It is not easy to appreciate the delight of Mr. Wilde and his coadjutors at this triumphant result of their researches; nor the sensation produced, not merely in Florence but throughout Italy, by this discovery of a veritable portrait of Dante, in the prime of his days. It was some such sensation as would be produced in England by the sudden discovery of a perfectly well authenticated likeness of Shakespeare; with a difference in intensity proportioned to the superior sensitiveness of the Italians. The recovery of this portrait of the "divine poet" has occasioned fresh inquiry into the origin of the masks said to have been made from a cast of his face taken after death. One of these masks, in the possession of the Marquess of Torrigiani, has been pronounced as certainly the _original_. Several artists of high talent have concurred in this opinion; among these may be named Jesi, the first engraver in Florence; Seymour Kirkup, Esq., a painter and antiquary; and our own countryman Powers, whose genius, by the way, is very highly appreciated by the Italians. We may expect from the accomplished pen of Carlo Torrigiani, son of the marquess, and who is advantageously known in this country, from having traveled here, an account of this curious and valuable relic, which has been upward of a century in the possession of his family. Should Mr. Wilde finish his biographical work concerning Dante, which promises to be a proud achievement in American literature, he intends, I understand, to apply for permission to have both likenesses copied, and should circumstances warrant the expense, to have them engraved by eminent artists. We shall then have the features of Dante while in the prime of life as well as at the moment of his death. G. C. THE TAKING OF THE VEIL One of the most remarkable personages in Parisian society during the last century was Renée Charlotte Victoire de Froulay De Tesse, Marchioness De Crequi. She sprang from the highest and proudest of the old French nobility, and ever maintained the most exalted notions of the purity and antiquity of blood, looking upon all families that could not date back further than three or four hundred years as mere upstarts. When a beautiful girl, fourteen years of age, she was presented to Louis XIV., at Versailles, and the ancient monarch kissed her hand with great gallantry; after an interval of about eighty-five years, when nearly a hundred years old, the same testimonial of respect was paid her at the Tuileries by Bonaparte, then First Consul, who promised her the restitution of the confiscated forests formerly belonging to her family. She was one of the most celebrated women of her time for intellectual grace and superiority, and had the courage to remain at Paris and brave all the horrors of the revolution, which laid waste the aristocratical world around her.