hibition was carried out in the
presence of a large assemblage, and to the universal satisfaction. They
had some good music to excite expectation, and the performance opened
with the Belisarius. The figures were so successful, the colors were so
happily distributed, and the lighting managed so skilfully, that they
might really have fancied themselves in another world, only that the
presence of the real instead of the apparent produced a kind of
uncomfortable sensation.

The curtain fell, and was more than once raised again by general desire.
A musical interlude kept the assembly amused while preparation was
going forward, to surprise them with a picture of a higher stamp; it was
the well-known design of Poussin, Ahasuerus and Esther. This time
Luciana had done better for herself. As the fainting, sinking queen she
had put out all her charms, and for the attendant maidens who were
supporting her, she had cunningly selected pretty, well-shaped figures,
not one among whom, however, had the slightest pretension to be compared
with herself. From this picture, as from all the rest, Ottilie remained
excluded. To sit on the golden throne and represent the Zeus-like
monarch, Luciana had picked out the finest and handsomest man of the
party, so that this picture was really of inimitable perfection.

For a third they had taken the so-called "Father's Admonition" of
Terburg, and who does not know Wille's admirable engraving of this
picture? One foot thrown over the other, sits a noble knightly-looking
father; his daughter stands before him, to whose conscience he seems to
be addressing himself. She, a fine striking figure, in a folding drapery
of white satin, is only to be seen from behind, but her whole bearing
appears to signify that she is collecting herself. That the admonition
is not too severe, that she is not being utterly put to shame, is to be
gathered from the air and attitude of the father, while the mother seems
as if she were trying to conceal some slight embarrassment--she is
looking into a glass of wine, which she is on the point of drinking.

Here was an opportunity for Luciana to appear in her highest splendor.
Her back hair, the form of her head, neck, and shoulders, were beyond
all conception beautiful; and the waist, which in the modern antique of
the ordinary dresses of young ladies is hardly visible, showed to the
greatest advantage in all its graceful, slender elegance in the really
old costume. The Archite