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THE ANNUAL EXHIBITION OF PICTURES by Duesseldorf artists was opened in that city about the middle of July.  Landscapes are rather predominant.  In their line the works of Alexander Michelis, August Kossler, Weba and Fischer are the best.  Ten pictures of peasant life in Norway by Adolf Tidemond, a Norwegian artist, are said to display very remarkable merit.  They were retained in the exhibition only a few days, being destined for the royal chateau of Oskarshall.  Of historical pictures there is nothing worth mentioning.

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The Brussells Herald states that the artistic value of the works of art contained in the churches of Antwerp, eleven in number, is by the late financial report of the province estimated at 49,763,000 francs-nearly ten millions of dollars.

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LEUTZE’S PICTURE of Washington Crossing the Delaware is nearly finished at Duesseldorf, and is much praised by several letter-writers who have seen it.

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MR. POWELL, at Paris, expects to finish his picture for the Capitol about the first of February.

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EDGAR ALLEN POE.

By R.W.  GRISWOLD.

The family of EDGAR A. POE was one of the oldest and most reputable in Baltimore.  David Poe, his paternal grandfather, was a Quartermaster-General in the Maryland line during the Revolution, and the intimate friend of Lafayette, who, during his last visit to the United States, called personally upon the General’s widow, and tendered her acknowledgments for the services rendered to him by her husband.  His great-grandfather, John Poe, married in England, Jane, a daughter of Admiral James McBride, noted in British naval history, and claiming Kindred with some of the most illustrious English families.  His father, David Poe, jr., the fourth son of the Quartermaster-General, was several years a law student in Baltimore, but becoming enamored of an English actress, named Elizabeth Arnold, whose prettiness and vivacity more than her genius for the stage made her a favorite, he eloped with her, and after a short period, having married her, became himself an actor.  They continued six or seven years in the theaters of the principal cities, and finally died, within a few weeks of each other, in Richmond, leaving three children, Henry, Edgar, and Rosalie, in utter destitution.

Edgar Poe, who was born in Baltimore, in January, 1811, was at this period of remarkable beauty, and precocious wit.  Mr. John Allan, a merchant of large fortune and liberal disposition, who had been intimate with his parents, having no children of his own, adopted him, and it was generally understood among his acquaintances that he intended to make him the heir of his estate.  The proud, nervous irritability