassination of Count Rossi was, from the same spirit, loudly applauded; and when the French troops were represented in possession of Rome there arose a yell of execration which almost brought the roof down. The respectable portion of the audience struggled hard to get up a counter demonstration, but their efforts were vain Three thousand of the free and independent blouses persisted in hooting their own flag, yelling down their own soldiers, disowning their own military exploits, and branding their own government! Never, perhaps, was such a scene witnessed before in any theatre. But the lesson, it must be confessed, was richly merited by the government, for the infamy of that Roman affair is unexampled. Unwilling, however, to be so scouted, the government has forbidden any further representation of the piece.

From the Examiner, 29 Sept.

THE ROMAN QUESTION.

THE president of the French republic, it is pretty evident, is after all worth something more than the sharp intriguers and solemn nonentities who surround him as councillors and courtiers. The letter to Colonel Ney is now clearly admitted to be his individual act and expression of opinion; for there is not one of his ministers who does not condemn its frankness, and is not ready to draw back from the necessity of imposing such large and liberal conditions on the Pope. M. Dufaure alone perhaps stickles for some shadow of Roman freedom; but all his colleagues submit to M. de Falloux, and are now entreating that lay brother of the conclave to settle the difference with the Pope for them at any price.

and Dufaure. The Pope was supposed to entertain a cordial opinion of the same kind. So that to land at Civita, set up this party, and enable it to recall the Pope, seemed to the more liberal statesmen of the Elysée the simplest thing imaginable.

But lo! all the facts on which the French relied completely disappeared. The moderates vanished or became immoderate. The Pope ran away, and flung himself into the arms and ideas of the Jesuits; and the French diplomatists wrote home that a middle and moderate party, in any manner reliable, no more exists in Rome than it does in Siberia or Patagonia. Were a shadow of such a party fabricated, and put up in power, it would require an army to keep it there; and this ariny should have a double front, one opposed to the priests and ultras, the other to the democrats. The termination of every French despatch from Rome has therefore the government is composed, cannot separate from been-Let us get out of this country as fast as possible.

The fact is, that this moderate party, of which

the legitimists, cannot do without them, cannot throw them into opposition. Their ill-humor, What the Pope concedes is manifest from his their good understanding with the republicans, motu proprio. His first promise is a Council of would at once overthrow the president. Hence State, of which he does not say that even the maM. de Falloux must be retained, and the Pope and jority shall be leaders. Then he promises a Conthe priests must be conciliated. Louis Napoleon sulta, a Senate to be elected by Provincial Councils, must not throw the religious banner to be caught whose duty will be to offer advice on financial matat by the Duke of Bordeaux. The Pope knows ters. The provincial councils are not to be elected his advantage. M. de Falloux's brother, an eccle- directly by the municipal councils, but chosen from siastic, is in Italy, as a means of communication. lists furnished by the latter. The motu proprio To expect that Messrs. Barrot and Dufaure could ends by the promise of an amnesty to all not ex

bend the Pope, thus encouraged, is idle. His holiness has ceded no more, will cede no more, than is necessary to save appearances for the French cabinet, and enable it to make some lame show of defence before the Assembly.

Upon the public men of France, thus truckling and tergiversating, the letter of M. Mazzini has fallen like one of those flashes of lightning which illumine in the midst of darkness, allowing each man to read for a moment his neighbor's face. How a Frenchman should peruse such a document without wincing and blushing is difficult to conceive; and it has therefore been made ample use of. French writers so universally flatter their countrymen, that not even the "reddest" of them could have told the truth in the bold and uncompromising language of Mazzini. The facts, too, of the letter are undeniable; the logic simple; and the ministerialists have nothing to reply, save to complain that the language is not polite. Poor Mazzini, just escaped from the battle-field and from the scorching ruin of his country, could scarcely be expected to write in courtly vein. He speaks to history and to posterity, and does not mince his words; and certainly Oudinot, and Barrot, and Corcelles, appear very contemptible pigmies in the face of his gigantic objurgation.

But, after all, Mazzini does too much honor to the French when he supposes them to have acted from political principles and from hatred to freedom. The Roman expedition was undertaken with the simple notion that there was a strong party of moderate constitutionalists at Rome, consisting of men like Barrot himself, Tocqueville,

pressly excluded; but as every Roman of liberalism and importance is excluded, the amnesty is but one more of the list of papal humbugs. There is little doubt, however, that with this the French government has determined to content itself! There cannot be a stronger corroboration of the truth of Mazzini's letter than such a termination of French professions and intervention.

M. MAZZINI'S LETTER. * - The letter of M. Mazzini to M. Falloux and M. de Tocqueville, (first published in the "Daily News,") fills the columns of the Presse," the National," and various The old hand of the "National" "Powerful

other papers.
will be recognized in the following:
reasoning, a pitiless memory, perfect clearness.
and convincing proofs, are the smallest recommen-
dations of this solemn manifestation, which is the
last cry of the Roman republic, miserably assassi-
nated by the French republic. What principally
strikes us in this document is the firm and grave
tone, the deep conviction, the constant enthusiasm,
the language becoming a man and a citizen, which
all the art in the world cannot counterfeit. The
letter of Mazzini is a sword-cut, falling straight
and firm on the folds of the serpent which glides
away. You have lied! These three words sum
up the whole anathema; but what a terrible de-
velopment they receive! How, under the inex-
orable pen of the Triumvir, are collected instances
of disloyalty, treachery, forgetfulness, and acts of

* This is an admirable letter, too long for our columns.
-L. A.