the most finished and admirable of the portraits of Holbein or Vandyke was to be seen in Broadway? But the cunning of the painter has never enriched canvas with a more sad and stately vision of queenly womanhood than Rachel, as Mary Stuart, gives to the memory forever.

If you would see some of the strongest emotions that can agitate human nature, represented to the very life, not in earthy color nor the inert marble, but in all the flushing, changing, subtle substance, the mystery and the beauty of the human frame and face divine; if you would see the most accurate attention to detail, the keenest feeling for material effect, combining to produce a consummate reality and splendor of costume and of coloring, which it is dazzling to look upon and delightful to study, while yet these admirable results are so completely subordinated to the poetic expression they are enlisted to serve, that it is long before their extraordinary perfection breaks upon the mind; if you would see all this and more, which, lost now, you may hardly hope in a lifetime again to see, we counsel you, reader, come quickly to New York!

For a time, Mlle. Rachel must mainly claim our attention. But we are glad to notice a great animation in theatrical matters generally. Our managers have entered hopefully upon a season of anticipated prosperity. We trust they may not find themselves deceived.

We are promised Mme. Lagrange at the Academy of Music. Where is our American, Miss Hensler? We trust her fresh and pleasing talent will not be overlooked.

Signora Parodi has been concerting successfully. The Pyne troupe, soon, alas!. to depart, have drawn excellent houses; and the farewell concert of the handsome Vestvali was an ovation-though the night was hot and Rachel at the Metropolitan. All signs show that our musical public "stands provided and prepared" for the coming season.

We have seen with pleasure that many of our own actors and actresses are among the most regular attendants upon Mlle. Rachel's performances. This is as it should be: for, without mooting any question of comparisons between Mlle. Rachel and the great tragedians of the English school, (comparisons, by the way, which few men living are competent to draw, since the

great actor leaves behind him no witness of his powers but the voice of tradition,) there can be no doubt that the study of excellence so extraordinary as hers must be in every way profitable, even to artists of a school radically unlike that which she represents. She applies a stimulus to ambition even where she does not supply a model for imitation.

One most characteristic fault of the English stage, is the unnatural key in which all our actors think it necessary to pitch their voices. In the humblest farce, as in the loftiest tragedy, this fault is continually repeated, till the trick of the stage-voice has become so familiar to our ears as almost to escape notice. The English or American visitor to Paris is instantly struck on visiting a French theatre, by the entire naturalness of the tones which reach his ears. One can hardly persuade himself, at first, that he is looking upon a stage. In witnessing Parisian comedies, we were long haunted with a vague notion that we were looking in upon the proceedings of private family, and committing an indiscretion of the grossest kind. Trained in this excellent school, the actors who accompany Mlle. Rachel, by the sheer simplicity of their method, (for they are by no means performers of the first rank,) have made, in comedy at least, a decided impression upon our public. Our own performers will do much for the theatre in America, if the example of these French players shall move them to shake off the trammels of a bad habit, consecrated by years though it be. It is only in private circles that such natural and unaffected acting has heretofore been found in America; but we have seen so much admirable dramatic talent displayed in our private theatricals, that we entertain no doubt of the capacity of America to produce, with the inspiration of good models, and under the control of a good system, a most respectable body of actors.

But few of the French performers carry upon the tragic stage the same unforced and simple manner. There are exceptions: and Mlle. Rachel is supported by two or three persons worthy of all praise for the ease and dignity with which they fill their róles. But the construction of French tragic verse betrays most of them into a kind of see-saw declamation, up to the

sixth syllable and down again to the twelfth, which is wearisome to the ear and sadly impairs the effect of the dramatic situations. No such fault can be found with Mlle. Rachel herself. Her declamation strikes us as nearly perfect. With that exquisite perception of nuances which distinguishes her alike in conception and in execution, (witness, for instance, a subordinate, but still most important example, the taste and delicacy with which she suits her complexion to her part, without even suggesting to the spectator the notion of artificial coloring,) she has just exactly hit the point where verse would vanish into prose, and while the ear, in listening to her, retains all the time a vague consciousness of the poet's peculiar rhythm, the perception of the metrical form of her speech very rarely comes between the mind and its apprehension of the passionate emotions she is expressing. Like Lucrece in the gripe of Tarquin,

"She puts the period often from his place," and without confounding the measure, or destroying the mere declamatory effect of her recitations, gives to the verses of Corneille and Racine a reality of power, not, perhaps, their own. In this respect, she probably resembles her great prototype on the French stage, whose genius, thanks to the temper of her times, never received a recognition so brilliant and so honorable as has been vouchsafed to the daughter of the colporteur Felix, in the palaces of monarchs, but whose memory has been so gracefully revived by Rachel herself. Adrienne Lecouvreur first commanded the ear and the attention of the French court, by her departure from the style of chanting declamation, of true recitative, in which actresses like la Duclos had been accustomed to utter the poetry of the stage. Let us hope that the good taste, the chaste and subdued energy of the power of which Mlle. Rachel is giving such memorable proofs, may be among the permanent legacies which she will leave to us.

There will be no lack of actors in New

York this winter to profit by this new study. Our theatrical season has opened with great spirit. A new English comedy at Burton's; a new American comedy, founded upon a French story, and written by Mr. Brougham, at Wallack's, have already been put upon the stage, with newly-arranged and well-recruited companies at those theatres; and Mr. Davenport has appeared again in Shakespearian drama at the Broadway.

Poor, indeed, must the actor be whom Shakespearian drama will, in its turn, not support. With the best disposition in the world to admire Corneille and Racine, we have been compelled to feel that the inter est of their tragedies, for us, depends absolutely upon the genius of the actress who is their interpreter. But who has not felt a keen wish, on seeing Rachel, that he could behold her, supported by an adequate cast, darkening the stage with the awful spirit of Lady Macbeth, or making it gorgeous with the passion of Cleopatra? We should be sorry if the appearance of the past French tragedies should have any (even momentary) effect in diminishing the zeal of Shakespearian students and actors

PLASTIC ART.-Scheffer's "Beatrice and Dante" (noticed in our last number) is on exhibition at the Messrs. Goupil's. We hope our readers will see it. And we specially recommend to their attention the print, also to be found there, which we think much finer than the painting itself.

At the Messrs. Williams's, Greenough's "Boy and the Eagle" has just been receiv ed. This is a bronze, beautifully cast at Springfield, and is for sale. It is a simple conception, admirably wrought out. A mother eagle, breathing vengeance, has fixed her talons in the back of a lad who has been stealing her eaglets; and the lad, finding himself in trouble, drops his prey, and turns, painfully enough, to defend himself. The same gentlemen have also received a beautiful head of a coquettish "Spanish Maid," an oil painting by Baxter, of London, which can hardly fail to charm our young friends.

incognita. On many maps still extant California is represented as an island bounded on the North by the Fretum Aniani, and in some it is jumbled with Jesso or Japan. We have seen a map by Louis de Hennepin in which California appears as a peninsula, separated from Jesso by the straits of Anien, with Jesso separated from Asia and Japon by the strait of Vries.

From such crudities the various surveys of Des Barres, de Brahm, Gauld and other British officers had done much to extricate our Atlantic coast prior to the Revolution. The Atlantic Neptune published by the British government brought together much of what was then known of our coast, and the imprint of Jeffreys is borne by some maps of localities along it, which have even yet been replaced by nothing better. The surveys of Des Barres have done him enduring honor where the work was actually performed under his eye, but in some charts, bearing his name, gross errors prevail. So, too, Gauld's Key West and Tortugas chart, whose accuracy was all the times could afford, is still quite tolerable as a navigator's guide. But as for our coast at large the charts were absolutely bad, and full of danger to those who trusted them. With few local exceptions no trustworthy charts had been made, adapted to the wants of our increasing navigation. The defect was in the insufficiency of the surveys, forming their basis, which had been rude, disconnected, and hasty. Our navigators had not yet begun to receive that assistance, in comprehending the peculiarities of our coast, which has since been so admirably rendered by the Coast Pilot and charts of the Messrs. Blunt (father and sons) of New York.

Meantime Europe had been alive with great geodetic undertakings, having for their direct object, the formation of accurate maps of states and charts of their coasts, and for their indirect result, the determination of those elements of the earth's figure which are so essential both to geography and astronomy. France had measured its arc of a meridian, on which to base its decimal system of weights and measures. England had begun its magnificent Ordnance survey, and throughout Europe, geodesy was fast assuming a scientific and practical form. The British Admiralty had fully entered on that sagacious

policy of surveying the coasts and harbors, not only of British dependencies, but of whatever foreign realms invited commercial enterprise; a policy which has done much to establish English maritime supremacy, and to which the world now owes over 2000 Admiralty charts, including a large portion of the known hydrography of the entire world.

Moved by this impulse and by a full consciousness of our great deficiency in good coast and harbor charts, the late Prof. Patterson, of Philadelphia, in 1806, brought forward a project for a complete survey of the U. S. coast. This project, favored and fostered by Secretary Gallatin, led to the passage of a law in 1807, authorizing a survey. Fortunately the plan adopted was that proposed by Mr. F. R. Hassler, whose high scientific attainments and experience in the Berne triangulation, in Switzerland, eminently qualified him to propose the best plan then practicable. Nothing was done till 1811, when Mr. Hassler was sent to Europe to provide the necessary instruments, which were to be made from new designs by him. Then came the war with England, and soon after the restoration of peace Mr. Hassler was removed from his post, before fairly entering on its duties. The work was at the same time transferred from the Treasury Department to the Navy Department. A period of inaction followed, which was first interrupted in 1827 by that enlightened Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Southard, who recommended a return to the former organization. In 1832, this recommendation was adopted and an appropriation made. It is from this date that the real and effective operation of the coast survey begins.

Mr. Hassler was appointed Superintendent and continued in that position till his death in 1843. A man of rare mental qualities; truly original and learned in the most advanced astronomical and geodetic science of his day; as a mathematician respectable and as a physicist meritorious; he was distinguished by some singularities which were unfortunate in their influence on the popularity of the work over which he presided. A single amusing illustration may indicate how little court he paid to the arts of popularity. It is told that, when he was once urging an increase of his salary upon the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary

remarked that Mr. Hassler's salary was about equal to his (the Secretary's), to which Mr. H. rejoined: "Oh yes, but Secretaries can be got any day, while there is but one Mr. Hassler." This peculiarity of temperament engendered hostilities, which led to a Congressional investigation, with its usual controversial concomitants. Incapable of comprehending the true character of our people and institutions, and using a dialect peculiar to himself, Mr. Hassler was in no condition to compel justice to his real merits. It is, hence, the more incumbent on us to bear witness to the great fertility of his mind within its proper sphere. He did good service in giving a right start to the work which he directed, and his researches on our weights and measures and their comparison with the standards were highly meritorious and extensive. His elaborate paper (in the Am. Phil. Trans.), on the coast survey instruments and methods, won special praise from the late lamented Bessel, and remains his chief monument.

In 1843, a law directed the formation of a Board to reorganize the work. This Board retained and extended the scientific features of the work, defined its organization and established in detail the methods and order of operations, essentially as they now exist. This plan of reorganization was approved, and the general Treasury Department regulations, based thereon, were adopted in 1844. Since that date they have been in constant and most successful operation.

In November, 1843, Prof. Alexander Dallas Bache was appointed to the places of Superintendent of the Coast Survey and of Weights and Measures, made vacant by Mr. Hassler's death. His accession gave a new impulse to the operations both in the field and office, and a progressive improvement has marked each succeeding year of his administration to the present time. Prof. Bache graduated at the U. S. Military Academy, as head of the class of 1825, and was a Lieutenant of Engineers till 1829. Then, in turn, he became Professor of Natural Philosophy and Chemistry in the University of Pa., President of the Girard College, and Principal of the Philadelphia High School, until 1843. His qualifications for the position he now holds cannot be better stated than in the words of the illustrious Hum

boldt, who thus writes to Prof. Schumacher:

"You know better than I do, in how high an estimation the direction of the work for the survey of the coast stands, not only among us, but among all the most illustrious men who, in France and England, are interested in the study of geography and nautical astronomy. To the most solid knowledge of astrono my and mathematics, Mr. Bache unites, in a very eminent degree, that activity of mind and extent of views which render a work of practical utility profitable to the science of the physics of the globe. In a region of the globe where the direction of oceanic currents, the dif ferences of temperature produced by these currents, and by the upheaval of the bottom, and the direction of the magnetic curves, offer so important phenomena to the navigator, such a work could not be placed in better hands than those of Mr. Bache. The government of the United States has acquired a new right to our gratitude by protecting nobly that which has arrested the attention of the hydrographers and astronomers of Europe. I should be glad to think that in a country where I am honored with so much good feeling, my feeble testimony might contribute to enliven the interest which is due to the excellent labors of Mr. Bache."

The first and most important object of the survey, that, indeed, for which it was began, and toward which all its operations tend, is the execution of a systematic, continuous, and accurate sounding out and delineation of the marine bottom along our entire coast line. All the hydrographic elements of a perfect chart are embraced under this ruling head, and all the various processes and means by which the charts themselves are to be prepared and circulated for nautical use. The plan is nothing less than this: to obtain and publish accurate maps of the shore line, in all its ins and outs, from Maine to Texas, from San Diego to Frazer's River, omitting no island, tidal river, harbor, bay, branch, or lagoon; to make frequent soundings along and abreast of all this coast line, in such a manner and with such a record as that each sounding can be plotted in its true position, relative to the shore line, thereby developing all shoals, rocks, holes, channels, bottom changes, characteristics and configuration; to define the local and general peculiarities of the tides and currents; and, in fine, to gather the materials for an rate picture of the ocean and ocean bottom along our coast and its indentations, which shall embrace every feature of importance to general, coasting and harbor navigation. The unveiling of the mysteries of the great

accu