Lewis Cigoli painted a picture of the Circumcision of the Holy Child, Jesus, and drew the high priest, Simeon, with spectacles on his nose; upon a supposition, probably, that, in respect of his great age, that aid would be necessary. Spectacles, however, were not known for fourteen centuries afterwards. In a picture painted by F. Chello della Puera, the Virgin Mary is placed on a velvet sofa, playing with a cat and a paroquet, and about to help herself to coffee from an engraved coffee-pot. In another, painted by Peter of Cortona, representing the reconciliation of Jacob and Laban, (now in the French Museum), the painter has represented a steeple or belfry rising over the trees. A belfry in the mountains of Mesopotamia, in the time of Jacob! N. Poussin's celebrated picture, at the same place, of Rebecca at the Well, has the whole back-ground decorated with Grecian architecture. Paul Veronese placed Benedictine fathers and _Swiss soldiers_ among his paintings from the Old Testament. A painter, intending to describe the miracle of the fishes listening to the preaching of St. Anthony of Padua, painted the lobsters, who were stretching out of the water, _red!_ probably having never seen them in their natural state. Being asked how he could justify this anachronism, he extricated himself by observing, that the whole affair was a miracle, and that thus the miracle was made still greater. In the Notices des MSS. du Roi VI. 120, in the illuminations of a manuscript Bible at Paris, under the Psalms, are two persons playing at cards; and under Job and the Prophets are coats of arms and a windmill. Poussin, in his picture of the Deluge has painted boats, not then invented. St. Jerome, in another place, with a clock by his side; a thing unknown in that saint's days.--_Nous revenons._ * * * * * THE TOPOGRAPHER * * * * * VIRGINIA WATER, (_The favourite Retreat of his Majesty_.)