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Lyttelton Times, Volume II, Issue 81, 24 July 1852, Page 11

Portrait of the Empress Maria Louisa —She was a charming daughter of the Tyrol with blue eyes and fair hair. Her complexion varied with the whiteness of its snows and the roses of its vallies ; her figure, light and graceful, its attitude yielding and languid, like those German maidens who seem to look for the support of some manly heart. Her dreamy glance, full of internal visions, was veiled by the silken fringes of her hair. Her lips were somewhat pouting, her bosom full of sighs and fruitful affection ; her arms were of due length, fair and admirably moulded, and fell with graceful langour on her robe, as if weary of the burthen of her destiny. Her neck habitually inclined towards her shoulder. She appeared of northern melancholy, transplanted into the tumult of a Gallic camp. The pretended insipidity of silence concealed thoughts delicately feminine, and the mysteries of sentiment, which wafted her in imagination far from that court to her magnificent but rude place of exile. The moment she returned to her private apartment, or to the solitude of her gardens, she again became essentially German. She^ cultivated the arts of poetry, painting, and music. In these accomplishments, education had rendered her perfect, as if to console her, when far from her native land, for the absence and the sorrows to which she would one day be exposed. In these acquirements she excelled ; but they were confined to herself alone. She read and repeated from memory the poetry of her native bards. By nature she was simple, but pleasing, and absorbed within herself; externally silent, but full of internal feelings; formed for domestic love in an obscure destiny, but dazzled on a

throne, she felt herself exposed to the gaze of the world as the conquest of pride, not the love of a hero. She could dissemble nothing, either during her grandeur, or after the reverses of her lord ; and this was her crime. The theatrical world, into which she had been thrown, looked for the picture for conjugal passion in a captive of victory. She was too unsophisticated to affect love, when she only felt obedience, timidity, ' and resignation. Nature will pity, though history may accuse her. This is a true portraiture of Maria Louisa. I wrote it in her presence ten years afterwards. She had developed at that period, during her liberty and her widowhood, all the hidden graces of her youth. They wished her to play her part—the actress was wanting, but the woman remained. History should award her, what the partial verdict of Napoleon's courtiers has refused—pity, tenderness, and grace.— Lamartina's France.

Lord Brougham.—As for Lord Brougham's " eccentricity," to the vulgar eye it stands a confessed fact. In the vulgar acceptation of the word, Brougham is daringly eccentric. In free countries, it is not permitted to men to differ from their neighbours except in very slight and imperceptible shades. Custom out-tyran-nizes absolutism. In France or in Germany one may do as one. likes, because society ds ground down by a ruthless despotism; but in England, do as you like if you dare! Lord Brougham, it seems, chooses to do as he likes. After a long day of arduous labour he prefers a walk to a ride, and if his blood wants circula ting he walks fast. ' When he speaks he speaks aloud, having been used so to do as a matter of business all his life. If his hands be cold he puts them in his pocket ; though fashions change for the benefit of tailors. Lord Brougham sticks (as many a northcountryman has done before him) to the check or the plaid ; not being particular about hats, he does not wear his stuck horizontally on the top of his head, like an inr verted chimney-pot, but lets it go aslant on his back, a practice less painful to the forehead ; being naturally of an ardent and exciteable temperament, he uses much gesticulation in talking—as much as a Frenchman would require in order to tell you it is a fine day ; in short Lord Brougham commits divers offences against the leaden sovereignty of customs, all which are peculiarly shocking in a Peer. Being, too, naturally of an affable and sociable disposition, he fraternizes quickly with those for whom he takes a liking, and spouts out his thoughts and feeling, instead of filtering them, as your grave ones do. He is in the world, and of the world ; a fast friend, the gayest and wittiest of companions; the most enjoying and the most enjoyable ; a patriarch in experience and sagacity, but a schoolboy in freshness of feeling. He is a man, not an ennobled abstraction. He is odd, unique, bizarre—anything but eccentric ; for there is not a man among us, who has the aplomb, or whose moral and mental centre of gravity more firmly pivot the violent oscillations and gyrations of his passionate energy. — Morning Chronicle.

The Mississippi.—The Mississippi springs to life amid the chilly glare of everlasting snows, and ends its career beneath a burning sky—ay, almost under the flaming heavens of the tropics. Nothing gives one abetter idea' of the immensity and greatness of this sublime river than the reflection that a vast space, comprising about two millions of square miles, pours its surplus waters into the king of rivers. It is indeed a long sea. Then not easily can one forget, on looking on those wonderful waters, what change another hundred years will almost certainly have produced on the vast scenes which they lave. What very nations of men will crowd on its busy shores, and throng its immense valley ! What a world of wonders will be presented to the future voyager! What industry, what prosperity, what splendour, and yet undreamed of attainments of civilization, and triumphs of science, and achievements of art! Already you see the beginnings of all these. The desert is gradually blooming, the forest is retreating, the habitations of men are rising in all directions; fleets of steamers and other craft are covering the face of the river; thousands of enterprising settlers are setting foot on the shores, and advancing further and further into the beleagured wilderness; but a hundred years hence, nay, fifty! Imagination almost fails to paint to herself what shall then be unfolded and displayed in broad day to^ the gladdened vision.— Lady E. S. Worthy's Travels in the United States.