required sum was yet needed, the committee felt emboldened to make the purchase, and thus enabled the ladies' achievement to realize their warmest hopes. This unexpected feat aroused the public interest to a great degree, and the remaining sum was soon raised by contributions from every quarter. We must reserve to another number the history of the "Old Brewery" and many circumstances connected with its purchase and demolition, and in this connection close by saying that the Ladies' Home Missionary Society have had the privilege of demonstrating to the city that the "Five Points" are perfectly accessible to moral influences. They believed that, "However deep may be the shade of sin, And in accordance with these sentiments they have contended with difficulties, met opposition, and patiently and prayerfully pursued their onward course. In view of the wasted intellect, the perverted feelings, the deadened sensibilities, and the fearful retribution of the adults by whom they were surrounded; in view of the redemption purchased for and proffered to them; in view of the hundreds of children exposed to every evil influence, who yet might be snatched from the mäelstrom on whose verge they were standing, the ladies acted. In view of this fearful desolation, which year after year had deterred both the philanthropic and the Christian from strong, systematic effort there, they said: "These are the thoughts that make us watch THE SPINNING-MAIDEN'S CROSS. BY REV. PROFESSOR WHEWELL. BENEATH Vienna's ancient wall And from the wall a little space, It seems, so standing there alone, A friend that forth hath set, It seems with doubtful greeting there Smiles have been there of beaming joy, As friends have met and parted, by Young Margaret had the gentlest heart Nor ever fail'd her constant part Of daily toil and prayer. But when the festal morn had smiled, For then with Wenzel side by side He gives a cot where we shall dwell, Though joy through Margaret sent a thrill, Few words she spoke for good or ill, Nor Wenzel needed more. But when again the festal bell A sadder tale had he to tell, "Gretchen beloved! Gretchen dear! Donations should be directed to the Ladies' Home Missionary Society, care of Carlton and Phillips, No. 200 Mulberry-teenth century stands at a little distance outside the street. A Gothic cross of the architecture of the thir city of Vienna, and is commonly called "Die Spinnerinn am Kreuz." "And he must to the Holy Land, And I and all his faithful band A swelling heart did Margaret press, Her solitary Sabbaths brought As on the Holy Land she thought, But from the Holy Land soon came, And heavy tidings brought with them In one long year she scarce could win Yet love can hope through good and ill, When other hope is gone; Shall she who loves so well be still, She felt within her inmost heart A strange bewilder'd swell, Too soft to break with sudden start, Too gentle to rebel. And what she hoped or thought to earn Poor Margaret never knew, But on her distaff oft she'd turn A thoughtful, hopeful view. And by the stone where last they met, And twirl'd the thread till daylight set, Her little store upon the stone She spread to passers-by; And oft they paused and gazed upon And e'en from those who had but few, And faster far her treasure grew But all in vain it grew, alas! Her destined ransom store; For from the Holy Land there pass And when to her their news they said, For Wenzel is in prison dead, His captive sorrows done. Then on her face what woe was set; As if her hands could not forget The work they had begun. Through shine and rain, through heat and Her daily task she plied; [snow, And wrought for two long twelvemonths so, And then she gently died. They took the treasure she had won, Full many a varied coin, And o'er the stone where she had spun They raised that shapely shrine. And still Vienna's maids recall Her meekly suffer'd loss, And point the fane beneath the wall THE SPINNING-MAIDEN'S CROSS. NATURE THE SCHOOL OF ART.* THE first quality with which the ob variety, as if in counterbalance, conducts us to a just recognition of the value of contrast throughout the works of creation. Tserer must be struck, is the infinite Simplicity becomes appreciable only when variety of form which pervades creation. On attempting to reason concerning it, he perceives its dependence upon the functions of each object, and what the component parts of each object are ordained to fulfill; hence he will at once recognize the fact, that form is in every case, if not dependent on, at least coincident with, structural fitness. When the complex flower is submitted to the test of a scientific botanical examination, no particles are found to be adventitious,—all are concerned in fulfilling the appointed functions of vegetable physiology. As those functions vary with the growth of the plant, so in every case does its form-changing from tender bud to blooming flower, and from blooming flower to reproductive seed-pod, as each successive change of purpose progresses. Infinite variety and unerring fitness thus appear to govern all form in nature. While the former of these properties demonstrates her infinite power of complexity, the latter restrains the former, and binds all in beautiful simplicity. In every case ornament appears the offspring of necessity alone, and wherever structural necessity permits, the simplest lines in every case consistent with the variety of uses of the object are adapted. Thus, the principal forest trees, which spring erect and hardy from the ground, in their normal state, uninfluenced by special conditions of light or heat, shoot straight aloft, with boughs equally balanced on all sides, growing so symmetrically, that a regular cone or oviform would, in most instances, precisely define their outline; and thus the climbing plants, from their first appearance, creep along the ground in weak and wayward lines, until they reach something stronger and more erect than themselves; to this they cling, and from it hang either vertically or in the most graceful festoons; to each its character of form as of purpose to each the simplest line consistent with its appointed function and propriety of expression. While a consideration of the quantity of fitness binds us to simplicity, that of From an admirable lecture by M. Digby Wyatt, Esq., "On the Principles which should determine Form in the Decorative Arts," delivered at the Society of Arts, London. opposed to complexity, while complexity itself will, on analysis, be found to consist only of the combination of parts, individually, of extreme simplicity. Mr. Owen Jones will, doubtless, have much to tell us respecting the beautiful laws of the simultaneous contrast of colors; so we may for the present content ourself with noticing the parallel effects produced in obedience to the laws of "simultaneous contrast of form." The researches of Mr. Penrose have lately developed many of these most interesting phenomena; and have not only demonstrated the fact of the scientific acquaintance of the Greeks with their peculiarities, but have shown how essential an attempt to apply such knowledge has been to the production of those exquisite monuments which, from the first moment of their creation to the present time, have maintained a position of unquestionable supremacy over every other work which human art has yet produced. The general result of Mr. Penrose's investigations tends to the assumption that no two lines can come in contrast with one another, either in nature or in art, without the direction of the one acting, either attractively or repulsively, upon the other, and tending to diminish or exaggerate the mutual divergence of both lines, i. e., to increase or lessen to the eye the angle at which they meet. Thus, if to a perfectly horizontal line another be drawn, meeting it at an angle of six degrees (about half the angle at which the inclined sides of the best Greek pediments leave the surface of the cornice), it will be difficult to convince the eye, as it traces the direction of each line, that the angle has not been materially increased by an apparent deflection of the base line, and an apparent elevation of that with which it actually forms an angle of six degrees only. In order to remedy this apparent distortion in their monuments, the Greeks have given entasis, or swelling, to their columns, inclination of the axes of their pillars toward a central line, a tendency outward to their antæ, and exquisite convex curves to the horizontal lines of their cornices and stylobates, which would otherwise have appeared bent and crooked. Nature, in working out her harmonies of contrast, abounds with similar optical corrections. The infinitely gentle convexity of her water sky line is precisely corrected into perfect apparent horizontality by contrast with any line at right angles to a tangent to its curve. It is by attention to the optical effects produced by the impact of lines upon one another in nature, that the artist can alone store his mind with the most graceful varieties of delicate contrast. Thus it is alone that he can appreciate the extreme beauty of her constant, minute, and generally inappreciable divergence from the precise mathematical figures, in approximation to which simplicity demands, as we have already shown, that her leading forms should be modeled. TOO MUCH BRAIN WORK. LAMAN BLANCHARD-KIRKE WHITE. PERHAP ERHAPS among the modern victims of overwork Samuel Laman Blanchard merits special notice. Like Byron, Laman Blanchard had a predisposition to cerebral disorder. At an early age he experienced a paroxysm of suicidal excitement; in the earlier part of his life he abstained wholly from animal foodan undoubted mark of eccentricity to the eye of the physician, whatever vegetarians may say or think; and it was during an acute attack of cerebral irritation that he perished. It was ushered in, however, with the usual warnings. When eking out his income by "a constant waste of intellect and strength," his wife was seized with paralysis, and became subject to fits. His vivacity now failed him, and he became subject to deep depression of spirits. "His friends, on calling suddenly at his house, have found him giving way to tears and vehement grief, without apparent cause. In mixed society he would strive to rally; sometimes with success-sometimes utterly in vain. He has been obliged to quit the room to give way to emotions which seemed to arise spontaneously, unexcited by what passed around him, except as it jarred, undetected by others, upon the irritable chords within. In short, the nerves, so long overtasked, were giving way. In the long and gallant struggle with circumstances, the work of toil told when the hour of grief came." Amid all this, his constant thought was of fresh literary enterprises; a "limèd soul" he was, yet not struggling to be free. So VOL. II, No. 2.-0 long had he toiled that the image of toil literally dogged him. He chalked out schemes more numerous, and even more ambitious, than any in which he had before indulged. Among the rest he meditated "a work upon the boyhood and youth of eminent men, (we quote his biographer,) "on which he wrote to consult me, and for which I ransacked my memory to supply him with anecdotes and illustrations. He passed whole days—even weekswithout stirring abroad, writing and grieving as it were together." In this short sketch, how clearly the psychiatric practitioner recognizes the premonitory symptoms of cerebral congestion-how deeply he grieves that no warning voice was raised, no helping hand stretched forth to snatch him from the abyss, upon the verge of which he evidently stood. The rest followed quickly. Intolerance of light—an attack of hemiplegia-imperfection of vision-spectral illusions - - terrible forebodings of some undefined calamity-violent delirium—suicidal impulse-and then the act itself. We once more quote his biographerbecause some apology is due to our readers for this harrowing history-for the moral. "Thus, at the early age of fortyone, broken in mind and body, perished this industrious, versatile, and distinguished man of letters. And if excuse be needful for dwelling so long upon details of a painful nature, it may be found in the deep interest which science takes in the pathology of such sufferers, and in the warnings they may suggest to the laborers of the brain when the first ominous symptoms of over-toil come on, and while yet repose is not prescribed too late." Laman Blanchard was the biographer of a kindred sufferer-L. E. L. Her history, also, is not without an emphatic warning; but we forbear to dwell longer upon this painful subject. There is one other result of mental labor which, however, deserves notice-namely, that in which the horrors of confirmed hypochondriasis afflict the toiler. This shows itself, not merely in the common form of weak fancies as to the bodily health, or in unaccountable gloom, but also in a less understood form, in which the judgment is weakened, and the individual gets committed to some intellectual folly in science and literature, religion or politics. The man is not actually insane, or, if insane, |