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 adm