THE pencil fell from the relaxed fingers of the artist, and, as the cold, damp dew of exhaustion settled upon his forehead, he fell back into his chair before the easel, on which rested an unfinished picture of the Virgin. The studio in which he sat was small and unpretending, but scrupulously neat. No magnificent vases or costly statues were to be seen, but the few casts that stood around the room-the copies of the most beautiful works of Raphael and Murillo, that hung between, and which were the work of his own hand; the flowers in the window, and the well-filled bookshelves that occupied one of the recesses of the apartment, and in which the Spanish and Italian poets preponderated;-all bore testimony to the taste and ability of the occupant. He had been at his work from the earliest dawn, and at his work he had vowed to remain, until the late twilight of a summer's evening would compel him to lay down his pencil, and permit him to walk out into the cool, fresh air, which his feverish hand and his aching forehead so much required. These were the moments that more than recompensed him for all the labour of the day-that renewed his strength, that increased his enthusiasm, that refreshed his hopes, that brought back to his eyes, dimmed as they were by continual application, the entrancing vision of the one human being, who alone could be the motive of such exertion, and who would be its reward. Day after day had gone by in this manner, week after week, and month after month; the lark did not more regularly arise from his dewy nest in the morning, to resume that never-ending chaunt of jubila

VOL. XXXII.-NO. CLXXXVIII.

tion, in which, as in a divinest poem, the gratitude of all animated existence is for ever spoken, than did our young artist to his labours. Quickly, steadily, and unceasingly, went his hand; quickly throbbed his heart with the strong, warm, full pulsation of youth and hope; while the calm but enthusiastic expression of his face proclaimed unmistakably that it was not the vulgar vanity of success, or the mere material recompense that follows it, to which his constant and unremitting labour might be attributed. He certainly sighed for fame with a true artist's longing; but that instinct of genius was now completely swal lowed up by a stronger feelingnamely, by an intense, overwhelming anxiety for distinction, not for its own sake indeed, or for its value to himself personally, but that he might have one offering, at least, not utterly worthless, to present unto another. He sighed and toiled for gold, too, but it was from the same motive

"That it might deck another brow,
And bless another name."

There was nothing remarkable in his history. Gifted by heaven with the soul of an artist, with a heart capable of feeling, and an eye of appreciating, all that was beautiful in art or nature, his youth passed away either in the quiet, passive enjoyment of the beautiful scenery, in the midst of which he had the good fortune of being born, or in the study of such specimens of the great Spanish and Italian masters as came within his reach. The enjoyment arising from the contemplation and imitation of those glorious works, the summer evening's walk, and the winter night's

K

study of some favourite author, though they did not make him completely happy, by filling up the aching void that was in his breast, and supplying its nameless want, yet still kept him in a state of tranquillity that was akin to happiness. Having no motive for exertion, he made none; having no great object to attain in society, he seldom entered it, and when he did so, surrendered, without an effort, that position to which his talents and information entitled him, from a complete indifference either to failure or success.

With the most loving nature in the world with a heart tender as that of infancy, and an eye formed but for the worship of the beautiful-he had for a long period never met with any person who could, at the same time, satisfy the cravings of his heart, and realize the ideal which his imagination had formed; no one, in a word, who could awaken that indescribable feeling that, in deifying the object, elevates the worshipper out of his own nature, and puts him on a level with the beloved. He had met many that were both good and beautiful, and to them, to a certain extent, he was irresistibly drawn, Pleased with their society and intelligence, his spirits rose for the time above their ordinary level. Ever pining for sympathy, which to him was almost a necessary of existence, his gratitude at receiving it was, at times, so intense as, perhaps, to be mistaken for affection; but never in his heart, nor in his words, nor in his thoughts, was there ever the slightest doubt as to his own feelings—the remotest wish to mislead-or the most shadowy fear of being misunderstood. He had almost well-nigh given up his search after the undiscoverable. had almost made up his mind to be satisfied with one or other of the only two alternatives that seemed to be open to him-either to lower the standard of his expectations, and to come down from the ideal region of his dreams, or to descend to the grave without leaving "any heir of his company," after the manner of the Milesians. It was in this state of uncertainty, indifference, and disappointment, that circumstances threw him occasionally into the society of Enna Edgeworth. He had known her almost from a child, and even in his boyhood had not escaped the influence of her beauty-that mysterious influence

He

which some one face exercises upon us through life, and which, when first seen, fascinates us in a manner that cannot be explained, and which, instead of awaking new feelings, seems but to recall dormant recollections of a pre-existing state-giving some colour to Plato's theory of an antenatal existence. Though her face had, from the very first, fascinated him in this way-though her beautiful eyes, "with their mazy depth of colour behind colour," had looked into his young heart with a bashful, unconscious familiarity, as if they instinctively knew it was a habitation of theirs in some other world, and would be again in this— though

"Her voice was like the voice of his own soul,
Heard in the calm of thought,"

yet so seldom had they been thrown together, so few had been his opportunities of meeting or speaking to her, that by degrees her face and form began to melt out of his memory as rea!, existing things and though they, in reality, were the objects to which the adoration of his heart was given, he almost deluded himself into the belief, that it was the old ideal of his dreams that he still worshipped. This early influence was apparent, as well in the few efforts of his pencil which he permitted his friends to behold, as in the models he selected for imitation, and the enthusiastic admiration which he felt, and which he took such a delight in expressing, for Murillo. In his own paintings, no matter what the subject, the country, the climate, or the agewhether he depicted a Pagan goddess or a Christian saint-a Roman vestal or an Irish nun-whether it were "a nymph, a naiad, or a grace"-the same pure, bright, intelligent, candid face, was to be seen throughout the same deep, beautiful eyes,

"Like wells of unfathomable light,"

and the same slight transparent shade of an almost divine melancholy, such as angel's wing alone could throw. His admiration for Murillo arose to a considerable extent from the same cause. He was able to appreciate, and did appreciate, all the artistic excellencies of this great master; but it must be confessed that it was a something which he could not explain, and of which he was scarcely conscious. A divine ex

pression shining from the faces of some of his portraits, such as "the Spanish Flower-girl," and the "Infant St. John," that reminded him of the full, deep, magnificent, yet modest eyes, which he had seen in his youth, and that made him pronounce the great Spaniard the prince of all painters. Circumstances, however, at length removed the invisible barrier that separated them; and he had sufficient opportunities of testing the truth, the depth, the sincerity of her character, as well as of renewing the impression her beauty had made upon his youth. It was done! the ideal had become a reality; the undiscoverable had been found; the want that had been the poison of his life had been suppliedthat want of a better self, a higher nature, a something to venerate, to worship, and to love, which is somewhat of a lesser religion, which God sanctifies and blesses, and which ever leads the happy and united neophytes to the better and the loftier faith. Oh! with what trustfulness, with what hope, with what childlike confidingness, did the young man open the flood-gates of his heart; and with what a full, sparkling, bounding gush of rapturous delight did the pure, pent-up stream of his affection burst forth! In those waters he felt himself regenerated-new-born, as it were in this baptism of the heart. All the imperfections of his nature were laid bare to him-the first step to their eradication; all those defects which the selfish insensibilities of advancing years might have hardened into vices, fell from him as at the touch of a magician. He felt so intensely, he believed so sincerely, in the presence of an overwatching and controlling Providence in human affairs, and that the good, and the virtuous, and the unselfish, are the immediate objects of his care, that he knew a union of light with darkness was just as possible as the union of this beautiful being with himself, if his nature was not, in the first instance, thoroughly purified and assimilated to hers. This change took place, not slowly, not by degrees, but suddenly and at once. Love came to his heart like summer in the north. Its soft and genial breath called into life a thousand virtues that never bloomed before, which the kindly hand of nature had planted in his heart,

but which required a warmer beam than ordinary to develop. A golden harvest of hitherto neglected duties was quickly garnered in. The present shone under his feet with flowers, while the future seemed bending nearer and nearer within his reach the ruddy fruits of hope; and he felt himself, in a moral point of view at least, worthy of looking fair Enna in the face, and of humbly but fervently asking her to love him. He did so; nor did he wholly ask in vain. But it was then only he discovered that there are miracles which even the Thaumaturgist power of Love himself cannot perform. He can change the heart, strengthen the will, and purify the moral nature of man. But alas! he

cannot make up for a youth and early manhood, not listlessly nor indolently, indeed, but, in a worldly sense, unprofitably spent. The young artist felt that the crisis of his life had come. He felt that if he had not resources within him for the attainment of wealth, and fame, and position he felt if he had not the daring and the heroism to make an honourable but desperate foray into the realities of life, and to snatch from thence some golden prizes wherewith to endow his elected bride, that bride would never be clasped unto his breast. Bravely, then, and full of courage did he enter on the combat of life. With his palette for a shield, and his pencil for a spear, did this young Orlando, within the four walls of his studio, wage deadly war against want, and obscurity, and prejudice, and envy, and neglect-gorgons and chimeras dire-infinitely less vulnerable than any of the dragons of romance. For months and months he toiled thus -now depressed by discouragement, now almost prostrated from physical exhaustion; but ever some invisible angel by his side placed her life-giving hand upon his heart and upon his brow, and restored him again to health and hope. By degrees, however, the hesitation with which the world regards and rewards the efforts of a new candidate for its applause, began to give way to a warmer and more decided feeling-praise-that sweetest guerdon of the true artist-began to curl towards him from a hundred invisible censers. The few words of encouragement and approval which, "with bated breath and whispering humbleness," his friends had ventured