THE DIORAMA.
THE Diorama reopened for the season on Monday, with a change of the architectural scene. The new picture is an interior of the Basi- lica or Church of St. Paul, near Rome, the most ancient temple of the Christian wield, and one of the grandest churches built by the Emperor CONSTANTINE. If the relief of the building and the illusory effect be somewhat less perfect than in the interior of Santa Croce, which pre- ceded it, the beauty of the picture is perhaps greater. This is in a great measure owing to the paintings with which the church is deco- rated. Their gorgeous hues lit up by the sunbeams through the win- dows, the dark cedar beams of the roof, the long vistas of Corinthian columns of costly marble, and the irregular forms of the marble pave- ment, produce a striking effect : the verisimilitude is complete. While the sasher is musing on the incongruity of this mixture of styles, and the enlivening effect of the pictured walls—wishing that our cathedrals and churches in this country were so ornamented—the scene suddenly, but almost imperceptibly, undergoes a change: the once perfect and beautiful structure is now a rootless ruin—its marble columns shivered and calcined, its pictured walls scorched and defaced, and the cedar beams scattered in blackened fragments on the rubbish-strewn pave- ment : in a word, it is represented as it appeared after the fire that destroyed the interior, in 1823. The transition has a most magical effect.
The beautiful Alpine snow-scene of the Village of Alagna over- whelmed by RD avalanehe—the chef d'crucre of dioramic landscapes— remains: it is worth seeing again and again. It is the perfection of scenic illusion in painting. Both views are the work of M. BouloN.
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