Madame REGNAULT DE ST. JEAN D'ANGELY, a peerless beauty, one of whose replies to NAPOLEON has become historical. Madame JUNOT, Duchess D'ABRANTES. This lady refused NAPOLEON's brother in marriage; her brother would not accept NAPOLEON's sister, PAULINE; and her mother, Madame DE PERMON, refused NAPOLEON himself. Madame DE STAEL, the first literary woman of the age. Mdlle. LENORMAND, the sybil of the nineteenth century, and the intimate confidante of JOSEPHINE; of whom it was said that 'she contrived to obtain credence in an age which neither believed in GoD and his angels, nor the devil and his imps.' Malle. GEORGES, the tragic actress, and the protegée of NAPOLEON. Mr. GOODRICH has done his part 'excellently well.' The prose is spirited and compact. We have room for only two excerpts, which we take at random. MADAME REGNAULT'S REPLY. 'MADAME REGNAULT was one of the many women who had incurred NAPOLEON'S dislike. He never treated her with even ordinary politeness, without, however, alleging any motive for his conduct, and probably conscious of no reasonable ground of aversion. On the evening in question, he was out of humor, and made his customary round of the company with evident distaste. He stopped opposite Madame REGNAULT to examine her toilet. This consisted of a simple dress of white crape, trimmed with alternate tufts of pink and white roses. The glossy black of her hair was relieved by white roses deeply imbedded in its tresses. Her toilet was considered faultless; for the events of the night caused it to be critically examined and canvassed. As his MAJESTY prepared to address her, she presented as perfect an embodiment of youth, beauty, and taste, as was to be found in the court. NAPOLEON was all the more incensed at her irreproachable appearance. Justice was the last feature which characterized his criticisms upon ladies, and the remark which he now made was certainly the last which a regard to truth and the most ordinary courtesy would have suggested to him. With a bitter smile, he said, in a deep, sonorous voice: "Do you know, Madame REGNAULT, that you are looking much older to-night?' "These words were uttered in the hearing of several hundred persons, half of whom were women, doubtless gratified at the beauty's humiliation. She hesitated for a moment, as if framing her reply. At last she said with a smile, and in a voice sufficiently firm for all who heard the attack to hear the rejoinder: What your MAJESTY has done me the honor to observe might have been painful to hear, had I reached an age when youth is regretted.' "The NIOBE of the court was hardly twenty-eight years old. A murmur of approbation ran through the room, which not even the presence of NAPOLEON could repress. The Emperor afterward regretted his treatment of Madame REGNAULT. He was told at St. Helena, in 1816, that she had manifested constant attachment to him during his confinement at, and upon his return from, Elba. Is it possible?' he exclaimed, with marked satisfaction. Poor lady! How badly I treated her! Well, this compensates for the ingratitude of the renegades for whom I did so much! How true it is, that we can neither judge of the heart nor the sentiments until they have been exposed to trial!' TALMA. Ir was said of TALMA, that his head and profile presented the Greek type in all the purity of an Athenian medallion struck in the time of PERICLES. His physiognomy, completely under his control, was naturally melancholy, but became at will terrible or placid, winning or repellant. His voice was penetrating and magnetic, and he pos sessed the art of speaking audibly in an extinct whisper. His gestures were the perfection of grace; his pantomime, whether illustrative of the text, or itself supplying the place of language, was singularly expressive. He was the first to bestow attention upon the art of costume, consulting medals, statues, manuscripts, black-letter folios, for authority upon the accessories of dress, armor, and drapery. He never had a rival upon the French stage. His immediate predecessor, LEKAIN, who enjoyed an immense reputation, was unequal and incomplete. Perfect in the delineation of the more violent passions, he failed in representing them when in repose, in rendering passages of transition from agitation to tranquillity, and in descriptive recitation. In all this, TALMA was as effective as in the more startling features of his art. The French classic stage is indebted to him for the present system of dramatic declamation. It was the custom previously to make both the sense and the punctuation subordinate to a distinct coupling of the rhymes. Each Alexandrine fell in cadence, and the duty of the actor was specially to impress upon the ear of the listener the rhyming syllables at the end of it. TALMA reversed this habit, and made it the object of his delivery to preserve the sense even if he somewhat slurred the rhyme. He breathed at the pauses; his predecessors had always taken breath at the ends of the lines. This avoidance of the jingle of rhyme was a happy innovation; and in thus improving an art intimately connected with oratory and elocution, TALMA is likely to exert a more durable influence upon literature and rhetoric than usually falls to the lot of an actor, however great he may be. Throughout the Consulate, TALMA remained on terms of intimacy with BONAPARTE, being habitually present at his levees, upon a footing with MONGE and LAGRANGE. When NAPOLEON became EMPEROR, he thought it prudent to cease his attendance at the palace. He was summoned, however, to the Tuileries on the morning of the day when the authorities were to compliment the EMPEROR upon his elevation to the throne. His MAJESTY compelled several deputations of government functionaries to wait without, while he took the tragedian to task for alleged exaggerations in the performance of NERO. On another occasion, speaking to TALMA of his tendency to over-act, he said: "You visit me often, TALMA; you see around me princes who have lost their dominions, princesses who have lost their lovers, kings who have lost their thrones; you see generals who aspire to crowns; you see disappointed ambitions, eager rivalries, terrible catastrophes; you see afflictions exposed to the public view, and you may guess at many sorrows nursed and hidden in the heart. Here is tragedy, certainly: my palace is full of it: and I myself am assuredly the first tragedian of my time. Do you ever see us lift our arms in the air, study and prepare our gestures, take attitudes and affect airs of grandeur? Do you hear us utter cries and shouts? Certainly not; we speak naturally, as every one speaks when urged by interest or inspired by passion. So have done before me the various persons who have occupied the attention of the world, and, like me, have played tragedies upon the throne. Here are examples to meditate upon!' Again, one morning after the performance of 'La Mort de Pompée,' NAPOLEON said: 'I am not entirely satisfied: you use your arms too much: monarchs are less prodigal of gestures: they know that a motion is an order, and that a look is death; so they are sparing of both motions and looks. For instance, how often has it happened to me to awaken to activity three hundred guns by a sign of my little finger!' TALMA profited by the advice thus given: and if the second part of his career showed a marked improvement upon the first, the criticisms of NAPOLEON may be supposed not to have been without influence in inducing reflection and reformation. During the Revolution and under the Directory, he had been clamorous, turbulent, demonstrative; under the Consulate and Empire, he became simple, impressive, majestic. He produced his effects by more natural and legitimate means. No one but TALMA,' wrote Madame De STAEL, ever attained that degree of perfection in which art is combined with inspiration, reflection with spontaneity, reason with genius.' THE GENIUS OF CHRISTIANITY: OR THE SPIRIT AND BEAUTY OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. By the VISCOUNT DE CHATEAUBRIAND. Translated by CHARLES I. WHITE, D.D. Baltimore: JOHN MURPHY AND COMPANY. In the midst of that fierce and horrible period of French history known as the Revolution of '93, when that 'most Christian country' abolished Christianity, and a degraded woman, clad as the GODDESS OF REASON, was set upon the altars and adored, Armand Henri, Vicompte DE CHATEAUBRIAND, wrote the work now under review, as a counter-poison to the infidelity of his countrymen. Portions of it have been before translated, but this is the only complete English version we have met with. The Rev. Mr. WHITE has performed his task with evident love for and admiration of the original, a love and admiration which indeed it well deserves. The work was written to exhibit the reasonableness, beauty, utility, and even necessity of Christianity. He set forth in eloquent language the glories of the religion of CHRIST, as manifested in its sacraments and mysteries, its virtues and moral laws, its poetry and artistic beauty, its consecration of common and family life, its power to dig nify what was otherwise held trivial, and its grand, solemn, and wondrous mission to prepare the human soul for a higher and eternal state after its separation with the clay which had been its casket. Thus wrote CHATEAUBRIAND; and France stopped to listen even amid her intoxication; amid the horrid blood-drunkenness of that awful time. To him is that noble country as much indebted for her salvation as to any other human agency. All that is said of Christianity is compared with what attempts to be its parallel in Paganism, Mohammedanism, or other systems; and few can read without recognizing the supreme superiority of the creed of Christendom. As a fine specimen of the style, both of writer and translator, we copy the splendid passage upon Christian Ruins: THE ruins of Christian monuments have not an equal degree of elegance, but in other respects will sustain a comparison with the ruins of Rome and Greece. The finest of this kind that we know of are to be found in England, principally toward the north, near the lakes of Cumberland, on the mountains of Scotland, and even in the Orkney Islands. The walls of the choir, the pointed arches of the window, the sculptured vaultings, the pilasters of the cloisters, and some fragments of the towers, are the portions that have most effectually withstood the ravages of time. 'In the Grecian orders, the vaults and the arches follow in a parallel direction the curves of the sky; so that on the gray hangings of the clouds, or in a darkened landscape, they are lost in the grounds. In the Gothic style, the points universally form a contrast with the circular arches of the sky and the curvatures of the horizon. The Gothic being, moreover, entirely composed of voids, the more readily admits of the decoration of herbage and flowers than the fulness of the Grecian orders. The clustered columns, the domes carved into foliage, or scooped out in the form of a fruit-basket, afford so many receptacles into which the winds carry with the dust the seeds of vegetation. The house-leek fixes itself in the mortar; the mosses cover some rugged parts with their elastic coating; the thistle projects its brown burrs from the embrasure of a window; and the ivy, creeping along the northern cloisters, falls in festoons over the arches. 'No kind of ruin produces a more picturesque effect than these relics. Under a cloudy sky, amid wind and storm, on the coast of that sea whose tempests were sung by OSSIAN, their Gothic architecture has something grand and sombre, like the GoD of Sinai, of whom they remind you. Seated on a shattered altar in the Orkneys, the traveller is astonished at the dreariness of those places: a raging sea, sudden fogs, vales where rises the sepulchral stone, streams flowing through wild heaths, a few reddish pine-trees scattered over a naked desert studded with patches of snow- such are the only objects which present themselves to his view. The wind circulates among the ruins, and their innumerable crevices are so many tubes which heave a thousand sighs. The organ of old did not lament so much in these religious edifices. Long grasses wave in the apertures of the domes, and beyond these apertures you behold the flitting clouds and the soaring sea-eagle. Sometimes, mistaking her course, a ship, hidden by her swelling sails, like a spirit of the waters curtained by his wings, ploughs the black bosom of ocean. Bending under the northern blast, she seems to bow as she advances, and to kiss the seas that wash the relics of the temple of GOD. 'On these unknown shores have passed away the men who adored that WISDOM which walked beneath the wares. Sometimes in their sacred solemnities they marched in procession along the beach, singing, with the Psalmist, How vast is this sea which stretcheth wide its arms! At others, seated in the cave of Fingal on the brink of ocean, they imagined they heard that voice from on high which said to JOB, Who shut up the sea with doors when it brake forth as issuing out of the womb? At night, when the tempests of winter swept the earth, when the monastery was enveloped in clouds of spray, the peaceful cenobites, retiring within their cells, slept amid the howling of the storm, congratulating themselves on having embarked in that vessel of the LORD which will never perish. 'Sacred relics of Christian monuments, ye remind us not, like so many other ruins, of blood, of injustice and of violence! Ye relate only a peaceful history, or at most the mysterious suffering of the SON OF MAN! And ye holy hermits, who, to secure a place in happier regions, exiled yourselves to the ices of the pole, ye now enjoy the fruit of your sacrifices; and if among angels, as among men, there are inhabited plains and desert tracts, in like manner as ye buried your virtues in the solitudes of the earth, so ye have doubtless chosen the celestial solitudes, therein to conceal your ineffable felicity!' In his chapter upon the Organization of Animals and Plants,' M. DE CHATEAUBRIAND condenses the following from a passage in the great German NIEUWENTYT'S Treatise on the Existence of a God,' as furnishing new proofs of the bounty of PROVIDENCE: 'Is treating of the four elements, which he considers in their harmonies with man and the creation in general, he shows, in respect to air, how our bodies are marvellously preserved beneath an atmospheric column, equal in its pressure to a weight of twenty ihousand pounds. He proves that the change of one single quality, either as to rarefaction and density, in the element we breathe, would be sufficient to destroy every living creature. It is the air that causes the smoke to ascend; it is the air that retains quids in vessels; by its agitation it purifies the heavens, and wafts to the continents the clouds of the ocean. He then demonstrates, by a multitude of experiments, the necessity of water. Who zan behold without astonishment the wonderful quality of this element, by which it ascends, contrary to all the laws of gravity, in an element lighter than itself, in order to supply us with rain and dew? He considers the arrangement of mountains, so as to give a circulation to rivers; the topography of these mountains in islands and on the main land; the outlets of gulfs, bays, and mediterranean waters: the innumerable advantages of seas: nothing escapes the attention of this good and learned man. In the same manner he unfolds the excellence of the earth as an element, and its admirable laws as a planet. He likewise describes the utility of fire, and the extensive aid it has afforded in the various departments of human industry. When he passes to animals, he observes that those which we call domestic come into the world with precisely that degree of instinct which is necessary in order to tame them, while others that are unserviceable to man never lose their natural wildness. Can it be chance that inspires the gentle and useful animals with the disposition to live together in our fields, and prompts ferocious beasts to roam by themselves in unfrequented places? Why should not flocks of tigers be led by the sound of the shepherd's fife? Why should not a colony of lions be seen frisking in our parks, among the wild thyme and the dew, like the little animals celebrated by LA FONTAINE? Those ferocious beasts could never be employed for any other purpose than to draw the car of some triumphant warrior, as cruel as themselves, or to devour Christians in an amphitheatre. Alas! tigers are never civilized among men, but men oftentimes assume the savage disposition of the tiger! "The observations of NIEUWENTYT on the qualities of birds are not less interesting. Their wings, convex above and concave underneath, are oars perfectly adapted to the element they are designed to cleave. The wren, that delights in hedges of thorn and Arbutus, which to her are extensive deserts, is provided with a double eye-lid, to preserve its sight from every kind of injury. But how admirable are the contrivances of nature this eye-lid is transparent, and the little songstress of the cottage can drop this wonderful veil without being deprived of sight. PROVIDENCE kindly ordained that she should not lose her way when conveying the drop of water or the grain of millet to her nest, and that her little family beneath the bush should not pine at her absence. And what ingenious springs move the feet of birds! It is not by a play of the muscles which their immediate will determines, that they hold themselves firm on a branch: their feet are so constructed that, when they are pressed in the centre or at the heel, the toes naturally grasp the object which presses against them. From this mechanism it follows that the claws of a bird adhere more or less firmly to the object on which it alights, as the motion of that object is more or less rapid; for, in the waving of the branch, either the branch presses against the foot or the foot against the branch, and in either case there results a more forcible contraction of the claws. When in the winter season, at the approach of night, we see ravens perched on the leafless summit of the oak, we imagine that it is only by continual watchfulness and attention, and with incredible fatigue, they can maintain their position amid the howling tempest and the obscurity of night. The truth, however, is, that unconscious of danger, and defying the storm, they sleep amid the war of winds. BOREAS himself fixes them to the branch from which we every moment expect to see them hurled; and, like the veteran mariner whose hammock is slung to the masts of a vessel, the more they are rocked by the hurricane the more profound are their slumbers. With respect to the organization of fishes, their very existence in the watery element, and the relative change in their weight, which enables them to float in water of greater or less gravity, and to descend from the surface to the lowest depths of the abyss, are perpetual wonders. The fish is a real hydrostatic machine, displaying a thousand phenomena by means of a small bladder, which it empties or replenishes with air at pleasure.' THE work is elegantly gotten up, with a fine portrait: and in typographical beauty compares favorably with the best classic works of the day. THE POETICAL WORKS OF HORACE SMITH AND JAMES SMITH, Authors of The. Addresses.' Portraits, and a Biographical Sketch. Edited by EPES SARGENT. York: MASON BROTHERS. FOR nearly half a century the Brothers SMITH flourished in the li society of London: welcome always and everywhere: wits, poets, an noisseurs club-men, men of ton, and gentlemen. JAMES was a lawy profession, but was a good deal more fond of his song and his joke t briefs and special pleas. He took more to the stage-box than the jur and to the nine muses than to the twelve men on a panel. HORACE broker-a money-maker; and withal a man of uncommon generosi the most genial temper. He was a reliable friend and an agreeable panion. Both were fond of the theatre, and wrote for it with m less success. Both wrote verses; and HORACE wrote poetry of a ver order. Both became famous by the publication of 'The Rejected Add one of the most remarkable works in literature, and a book that is s printed, and read with as much zest as on the day of its first appea It has passed through some thirty editions, and is still one of the be ing books on MURRAY's trade-list. The SMITHS, when young men, were intimate with CUMBERLAND, an connected with him in several literary enterprises. The memoir, p to this collection of their poetical works, gives us an amusing account commencement of this acquaintance. Anecdotes of the distinguishe matist, of Hook, MATHEWS, CROKER, and the literary guests of Toм make this biographical sketch very agreeable; and it gives us a livel traiture of the two brothers to whom it is more especially devoted. Many of HORACE SMITH's poems are familiar to many American re but they are now for the first time brought together in a volume, in pany with 'The Rejected Addresses.' SHELLEY was very fond of HORACE SMITH, and thought highly of hi poet; and there are certainly some touches in his verse that could been accomplished only by the true inspiration. What can be more site than his Hymn to the Flowers'? There is a flow to the verse cilian Arethusa' like that of molten silver, or of the stream it descri Thy liquid gush and gurgling melody In deep oblivion, but that the buoyant breath Of bards uplifted it, and bade it swim Adown the eternal lapse, assured of fame, Till all things shall be swallowed up in death.' 'The Murderer's Confession' is a remarkable poem, for its originali boldness both of conception and versification. It is in a different vei gether from HORACE SMITH'S other writings in verse, and more like I touch in some of his delineations of domestic tragedy. The Invoc written in the neighborhood of Abbotsford during the last illness WALTER SCOTT; 'Dirge for a Living Poet,' written of SOUTHEY, duri latter days; 'CAMPBELL'S Funeral,' and 'The Life and Death,' in memoration of his friend CHARLES MATHEWs; all testify to the geni |