28 JUNE 1834, Page 20

Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad, is the title

of a pleasant and entertaining miscellany, of four volumes, by Mrs. JAEIESON. It consists of an account of a visit to Germany, called "Sketches of Art, Literature, and Character," in three parts—the first in the form of dialogue, the two others in the snore free and natural shape of travelling memoranda ; a reprint of the Diary of an Ennuyee—under which mask the lively traveller beguiled the sentimental reader of some tears for the sad fate of one who has lived to rival her assumed character by the vivacity of her natural disposition; and some minor pieces, such RS personal Sketches of Mrs. SIDDONS and Miss FANNY KEMBLE ; Visits to Hardwicke and Althorpe, two or three Tales, and a little Drama of rustic character.

Mrs. JAMESON'S view of the state of the Fine Arts in Ger- many is particulary interesting. Her vivid perception and correct taste, aided by an elegant and well-stored mind, give weight and value to her criticisms, and force to her animated descriptions of the modern and ancient works of art. The ac- counts she gives of the Glyptothek and the Pinatothek (sculpture and picture galleries) at Munich, and the royal palace now in progress there—all erected by the architect DEKLENZE, at the expense of that munificent patron of the arts, the late King of Bavaria—make an Englishman feel ashamed, as he contrasts these grand and magnificent buildings with a paltry Pimlico Palace, and a meagre strip of a National Picture-gallery. The de- scription given of the frescos that adorn these edifices— the work of PETER CORNELIUS, SCHNORR VON CAROLSFELD, ZIMMERMANN, and other living German painters—shows that the genius of ALBERT DURER is revived in his country, not in the person of RETZSCH alone. One or two detached speci- mens of these grand works, given in the volumes, prove the justness of Mrs. JAMESON'S praise, and induce the desire to see more of them. She also makes us acquainted with the merits of DANNECKER the sculptor, the rival of THORWALS- DEN and CHANTREY, whose name is scarcely known in this country. The landscapes and portraits of the modern German painters are as hard, fiat, cold, and frittered, as we had judged from the few specimens of them that we have seen : it is in in- vention and drawing that they excel.

In Mrs. JAMESON'S narratives of her visits to some of the eminent men of Germany, her amiable feeling lends an additional charm to her vivid pictures of the social character and domestic life of these sons of genius. The romantic adventures of a German lady named AMBOS,—who obtains the Emperor's pardon for her brother, condemned to Siberia, by the blind despotism of the Russian Government, for an offence of which he was innocent, and on arriving with it finds him dead ; and who afterwards en- counters his cruel mistress, a Jewess, who by falsely accusing her lover of having carried her off against her consent, had caused his banishment, and upbraids her with her perfidy,—is a trag:cal episode, which might be dramatized effectively.