was for a long time doubted, that signals can be sent from opposite ends of a wire at the same time without interference; so that a second signal may be forwarded while the receiver of the first is acknowledging its reception. The essential condition appears to be, that the two opposing currents shall be absolutely equal; and this is measured and determined by a newly invented instrument called an agometer. The same fact of double transmission has been for some time known to experimentalists in this country. Experiments have recently been made by a committee of scientific gentlemen, to ascertain the porosity of marble. This was accomplished by heating a cube of the material in a bath of oil, weighing it, and then placing it in an airpump, exhausting the air, and then allowing a current of water to pass in from a large chamber, with a force of about fifteen pounds to the square inch. This question of the absorption of water is important, as illustrating in some measure the action of frost upon marbles. The marble chosen was from Lee, Mass., the principal ingredients of which are found, on analysis, to be carbonate of lime and magnesia. more so on the 30th, and the next day the eruption took place. Thus the magnet is now ascertained to indicate the approach of a volcanic outburst as well as an earthquake. Scientific investigation shows that flints are formed from sponges. Imbedded in the substance of chalk, which, during long periods, by its accumulation, had continued to overwhelm successive generations of marine animals, the sponge have remained for centuries exposed to the water that continually percolates such strata-water which contains silicious matter in solution. The silicious spicula, that originally constituted the framework of the sponge, forms nuclei around which kindred atoms constantly accumulate, until the entire mass is at last converted into flint. Parisian Telegraphs.-In Paris the telegraph wires are laid under ground, no poles being seen in the streets. fifteen inches wide, in which the wires are A trench is dug twelve or placed side by side, but so as not to touch each surrounds the wires, and completely isolates other. Liquid bitumen is then poured on, which them. It secures them from damage by accident or design, and from being deranged by atmosA monument has been erected at St. Peters-pheric influence. The same plan is to be burgh to the Russian fable-writer, Krylow, (born adopted at Lyons. 1768, died 1844.) It is a colossal "sic sedebat" statue of the poet, surrounded by allegorical groups of animals, and has been modeled by the well-known Russian sculptor, Baron Kloots. Professor Pierce, of Harvard College, is said to be of the opinion that the zodiacal light is occasioned by a nebulous ring around the earth; also, that the earth has many satellites, though too small to be seen, and that these satellites furnish the meteors which fall to the earth. Prince Albert has suggested, in a letter to the Council of the Society of Arts, the propriety of their visiting the Paris Exhibition, accompanied by the associated institutions, now amounting to nearly four hundred. The Council of the Society of Arts are now making arrangements to carry out the plans recommended by the prince-president of the society. It has been lately proposed, by some scientific gentlemen, to organize a new American Scientific Association, on a more select and exclusive plan than the one now in existence. A new mezzotint engraving called the "American Christian Union" has just been published. The scene appears to be the interior of a church, with a congregation of distinguished divines of all evangelical denominations. Bishop Wainwright is presiding, with the familiar figure of Dr. Cox conspicuously holding forth, while some forty of the leading clergymen of the present day are seated at the right and left. Among them are Drs. Ferris, Krebs, Tyng, Spring, Spencer, Cone, H. W. Beecher, L. Beecher, Bishop Waugh, Bishop Coskry, Rev. E. N. Kirk, and others. Geologists are accumulating facts concerning the earthquakes in Turkey and the eruption of Vesuvius. As regards the mountain, it appears from a report by Professor Palmieri, of the Observatory at Naples, that the magnets were unusually disturbed on the 29th of April, still for some time investigating the phenomena of Lauberg, the German chemist, who has been terrestrial magnetism, sees reason to conclude that the greatest magnetic induction, as demonstrated by the records of observatories in all parts of the world, takes place sixteen days after the two solstices-in the northern hemisphere at one period, in the southern at the other. He shows that at those two periods the poles of the earth are so placed as to be come subject to the greatest amount of influence from the sun. These facts assort well with what is known respecting another phenomenon-namely, that the aurora has a marked maximum at the equinoxes, and as strongly marked a minimum at the solstices. So far as is yet ascertained, the phenomena are dependent on the position of the poles and axis of the earth relatively to each other; and slowly we are beginning to be able to trace something like cause and effect in the mysterious phenomena of terrestrial magnetism. Newton and Leibnitz.-Sir D. Brewster has taken great pains to investigate the claims advanced by the friends of Newton and Leibnitz to the invention of the Differential Calculus, upon which, after the lapse of nearly two hundred years, a verdict has not yet been pronounced. Our author, however, conceives that it is not difficult to form a correct estimate of the claims of the rival analysts, and arrives at the following results :-"1. That Newton was the first inventor of the method of Fluxion; that the method was incomplete in its motion; and that the fundamental principle of it was not published to the world till 1687, twenty years after he had invented it. 2. That Leibnitz communicated to Newton (1677) his Differential Calculus, with a complete system of notation, and that he published it in 1684, three years before the publication of Newton's method." VALENTIN, one of the most cele-him as belonging to the Roman school, brated French painters, was born in the little town of Coulommiers, in Brie, the 8th June, 1601. I do not know why some authors have chosen to consider VOL. VII.-33 for if France can claim him as one of her children, it is not only because she saw him born, but because his taste for painting manifested itself long before he went to Roine, to seek inspiration among the marvels of the Vatican. If it is true that he made a journey to Paris, it was not, at any rate, to become a pupil of Simon Vouet, as some of his biographers have asserted: a mere comparison of dates is sufficient to refute this error. Simon Vouet left for Constantinople, with Monsieur de Sancy, in 1612, at which time Valentin was only eleven years old. Vouet, according to the testimony of Félibien, did not return and found his school in Paris before the year 1627, at which period Valentin already enjoyed a high reputation as a painter in Rome, in which city he had resided for a considerable time. When Valentin arrived in Italy Caravaggio was just dead, and painters were beginning to free themselves from the influence which he had exerted during his lifetime. Like many other reformers, he had led away his cotemporaries by supporting a false system on chefs-d'œuvre, and bad principles on great examples. At his death there were only two parties remaining in Rome; that of Josepin and that of the Caracci, represented respectively by Domenichino and Guido. All that these rivals had left them to perform was the no very difficult task of proving that nature is not black, and that the genius of Caravaggio neither excused his contempt for noble and carefully chosen forms, nor his horror for a strong light. Valentin came to Rome during the period of this reaction of feeling, which was destined to receive additional force from the presence of Poussin, for it was not long before that great painter published his opinion on the different parties, and assigned to each its proper place. On the one hand, he pronounced Domenichino to be the greatest painter after Raphael; and, on the other, when speaking of Caravaggio, said, "This man came among us to destroy painting." In spite of this, however, Valentin was irresistibly led to an imitation of Caravaggio; his instinct prompted him to take this step from the very first, and nothing could turn him from the path he had taken, neither the general tendency to leave it, nor the authority and advice of Poussin, whose admirer and friend he was; so true is it, that in his conduct he obeyed an organization which was more powerful than the influence exerted by a great mind. To work he went, therefore, carried away by his enthusiasm for form which others despise, preferring force to grace, and ready, with Guercino, to sustain the theory of contrast against the defenders of unity. His genius was rough and plebeian, and it is among the people that he looks for his subjects and his models; he finds that the reality is always sufficiently noble there, provided that he can succeed in portraying it, palpitating and striking. In his love for nature of this kind, which appears to him unjustly neglected, he lavishes his light and shade, in order that the subject may possess relief, vigor, and brilliancy, and, not knowing how to ennoble it, he surrounds it with darkness, and lends it the poetry of night. In the evening he frequents the taverns of Rome, and sits down amid volumes of tobacco-smoke, in order to study the physiognomies of gamblers, or seize the poses of drunkards, or the grimaces of itinerant musicians. Mixed up with this people of tatterdemalions and vagabonds, he observes their mode of life, their now reckless, now impassioned bearing, and their proud and manly beauty peering through their rags. Sometimes, in order that nothing of this reality which he is pursuing may escape him, he forgets himself in places where he meets low bullies and high-bred cavaliers, huddled together in the same strange confusion; and where the same light which displays the misery of a ragged beggar, sparkles on the sword which beats against the heels of the nobleman in his doublet. In this respect, although differing in one particular point, to which we shall have occasion to allude in another part of this notice, Valentin's taste mostly led him to select the same class of subjects as those chosen by Callot. Speaking of the latter, Monsieur Arsène Houssaye says: "What struck Callot most was Man. In his time humanity still possessed a thousand distinct characters; the parent tree had a thousand different graftings; either through chance or the will of the Creator, each man was then more thoroughly imbued than now with the spirit and manners of his part in the drama of smiles and tears which is played on the stage of this world. Jacques Callot, instead of studying the mysteries and grandeur of Nature, gave his attention to everything that appeared fantastic, ex it was again seized and carried off in the wagons of the conqueror, who did not think, as the consul Mummius once did at Corinth, that the gold of the conquered was sufficient to redeem objects of such travagant, or original. In a word, of all the actors in life who played their parts under his immediate observation, those who pleased him most were boastful soldiers, religious ballad-singers, who opened a mouth that was bigger than their money-value, or that it was an easy task to find bowl-mountebanks who prefaced their buffoonery with unlimited promises-mendicants in picturesque rags, and pilgrims with doublets slashed with time, spangled with box-rosaries, studded with artificial flowers, and covered with leaden medals, as well as with all the holy marvels of Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours." In another part of his work, Monsieur Arsène Houssaye says of Callot: "He had the passion of creating tatterdemalions, bullies, and mountebanks, as other men have the passion of play." Meanwhile, the celebrated Cardinal Barberini, the nephew of Urban VIII., a great patron of artists, and especially of Nicholas Poussin, having heard of Mousù Valentino, (as he was then styled in Italy,) expressed a wish to see and patronize him as well. Among other pictures, he ordered of him a view of Rome with the Anio and the Tiber. In this picture Valentin was very successful, according to the account of the historian Baglione, who saw it exposed during his time in the palace of the chancellor's office of the apostolic see. It was for this same cardinal that Valentin painted the Decollation of Saint John the Baptist, a large canvas covered with numerous figures, remarkable for their being executed with that bold firmness of touch for which he was already known-gagliardamente, as the Italian account has it. But his principal work was the Martyrdom of Saints Processus and Martinian, which he painted for the Basilica of Saint Peter's, in that Caravaggian manner which he had now made his own, and in which he had the opportunity of displaying an incredible energy of style. The two sufferers are stretched out upon a mechanical apparatus, and tied together, with the head of the one in the direction of the other's feet, while the cord which binds their feet and hands is attached to the axle of a capstan which the executioner is turning round. Valentin's picture was brought to Paris, after Bonaparte's conquests, at that memorable period when Rome was merely the chief town of a French department. But, after the second invasion, in 1815, a second Valentin who could produce other works of the same description. What a singular privilege is that possessed by objects of art, which can thus travel without the slightest danger throughout the world, among the baggage of victorious troops, for whom the mere possession of a chef-d'œuvre is often a pledge of the honors of war and the most precious of all trophies! Valentin was unskillful in expression, unless he had to depict the most vulgar emotions of the soul. So far from appreciating the shades of sentiment, and the varied language of the passions, he could only seize their coarsest and most simple forms; and, with him, the word expression may be taken to mean not only the contraction of the face, but also historical and philosophical propriety, and a number of circumstances inseparable from the subject. In order to obtain a correct idea of what he wants in this res ect, it is not even necessary to compe him to Poussin. It would, without doubt, be unjust to place Valentin's Solomon, a beardless young man, badly clad, of a lymphatic temperament and clumsy joints, without dignity or grace, by the side of the other Solomon, so majestically draped, and yet so simple, calm, and impassible, seated with an air of grandeur, expressing his impartiality by his attitude, and pointing out with his finger the true mother almost without a movement. It would at first appear that the knowledge of the value of gesture and the power of pantomimic expression ought to belong to a painter who confines himself altogether to reality; and yet these qualities are only possessed by the philosophical artist, by him who, not content with observing the external signs of the various passions, endeavors to discover that which causes them to spring up in men's hearts. In this Judgment of Solomon the true mother is a beautiful woman, whose black hair causes her large white shoulders to stand out in bold relief. She is turning round, in order to snatch her child from the soldier who appears about to cut it in two, and this movement of hers allows us to perceive the type of the Roman face in the severe lines of her profile. It is by this that she is distinguished from the false mother, whose gesture is full of hypocrisy, and whose physiognomy is stamped with a character of baseness, as if the painter, in his ignorance of the play of the features, could find no other means of characterizing the good and the bad mother than by giving beauty to the one, and ugliness to the other. If we allow Valentin to be an admirable painter, it is especially on account of the truthfulness and force of his execution, and whenever the subject does not require those qualities of the mind in which he is deficient. To understand and admire him more at our ease, we ought to study him when he represents the picturesque episodes of that life of reality which he has chosen for his epic. We ought to follow him into the thick and smoky atmosphere of the guard-room, where soldiers are having their fortunes told them, or scraping on a fiddle. A public, who covered themselves with garments of glaring hues, and found in every town some dark retreat or other, unknown to justice, and offering a place of refuge to every adventurer without hearth or home. As we have already remarked, the substance of Valentin's pictures is the same as that of Callot's engravings. The former, as well as the latter, offer us a lively representation of the manners of a certain period; but, although the epoch of Valentin's works is the same as that of Callot's, there is a marked difference in their manner of seeing things. The reason that this brilliant arabesque did not unfold itself before the eyes of the painter of Coulommiers as it did before those of the engraver of Nancy, is, that each of them gave the fruits of his observations the tinge of his own disposition, and stamped them with the impression of his own mind. The one chose the burlesque, the other the poetic side of the subject. Callot was more particularly struck with the gait of the passer-by, the easy swagger of the cavalier, and that kind of misery which, in his day, was coated with a varnish of elegance. He represented the agitated and wandering episodes of outof-door life which he had seen defiling before him, those joyous caravans of Behold us in a retreat of gipsies. dirty and sallow-faced sorceress, with a napkin bound around her head, like the women of Frascati, and hiding her countenance in the shade, is examining the hand of a kind of landsknecht, who is having his fortune told. The tranquillity | tatterdemalions who used to feast upon of this low witch forms a striking contrast the sward, share their booty under the with the lively emotion that is visible in vault of heaven, and gild their rags in the the soldier's features; and, as if the sun. Valentin, on the contrary, devoted strangeness of the figures about him, and his attention to the in-door life of this the appearance of the cavern, into which wandering race; he entered with them only a mysterious light finds its way the unknown retreats where they reposed through an air-hole, were not sufficient to themselves from their fatigues, or where, trouble his thoughts, the companions of during the night, and by the light of their the prophetess succeed in exciting his torches, they indulged in all kinds of imagination still more effectually by the pastimes. noisy music which they are playing close to his ears. To the left, in the obscurity, is seen a man putting his hand into the gipsy's pocket, from which he draws forth a living cock, a sort of symbolical animal such as the old sibyls usually possess. In truth, it is not merely impossible to paint with a more masterly and vigorous touch; but, what is more, to initiate the spectator with greater success into the mysteries of the life led by the gipsies of those days-by that proscribed and vagabond race, with their eccentric costume and copper-colored complexions, who lived by rapine, or on the credulity of the One day, during Valentin died poor. the great summer-heats, he had gone with his companions to amuse himself, and heated himself to an extraordinary degree. After night had set in he was returning to his own residence through the deserted streets of Rome, when, in passing over the Place d'Espagne, near the fountain Del Babbuino, he felt a desire to throw himself into the basin, in order to quench the fire which was consuming him. This act of imprudence brought on, doubtless, a pleurisy, for he died a few days afterward, in the year 1632, in the flower of his age, being only thirty-one years old. |