PAUL DELAROCHE has just completed, at Nice, a grand historical composition, which the most intelligent judges decree to be his _chef d'oeuvre_. The picture represents a tragical moment in the life of Marie Antoinette. After a night of anguish before the revolutionary tribunals the unhappy Queen has just heard the verdict of her guilt. The President asks her if she has any thing to say in arrest of the sentence. For her sole answer, she rises calm and majestic, and takes silently the way back again to her dungeon. The artist has seized this instant, as she passes erect and still before a crowd of revolutionists. A man with a tri-colored scarf walks by her side, regarding her as a tiger gloats upon a lamb. It is the personification of terror. A single girl, too young to be cruel, yet attracted with the others, perhaps, to applaud the punishment of the _Widow Capet_, looks pityingly upon the Queen, her trembling lips murmur a prayer, and the tears start in her eyes. Upon the lips of the Queen there is almost a smile, a thought of disdain, for the outrages of men upon a solitary and defenceless woman. From the descriptions of which we select the prominent points, it is evident that this is another of the representations of historical incident for which Paul Delaroche has made himself so famous a name, as in his Death of Elizabeth, the Children of Edward in the Tower, Cromwell at the Coffin of Charles I, the Execution of Strafford, of Lady Jane Grey, Napoleon Crossing the Alps, &c., &c. And there is no reason that this last work should not be, as claimed, the greatest, since the artist adds to the greater cunning of his hand, the sympathies of chivalrous artistic feeling for the sorrow of a beautiful woman and a Queen of France. The picture is already sold in London, and will presently be forwarded to its destination; on the way it will remain a short time in Paris for the homage of the many admirers of this artist's genius.
Mr. MINER K. KELLOGG, who since his professional tours in the East and long residence in Italy, has spent some half dozen years in his native country, has just returned to Florence, where, with his companion from boyhood, Hiram Powers, he will probably pass the remainder of his life. He is an artist of peculiar and great merits, and there is not perhaps among American painters a man more uniformly regarded with respect and affection.