The Polish authoress NARCISA ZWICHOWSKA, well known to all who are acquainted with the literature of that country, has received from the Russian authorities an order to enter a convent, and no longer to occupy herself with literature, but with labors of a manual kind, which are more becoming to women. She is to receive from the treasury a silver ruble, or about sixty-two and a half cents a day for her support. * * * * * Cooking is no doubt a great science, and its chief prophet is undeniably EUGENE BARON BAERST. This gentleman, who is well known in Germany and elsewhere for his gallant services in Spain, in the army of Don Carlos, has just brought out a work in two volumes, of some six hundred and fifty pages each, entitled _Gastrosophie, oder die Lehre von den Freuden der Tafel_ (Gastrosophy, or the Doctrine of the Delights of the Table). In this he evinces a thoroughness of knowledge and a fire of enthusiasm well calculated to astonish the reader, who has probably not before been aware of the grandeur of the subjects discussed. He begins with the very elements of his theme. "The man," he exclaims in his preface, "who undertakes to write a cook-book, must begin by teaching the mason how to build a fire-place, so as not merely to produce heat from above or below, but from both at once; he must teach the butcher how to cut his meat, and above all the baker how to make bread, and especially the _semmel_ (a sort of small loaves with caraway or anise seed, much liked in Germany), which are often very like leather and perfectly indigestible. It is true that in Psalm CIV. verse 15, we are told that bread strengthens the heart of man, but the semmel sort does no such thing; and when Linguet affirms,--and it is one of the greatest paradoxes I know of,--that bread is a noxious article of food, he must be thinking of just that kind. Further, it is necessary to instruct the gardener, the vegetable woman, the cattle dealer and feeder, and a hundred other people down to the scullion, who must learn to chop the spinage very fine and rub and tie it well, and also not to wash the salad, &c. And this is all the more necessary, because bad workmen,--and their name is legion,--love no sort of instruction, but fancy that they already know every thing better than anybody else." To this extensive and thankless work of instruction, the Baron declares that he has devoted himself, and that the iron will necessary to its accomplishment is his. The iron health is however wanting, and accordingly he can do nothing better for "the fatherland's artists in eating" than the present work. At the last advices, the valiant Baron was dangerously ill. * * * * *