flowers and wreaths. These figures, with those of ladies upon balconies
gay with flags, and the vast architecture, fill this enormous canvas,
which is much larger than even the _Catharine Cornaro_ with which the
Philadelphia Exhibition made Americans familiar. The nudity of the women
mingled with clothed personages in the streets of a city of the
sixteenth century has naturally called forth much adverse criticism, and
people have fancied that they saw in it an unworthy attempt to achieve a
popular success by means of the scandal; but M. Makart replies that he
has respected the truth of history if we are not to disbelieve a
contemporary letter of Albert Duerer to Melanchthon. Be this as it may,
this great effort receives the applause of the public, notwithstanding
the monotonous amber tint which pervades this picture as it did the
_Catharine Cornaro_. Another Austrian, the historical painter Matejko,
has received a medal of honor for pictures full of energy, truth and
character, though marred by that unaccountable scattering of the light
which is a peculiar eccentricity of Austrian painters.

L. LEJEUNE.

DESERTED.

"What a glorious, all-satisfying country this Nevada desert would be if
one were only all eyes, and had no need of food, drink and shelter!
Wouldn't it, Miss Dwyer? Do you know, I've no doubt that this is the
true location of heaven. You see, the lack of water and vegetation would
be no inconvenience to spirits, while the magnificent scenery and the
cloudless sky would be just the thing to make them thrive."

"But what I can't get over," responded the young lady addressed, "is
that these alkali plains, which have been described as so dreary and
uninteresting, should prove to be in reality one of the most wonderfully
impressive and beautiful regions in the world. What awful fibbers or
what awfully dull people they must have been whose descriptions have so
misled the public! It is perfectly unaccountable. Here, I expected to
doze all the way across the desert, while, in fact, I've grudged my eyes
time enough to wink ever since I left my berth this morning."

"The trouble is," replied her companion, "that persons in search of the
picturesque, or with much eye for it, are rare travellers along this
route. The people responsible for the descriptions you complain of are
thrifty business-men, with no idea that there can be any possible
attraction in a country where crops can't be raised, timber cut or