New York, are imposing and classical, while they perhaps show the
absence of the Christian idea noted in his other clerical subjects.
Thorvaldsen, born a Lutheran, was a spectator in Rome of bigotry and
skepticism, and took refuge in artistic impartiality. A friend once
observing that his want of religious faith must make it difficult
to express Christian ideas in his works, "If I were altogether an
unbeliever," he replied, "why should that give me any trouble? Have
I not represented pagan divinities?--still, I don't believe in them."
The life of this artist was one of consummate worldly success;
the kings of Bavaria and Denmark were the personal friends of the
unlettered son of the ship-carver, as were Horace Vernet, Walter
Scott, Andersen, and Mendelssohn; his casket of decorations was the
amusement of his lady visitors; and his invitations were so constant
that he could not always remember the name of his host: he was at once
parsimonious and charitable, cheerful and melancholy. His artistic
influence was very strong, exhibiting itself in the style of Tenerani,
Galli, Rauch, Drake and Bissen. The life of him by Plon is methodical
and complete, and the American version is illustrated by thirty-five
careful engravings printed in Paris and gummed upon the sheets.

Expiation. By Mrs. Julia C.R. Dorr, author of "Sibyl
Huntington," etc. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co.

_Expiation_ is an interesting American story, with a background of
lonely woods that protect the rustic privacy of Altona, and a list of
characters that combine city culture and country eccentricity. Patsy,
the grim and self-sacrificing "help," who observes drily of a statue
representing Eve with the apple that "some things is decent and some
things ain't," is the best delineation in it, but the style is always
lively, always feminine and pure, and the conception of the high-bred,
aristocratic family, come to bury their mistakes and miseries in a
forest seclusion, would have been thought worthy of being worked up by
Emily Bronte. The catastrophe, where a dumb nun turns out to be a lost
wife given over to the undertakers in a state of catalepsy, is perhaps
not quite new, but it is striking and vigorously told, and her union
at last with her husband's sons and the girlish bride of one of them
is very touching. The novel is full of local American color, and
entices the attention from the reader's first plunge to the end.

Wanderings in Sp