Necker de Saussure’s work will satisfy the candid reader. And though her testimony to the truth and value of religion was for the most part indirect, we may reasonably believe that it was not ineffective. “Placed in many respects in the highest situation to which humanity could aspire, possessed unquestionably of the highest powers of reasoning, emancipated in a singular degree from prejudices, and entering with the keenest relish into all the feelings that seemed to suffice for the happiness and occupation of philosophers, patriots, and lovers, she has still testified that without religion there is nothing stable, sublime or satisfying; and that it alone completes and consummates all to which reason and affection can aspire. A genius like hers, and so directed, is, as her biographer has well remarked, the only missionary that can work any permanent effect upon the upper classes of society in modern times—upon the vain, the learned, the scornful and argumentative, ‘who stone the Prophets, while they affect to offer incense to the Muses.’” (_Ed. Review, No. LXXI._) [Illustration] PALLADIO. Palladio is distinguished among the renowned professors of his age as the chief modifier of the revived style of Roman architecture. The celebrity however which attaches to his name, though just in regard to its extent, is not always correctly appreciated: inasmuch as a bigoted admiration for his precepts and designs, on the ground of their intrinsic excellence, has too frequently supplanted that more sober estimate, which results from a consideration of the circumstances under which those precepts and examples were given to the world. Neither have succeeding ages been sufficiently discriminating in respect to the predecessors and contemporaries of Palladio, several of whom either effected or assisted in effecting much, of which the credit has been given by the world at large too exclusively to him. Our less informed readers should therefore be apprised that, for more than a century before the time of Palladio, the ancient Roman style of architecture had been in progress of revival. Brunelleschi, who died in 1444, was the first to exhibit, in the upper part of Florence cathedral, some departure from the Italian Gothic, and an approach towards the more classic models of old Rome. Alberti, his pupil, published a system of the Five Orders, and Bramante, Raphael, and San Gallo, successively advanced the restored style in the famous Basilica of St. Peter, then erecting. Sansovino, in several costly edifices at Venice, and San Micheli, in many at Verona, anticipated the best efforts of Palladio, and Vignola also distinguished himself as a practical architect and author. Serlio was the first to measure and describe the ancient examples of Rome; and in 1537, published the first part of his ‘Complete Treatise on Architecture.’ [Illustration: _Engraved by R. Woodman._ PALLADIO.