A new shell has just been invented by a chemist named Lagrange, which is said to be capable of sinking a ship of 120 guns in a few minutes. Some experiments made with it in the presence of skillful officers were entirely successful.
An artist named Garnier died lately in Paris, whose only claim to distinction lay in the incredibly long time which he spent on incredibly poor pictures. One of them representing the entrance of Napoleon and Marie Louise into the Tuileries, took him thirty-seven years, and when finished was a wretched daub. A notice of his life was read in the Academy.
The French papers state, that a number of workmen are employed in fixing a wire from the Bastile to the Madeleine, as an experiment for a new company that has proposed to establish an electric telegraph throughout Paris for the transmission of messages.
A Belgian engineer, M. Laveleye, proposes to connect the Seine and the Rhine by means of a canal, by constructing which, navigation would be open from London to the Black Sea and Constantinople, through the heart of the Continent, and by means of the great watercourses on or near whose banks lie the materials of nearly all the internal and external trade of Europe. The estimated cost is £1,600,000.
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 every body 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.
Although the censorship on theatrical pieces in Paris has been re-established in even more than its wonted strictness, the prefect of police does not think it sufficient. He has recently directed the commissaries of police (there is one in every theatre every night) to pay particular attention to every performance, and to notify him if there be any thing "in the words, style, play, or costume of the actor, or in the applause or disapprobation of the public," which may appear politically objectionable. This proceeding of the prefect has caused profound dissatisfaction in the theatrical circles.
The Paris "Débats" announces two new works from the pen of M. Guizot, to be published at the end of this month. The first is entitled "Monk; Fall of the Republic, and Re-establishment of the Monarchy in England in 1660." The second is "Washington; Foundation of the Republic of the United States of America."
An experiment has been made at the arsenal of Metz, of mortars, hand grenades, and bombs made of zinc, which has completely succeeded.
A vessel arrived at Bordeaux on the 18th inst. from Canton, having on board a curious collection of Chinese arms and costumes for the Museum of Paris.
Several works concerning Joan of Arc have recently been published in France. The one which attracts most attention is devoted to her martial exploits, and shows that she did not hesitate in combat to put her foe to death with her own hand. It is also cited as completely exonerating the English from the odium of having had any part in her horrid execution, since it shows that she was tried, condemned, and executed by the Inquisition—that the charges against her were purely and wholly ecclesiastical; that her trial was conducted in the pure ecclesiastical form, just as those of any other suspected sorcerer, witch, or heretic; and that in virtue of ecclesiastical laws she was sentenced and burned.