The French Society of Geography have just given their grand gold medal to two brothers, Antoine and Arnaud d'Abadie, for the progress which geography has received from their travels in Abyssinia, which were begun in 1837 and finished in 1848. This period they spent in exploring together, not only Abyssinia, but the whole eastern part of Africa. Their enterprise was wholly at their own expense, and was undertaken from the love of science and adventure. * * * * * The French Government are now publishing at Algiers the History of the Berbers, by Ibn Chaldun, the greatest of Arabian historians. It is printed in quarto form, with the types of the National Printing Establishment, sent from Paris for the purpose. The French translation will appear as soon as the second volume of the original, which is now in press, is completed. * * * * * [From Fraser's Magazine.] MADAME DE POMPADOUR. In the gallery of the Louvre at Paris there is, or was some few years ago, a crayon drawing by La Tour, which represents Madame de Pompadour in all the pride and luster of her early beauty. The marchioness is seated near a table covered with books and papers, among which may be distinguished Montesquieu's _Spirit of Laws_ and the _Encyclopædia_, two of the remarkable works which appeared during her reign of favor. An open album shows an engraving of Gay, chiseling some portrait of Louis XV., or his mistress. The marchioness is represented with her hair slightly powdered; she is clad in an open, flowered brocade robe, and wears red-heeled shoes, of a delicacy, as regards size, worthy of an Oriental foot. In this portrait there is much to admire: the neck, which is slender and well-shaped, springs most gracefully from the shoulders; the head, which is also admirably proportioned, is a model of feminine beauty; the brow is lofty and severe; the lips, slightly compressed, express at the same time decision and irony; the eyes are of a most vivid brilliancy, and the nose is perfection itself: in short, there reigns throughout every lineament of this most striking countenance an air of nobility, and even of dignity, which qualifies in some measure the accounts left us by history of the share she bore in the _petits soupers_ of Versailles, the masked balls of the Hôtel de Ville, and the thousand other orgies got up for the entertainment of the most dissolute monarch of (at that period) one of the most dissolute courts of Europe.