the despair of genius which looks in on Heaven and yet cannot attain

it.

The peasant who served as model, without a single word, without seeming to be at all surprised at this outbreak, and seeing his master thus immoveable, shut his mouth, seated himself on the floor, and took from the corner of his bosom, from beneath a ragged and dirty shirt, a piece of brown bread, and began to gnaw it with such an appetite that it might be reasonably inferred he would have been pleased to get to work long before he did.

He finished his breakfast or repast, tasting deliberately and with prolonged enjoyments, every one of the concluding morsels; then risked a timid glance at his master, still immovable, still fixed in the same attitude. He waited, and waiting, the time passed by, until seeing it was nightfall, he glided from the room without the least movement on the part of the painter.

Thus he remained depressed and pensive, giving signs of being still awake by some convulsive motion; once he raised his head, looked around, covered his eyes, doubling his fist, and striking his forehead fiercely.

Thus sped on the hours, and he tasted not of food; thus night found him and he slept not; and the next morning at day-break he sallied forth, exceedingly exhausted and overcome; but rather with an expression of sadness than of his first fit of despair. He donned the cap with the broken feather, and enveloped himself in a long cloak. By a natural and involuntary motion he twisted and caressed his budding mustachios; and bearing with him proofs of his recent excitement in his hollow eye and pallid complexion, he descended the steps, and having crossed himself devoutly, emerged into the street.

II.

He was a good christian and a christian of the sixteenth century; the seventeenth had just commenced; so his first act was to go to the nearest church; he there heard mass, waited awhile, and grown more composed was about leaving, when a hand touched him lightly on the shoulder, and a familiar voice exclaimed: GOD be with you, Signor Don Diego!'

He who thus spoke was a man of somewhat over sixty years of age, well made and of a pleasant countenance, and olive complexion, with proofs of having been good-looking, quick and black eyes, eyes of genius which told of wars and arts with all the ardor of a soldier and enthusiasm of an artist. His mouth was small and furnished with only two or three straggling teeth; but in person he was active, in appearance cheerful and genteel. He wore a black camblet-cloak, old and thread-bare, doublet the same, with handsome flowers and slashed, but in no better plight than its companion; he wore knightly hose, or 'pedoweras' as they were then called, with colored lacing, a long and shining sword, a cap set on one side in a martial and soldier-like style, much worn and thread-bare, evidencing poverty from afar, but clean and brushed most carefully.

Oh! it was a scene worth observing, the meeting of those two men, one entering upon life the other leaving it; one all hope, the other memory, and both battling it with Destiny, both looking at each other with eyes that betrayed a fiery soul, a genius of flame, a volcanic imagination, a life which enthusiasm wasted as with a file; and this athwart the prism of the future of youth and the veil of the past, of old age. Ah! whoever had seen them thus would not have confounded them with common souls, but would have exclaimed, much is there of good and evil within those fleshy prisons; a heaven or a hell! glory or suicide awaited the one; the other- The other had braved and overcome a hundred combats throughout life against a hard and unmanageable fate.

And so it was; the old man was a great poet; but unknown, obscure, known and respected only by some artists of fine enthusiastic genius, who in that age could alone appreciate the florid and ardent genius of that aged man.

Our young painter knew, loved and revered him as a profound philosopher, philanthropist and brave soldier; he knew his verses by heart; and the learned youth of Seville repeated enthusiastically every sonnet which revealed him as its author.

He exclaimed 'But this paleness! those red and wearied and hollow eyes! Do not waste a life which may be so glorious! waste not thy heart, boy! this —'

It means,' said the painter, interrupting him even rudely, a night of watchfulness, sorrow and torment, of rage and despair!" And he grasped his companion's arm roughly and checked a convulsive sigh.

• What? a youthful love?' exclaimed the old man with interest. But no! I see another fire than that of love shining in those eyes. No, it cannot be! Young man, tell me what has happened?'

What has happened? To lose my hopes of glory, to scorch my wings! To fall!

Thou hast undertaken more than thou shouldst. Thou hast not chosen the moment of inspiration!'

'I could not advance one line, one inch; and there must I remain, there be confounded with the crowd!'

'No, young man; thou hast not been born for such a fate. No; raise thy head; elevate it, thinking upon glory!'

Glory? Yes! I dreamed of glory, and to you owe I those dreams which are my despair! I wished to live admired or to die; not a common existence, one of those which cower in the mud; and now how may I soar aloft?'

Had I thy touch, brush and imagination!' exclaimed the other with a look of enthusiasm, and placing his hand upon his shoulder, animated with genius and poetry. Thou knowest not the treasury that is thine; work and I promise thee fame.'

6

'It is all in vain. Already does it lose its charm for me. I will exhaust myself before emerging from the cloud,' answered the youth, with apparent apathy. Then came a moment of silence; and he continued: You too have dreamed of glory; you too have composed verses, comedies, and what, what has been the result? Your glory is in this cloak, in this doublet.'

'True,' said the old man sorrowfully: True; I am poor, forgotten, infirm, persecuted; behold my glory! The ungrateful goddess I have worshipped, caressed and so much admired! What a return, oh God!' and he bowed his head, but only for a moment. I am poor it is true,' he resumed, with the bold and martial air of a poet and soldier; I am poor, but honored; and those dreams of love and happiness, and those characters I have created as if a GOD with their virtues, qualities and passions, good or bad, at will; those characters I love as my creatures; those works which are my children; those moments of illusion and delirium; those celestial delights; that delicious volition, vague, free as the air; those worlds I lived in: tell me, do not they compensate for all those troubles, all the misfortunes of my life? Tell me who shall take them from me? What avails the glory of man in comparison with the creations, the pleasures of a GOD?"

The deep furrows in his brow had disappeared, his eyes shone with the double light of youth and enthusiam; his head noble and erect; his disdainful glance, seeming to measure the earth with the sceptre of heaven; it was not a man- no! it was a Genius- a GOD! more than this he was the poet, the true, inspired Poet!

The young painter felt controlled by the eagle eye and fascinating glance of the old man. He drooped his eyes, ashamed of his weakness, and when the other exclaimed: Let us go to your room— - come!' he allowed himself to be led as if he were a lamb.

Outlaws.

NUMBER ONE: THE COMET.

1.

HEAVILY drave the planets down the causeways of the deep,
Up from humming caverns rose the cavalcade of sleep;
Angels on the world's vast walls stood to their nightly stations,
All bright with armor, as they watched the sleeping constellations.

A prowling comet steamed along the outer seas of Night,

An ancient pilot grasped the wheel, and guided its frantic flight:

A grim, gigantic engineer stood by the furnace door,

And red fire shone through many grates, those vast black empires o'er.

111.

The universe lay glimmering, far on the silent lee,

Like a great lamp-lit city beyond a midnight sea;

The pilot, said Our mighty king shall man his flaming fleets,
And sailing across the Gulf shall sack those planetary streets.

IV.

Comets he hath, with engines made in the iron-shops of hell,
Admirals and dusky hosts, cannon and shot and shell;

O! 't will be sweet to batter those walls which angels now are guarding,
And sweet to shatter those golden globes with shot-storms and bombarding.

O! sweet for Night's black pirates, ye dingy cloud-girt peers,
To bathe in that crystal ocean, where swim the hollow spheres;
O! 't will be rare to freight our fleets with planetary plunder
And frighten the tall archangels with bolts of Stygian thunder!

VI.

The engines jarred, the funnel roared, shone the red furnace flames,
The beams of iron trampled, grated the rods and chains;

Those pirates all applauded; the pilot ported the helm :

The comet curved toward the dusky cliffs of that far distant realm,
Where thunders rumble through the iron towers of Demigorgon,

Like the roll of a heavy and jarring bass thro' the pipes of a growling organ!

NUMBER TWO: THE TEMPLE BY THE NILE.

Ir was midnight; dimmer and dimmer
Shone the distant tent-fire's glimmer;
Mournfully murmured ancient Nilus
Along the piers of Hecatompylos.
While the still and sacred starlight
Mingling with the full moon's far light,
Rested on many strange inscriptions
Chiselled by the dead Egyptians.

Then arose a muffled Magus
From a granite sarcophagus,
Down in a burial crypt abysmal,
Unrummaged by the sons of ISHMAEL.
With a solemn tread, as whilom
Thrice he paced the long propylon,
Muttering syllables deep and mystic,
Hexameters harsh and cabalistic.
Now came forth a file of wizards,
Who kept of old the sacred lizards;
Scaly crocodiles that nibbled
Lotus, while the Hierarchs scribbled
Those strong staves and incantations
That vexed the peaceful constellations.
Them, from tombs by Hebrews hollowed,
Buried kings an hundred followed;
Frowning PHAROAH, AMENOPHIS,
SHISHAK, girt with Syrian trophies.

But now the stars of morning faded.
Daybreak's merry dæmons braided
The net of a fantastic tent
Far in the glimmering Orient.
A slow, long line of dromedaries
Toiled across the sandy prairies:
From the river's rushy marges
Moved a fleet of splashing barges,

While, with his waving plume of horse-hair,
Galloped away the desert Corsair;

Away on his barb than the west wind fleeter,
Singing some wild Arabian metre ;
And seven Franks rode by to scramble
Up the cliffs of Abousamboul.

YBBL.

DO NOT STRAIN YOUR PUNCH.

ONE of my friends, whom I am proud to consider such; a Gentleman, blest with all the appliances of Fortune, and the heart to dispense and to enjoy them; of sound discretion coupled with an enlightened generosity; of decided taste and nice discernment in all other respects than the one to which I shall presently advert; successful beyond hope in his cellar; almost beyond example rich in his wine chamber; and last, not least, felicitous to say no more in his closet of RUMS — this Gentleman, thus endowed, thus favoured, thus distinguished, has fallen, can I write it? into the habit of straining his PUNCH!

-

When I speak of RUMS my masters, I desire it to be distinctly understood that I make not the remotest allusion to that unhappy distillation from molasses which alone is manufactured at the present day throughout the West Indies since the emancipation of the Blacks; who desire nothing but to drink, as they brutally express it, 'to make drunk come' but to that etherial extract of the sugar-cane, that Ariel of liquors, that astral spirit of the nerves, which, in the days when planters were born Gentlemen, received every year some share of their attention, every year some precious accession, and formed by degrees those stocks of RUM, the last reliques of which are now fast disappearing from the face of Earth.

And when I discourse on PUNCH, I would fain do so with becoming veneration both for the concoction itself, and, more especially, for the memory of the profound and original, but alas! unknown inventive Genius by whom this sublime compound was first imagined, and brewed by whose Promethean talent and touch and Shaksperian inspiration, the discordant elements of Water, Fire, Acidity, and Sweetness, were first combined and harmonized into a beverage of satisfying blessedness, or of overwhelming Joy!

My friend then to revert to him after having brewed his Punch according to the most approved method, passes the fragrant compound through a linen-cambrick sieve, and it appears upon his hospitable board in a refined and clarified state, beautiful to the eye perhaps, but deprived and dispossessed by this process of those few lobes and cellular integuments, those little gushes of unexpected piquancy, furnished by the bosom of the lemon; and that, when pressed upon the palate and immediately dulcified by the other ingredients, so wonderfully heighten the zest, and go so far to give the nameless entertainment and exhilaration, the unimaginable pleasure, that belong to PUNCH!

PUNCH! - I cannot articulate the emphatick word without remarking, that it is a liquor that a man might moralize into a thousand similies! It is an epitome of human life! Water representing the physical existence and basis of the mixture: Sugar its sweetness: Acidity its animating trials: and Rum, the aspiring hope, the vaulting ambition, the gay and the beautiful of Spiritual Force!

Examine these ingredients separately. What is Water by itself