ur knights of France,
Jove and the Muses--scene Madrid!'

* * * * *

The leading paper in the present number will not escape the attention nor
fail to win the admiration of the reader. The description of the _Ascent
of Mount AEtna_ by our eminent artist, is forcible and graphic in the
extreme. It will derive additional interest at this moment from the recent
eruption of this renowned volcano, which still continued at the last
advices, and by which already seventy persons had lost their lives. If our
metropolitan readers would desire a _due_ impression of the magnificent
scene which our correspondent has described, let them drop in at the rooms
of the National Academy of Design, where they will find the Burning
Mountain, as seen from Taormina, depicted in all its vastness and
grandeur; and not only this, but the noble series of allegorical pictures,
heretofore noticed at large in this Magazine, called '_The Voyage of
Life_,' representing Childhood, Youth, Manhood, and Old Age; '_Angels
ministering to Christ in the Wilderness_,' a picture that has an horizon,
and an aerial gradation toward the zenith, which alone, to say nothing of
the figures, and the composition itself as a study, would richly repay a
visit; '_The Past and the Present_,' two most effective scenes, especially
the second, which is overflowing with the mingled graces of poetry and
art; a glorious composition, '_An Italian Scene_,' of which we shall speak
hereafter; as well as of the view of '_Ruined Aqueducts in the Campagna di
Roma_,' fading into dimness toward the imperial city, and of '_The Notch
in the White Mountains_' of New-Hampshire. _Apropos_: we perceive by a
letter from an American at Rome, in one of the public journals, that
THORWALDSEN, the great sculptor, was an enthusiastic admirer of Mr. COLE'S
pictures, particularly of his 'Voyage of Life,' which he pronounced
'original, and new in art.' 'He could talk of nothing else,' says the
writer, 'for a long time; and every time he speaks of him, he adds: '_Ma
che artista, che grand' artista, quel vostro compatriota! Che fantasia!
quanto studio della natura!_' 'But what an artist, what a great artist, is
this countryman of yours! What fancy, what study of nature!' . . . WE are
aware of a pair of 'bonny blue een' swimming in light, that will 'come the
married woman's eye' over a kind but most antiquarian husband, when the
following is read, some two weeks from now,