"In no people do the chief men appear as more thoroughly incarnate of the national traits; each outwardly a several Americanism. Here we have the massive potency of Daniel Webster,—on whose ponderous brow and fixed abashing eyes is set the despotism of intellect; Silas Wright,—a well-grown and cultivated specimen of the ordinary statesman; Henry Clay and Col. Fremont,—two halves of the perfected go-ahead spirit; the first shrewd, not to be evaded, knowing; the second impassable to obstacles and alive only to the thing to be done. The heads are finely and studiously lithographed from daguerreotypes by Brady, and suffice to show how utterly fallacious is the notion that character is lost in this process."
A portrait of the author of Don Quixotte, after a painting by Velasquez, has been discovered in Paris, and has created some sensation, as none of the portraits of the great Spanish poet hitherto existing were considered very authentic. The renown of Cervantes being not fairly established till after his death, little pains were taken to preserve his features during lifetime. His portrait had been painted by Pacheco; but there existed but a poor copy of this, and it was from this copy that all engravings have been taken. The hope, therefore, of possessing a portrait of the poet by such a man as Velasquez, is cheering; and there are some facts which go far enough to prove the thorough authenticity of that now discovered.
The Exhibition of the British Institution was opened to private view, in London, on the 8th of February, and to the public on the Monday following. The number of works in painting and sculpture amounts to 548, and, as a whole, the Exhibition is considered as scarcely up to the average.
Of French Taste we have a new illustration in the fact that M. de Triqueti, the sculptor, has completed a statue of Our Saviour, six and a half feet high, for one of the decorations of the tomb of Napoleon Bonaparte.
The late railway works, undertaken near Prague, in Bohemia, have brought to light a great number of objects which may constitute a new species of European art, we mean that if the Czecho-Slaves before the introduction of Christianity. Some of the ancient sculptures found relate to the Slavian goddess Ziwa, most undoubtedly analogous to the Indian Siwa.