CURRENT LITERATURE.
Letters from Paris during and after the Hundred Days. By Helen Maria Williams. (The Burrows Brothers Company, Cleveland.)- These letters give a curious picture of Paris in 1815. Perhaps the most entertaining passages are those which describe the breaking up of the great collection of plundered statues and pictures with which the Directory and Napoleon had filled the Louvre. The writer tells us how she gained access to the sculpture-gallery and saw the vacant pedestal of the Venus de Medici. "Ali, Madame," said one of the old liveried attendants, "she is gone, I shall never see her again ; she set out this very morning at 3 o'clock et sous bonne escorte." Apparently the ardent old gentleman had enter- tahaed some wild thoughts of a rescue. Very curious, too, is the account of how not even the poorest labourers could be got to help nnhang the pictures, so indignant were they at what they con- sidered an act of spoliation.
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