ART AND MISERY. AMID the treasures of the Sculptor's art The brightest thoughts of Greece were gathered there, Her faith's divinest mysteries: What later ages dimly strove to share, And what the present tries. There the Apollo held his lordly head, A God-like act-yet, more the God display'd, Faint with excess of beauty linger'd there As from his locks the balmy Eastern air The Satyr's face glow'd with the jocund time And echoed through the groves beneath the clime And there the Thunderer heaved his awful brows Like to some frowning cliff beneath the snows And gentler Woman found her every grace The cold white substance sweetly warm :— As Psyche claim'd the rightful clasp of Love,- Affection's power in Niobe could prove- The swift Bacchanté showed her lighter mood- In each and all man's holiest, highest good, His first, his last sweet want. From these I pass'd, and in the City's haunts Exchanged Soul's empire for its saddest wants; I saw the straighten'd forehead branded deep The blooded eye that knew not how to weep, And gentle woman had a Harpy's form, Her love, a scorching passion, could not warm— And rudely now contended in my heart The World's sad truth, the Greek's ideal; And sore I strove to reconcile the art By that I saw Humanity a God, This show'd my fellows less than men :- How vain, methought, for man to give by art But Art forbade me in her power despair, For Beauty never looks with scornful eyes And where her love is, ne'er can vainly rise A Power there is shed o'er the hearts of men Give Misery a fairness in his ken Who basks in Beauty's smile. Such Power hath warm'd the coldness out of Art, The universal brotherhood of man In one all loving God united, Brings these far-sundered poles within the span From both alike doth highest Wisdom flow— Up to his throne-while Sin and Sorrow show H. N. ON THE DISADVANTAGES OF NOT BEING A DWARF. I AM one of that unfortunate class who have to work for their bread. I make no bones of confessing—and I would all the world were so honest that I should be very happy to dispense with the work, if the bread did not go with it. However, I have to support myself; the public will not support me. I am no lion; my name is not in everybody's mouth. My form has never been puffed in the newspapers as "perfectly symmetrical." I can state fearlessly, that I have never been reported to possess a "beautiful and intellectual countenance." Nor has it been asserted of me in print, that I am "a perfect man of mind, intellect, and beauty." To continue my list of negations-my equipage has never been paraded round the streets; in truth, I have not even a wheelbarrow to parade; and I never gave any "levees," because I don't believe anybody would come to them. Further, I defy any one to assert with truth, that I have been three times invited to Buckingham Palace by the special command of the Queen herself, or that I have received from her Majesty even the very slightest present. The Queen Dowager has been equally inattentive. I pledge the public my word of honour, that that illustrious lady never gave me a magnificent watch, set with brilliants. The Duke of Wellington, I regret to say, has been not a cubit more generous and discerning. I was at Paris last season without having been invited to the Tuileries. Louis Philippe, in fact, only permitted me to waste my sweetness on the desert air of a decidedly uncomfortable bedroom au cinquième. To finish the catalogue of my griefs, I cannot state with strict truth, that I have been "patronised by all the principal crowned heads of Europe;" nor that the newspapers have made me a personage of so great importance, as to cause the insertion of fabricated accounts of my capture by bandits; while, to crown all, neither the maids of honour at court nor the ladies of the West-end ever purchased of me, at the cheap rate of a shilling apiece a narrative of my life and a kiss into the bargain. That I have been thus neglected, thus left to blush and bloom unseen by newspapers, ladies, and monarchs, I attribute entirely to my unfortunately not having been born a dwarf. 66 I am nearer six feet than two; hinc illæ lacrymæ. I am not a stunted abortion-ergo, I have never been pronounced "perfectly symmetrical." I am not a "delicate monster;" therefore, I have never been the companion of monarchs. When I think what a fate would have been mine had I only had the good luck of being born a repulsive exception to the general rules of nature, I look perhaps more in sorrow than in anger" upon limbs of the average proportions and chiselled after the ordinary order of human architecture. Had I only measured something under a cloth-yard shaft, I should have a carriage to ride in, instead of tramping it on foot. I should have admiring crowds of fine ladies flocking to see me every morning. The Duke of Wellington and I might have had a chat on Waterloo. I might have spoken with the Queen, and gossipped with Louis Philippe. I might have made something which I could call a "progress" through Europe. Courts would have been my stages-newspapers my avantcoureurs. A baronet title would have raised me to rank, and my name would have been a household word in half the capitals of Europe. Alas! the last three feet of my growth spoiled everything. Stunted, I should have been adored: well-developed, I am neglected. I have no "magnificent presents " made to me by the greatest crowned heads of the world to exhibit to my morning visitors. My height has been my ruin-so it has been decreed by that enlightened public opinion whereof I am a humble admirer. I do not mean to say, that, were I twelve feet high, I should not be fêted and caressed. Extremes meet-but unhappily I am between them, and therefore, not being a monster either one way or the other, a giant or a dwarf, I am left unsmiled on by Buckingham Palace unasked to Versailles. There are a foolish lot of people ambitious of being noticed by monarchs and received at courts. They may not, it is true, abstractedly think much of the honour of kissing the hand of the one, or being told to make themselves at home in the other; but society, that sensible-profoundly-wise orderer of things, has ordained that the mass of mankind should look up with reverence to a conventional and chance-bestowed rank; and this being so, the ambitious, of whom I speak, regard the notice, the friendship, not the patronage of kings and queens as one of the conventional means society has decreed of bestowing its homage upon those who deserve it. These unfortunates, then, entertaining this view of things regal, concluded-absurd people !-that it was by great mental gifts, and the production of great literary, scientific, and artistic works, that royal favour indicating national gratitude was to be procured. They looked to various pages of the history of various nations, and found that this principle had been acted upon that science, and literature and art had been honoured, while they received royal favour; that queens had suggested subjects to a dramatist, and that emperors had picked up an artist's brushes when they fell from his palette. But we being a highly-civilized people have changed all this. It is not mental greatness, but bodily littleness, that kings and queens delight to honour now-a-days. Write like Shakspeare; but you must go to the Italian Opera if you wish to see the monarch-paint like Raffaelle, but you must be content to take a dauber's price if you wish your pictures to decorate a royal palace. You may have some chance of seeing the inside of Windsor, indeed, if you take to delineating the royal wardrobe and the royal kennel. There is a glimpse of hope if you fly your genius at such themes as lap-dogs, gloves, macaws, and hats; but there is nothing like a good degree of physical deformity-some monstrous malconstruction to excite the notice and display the taste of the fountain of honour. Write another "Hamlet," or paint another "Transfiguration." All very well. You may go and see Windsor Castle with the rest of the public. But be lucky enough to be only twenty-nine inches high, or to have three legs, or to present some other agreeable novelty of appearance of the kind, and you are a made man, loaded with regal gifts, weighed down by the gold of a discerning public. You can pass the winter -should you like it-in your hotel in the Chaussée d'Antin at Paris, and the summer in your rose-hid villa on the Lake of Como! Times are hard. So say everybody. Prudent fathers of families think what they shall do with their children. Let me whisper a bit of advice. “ Madam, you are giving that child wholesome food-cruel parent! You are not squeezing or distorting its limbs -unnatural mother! It may one day want the meal you are now so barbarously assuaging its hunger with. Don't you see that the innocent, if so treated, has not the remotest chance-barring a miracle of good luck-of being stunted in its growth, of never attaining manly dignity or womanly beauty. Stint it, and it may peradventure be stunted. Give it gin: they say that excellent |