"Oh, what have I done?" he groaned out, as he gazed upon the destruction that surrounded him, and began gathering up the fragments. "Those eyes, though their glance might have been cruel to others, have ever looked on me with kindness. Those pale lips have never addressed me but with favour. Oh, my prince! to others thou may'st be all that thy face betrays, but to me, thou wert only a friend and benefactor. It is not thy fault that thou art a rival of the devil himself in ugliness." And as he spoke, bitter and sorrowful tears fell upon the torn relics. The door again opened, and he received a summons to attend the Duke.

"I do not now invoke thee, Andreas, in this my greatest need," he said softly; "thou canst not hear me, for I have sinned by giving way to a foolish passion. What ever happens, I have deserved it." And thus prepared for the worst, he entered the saloon of the palace.

The Duke was pacing gloomily up and down the apartment. The Prior sat in a window recess, his hands folded, and his eyes fixed upon the ground. The courtiers stood round in silence, and not a breath disturbed the oppressive calm which announced an approaching tempest. It was long before the Duke spoke; at length, in a tone scarcely audible from suppressed rage, he asked the trembling painter, "Where is my portrait ?"

"It is destroyed," stammered Leonardo. "Destroyed!" exclaimed the Duke, in a louder tone, "destroyed-again destroyed! and nothing else but destroyed! And, even myself-my picture! And wherefore?" Leonardo stood with his eyes rooted to the earth, unable to answer a word.

Upon this, the Prior raised his head and softly whispered, "Most probably from reverence, your highness! | from a feeling of his own inability, not being yet equal to so great a work; from a fear that he might not do justice to his illustrious original."

"You lie, Father Prior !" shouted the enraged painter, with the desperate courage of one who already knew his ruin certain.

"He lies?" repeated the Duke, stepping back, while his countenance assumed the paleness of death, "therefore that was not the reason; and you assert that so boldly and without further explanation! What was it then?" Madness, my lord," replied Leonardo, more composedly; "rage at myself."

"If that was it," interrupted the Duke proudly, "I will not say that you have acted altogether wrong; it is better for your fame that an inferior work should not descend to posterity, more especially with such a subject. Take care, however, that the like happen not again." "Forgive me, my prince!" entreated Leonardo, "give me but a different task; drive me through fire and water --send me into the abode of the damned, and your commands shall be obeyed. I will work day and night to show myself worthy of your kindness, and, if possible, to recover your confidence."

It shall be as you have said," returned the Duke, "and, for the future, as no secular subject appears to succeed with you, you shall dedicate your art to what is sacred. The refectory of the Dominican Monastery of St. Maria della Grazia is in need of some decoration; to your pencil it shall be entrusted. You shall paint upon the wall the Last Supper of our Lord, and complete the work within a year from this day. And again I say to you, and for the last time, forget your folly."

The Prior smiled maliciously, and, glancing contemptuously at Leonardo, extolled the clemency of the Duke, and poured out his thanks for the favour bestowed upon him and his Monastery. The courtiers again decked their faces with smiles, though they could not help inwardly marvelling, that the threatening storm should have passed away without some one suffering from its fury. They considered not, it is true, that the great and free Florentine, whose services had already been so numerous and valuable, and who was ranked among the ornaments of his age, deserved to be treated with a leniency to which none of them had any claim.

Again deeply agitated, Leonardo escaped as soon as possible into the fresh air. The sense of his own merits pressed upon him much less forcibly than the kindness of his patron. He smote his forehead, and exclaimed, "Is this the return which Satan makes for ingratitude? what more could a saint do to bless those that curse him? But stay-am I not a fool to fancy the danger over? I may only have escaped Scylla to fall into Charybdis. It must be so ;" and, all at once, the idea struck him, that the direction which the affair had taken could have been suggested by no other than the crafty Dominican. Still, what kind of a viper would creep out of it, was to him a mystery, while this mystery only served to increase his uneasiness, as the fear of a concealed danger is more harassing to the mind than a known and positive evil. Whatever might be the result, it jarred sorely upon his feelings, there to dedicate his pencil to the Most Holy, where the hated monk resided. This, however, had been precisely the object of the latter. Yes, he the proud, high-minded painter, who scarcely deigned him a look, who had supplanted him in the favour of his prince-he should be made to devote to him and his convent the splendid efforts of his genius, or perish. This had been his motive in the plan he had recommended to the Duke; for, if the master completed his difficult task, the more difficult for being in a style to which he was little accustomed, he had served him, the Prior-had been the minister of his wishes. Should he, however, fail in his task, which was more probable, and more agreeable to his hate; or, should he execute it in an unworthy manner, it was only calling upon his enemy, the stripling Buonarotti, to do it better, a step to which it would not be difficult to persuade the already displeased prince, and his ruin as a painter was certain. For, that Leonardo's fiery temperament would not endure this disgrace, without breaking out into some fresh insult to the Duke, who would be disposed to show little ceremony or kindness towards one whose reputation was sullied, and whose services were no longer indispensable, followed in the Prior's calculation as matters of course. (To be concluded in our next.)

STATESMEN OF THE REIGN OF GEORGE 111.*

THE period over which the long reign of George III. extended, possesses an interest of a peculiar kind for the men of this generation. It is fast receding into the region of "time past," but has not yet fairly reached it. Its events, and the men who figured in them, have scarcely come to be regarded by us with the quiet absence of emotion with which we look upon matters of pure history, however important in their results, although they have, in a great measure, ceased to awaken any of those contentious feelings, which it is difficult to repress when our attention is directed to matters or persons of interest belonging to our own day. Few of us have seen any of the great men of that era, and still fewer of us have been personally affected by their political failures or successes; but we have lived and conversed with those to whom their names

were familiar as household words-who were their warm partisans or bitter foes-who regarded them as paragons of good or of evil, as the saviours or destroyers of their country; and we feel, therefore, a kind of reflected and subdued interest, a curiosity not unpleasantly warm, yet not coldly speculative, regarding their real characters, and the exact situation of the niche which each of them is destined to occupy in the temple of Fame.

"Historical Sketches of Statesmen who flou

* Sketches of Statesmen of the Reign of George III. By LORD BROUGHAM. London: Charles Knight.

rished in the time of George III." is therefore an interesting title of a book to readers of the present day; the addition,-" by Henry, Lord Brougham,' is one which gives us assurance of a book as interesting, to the full, as its title would lead us to anticipate. The author's name is a pledge that the promise of the title will be fulfilled in its pages; that, whether his principles be true or false, his views crude or matured, his estimates of character liberal or prejudiced-his sketches, take them in the whole, will be neither dull nor commonplace. They are but sketches unquestionably, and that, in some instances, of the slightest description; a few hasty strokes of the pencil, exhibiting the mere outline of the figure, with some of the more striking peculiarities of form and carriage; but the pencil is one whose slightest touch bears the impress of genius, and is therefore pregnant with meaning. They have, besides, the additional charm of being revelations regarding a class of men raised high above common observation, by one of themselves, though belonging to a somewhat later era; dictated, with occasional exceptions, in the kindly and gossiping spirit, with which we should imagine a veteran statesman to detail, to the family circle collected around his fireside, the recollections of his early years-the story of his struggles and his triumphs, and to unfold the character of his compeers long dead, and slumbering with all the animosities which they felt, or of which they were the objects, in the

grave.

With the politics of these sketches, or of their author, we shall not intermeddle. The time is, perhaps, not yet come, when an altogether impartial estimate can be formed of the public character and acts of the statesmen at the close of the last and beginning of this century; nor are we quite sure that one who, like Lord Brougham, has devoted his physical and intellectual energies, while in their fullest vigour, and during a period of unexampled political excitement, to a contest on either side of which almost every man whom he notices had been ranged while he lived, is the person to form such an estimate at any time. Besides, in the political character of great men, that which is esteemed a virtue by one-half of the nation, is regarded as a vice and a blemish by the other; and we desire to avoid such disputable matters. There is enough in their characters as men, in their genius, their fortunes, even in their intellectual peculiarities, which we can regard, if not with unmixed approbation, at least with an interest not liable to be disturbed by controversial associations. We propose therefore, to select from these sketches, and lay before our readers, one or two of those passages regarding statesmen of all parties indifferently, which are the least imbued with political feeling.

We begin with the character of Lord Chatham. "The first place among the great qualities which distinguished Lord Chatham, is unquestionably due to firmness of purpose, resolute determination in the pursuit of his objects. This was the characteristic of the younger Brutus, as he said, who had spared his life to fall by his hand-Quicquid vult, id valde vult ;* and although extremely apt to exist in excess, it must be admitted to be the foundation of all true greatness of character. Everything, however, depends upon the endowments in company of which it is found; and in Lord Chatham these were of a very high order. The quickness with which he could ascertain his object, and dis

* Whatever he wills, he wills with all his soul.

cover his road to it, was fully commensurate with his perseverance and his boldness in pursuing it; the firmness of grasp with which he held his advantage, was fully equalled by the rapidity of the glance with which he discovered it. Add to this, a mind eminently fertile in resources; a courage which nothing could daunt in the in their application; a genius, in short, original and choice of his means; a resolution equally indomitable daring, which bounded over the petty obstacles raised by ordinary men-their squeamishness, and their precedents, and their forms, and their regularities-and forced away its path through the entanglements of this base undergrowth to the worthy object ever in view, the prosperity and the renown of his country. Far superior to the paltry objects of a grovelling ambition, and regardless alike of party and of personal considerations, he constantly set before his eyes the highest duty of a public man, to further the interests of his species. In alike the frowns of power and the gales of popular appursuing his course towards that goal, he disregarded plause, exposed himself undaunted to the vengeance of the Court, while he battled against its corruptions, and confronted, unappalled, the rudest shocks of public indignation, while he resisted the dictates of pernicious agitators, and could conscientiously exclaim, with an illustrious statesman of antiquity, Ego hoc animo semper fui ut invidiam virtute partam, gloriam nou invidiam putarem !'*

"Nothing could be more entangled than the foreign policy of this country at the time when he undertook the supreme direction of her affairs: nothing could be more disastrous than the aspect of her fortunes in every quarter of the globe. With a single ally in Europe, the King of Prussia, and him beset by a combination of all the continental powers in unnatural union to effect his destruction; with an army of insignificant amount, and commanded by men only desirous of grasping at the emoluments, without doing the duties or incurring the risks of their profession; with a navy that could hardly keep the sea, and whose chiefs vied with their comrades on shore in earning the character given them by the new Minister, of being utterly unfit to be trusted in any enterprize accompanied with the least appearance of danger; with a generally prevailing dislike of both services, which at once repressed all desire of joining either, and all hope of success, and even all love of glory-it was damped all public spirit in the country, by extinguishing hardly possible for a nation to be placed in circumstances more inauspicious to military exertions; and yet war raged in every quarter of the world where our dominion extended, while the territories of our only ally, as well as those of our own sovereign in Germany, were invaded by France, and her forces by sea and land menaced our shores. In the distant possessions of the Crown, the same want of enterprize and of spirit prevailed. Armies in the West were paralysed by the inaction of a captain who would hardly take the pains of operations; and in the East, while frightful disasters writing a despatch to chronicle the nonentity of his were brought upon our settlements by barbarian powers, the only military capacity that appeared in their defence was the accidental display of genius and valour by a merchant's clerk, who thus raised himself to celebrity.+ As soon as Mr. Pitt took the helm, the steadiness of the hand that held it was instantly felt in every motion of the vessel. There was no more of wavering counsels, of torpid inaction, of listless expectancy, of abject despondency. His firmness gave confidence, his spirit roused courage, his vigilance secured exertion, in every department under his sway. Each man, from the first Lord of the Admiralty down to the most humble clerk in the Victualling Office--each soldier, from the Commander-in-Chief to the most obscure contractor or com

66

* I was always of that mind, that I esteemed what censure was cast upon me on account of my virtue, to be praise, and not

censure.

Mr. Clive, afterwards Lord Clive.

No! the

was to adjourn or to call for another cause. judge's time had now arrived, and another artist was to fill the scene. The great magistrate began to pronounce his judgment, and every eye and every ear was, at length, fixed upon the bench. Forth came a strain of clear un broken fluency, disposing alike, in most luminous order, of all the facts and of all the arguments in the cause; reducing into clear and simple arrangement the most entangled masses of broken and conflicting statement; weighing each matter, and disposing of each in succession; settling one doubt by a parenthetical remark; passing over another difficulty by a reason only more decisive that it was condensed; and giving out the whole impression of the case, in every material view, upon the judge's mind, with argument enough to show why he so thought, and to prove him right, and without so much reasoning as to make you forget that it was a judgment you were hearing, by overstepping the bounds which distinguish a Judgment from a Speech. This is the perfection of Judicial Eloquence; not avoiding argument, but confining it to such reasoning as beseems him who has rather to explain the grounds of his own conviction, than to labour at convincing others; not rejecting reference to authority, but never betokening a disposition to seek shelter behind other men's names, for what he might fear to pronounce in his own person; not disdaining even ornaments, but those of the more chastened graces that accord with the severe standard of a judge's oratory. This perfection of judicial eloquence Sir William Grant attained, and its effect upon all lis teners was as certain and as powerful as its merits were incontestable and exalted.

"It may safely be said that a long time will elapse before there shall arise such a light to illuminate either the Senate or the Bench, as the eminent person whose rare excellence we have just been pausing to contemplate. That excellence was, no doubt, limited in its sphere; there was no imagination, no vehemence, no declamation, no wit; but the sphere was the highest, and in that highest sphere its place was lofty. The understanding alone was addressed by the understanding; the faculties that distinguish our nature were those over which the oratory of Sir William Grant asserted its controul. His sway over the rational and intellectual portion of mankind was that of a more powerful reason, a more vigorous intellect than theirs; a sway which no man had cause for being ashamed of admitting, because the victory was won by superior force of argument; a sway which the most dignified and exalted genius might hold without stooping from its highest pinnacle, and which, some who might not deign to use inferior arts of persuasion, could find no objection whatever to exercise."-Pp. 169–173.

Our next extract shall be from the sketch of the intellectual character of Burke; but our space compels us to reserve it for a future number.

Poetry.

[In Original Contributions under this head, the Name, real or assumed, of the Contributor, is printed in Small Capitals under the title; in Selections, it is printed in Italies at the end. ]

TO THE PRIMROSE.

[BY DAVID SMART.]

COME, Sweet Evangelist of Spring,
And, in the poet's ear,

Rehearse the message thou dost bring,
In thy prophetic blossoming,

Of resurrection near!

While yet no timorous bud dares peep, Half wakened from its wintry sleep,

Thou scorn'st the poor defence; And, mid the inhospitable heath, Dost draw thy soft and infant breath, In fearless innocence.

The frown that knits the brow of heaven
Unbends before thy smile;

What time, beneath his furrowed sky,
Thou dost unseal that dove-like eye,
His menace to beguile.

The wind hangs fondly o'er thy bed,
And softly rocks thy gentle head,-

While, from his dark retreat,
Thy smile the playful streamlet courts;
And, like an elder brother, sports
And gambols at thy feet.

Woo, then, the nursing oreezes near,
That rock the cradle of the year,

And flutter light thy damask wing;
And fancy's ear the voice will bless,
That crieth in the wilderness,—
Prepare the way of Spring.

THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH. UNDER a spreading chestnut-tree

The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,

With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.

His hair is crisp, and black, and long,
His face is like the tan:

His brow is wet with honest sweat,
He earns whate'er he can,

And looks the whole world in the face,
For he owes not any man.

Week in, week out, from morn till night
You can hear his bellows blow;

You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,
With measured beat and slow,
Like a sexton ringing the village-bell
When the evening sun is low.

And children coming home from school
Look in at the open door;

They love to see the flaming forge,
And hear the bellows roar,
And catch the burning sparks that fly
Like chaff from a threshing floor.

He goes on Sunday to the church,
And sits among his boys;

IIe hears the parson pray and preach;
He hears his daughter's voice
Singing in the village choir,

And it makes his heart rejoice.

It sounds to him like her mother's voice,
Singing in Paradise!

He needs must think of her once more,
How in the grave she lies;

And with his hard, rough hand he wipes,
A tear out of his eyes.

Toiling, rejoicing,-sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;

Each morning sees some task begin,
Each evening sees it close;

Something attempted, something done,
Has earn'd a night's repose.

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
For the lesson thou hast taught!
Thus at the flaming forge of life
Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
Each burning deed and thought!

Longfellow.

Miscellaneous.

"I have here made only a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own, but the string that ties them."-Montaigne.

THE SNOW-PALACE.

AGAIN we see again (in fancy) we sit in the snow-house built by us boys out of a drift in the minister's glebe; a drift-judging by the steeple, which was sixty-about twenty feet high, and pure as marble. The roof was all strewed with diamonds, which frost saved from the sun. The porch of the palace was pillared, and the character of the building outside was without any servile imitation, for we worked in the glow of original genius, and none of us had ever seen itself or its picture, wonderfully like the Parthenon. Entering, you found yourself in a superb hall, lighted up-not with gas, for up to that era gas had never been used, except in Pandemonium-but with a vast multitude of farthing candles, each in a turnip stuck into the wall, while a chandelier of frozen snow-branches pendant from the roof set the presencechamber in a blaze. On the throne at the upper end sat young Christopher North, and proud were his subjects to do him homage. In niches all round the side walls were couches covered with hare, rabbit, foumart, and foxes' skins, furnished by those animals slain by us in the woods and among the rocks of that sylvan and moorland parish; the regal torus alone being spread with the dun-deer's hide from Lochiel forest in Lochabar. Then old airs were sung in sweet single voice, or in full chorus that startled the wandering night-traveller on his way to the lone King's Well; and then, in the intermediate push, old tales were told of goblin, groom, or fairy," or of Wallace Wight at the barns of Ayr or the brigg o' Stirling, or a glorious outlaw harbouring in caves among the Cartlane Craigs, or of Robert Bruce the Deliverer, on his shelty, cleaving in twain the skull of Bohun, the English knight, on his thundering warsteed, armed cap-à-pie, whilst the king of Scotland had nothing on his unconquered head but his golden crown. Tales of the snow-house! Oh, that we had but the genius to recall you to life in undying song! Nor was our frozen hall at times uncheered by the smiles of beauty; for the cottages poured forth their little lasses in flowerlike bands, nor did their parents fear to trust them in the fairy frozen palace. Sometimes the old people themselves came to see the wonders of the damp; nay, the minister himself, with his mother and sister, were with us in our fantastic festivities, and gave to the architecture of our palace their wondering praise. Then Andrew Lyndsay, the blind Paisley musician, a Latin scholar who knew where Cremona stood, struck up his famous fiddle-jig or strathspey, and the swept floor in a moment was alive with a confused flight of fourscore reels. Fifty years have fled since that snow-palace melted away, and of all who danced there-how many are now alive?-Blackwood's Magazine.

THE GLOUCESTER MISER AND HIS BOY.

OLD WOOD, the miser of Gloucester, whose will has lately been before the courts of law and the Privy Council, kept a boy a little one-miserably fed, and in great bondage. One Sunday the master was getting ready to go to church, but got his dinner in some readiness first, that nothing might have to be done when he came home but to eat it. It was a roast chicken, which the boy stayed at home to dress. The old fellow also got out the quantity of wine he meant to allow himself, and put it upon the chimney-piece; but to prevent it being tasted, he wrote upon it, in large letters," Poison." So off he went. The lad was cravingly hungry; and as the fowl roasted, he could not help drawing his fingers

across and tasting it. But this sharpened his appetite, and he could not resist pulling off a leg. The theft began, he soon went on to the other leg; and so further and further, till he had quite devoured the whole. What was to be done?-for then came remorse, and, worse than that, soon was coming his master! He felt quite desperate; and just at that moment his eye caught sight of the phial with the label upon it. Off he drank, at one draught, the whole contents; and old Wood came home to find him well-fed, and in high spirits,— the first time he ever had animal spirits to be so, since he had been in his service!

It is not so great a matter to live lovingly with goodnatured, with humble and meek persons; but he that can do so with the immoral, with the wilful and the ignorant, with the peevish and perverse, he only hath true charity; always remembering that solid, true peace, and peace of God, consists rather in complying with others, than in being complied with; in suffering and forbearing, rather than in contention and victory.-Jeremy Taylor.

TRUE eloquence I find to be none, but the serious and hearty love of truth; and that, whose mind soever is fully possessed with a fervent desire to know good things, and with the dearest charity to infuse the knowledge of them into others, when such a man would speak, his words, like so many nimble and airy servitors, trip about him at command, and in well ordered files, as he would wish, fall aptly into their own places.-Milton.

MOST people read merely to pass an idle hour, or to please themselves with the idea of employment, while their indolence prevents them from any active exertion; and a considerable number with a view to the display which they are afterwards to make of their literary acquisitions. From whichsoever of these motives a ble that he can derive from them any material advanperson is led to the perusal of books, it is hardly possitage. If he reads merely from indolence, the ideas which pass through his mind will probably leave little or no impression; and if he reads from vanity, he will be more anxious to select striking particulars in the matter or expression, than to seize the spirit and scope of the author's reasoning, or to examine how far he has made any additions to the stock of useful and solid knowledge.-Dugald Stewart.

It is common for men to say, that such and such things are perfectly right-very desirable; but that, unfortunately, they are not practicable. Oh, no, no. Those things which are not practicable are not desirable. There is nothing in the world really beneficial, that does not lie within the reach of an informed understanding and a well-directed pursuit. There is nothing that God has judged good for us, that he has not given us the means to accomplish, both in the natural and the moral world. If we cry, like children, for the moon, like children we must cry on.-Burke.

THERE is frequently more truth in the common acceptation of general terms, than in the more precise and rigorous definitions of science. Common sense gives to words their ordinary significations; and common sense is the genius of humanity.-Guizot.