Near these ostentatious productions of modern art, are some neighbom- ing cabinets filled with tropliies brought by Russian antiquaries from the graves of the Crimea. This is one of the most interesting collections to be seen any where ; and we must admire the providence of the Russian government, and wonder at the good fortune that has preserved so many costly relics from so distant a period. From ancient times, the countless graves of the Greeks of Taurus, and of the original inhabitants of the Caucasus and Siberia, have been objects of zealous research. The Alarics, the Huns, the Tartars and the Cossacks of the present day, have plundered them, and melted down the treasures found therein. The greater part of the kurgans and mohilos of South Russia, have been long since burrowed hke rabbit-waiTens, and explored like mines ; a considerable trade was and is yet carried on with the treasure found there. Whatever the watchfulness of the government could rescue from the un-historical merchants and robbers, has been deposited in the Hermitage. The graves of Kertsh, at the mouth of the Taurian Bosphorus, have yielded largely, and also the burial-places of Mithridates and liis successors, the kings of the Bosphorus. The choicest objects are the laurel-wreaths of pure ducat gold. Many of them are quite perfect, not a twig or leaf being deficient. These ^vreaths adorned the victors' brows more gracefully than our orders and stars. The head which was adorned by the ancients, was far more the original seat of great deeds, than the breast adorned by us. The cro\Tied head was a far more picturesque object than the star-covered coat. It never occurred to any painter to place the gloria of a saint or martyr on his bosom ; no, the rays must grace and radiate from the throne of the spirit. Our cold climate, and our closelyfitting garments may have assisted this change, for it was not possible in the folds of a Greek or Roman drapery to place a decoration on the breast.
After the halls of the golden laurel-wreaths, and the ItaHan cameos, we come again to other magic productions of colour ; the greater part of which formerly belonged to Malmaison. When the Emperor Alexander was in Paris, in 1814, he visited the divorced consort of Napoleon, who spoke to him of the smallness of the property that remained to her, and of the insecurity of its possession. Her imperial husband had laid at her feet so many spoils of the German and ItaHan galleries, that she was afraid, when all were claimed by their rightful o^^^lers, Uttle would remain to her. Alexander bought the whole treasures of Malmaison, and enriched the Hermitage with them, whence they will not be so easily reclaimed. A part of the purchase -money has foimd its way back to Russia, with the young gTandson of Josephine.
There are among them many Claude's, some powerful Domenichino's, and Tintoretto's, honey-sweet Carlo Dolces, the beautiful marble flesh of Van der Werft, the eggs, fish, and fish-women of Dow, the satin robes, embroidered coverings, and lovely faces of Mieris, and cut-onions, turnips, and vegetable-parings in abundance. Also a barber, and his well-soaped rogues of customers, who seem to have been taken by a Daguerrotype, for every Httle bubble in the soapy froth may be distinguished, and yet the spirit of the whole has not suffered by the minute execution of the parts. A calculator, by Quintin Matsys, wise as he appears, has not yet solved his problem. Perhaps Matsys meant to indicate thereby the human mind, which has been thinking and calculating for thousands of years without being able to balance the account. The Vandyck's and Rubens's are so numerous that one can scarcely make way through them, the Rubens's particularly ; whose persons are so enviably weU fed, that they require no small space. There are also many mythological pieces of Rubens, subjects with which he should not have concerned himself. Some of them seem to be satires on the Grecian mythology. The Venuses of Rubens have swallowed too much Brabant beef and beer ; there is in them as little that is plastic, antique, and divine, as in Shakspeare's TroUus and Cressida.