petual absence from my pretty friend. Whether I wept or raved, or how it was, I know not; but I was taken to visit her. It was a cold day, and the red and brown leaves were plentiful on the trees: and it was afternoon when we arrived at an old-fashioned country-house, something better than a farm-house, which stood at some distance from the high-road. The sun was near his setting; but the whole of the wide west was illuminated, and threw crimson and scarlet colours on the windows, over which hung a cloud of vine-stalks and changing leaves, that dropped by scores on every summons of the blast. There she sate-in a parlour full of flowers, herself the fairest among China roses and glittering ice-plants, and myrtles which no longer blossomed. As I entered, she was sitting in a large arm-chair covered with white, like a faded Flora, and was looking at the sun; but she turned her bright and gentle looks on me, and the pink bloom dimpled on her cheek as she smiled and bade me welcome. I have often thought of her since. I look on her, as it seems, even now-through what a waste of years! I see her cheek, at first like a lily just tinged, but afterwards deepening into the brightest red, from the agitation, perhaps, of meeting with visiters. The flowers that were around looked as fragile as herself-summer companions-but the wild autumn was around her and them, and winter himself was coming. He came, almost before his time, cold and remorseless, and she shrank-and withered-and died. The rose-blooms and the myrtles lived on a little longer; but the crimson beauty of her cheeks faded for ever.

The progress from infancy to boyhood is imperceptible. In that long dawn of the mind we take but little heed. The years pass by us, one by one, little distinguishable from each other. But when the intellectual sun of our life is risen, we take due note of joy and sorrow. Our days grow populous with events; and through our nights bright trains of thought run, illuminating the airy future, and dazzling the days we live in. We have the unalloyed fruition of hope; and the best is that the reality is still

to come.

I went to a public school when I was between twelve and thirteen years of age, and I carried thither a modest eve and a bashful spirit. I was stored with tales and fictions. I had my share of Latin, had read some history, and a great many novels; and, thus equipped, I took my seat on the third form at -. Among the other things which I carried to this place, I forgot to mention a grateful regard for an old relation, a sort of great-uncle, who had always treated me with kindness. He used to place me upon his knee in the winter evenings, and tell me stories of foreign countries, of Eastern and Western India; of buffaloes and serpents; of the crocodile and the tawny lion, and how he bounded through the jungles; and what the elephant, with his almost human faculty, could do; and how the shark would follow ships by a strange instinct; and how the whale could spout out his cataracts of water; and a hundred other marvels, which I listened to with a greedy ear. He never failed, either in his kindness or his stories; at least towards me. He was a weather-beaten man, could shoot, and hunt, and in his youth had doubled the Cape, and traversed the Indian Ocean. But he was doomed to die.

He had been ill when I last saw him, in the Christmas holidays: yet I little thought that the grave was so near him. I was summoned home, one day, to weep and wear mourning; and I went to the house of his widow, where he lay-dead. Oh, what a visit was that! It haunted me for years. The servant said that he (what he?' was it the dust?)—that he lay in the front drawing-room. I shuddered and stopped; but I was assured that he looked just as though he was asleep. Let no one believe such things. There is nothing so unlike sleep as death. It is a poet's lie. The one is a gracious repose, a vital calm: the other is a horrid solemnity, no more like sleep than a mask of plaster; stiff, rigid, white-beyond the whiteness of shrouds or the paleness of stone. All parallels fail. We strain at comparisons in vain.

I went up to see my old friend. There was great silence all about, and the stone steps of the staircase sent out unusual echoes. The door was opened, slowly, as though we should disturb the corpse. The windows were closed, and there were long wax candles burning at the head and at the feet; and over all a white sheet was carefully thrown. The length-the prodigious length that the body seemed to occupy, at once startled me, and I recoiled. But the servant proceeded, and uncovered the head of the coffin. After an effort, I looked. Ah! would to God that I had never looked. There he lay, like a stone. His mouth was bound up, and his eyelids had been pressed down, and his nose was pinched as though by famine. The white death was upon him--the rioter, the ruler of graves. And my old friend was swathed in fine linen, and pure crape was cut and crimped about him, as though to save him from the worm and the sapping earth. 'Twas poor mockery of his humble state; and yet, perhaps, it was meant kindly. Three days after this, he was borne away in a hearse, and I let out my grief in tears.

I scarcely know how it is, but the deaths of children seem to me always less premature than those of elder persons. Not that they are in fact so; but it is because they themselves have little or no relation to maturity. Life seems a race which they have yet to run entirely. They have made no progress towards the goal. They are born, nothing further. But it seems hard, when a man has toiled high up the steep hill of knowledge, that he should be cast, like Sisyphus, downwards in a moment: that he who has worn the day and wasted the night in gathering the gold of science, should be-with all his wealth of learning, all his accumulations-made bankrupt at once. What becomes of all the riches of the soul, the piles and pyramids of precious thoughts which men heap together? Where is Shakspeare's imagination, Bacon's learning? Where is the sweet fancy of Sydney, the airy spirit of Fletcher, and Milton's thought severe? Methinks such things should not die and dissipate, when a hair can live for centuries, and a brick of Egypt will last three thousand years! Surely the thought ought not for a moment to be entertained that mind does not survive matter.

I was once present at the death of a little child. I will not pain the reader by portraying its agonies; but when its breath was gone-its life-nothing more than a cloud of smoke-and it lay like a waxen image before me, I turned my eyes to its moaning mother, and sighed out my few words of comfort. But I am a beggar in grief. I can feel, and sigh, and look kindly, I think; but I have nothing to give. My tongue deserts me; I know the inutility of too soon comforting. I know that I should weep, were I the loser; and I let the tears have their way. Sometimes I can muster a word or two; a 'Sigh no more!' and 'Dear lady, do not grieve!' but further 1 am mute and useless.

To pass from this to a scene of a darker colour. It was in Wshire that I heard a medical friend tell of a deathbed which he had witnessed. This I did not see, and it does not therefore perhaps strictly come under the title of this paper; the more especially as the sufferer was almost unknown to me; but let the reader excuse it. The man whom I refer to was a rich farmer. He was the father of two natural children, females, whom he made do all the drudgery of his house. He was a hard landlord, a bad master, a libertine though a miser, a drunkard, a fighter at fairs and markets; and over his children he used a tyranny which neither tears nor labour could mitigate. But he was stopped in his headlong course. A fierce pain came upon him; a fire raged in his vitals. His strong limbs, which no wrestler could twist, and no antagonist lay prostrate, shrank before an unseen foe. Fever encompassed him, and delirium; and in his frightful dreams he called aloud-he shricked-he wept like a child. He prayed for help-for ease-for a little respite. It was all in vain. My friend attended this man, and though used to scenes of death, this terrified even him. He said that the raving of the sufferer was beyond be

lief, it was the noise of a great animal, not of a man. His eye glared, and he swore perpetually, and said that Satan was in wait for him, and pointed towards a corner of the chamber. When he made an effort, it was like the struggle of the tiger. And then he would listen, and cry that he heard the dull roll of drums, and the stamp of a war-horse, and the sounds of trumpets-calling calling; and he answered and shrieked, that he was coming.' And he came!

Most of my own friends have died calmly. One wasted away for months and months; and though death came slowly-he came too soon. I was told that Mr 'wished to live. On the very day on which he died, he tried to battle with the great king-to stand up against the coldness and faintness which seized upon him. But he died, notwithstanding, and though quietly, reluctantly. Another friend, a female, died easily and in old age, surviving her faculties. A third met death smiling. A fourth was buried in Italian earth, among flowers and odorous herbs. A fifth-the nearest of all-died gradually, and his children came about him, and were sad; but he was resigned to all fortunes, for he believed in a long 'hereafter!' And so time passes.

There is something inexpressibly touching in an anecdote which I have heard of a foreign artist. He was an American, and had come hither, he and his young wife, to paint for fame and a subsistence. They were strangers in England; they had to fight against prejudice and poverty; but their affection for each other solaced them under every privation, every frown of fortune. They could think, at least, all the way over' the great Atlantic; and there fancy, little cherished here, had leisure to be busy among the friends and scenes which they had left behind. A gentleman, who had not seen them for some time, went one day to the artist's painting-room, and, observing him pale and worn, inquired about his health, and afterwards regarding his wife. He answered only, 'She has left me;' and proceeded, in a hurried way, with his work. She was dead! and he was left alone to toil, and get money, and mourn. The heart in which he had hoarded all his secrets, all his hopes, was cold; and fame itself was but a shadow! And so it is, that all we love must wither-that we ourselves must wither and die away. 'Tis a trite saying: yet a wholesome moral belongs to it. The thread of our life is spun; it is twisted firmly, and looks as it would last for ever. All colours are there, the gaudy yellow and the sanguine red, and black, dark as death; yet is it cut in twain by the shears of fate almost before we discern the peril.

All that has been, and is, and is to come, must die, and the grave will possess all. Already the temple of death is stored with enormous treasures: but it shall be filled, till its sides shall crack and moulder, and its gaunt king, 'Death, the skeleton,' shall wither like his prey.-Oh! if the dead may speak, by what rich noises is that solemn temple haunted! What a countless throng of shapes is there-kings and poets, philosophers and soldiers! What a catalogue might not be reckoned-from the founder of the towers of Belus, to the Persian who encamped in the Babylonian squares-to Alexander, and Socrates, and Plato, to Cæsar, to Alfred! Fair names, too, might be strung upon the list, like pearls or glancing diamondscreatures who were once the grace and beauty of the earth, queens and gentlewomen. Antigone and Sappho -Corinna and the mother of the Gracchi-Portia and Agrippine. And the story might be ended with him, who died an exile on the sea-surrounded rock, the first emperor of France, the king and conqueror of Italy, the Corsican soldier, Napoleon.

I

I will here take leave of this melancholy subject. have touched upon it in a desultory way; but it is difficult to reduce our sorrows to system, or to array such recollections as these in the best order. For my own part, I have been content to relate them just as they occurred to me! let the reader submit, for once, to be as easily satisfied as I was.-From an old Magazine.

MICHAEL ANGELO AND HIS
PUPILS.

AMONG the scholars who crowded to Michael Angelo's painting-room, was Andrea, a poor young man, a stranger, to whom his comrades had given the name of II Triste, from his melancholy temper. He never mingled in their noisy amusements, but loved to wander by the flowery banks of the Arno, listening to its murmurs or gazing on the fading glories of sunset. All that was known of him was that he was no Florentine, but a total stranger in the city, and his means were equal to his few expenses. The common people thought him slightly deranged, because his look was sad and wild, and he would often talk long to himself. The secret of his melancholy was, however, soon discovered.

Michael Angelo had taken into his house a distant relative, an orphan girl of some seventeen years, named Vesperia. She had studied music long and successfully, and had a voice of remarkable sweetness. One day, when the great artist was entertaining at dinner a party of friends, among whom were Benvenuto Cellini, Francisco Francia, Carlo Dolce, and some of his pupils, the subject of conversation happened to be music. Michael Angelo boasted highly of his young relative's talent, and proposed to his guests to invite her to visit them and give a specimen of her skill. The proposition was received with acclamation, and he sent a servant to request the young girl to wait on him. When she entered the room, there was a profound admiring silence. Vesperia, in her hurry to obey the orders of her relative and protector, had not had time to arrange her yellow locks, which fell in thick curls on her neck and shoulders, and her usually pale cheeks were covered with a brilliant flush of excitement. Her voice trembled at first, but she now gained confidence, and sang with so much sweetness and expression, that the guests sat with their eyes fixed upon her, in utter forgetfulness of the wines of Sicily and Cyprus that shed a perfume round the table. As soon as she ceased, the company broke out into that frenzy of applause which is unknown out of Italy. Michael Angelo, who cultivated poetry as well as the sister arts, called the attention of the guests to the beauty of the verses. Francisco Francia asked for the author. The young men bent their heads forward to listen, while Vesperia, blushing still more deeply than before, whispered rather than uttered the name of Andrea. This was a thunderbolt to his pupils. They eyed each other in surprise, and one of them, a young patrician, named Marino, was so vexed, as to let fall the large drinking vase he held in his hand.

This little circumstance made Andrea's fellow-students regard him with more attention. It was plain that he loved Vesperia, and that she was not indifferent to his passion, since she sung his verses. Moreover, Marine recollected that once when he spoke to Vesperia of Andrea's strange character, she answered that there were some spirits so harmoniously sad, some voices so musically plaintive, that it was sweet to lament along with them. Be this as it may, jealousy soon made its appearance among Vesperia's suitors-more than once a duel on her account terminated their nightly revels, and once in a fray on the banks of the Arno, one of the students was dangerously wounded. When this came to the ears of Michael Angelo, he answered, to put an end to all disputes, that he would give his relative's hand to him among his pupils whose picture should surpass the others. He gave them as a subject to paint Cecilia composing a hymn, and fixed on the next Michaelmas as the day when he would decide on the merits of their performances.

The subject was exactly suited to Andrea's genius. He resembled Raphael more than he did his teacher. His outlines wanted boldness; he did not bring out every nerve, vein and muscle; but his figures were smooth, soft, and rounded. Consequently, his female figures were the best things he did, and the reason that his talent had never been discovered was, that he had always been employed on bold and severe subjects, such as the prophets

in the Sistine Chapel. He commenced his work with a beating heart, full of hope: he had within himself a female figure, and a wondrously soft and beautiful one. It would have been useless for him to draw any other; the same one always came back upon him.

As for Marino, he felt that his triumph was certain. He had no doubts of his superiority. He handled flesh with almost as much ease as his master. His men always looked like prize-fighters. For this reason, Michael Angelo had employed him in preference to his other pupils, to paint the figures of the damned in his great work of The Judgment, and his comrades tacitly yielded him the palm among them. But when he began to paint for the prize, he was greatly disappointed. His imagination was silent. His design was harsh, his colouring grey and cold, and ill-suited to the harmonious form of the patroness of music. He tore his canvass in pieces, and began again and again, with no better success. temper, always proud and quick, became so irritable that he lost the affection of his former friends. Cristoforo, commonly called Pescarenico, the best of the students, was sick, and could be of no assistance to him. As to the others, they were so far inferior, that they made no effort for the prize.

His

Surprised at seeing joy re-appear on Andrea's visage, and knowing that he spent many hours in working privately, Marino felt the keenest jealousy. One night when I Triste was absent, he broke into his little room, and hurried to the picture; what was his astonishment at recognising in the face of St Cecilia the very features and smiles of Vesperia! Unable to contain himself, he threw down the canvass and trampled it under foot, so as to make it impossible to finish it.

Meanwhile the appointed time drew nigh. Marino's picture was finished. Andrea had said nothing of his misfortune, for he had no friends to sympathise with him; only his fleeting joy had disappeared, and he was gloomier than ever. One morning when the students entered the studio, there were standing there two pictures which the great artist had just finished, and on which the colours were yet fresh. The subjects were two of the virtues, Hope and Charity. To pass the time away, while waiting for their master, and perhaps to show his wit, Marino thought proper to rally Andrea, who sat pensively in a corner. He bore the sarcasm patiently at first, but Marino having alluded to his love for Vesperia, and how much his St Cecilia resembled her, Andrea's blood began to boil. He drew a poignard, and leaped upon his rival like a tiger. The others threw themselves between and soon separated them, but in the scuffle the two pictures were thrown down with violence. The noise of the fall put an end to the strife. All stood, as it were, stupid, and did not even notice that Andrea was slightly wounded. After a long silence-' We must lift up the pictures, at any rate,' said Marino, affecting more indifference than he really felt. They were lifted up, and the colours were found to have been partially rubbed off.

'Oh, brothers, what have we done!' cried Bartolomeo. Look, Charity is blind, and see to the mouth of Hope how it grins! Oh, my friends, you have destroyed, in one instant, two years of labour, and twenty ages of glory!' It was necessary to do something, however, for the teacher was expected every hour.

'Some one of us must retouch the pictures,' was timidly suggested by Albertazzi.

Who will dare to pass his pencil over the work of Michael Angelo?' answered Bartolomeo. 'Not I, certainly.' 'Nor I, nor I!' echoed round the room.

the first proclaimed, and he rejoiced at his good fortune. While they were hard at work, which, by the way, was difficult for Andrea, whose arm was wounded, and whose blood sometimes ran down and mixed with his colours, the other students kept aloof; and Bartolomeo, who was always kind-hearted though careless, whi ed to Albertazzi

'Andrea is the weakest of all us scholars; and to tell you the truth, I have great fears

'Let him alone,' was the answer, he will do well enough; the subject seems to inspire him. But to give the Charity to Marino! Certainly, rtune is often blind!' In a few minutes Marino cried out, 'I am ready!' 'So am I,' rejoined Andrea; 'judge between us!' 'Our master is coming!' said Apostolo; and Michael Angelo entered the painting-room.

He happened to be agitated and out of humour that morning. Perhaps he had been meditating on the shortness of life, the vastness of his art, and the empty nature of all earthly glory. Whatever the cause, he was thoughtful and moody, and spoke much to himself and incoherently, not regarding the confusion of the scholars. Gradually he grew calmer and more collected. He began to give some lessons on his divine art, and he turned to the two pictures, as an illustration of the rules he had been laying down. No sooner had he fixed his eyes on the picture of Charity, than he exclaimed, his eyes flashing with anger

Furies! what woman is this? Can I be so far deceived?' Then turning to the Hope, Ah, ah-no, nohere there is some of the true inspiration. But as for this Charity, that looks like a hangman!' And he drew his dagger and cut the canvass to pieces.

The whole company were silent with fear, except a few who talked in whispers in a corner. The great master noticed them, and as he saw at once that something had happened, he approached the picture a second time, viewed it closely a few minutes, and said—

'What is the matter here, gentlemen; what is all this? This is not my style, these are not my tints. On your lives, tell me what has happened!'

The silence continued.

'Am I listened to when I speak? Can I have an answer when I ask a question?'

'Master,' said Bartolomeo timidly, 'an accident happened, and

Michael Angelo reflected for some moments. Who retouched the picture of Hope?' he asked calmly. 'Andrea,' answered Bartolomeo.

Andrea, come hither,' said the artist.

He advanced slowly and timidly; his master clasped him in his arms.

"You are a pupil worthy of Michael Angelo,' cried he; you are the only one that understood my Hope.'

Then as he saw that he was ready to weep, and remembering how much he must have suffered, Child,' said he, with a tenderness unusual and strange in him, 'you were a ray of light hidden behind clouds, but the clouds have passed away, and the sun of thy genius shines out brightly in the sight of heaven and earth. Ask for what you will-it is granted already.'

The young man was too much agitated to answertwo big tears rolled down his cheeks. A young girl crossed the garden; he pointed to her in silence.

'Vesperia!' exclaimed Michael Angelo, 'I remember now.'

and retouch it.'

'Or, better yet,' said Albertazzi, 'let them each draw for the picture they are to take.'

It was agreed that the two names should be placed in a cup, and that the first one drawn should take the Hope, and the other the Charity. The name of Andrea was

lifeless body was found in the garden; his poignard was thrust into his heart up to the very hilt. He had rolled around the blade a paper which had also entered his breast, on which was written, 'There was something here.' When the body was brought up to Michael Angelo, he remarked, carelessly-His hatred must have come out with his blood, for the wound is a wide one.'

No. 18.

MEMORY.

Ir has often struck us, that, in our modern educational improvements, one point of very considerable importance is apt to be lost sight of, or at least to be treated without that degree of attention which it merits. We condemn, and justly, the parrot-like fashion in which the young were made to go through their school-tasks in days past, learning by rote and by heart lessons, of the signification and value of which they were left in almost total ignorance. But, in changing the system, and making the meaning the primary matter in every lesson taught, there is some risk, it seems to us, of our running into error in an opposite direction, and overlooking one real advantage, which most certainly attaches so far to our old academical customs. We refer, it will be obvious, to the exercise and cultivation of the memory. Memoria augetur exercendo (the memory is strengthened by exercise') is an adage of equal antiquity and truth; and the committing of things to memory, even before a comprehension of their meaning is attained, may be of no slight service to the young, in as much as the adage in question is thus fulfilled. Even the long propria quæ maribus rules of Ruddiman's Grammar, which used to be consigned to memory, we remember, by boys who had not the faintest idea of their meaning, may not have been unserviceable in their way, simply from the powers of recollection being thereby called forcibly into play. But there is no occasion for the object on which the memory is exercised being something unintelligible. Far from it. It would be easy, in communicating rational instruction to the young, and exercising their minds upon comprehensible' lessons, to accompany such tutorage with the culture of the memory; and this course, we argue, would be a judicious and most useful one. In fact, the culture of the memory seems to us a matter of such high consequence, as to merit being ranked as a distinct item in every syllabus of juvenile instruction. It is a secondary point, certainly, to the conveyance of actual knowledge, but still most important, though it be subsidiary.

Those who have not particularly attended to the subject would probably be surprised, on inquiry, to find to what an extent mere strength of memory appears to have contributed to the greatness of literary men in all ages. Our own times have presented at least two striking cases in proof of this assertion. Speaking of Lord Byron, Mrs Shelley, an observer of great acuteness, and who had the advantage of ample opportunities of intercourse with that noble poet, has made the remark that his natural abilities did not strike her as very extraordinary; in truth, she rather thought meanly of them; but 'his memory,' she

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says, was altogether supernatural! Every page of his writings supports this statement. In the first place, as regards the simple remembrance of words, the endowment in question appears to have been of vast use to Byron. To the great strength of his memory, we may ascribe the astonishing copiousness and felicity of language, and the facility of rhyming, displayed in the brilliant galaxy of poems which he poured forth in rapid succession-a succession so rapid, indeed, as to have no parallel in literary history. Again, when his poems are fully examined, we find in them comparatively few traces of distinct originality of thought. A vast number of his ideas and images are but able and improved versions of the conceptions of others, for which he had drawn upon the stores of his supernatural memory.' His skill in this mode of adopting and transplanting is seen to a remarkable extent in his tragedy of Werner; but the same thing might be shown in a thousand places in his works, where he has not acknowledged any obligation, as he did in the particular case mentioned. An example of his talent at adopting thoughts with emendations is seen in the fine passage

'And the waves bound beneath me like a steed

That knows its rider.'

'Here,' says Moore, 'the poet has evidently caught an image in Beaumont and Fletcher, and, by a change, greatly improved it:

'No more shall we two feel our fiery horses

Like proud seas under us.''

The illustrations which Byron gave, in his juvenile satire, of the faults and follies of English Bards,' were almost all directly borrowed from the other objects of his attack, Scotch Reviewers.' In short, everything tends to prove that much of Lord Byron's success in literature rested on his 'supernatural memory.' And if we turn to his school-days, we shall find distinctly the origin of his endowment in this respect. He tells us, that if he shone in anything it was in public recitation or declamation. He probably little thought that the getting up of pieces by heart to display his boyish elocution, was to bear so materially on his after-greatness. The case is an instructive one.

Not less strikingly apparent was the value of a well-cultivated memory in the case of Sir Walter Scott. That he possessed such a gift is undeniable. The Ettrick Shepherd tells us that being once on the Tweed with him, engaged in salmon fishing by night, Sir Walter requested the Shepherd to amuse a leisure moment by repeating a certain ballad. The ballad was of some length, and had never been printed; and Hogg could not remember more than the first verse or two. To his great surprise, Scott,