Hear me profess sincerely: Had I a dozen sons, each in his love alike, and none less dear than thine and my good Marcius, I had rather eleven die nobly for their country, than one voluptuously surfeit out action.'

That means, as plainly as words can speak, 'A son who has no power of action is to me as a girl, and a girl is of no value because she has no power.' She tells her daughter-in-law, Virgilia, whom it is clear she despises for her softness,

If my son were my husband, I should freelier rejoice in that absence wherein he won honour, &c.

Virgilia replies,

But had he died in the business, Madam, how then?"

Therein, in that one remark, she proves herself the direct opposite of Volumnia in her character. Both women are selfish in their way. Volumnia would give her son to the public service because only thus could he reflect honour upon her. Virgilia would not give her husband to the public service, inasmuch as it were so much private love lost to her. But Volumnia spoke out, while Virgilia, as became the nature of her love, was a coward. Good training would have made both characters excellent; but while Volumnia would have ever remained the most magnificent woman, Virgilia would have been capable of far the most devoted love and affection. As it is, she is somewhat mawkish. She would keep her husband about her as she would a kid or a kitten, or her child, and pine the moment he were away. She seems to possess no intellect, nothing but blind instinct, and her fears are of the most ignorant kind, like those of a green school girl of the 'bread and butter tribe' of modern days. She is formed to love without knowing why, and to dread with as little reason. She cannot comprehend Coriolanus, save that he is somewhat awful to most people, and very kind to her; and one is tempted to think that his love to her springs partly from her softness when compared with Volumnia, and partly from the very helplessness which stands so much in need of a protector. But of a surety there is no perfect sympathy between them. There are many thoughts which come across his mind in which she cannot share, and she evidently has no thoughts of her own. Volumnia is speaking of her son:

Methinks I see him stamp thus, and call thus,-
Come on, you cowards, you were got in fear,
Though you were born in Rome: His bloody brow
With his mailed hand then wiping, forth he
Like to a harvest-man, that's tasked to mow
Or all, or lose his hire.'

On this Virgilia, in a fright, remarks,

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goes;

Scorn is in the aspect of Volumnia while she replies,
'Away you fool! It more becomes a man

Than gilt his trophy. The breasts of Hecuba,
When she did suckle Hector, looked not lovelier
Than Hector's forehead, when it spit forth blood
At Grecian swords contending.'

Verily I could be well content never to be linked to woman rather than she should be such an one. The same spirit inhabited Tullia when she bade the charioteer drive over the corse of her parent. And yet the basis of that spirit was energy, and it might have been trained to work good as readily as evil. A steamengine, while bursting, is a fearful thing, yet steam power is a most glorious servant when properly guided and applied to human uses. But how thoroughly illogical and absurd is the exclamation of Virgilia about the blood. The idea of her husband killing hundreds of his fellows like harvest work, she can contemplate calmly enough, but the thought of blood flowing from scratches on her husband's brow is perfectly terrific to her. It is a nervous weakness, like that of being frightened at a rat or a mouse, which is the case with many fine ladies, who at the same time can run in debt and starve their creditors, or encourage election bribery, or smile upon red-coated men, whose trade it is to slaughter their fellows, and all this without a thought of the many ramifications of misery which are the result.

In the midst of their discourse Valeria enters, who is the very sample of an inveterate gossip, without either feeling or energy, save when her business is to flatter in order to keep well with her acquaintances. Coriolanus was surely disposed to be ironical when in another place he calls her,

The noble sister of Publicola ;

The moon of Rome; chaste as the icicle
That's curded by the frost from purest snow,
And hangs on Dian's temple.'

I have seen such women, and so doubtless have you, reader, who take credit to themselves for virtue, in this sense, because they have little else for which to take credit. The lady gossip asks Virgilia,

Whereat Volumnia takes occasion to remark, that

'He had rather see the swords and hear a drum, than look upon his schoolmaster.'

Doubtless he would: she had trained him to it, and done what in her lay to confirm him a savage. Valeria will give proof:

I saw him run after a gilded butterfly; and when he caught it, he let it go again; and after it again; and over and over he comes, and up again; catched it again; or whether his fall enraged him, or how 'twas, he did so set his teeth and tear it; oh! I warrant him he mammocked it.'

There's a sucking wild beast of the Roman lady's training! Reader! Coriolanus being thus trained, marvel rather at his great qualities than be astonished at his defects. The boy is a picture of our aristocracy,-crying for a plaything one minute, and breaking it the next in sheer caprice. Virgilia, had she lived in our days, would have mended stockings. She resolutely refuses to go out gadding with the others, even to get news of her husband, but withstands their taunts, and sits down like a good housewife. So ends scene the third.

To be continued.

JUNIUS REDIVIVUS.

THE LUXEMBOURG.

THE Luxembourg is a picture gallery in a palace, and a palace in a garden. Spring is its time of prime, for the garden is crowded with lilac trees that array it in an atmosphere of their own beautiful hue, and fill it with that freshest fragrance which can scarce be said to come wooingly' to the sense, for the sense would rather come craving for it, after the long privation from all the lovely forms and delicious odours that are shut up in winter. It is glorious thus to meet again: there is no niggard allowance of a few scant blossoms,-there is a whole world of them, except where there are fountains or statues, or better than all and every thing, troops of happy people, who flock from far and wide, to hail the coming spring in one of her fairest bowers of reception; who listen eagerly again to the breezes, birds, and falling waters, mingling with them at intervals a sweeter musicthe music of happy, human voices, and brightening the sunshine they enjoy with the brightness of their own enjoyment. Oh! it is much to meet Spring alone in a watching walk, where the eye searches for every new treasure, and the heart bounds in thankfulness at finding it: one feels like a new Adam in a new garden of Eden; but it is more to see her in her fulness of beauty where a thousand hearts are leaping in sympathy with your own, like her own glad streams released from their icy thraldom: to see her as she celebrates her first fête amongst the lilacs of the Luxembourg. But we must not stay in her picture-gallery.

In the Luxembourg the whole arrangement is so different from that of the Louvre, that the impression received is uninjured by comparison. It contains two distinct suites of rooms. The first comprises an ante-room, a gallery, and a smaller room beyond. In each there are choice pieces of sculpture. There is a Daphnis and Chloé specially to be observed,-alive in marble; young, loving, sweet, and pure, and tender. How much more of love

painting admired, copied, engraved; yet love and the soul are alike unconscious of any concern therein. Psyche is selfish, and Love seems half asleep; so far it is consistent, for love is never thoroughly awake when selfishness is near him; there is a numbing coldness in her presence that makes him drowsy. The subject is an exquisite one if spiritually dealt with: we should like to see a higher mind employed upon it. All the paintings here are of the modern French school. Heaven defend us,' say some,-Heaven preserve it, say we, and at the same time teach its artists to improve their noble powers, giving them better direction or a better choice of subjects. Here, as in many other places, there are far too many who have chosen plague, pestilence, battle and murder, madness and misery, instead of others more adapted to the quickly progressing state of the world. They paint backwards instead of forwards: plagues are mitigating; the trade of war is beginning to be held in detestation, and we are tending rapidly towards universal sympathy. Perhaps the French artists would teach the people a hatred to war as the Spartans taught their children to loathe drunkenness, by an exhibition of its disgusting consequences; their teaching (if it be so) will make deeper impression, as the drunkenness with blood is more abhorrent than the drunkenness with wine. But the highest task of a painter is to create a love for moral and intellectual beauty by depicting moral and intellectual beauty; rather than the more indirect way of creating a loathing for vice by painting it in all its deformity. Objectionable as are many of the subjects chosen, the power of realization displayed in their execution cannot be sufficiently admired. There is the battle of Aboukir, by Gros. It is like one of Scott's novels, in more respects than one; in its lively action, and in that the hero is not the hero. Who would not rather be the fine old Pacha Mustapha, deserted as he is by his troops, wounded till he can fight no more, yet nearly unhorsed by his last effort, seizing one of the flying cowards by his turban, trying to drag him on to the very bayonets of the enemy; who would not rather be this brave tiger, than the gay fop, Murat, who is in the centre gallantly equipped as a bridegroom for his bride, rather than a murderer for his victims; not a curl of his whiskers ruffled, not a fold of his sash displaced, leading on his thousands remorselessly to drive the retreating host into the flood ready to receive them, should they escape the sword of the pursuer. And the enemy would do likewise had they the power.' Woe to the trade of war, that encourages the perversion of man's noble passions: although Sir Robert Peel thinks, or did think last year, (there is no vouching for a statesman's opinions,) when he spoke on the Irish Coercion Bill, that there was something animating in the idea of a battle.' There is something animating in the idea of a battle; it animates all those who have a holier warfare before them to go on steadily, bravely, in their

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efforts, until they work this change in the minds of the many, that they shall regard appeals to physical force as worthy bulldogs rather than men. But such pictures as these, indeed almost all pictures, may be converted into impressive lessons for the young, provided they have those about them who will read the lesson aright. Come here, little fellow, you who have the longing for a cap and feather, a scarlet jacket, and a love of martial music, your head already filled with admiration of the pomp and circumstance of glorious war;' you who watch so eagerly the glancing helmets, glittering arms, and gallant steeds of the Guards as they move in measured pace along the streets, or in the parks on some sunshiny morning,-come hither and see to what your admiration tends:-brother fighting against brother; shouts of vengeance; shrieks of agony; blood drawn by weapons in human hands, flowing like water from human hearts; hands and hearts that once were like your own, young, guileless, springing with a power yet undirected, (what is your own longing but the result of fine energy unemployed,) craving for action, listening eagerly to stories telling of gallant deeds; listening to those with whom fate had linked them, whose gallant deeds' were the deeds of the million murderers.' Think of them as they were; look at them as they are. It is well; the fire which the thought of deeds of arms' had kindled within you is quenched for ever by so much blood. The destruction of the Mamelukes by Mohamed Ali Pacha, viceroy of Egypt, painted by Horace Vernet, is even more repelling, inasmuch as it represents the destruction of human life by the treachery of a despot, rather than in the open battle field. The history is familiar. The moment of time chosen is that when the Mamelukes have assembled in all their state within the castle walls of Cairo, by order of the pacha, to attend a ceremony in honour of one of his sons. The gates are closed, and on the instant, from the ramparts, from the towers, from the windows, a tremendous fire is showered upon them by the soldier slaves of the pacha. You see them in the court-yard below, struggling in an ocean of smoke, as did the drowning Egyptians in the waves of the Red Sea: horses plunging, men reeling in their saddles; hands, and we had almost said, voices, uplifted in imprecation on the head of the destroyer, who is seated on a rampart, where, unseen by them, he may yet listen to the agony and death of his victims. Behind him are two favourite attendants, mute, stern, and motionless. To the right a group of Albanians, firing away like human steam guns, so quick, so vigorous appear the movements directed against the thickly pent struggling mass of human beings below. The action, the colouring, the accompaniments, are all worthy the painter's high fame, all except the pacha himself, an exception nearly as bad as the tragedy without Hamlet.' Was the act one for the promotion of his country's good? (tvrants make strange excuses to themselves