MR. CANNING.

A beautiful medal in memory of this celebrated statesman, has lately been struck at Paris, under the direction of M. Girard.

NATURE AND ART.

It is curious enough that people decorate their chimney-pieces with imitations of beautiful fruits, while they seem to think nothing at all of the originals hanging upon the trees, with all the elegant accompaniments of flourishing branches, buds, and leaves—Cobbet's English Gardener.

THE KING OF PRUSSIA

Lives in comparative retirement, in a small palace fitted up with the greatest simplicity, and his bed is really not better than that usually allotted to a domestic in England. His study is quite that of an official man of business. He has a large map of his own dominions; and in each town where troops are stationed he fixes a common pin, and on the head of the pin is a small bit of card, on which are written the names of the regiments, their numbers, and commanding officers, in the town. He thus, at any moment, can see the disposition of his immense army, which is very essential to such a government as Prussia, it being a mild despotic military system. He has a most excellent modern map of the Turkish provinces in Europe, and upon this is marked out every thing that can interest a military man. A number of pins, with green heads, point out the positions of the Russian army; and in the same manner, with red-and-white- headed pins, he distinguishes the stations of the different kinds of troops of the Turkish host.—Literary Gazette.

THE OPERA OF "OTELLO."

Othello is altogether unsuited to the lyrical drama, and supposing the contrary, Rossini, of all composers, was the most unfit to treat such a subject in music. The catastrophe in the English tragedy is necessary; we see it from the beginning as through a long and gloomy vista. We weep, or shudder, we draw a long sigh of despair, and feel that it could not have been otherwise. But in the opera, Othello is a ruffian, without excuse for his crime. We have suddenly a beautiful woman running distracted about the stage to a symphony—and a very noisy symphony—of violins, and butchered before our eyes to an allegro movement.—Foreign Review.

FRENCH NOVELS.

When last in Paris we were curious to know wherefore M. Jouy had written such exceptionable and abominable stuff as his last novel; and the gentleman to whom we addressed ourselves, answered, in a light lively vein; "Oh! M. Jouy has a name, and the booksellers pay well; and as they are very stupid, and depend on names for the sale of their books, he wrote down the first matter that came into his head."—Foreign Review.

AMBER.

Polangen, the frontier town of Russia, is famous for its trade in amber. This substance is found by the inhabitants on the coast, between Polangen and Pillau, either loosely on the shore, on which it has been thrown by the strong north and westerly winds, or in small hillocks of sand near the sea, where it is found in regular strata. The quantity found yearly in this manner, and on this small extent of coast, besides what little is sometimes discovered in beds of pit coal in the interior of the country, is said to amount to from 150 to 200 tons, yielding a revenue to the government of Prussia of about 100,000 francs. As amber is much less in vogue in Western Europe than in former times, the best pieces, which are very transparent, and frequently weigh as much as three ounces, are sent to Turkey and Persia, for the heads of their expensive pipes and hookahs. Very few trinkets are now sold for ornaments to ladies' dresses; and the great bulk of amber annually found is converted into a species of scented spirits and oil, which are much esteemed for the composition of delicate varnish. In the rough state, amber is sold by the ton, and forms an object of export trade from Memel and Konigsberg.—Granville's Travels in Russia.

The head of the late Dr. Gall has been taken off agreeably to his wishes, and dissected and dried for the benefit of science.

MUSICAL TALENT.

All the principal Italian composers were in flower about the age of twenty-five. There is scarcely an instance of a musician producing his chef-d'oeuvre after the age of thirty. Rossini was not twenty when he composed his Tancredi, and his Italiana in Algieri.

The most important principle perhaps in life is to have a pursuit—a useful one if possible, and at all events an innocent one. The unripe fruit tree of knowledge is, I believe, always bitter or sour; and scepticism and discontent—sickness of the mind—are often the results of devouring it.—Sir Humphry Davy.

COFFIN OF KING DUNCAN.

A coffin has been discovered among the ruins of Elgin cathedral, supposed to be that of the royal victim of Macbeth.

AN IMPERIAL ENCORE.

When Cimarosa's opera of Matrimonio Segreto was performed before the Emperor Joseph, he invited all the singers to a banquet, and then in a fit of enthusiasm, sent them all back to the theatre to play and sing the whole opera over again!—Foreign Review.

Dinner is a corruption of decimer, from decimheure, or the French repast de dix-heure. Supper from souper, from the custom of providing soup for that occasion.

LARKS.

We have heard much of Dunstable larks but the enthusiasm with which gourmets speak of these tit-bits of luxury, is far exceeded by the Germans, who travel to Leipsic from a distance of many hundred miles, merely to eat a dinner of larks, and then return contented and peaceful to their families. So great is the slaughter of this bird at the Leipsic fair, that half a million are annually devoured, principally by the booksellers frequenting the city. What is the favourite bird at the coffee-house dinners of our friends in Paternoster Row?

PAINTING CATS.

Gottfried Mind, a celebrated Swiss painter, was called the Cat-Raphael, from the excellence with which he painted that animal. This peculiar talent was discovered and awakened by chance. At the time when Freudenberger was painting that since-published picture of the peasant cleaving wood before his cottage, with his wife sitting by, and feeding her child with pap out of a pot, round which a cat is prowling, Mind cast a broad stare on the sketch of this last figure, and said in his rugged, laconic way, "That is no cat!" Freudenberger asked, with a smile, whether Mind thought he could do it better. Mind offered to try; went into a corner, and drew the cat, which Freudenberger liked so much that he made his new pupil finish it out, and the master copied the scholar's work—for it is Mind's cat that is engraven in Freudenberger's plate. Imitations of Mind's cats are already common in the windows of printsellers.

PLAY-WRITING.

When the manager of a theatre engaged Sacchini to write an opera, he was obliged to shut him up in a room with his mistress and his favourite cats, without them at his side he could do nothing. The fifth act of Pizarro was actually finished by Sheridan on the first evening of its performance, when the illustrious playwright was shut up in a room with a plate of sandwiches and two bottles of claret, to finish his drama.