Boulevards, and give to this gay capital, with all its pure airs and lovely skies, the semblance of a forest city. From the Pere La Chaise the view of Paris has certainly a strikingly grand effect.

In 1814, the cemetery was converted into a battle-field, and batteries were erected on various spots to command the plain which extends to Vincennes, in order to prevent the advance of the Allies. The walls were pierced for cannon and muskets, and the students of the school of Alfort occupied it on the 30th of March, 1814, and defended it against two attacks of the Russians, who were led on by General Barclay de Tolly. The Cossacks carried it in the third atttempt, and Paris having capitulated, they bivouacked there, and cut down several of the trees for fuel. In 1815, while the Allies surrounded Paris a second time, interments in this cemetery were again temporarily suspended. In the chapel, which is a plain Doric building, fifty-six feet long, twenty-eight feet broad, and upwards of fifty feet high, there is always a service for the dead being performed; and priests, with their long black robes, may be always seen flitting about the tombs.

There are nearly three hundred persons employed about this cemetery, our guide informed us-guardians, guides, grave-diggers, masons, sculptors, &c. We did not see any works in progress sufficient to warrant us in believing this statement, but of course the guide knew whether he "spoke for effect." The keepers' lodge, which is the remains of the old mansion, is one of the most picturesque-looking old ruins that can be looked upon. It has been transcribed into many a traveler's album, and has been an object of

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much interest to the lovers of the fantastic in architecture; but it is not the most safe and comfortable looking dwelling to live in that ever we saw. There are hundreds of more comfortablelooking tombs than is this house of the poor keepers of Pere La Chaise.

It has been estimated that during the fortyfive years that this cemetery has been in existence, nearly 120,000,000 of francs have been expended upon the erection of chapelles and tombs. We saw several of them already broken and crumbling into ruins, and the probability is that none of those slight but expensive mausoleums will exist in a century hence. There are nearly 16,000 of them built of the finest granite, sandstone, and polished Carrara marble. They are silent monuments of affection, of vanity, and, to our mind, silent commentaries too upon the sentiment of France. It tolerates purlieus like the Faubourg St. Antoine, in which the living darkle -in which they rob, starve, smother themselves with charcoal, and murder for a subsistence-in which a language is spoken which has been invented, not to express but to conceal the sentiments of those who use it-in which there is a bitterness of life, a sentient death, that comes ever and again rolling out with furious eyes and grinning jaws upon society; and close beside this faubourg, which travelers are warned to shun, this same sentiment, so neglectful to the living, has erected 16,000 marble chapelles, &c., at an enormous expense, in memory of the dead. A splendid, and at the same time a pitiable promenade is the cemetery of Pere La Chaise. It is, as our friend expressed it, a splendid illustration of the French passion for effect.

THE readers of our volume will recall the graphic sketch of the first book of the Fairie Queene, by Professor Hart, under the title of the Story of Una. One of the incidents of the beautiful heroine's romantic history, was her visit to the Cave of Despair. The picture of the cave and its melancholy inmates, is one of the most masterly of the whole series, and in many of its features resembles the celestial strength and fire of Bunyan's delineation of a similar scene. The comparison of the two pictures, as well as of the style and force of genius of the two great poetsfor Bunyan was a poet of the highest orderwould form a beautiful and profitable study, which we may on some other occasion attempt. After the full account of the Poem on a preceding page, our plate will be sufficiently illustrated by quoting the particular passage, which our artist has chosen for his pencil :

Then gan the villein him to overcraw;

And brought unto him swords, ropes, poison, fire,
And all that might him to perdition draw;
And bad him choose what death he would desire:
For death was dew to him that had provokt God's ire.

THE preceding engraving is from a picture by the celebrated Gerard, in the Louvre, and is founded upon the ancient tradition of the fate of Belisarius, whose history is of much interest, and has been rendered doubly attractive by the fiction of Marmontel. Belisarius was a general under Justinian I., and distinguished himself by many signal victories. The times in which he lived were troubled by much anarchy: conspiracies and assassinations were but common occurrences. He is described as having been very brave, commanding in person, and inflexible in purpose. His successes in arms excited against him the envy of other chiefs by whom his assassination was once attempted. Even Justinian himself became jeal

ous of his fame. In 503, a conspiracy against the emperor was discovered, which Belisarius was falsely accused of participating in. Of his ultimate fate there are various accounts. Gibbon states that his life was spared, but that his wealth was confiscated, and he was placed in confinement. A tradition prevails that his eyes were put out, and that he traveled as a blind beggar, guided by a boy, and exclaiming, "Give a penny to Belisarius the general!" The artist has evidently worked upon some such tradition, and it would seems that the boy has set his foot upon a reptile which has stung him, and the blind Belisarius is now compelled to bear his helpless guide.