Upon this topic of the primitive forms and operations of nature, I am reminded of something interesting I was looking at yesterday.  These are botanical models in wax, with microscopic dissections, by an artist from Florence, a pupil of Calamajo, the Director of the Wax-Model Museum there.  I saw collections of ten different genera, embracing from fifty to sixty species, of Fungi, Mosses, and Lichens, detected and displayed in all the beautiful secrets of their lives; many of them, as observed by Dr. Leveille of Paris.  The artist told me that a fisherman, introduced to such acquaintance with the marvels of love and beauty which we trample under foot or burn in the chimney each careless day, exclaimed, “’Tis the good God who protects us on the sea that made all these”; and a similar recognition, a correspondent feeling, will not be easily evaded by the most callous observer.  This artist has supplied many of these models to the magnificent collection of the Jardin des Plantes, to Edinburgh, and to Bologna, and would furnish them, to our museums at a much cheaper rate than they can elsewhere be obtained.  I wish the Universities of Cambridge, New York, and other leading institutions of our country, might avail themselves of the opportunity.

In Paris I have not been very fortunate in hearing the best music.  At the different Opera-Houses, the orchestra is always good, but the vocalization, though far superior to what I have heard at home, falls so far short of my ideas and hopes that—­except to the Italian Opera—­I have not been often.  The Opera Comique I visited only once; it was tolerably well, and no more, and, for myself, I find the tolerable intolerable in music.  At the Grand Opera I heard Robert le Diable and Guillaume Tell almost with ennui; the decorations and dresses are magnificent, the instrumental performance good, but not one fine singer to fill these fine parts.  Duprez has had a great reputation, and probably has sung better In former days; still he has a vulgar mind, and can never have had any merit as an artist.  At present I find him unbearable.  He forces his voice, sings in the most coarse, showy style, and aims at producing effects without regard to the harmony of his part; fat and vulgar, he still takes the part of the lover and young chevalier; to my sorrow I saw him in Ravenswood, and he has well-nigh disenchanted for me the Bride of Lammermoor.

The Italian Opera is here as well sustained, I believe, as anywhere in the world at present; all about it is certainly quite good, but alas! nothing excellent, nothing admirable.  Yet no!  I must not say nothing:  Lablache is excellent,—­voice, intonation, manner of song, action.  Ronconi I found good in the Doctor of “L’Elisire d’Amore”.  For the higher parts Grisi, though now much too large for some of her parts, and without a particle of poetic grace or dignity, has certainly beauty of feature, and from nature a fine voice.  But I find her conception of her