admission of a new member, the Count Molé, into the Institute of France. The assembled academicians, in their becoming uniform, listened intently to his animated inaugural oration, and to the reply of the President Dupin, while, from their niches in the spacious hall, the marble brows of Massillon, Fenelon, and Bossuet, Sully, Descartes, and others, looked down with imperturbable dignity.
Taste for the fine arts forms an integral part of the character of the French. From the saloon of the noble to the shop of the petty marchand des modes, it is seen in every variety of adornment, from the costly painting or chiseled group of the ancient master, to the simple vase of artificial flowers under its glass shade, or the little fancy-clock, that hastens the movements of the needle. The very street-beggar feels a property and a pride, in the decorations of la belle Paris. To rifle a plant, or wound a tree, or deface a statue in the public squares or gardens, is held by the rudest boy an indelible disgrace. Would that it were so everywhere!
In the Louvre, amid that astonishing collection of 1500 arranged pictures, and probably as many more for which the walls of its sumptuous gallery have no space, were groups of artists, of both sexes, diligently employed in copying ad libitum. The department of statuary, notwithstanding the spoils of Italy have been abstracted and restored, is still very extensive. Our party often found themselves attracted towards a love-
