previously enjoyed by the subjects of the
house of Hapsburg have also been swept away. The powers of the
municipalities have, wherever they existed, been curtailed, and in some
instances abolished entirely. It is not the _status quo ante_ that has
been restored in the Austrian dominions; the condition of the people has
been rendered _more_ servile.

A very important movement has been going on in Germany. We refer to the
attempt of Austria to combine her dominions with the Prussian
Zollverein, by means of a treaty of commercial reciprocity for five
years, with complete union afterward. A conference of delegates from all
the important states, except Prussia, was sitting at Vienna during the
month of January, but the results have not definitely transpired. Such a
union would be beneficial to the people of the states involved, by
favoring industry and giving new activity to trade, as well as by
dispensing with a large proportion of the armies they are now obliged to
support.

The railway between St. Petersburg and Moscow is now in regular use. The
first train, on the 13th of last month, took from Moscow to the capital
792 passengers. The line was eight years in constructing. The line from
St. Petersburgh to Warsaw has been commenced, under the direction of
General Gersfeldt, who assisted General Klenmichel in the former line.

Through the representations of Lord Palmerston to the Turkish
Government, all difficulties have been removed with regard to the
Egyptian railway, the works of which are to proceed without delay. Mr.
Stephenson has surveyed the line. The two branches of the Nile are to be
crossed by a pontoon bridge. The Pasha has given orders for 18,000
laborers to be put upon the works.

The Fine Arts

KAULBACH has just finished the cartoon of his Homer. This is the second
in the series of great frescoes with which he is to adorn the new Museum
at Berlin. The first, the Dispersion, at Babel, and the third, the
Destruction of Jerusalem, are completed upon the walls, and have already
been described in these pages. The Homer possesses the same richness of
artistic combinations, and the same daring sweep of thought and
imagination, which undeniably place Kaulbach at the head of the artists
of this age. He represents in Homer the culture and the religion of
Greece; the idea he depicts is, that Homer gave Greece her gods, and the
peculiar tendency of her intellectual development. The poet is, of
course, the