solemn occasions, carried in the processions, or suspended from the tapestried balcony of our palace, I received the homage of assembled Rome.

"But evil days came; and, alas! I must now enter on the narration of my sad history.

When the Gallic hordes, under the false pretence of liberty and equality and brotherhood, swept down from the Alps and Apennines upon our smiling plains, not even the Goth and the Vandal, who, at the sacking of the eternal city, encumbered the bed of the Tiber with the ruins of temples and the wreck of statues, made a more barbarian abuse of conquest. Who can describe my horror, when a band of lawless soldiery burst into my sanctuary, laid their profane hands on the work of the divine Raphael, and cast lots, on the steps of the altar, to part it among them? I felt the knife-it seemed to lacerate and dissect me limb from limb; separating me from all that I loved-patriarchs, sibyls, angels, one by one were torn away, till I found myself in a frightful solitude, and not without a struggle and bloodshed.

"Happy was it for me, great as my sufferings were, that I had not been painted in fresco, and immovably fixed to a wall, or I might have shared the destiny so many masterpieces of art were doomed to undergo in "the time of the French." I shudder to think that I might else have been shut out from the light of day-" dark! unutterably dark!"-lost to the world for ever! My fate, indeed, was far from enviable. Sometimes, I lay smothered beneath a pile of baggage on the fourgon; or after a battle, always a victory, was dragged forth, diced for, raffled for, and transferred, from hand to hand, till I fell into that of a heretic, who transported me to London, where I at length became pledged at a vile price, and deposited in a vile place,—where you may suppose, when I tell you, that over the door hung the arms of the Medici. Here, nailed against the wainscot, I grew familiar with misery and degradation in all its forms; my ears assailed with profane jests and drunken laughter; my eyes not less shocked with the sight of the degraded beings who bartered their filthy rags-thrown afterwards contemptuously at my feet-for the means of supplying their necessities or their vices.

"After a twelvemonth, being unredeemed, I was exposed to public sale, and purchased by one of those unconscionable plunderers-a picture-dealer. By him I was dispatched to Leghorn, whence I was conveyed to Florence. Here, despised and rejected, I was made over to a broker, who hung me up, and not in the most conspicuous part of his stall, nor the best sheltered from the sun and wind and rain; and here, for four long years, no passer-by deigned to honour me with a look, much less to bid for me the lowest coin in the Tuscan dominions.

"A canonico of the Dominican order, stricken in years, poor as an apostle, and remarkable for his saint-like piety, was seized with one of those malignant fevers common in the autumnal season, which he had taken by infection from a peasant in administering the last unction in extremis. As he lay on his sick pallet, and death stood in act

The chapel that contained the Supper of Leonardo da Vinci, was turned into a stable at Milan; and the beautiful medallions of Perrin del Vaga-equal to any works of Julio Romano's-when it was made the quarter of the French general in command, were covered with distemper, and utterly obliterated.

to strike over his head, his niece, a lay sister of the Santa Maria Novella, was unremitting in her attentions to him; and passing daily, in her way to the convent, the stall of which I have just spoken, bethought her of me, purchased me for two pauls, and hung me, fronting the good old man, over the crucifix in his cell. His eyes, already dim with the coming shadows of dissolution, were mechanically fixed on mine. I regarded him with a look of pity and affection. That look shot comfort into his soul. He prayed devoutly to the Virgin-I seconded his prayers. From that moment his malady abated; and in fourteen days he resumed the holy offices of the church. But he did not forget her to whom he firmly believed he owed his recovery; nor did he forget me; and after having collected several scudi by the contributions of pious communicants for the praiseworthy purpose, he determined on my restoration. I was now placed in the hands of an honest and excellent young painter, who, a rare thing in Florence, had, with a conscientious regard and veneration for the martyr, just completed the cleaning of an Andrea del Sarto, that formed the altarpiece of the Dominican Chapel. Had you beheld me on the eve of this operation, you would have shed over me heart-wrung tears.

"I have detailed to you what I had suffered, now shudder to hear what I was! Blackened and begrimed with layer after layer of varnish and dust and smoke-my canvas mildewed by damp and pierced by worms-mutilated and disfigured;-such was the ruin the artist was engaged to repair.

When he began to tear me from my original canvas, and with a pallet knife to make the adhesions yield, in order afterwards to glue me on a new fond,' not the tomahawked Indian, Marsyas, nor the martyred Bartholomew, endured agonies more intense. Then, indeed, in utter despair, I deemed myself ruined and undone, torn in pieces, and irreparably destroyed. But no: after the manner of the practitioner, who, with steady hand and unerring eye-a full confidence in his own skill, and a thorough knowledge of the nature of the disease -cruel only to be merciful-separates the morbid from the sound, and by the very wounds that he inflicts, restores the patient to renovated health-thus did the painter create for me a new constitution-lay the foundation, as it were, of a new life and being. This accomplished, he proceeded to remove, with certain cosmetics, the filth of centuries; and this very accumulation was it which proved, as he had expected to find, my preservation; that alone tended to save me from decay. Inch after inch was developed, till, to my perceptible delight, I issued forth, like a butterfly from its chrysalis, glowing with immortal youth -nay, more beautiful than I first appeared, fresh from the easel of the master-my complexion richer, my robe more graceful and easy in every fold, and my whole mellowed and softened down into a more exquisite harmony of colouring. But on this I need not further enlarge-you see what I am.

An

"The discovery of a new work of Raphael was soon noised about Florence, and multitudes flocked, on all sides, to the studio of the artist. I was seen, admired, adored! All desired to possess me. English nobleman was willing to cover me with pieces of gold, as my price, but he found a rival in you-a more successful competitor. The ten thousand scudi you offered were too great a temptation for the fortunate Canonico. With tears in his eyes, he counted out the coins,

and handed me over to my new master. fate-for you have made it.''

Since when, you know my

At this moment, a bell of silver sound ringing through the chateau announced the vesper hour, and the Count, rising and waving his hand almost imperceptibly to me, hurried to the chapel. I now heard the pealing of an organ, and three voices, a bass, a tenor, and a treble, joining in the evening hymn to the Virgin. The shades of twilight had begun to deepen; and without wishing to take a formal leave of my host, I made the best of a bad way to the auberge. There I reflected on all I had seen and heard, and became the more convinced, that in making "nil admirari" my motto and rule of life, I had judged rightly. I felt no surprise that a bigoted Catholic, immured in a dilapidated chateau, with no other companions than a confessor, a chorister, and a Madonna, should confound dreams with realities, and speak and think as Count B- had done of his picture.

It was a new version of the old story of the Sculptor and his Statue. The history of the picture is not yet completed. The Count is dead; and the Madonna forms one of the most distinguished ornaments of the Munich Gallery.

Which as they bound

Round and round,
Measure the flight

Of the long, long night,
That reigns for the time,

Which in softer clime

Maketh two seasons upon the earth.

But bright is the dome 'neath which I have birth,

Where the Boreal lights, like banners unfurl'd,

Shed their glory upon the northern world;

And the silver band of the galaxy,

Like a loosen'd girdle, spans the sky.

From this Polar home,

Where no man may roam,
I burst through the cleft

Of an ice-berg reft,

And my hitherward course began.

Over pillars of ice and plains of snow,
Prepared for my coming ages ago,

My chosen pathway ran,

Till I leap'd with a bound

Which echo'd around

The constellation Bootes; the fable of which is, that with his two dogs he is perpetually driving the Bear round the Pole.

To Norway's rocky shore.
Then with threat'ning roar,
In my hurried race,

I shook the spectre larch,
Or with rough embrace,
As I onward march,
My caresses are known
By the full deep moan
Which the pine-tree breathes to me;

Or in anger and strife

I war with their life,

And uproot each lordly tree.

Now again on the shore, where the cataracts lead
From on high to the dark and fathomless deep,
I kiss the white foam that gambols with me,
And dash with it down to the restless sea.
Then wildly I play o'er the ocean wide,
When man is not near to humble my pride;
But so fearless is he, that seldom I fail

To meet in my passage some venturous sail,
And fierce is the struggle that passes between,
And fierce my revenge is, full often, I ween,

For the daring that prompts him to wrestle and gain,
The empire I strive for-the sway o'er the main;
But like a wild beast by the hunters at bay,
More often I crouch till he passes away,
Though wildly I rage, and my fury I vent,

Till I find, when too late, that my strength is spent.

So, something subdued in my wrath and power,
I visit your land in its wintry hour;

And here, as I pass, I crisp the streams,

Though over them glow the faint sunbeams;

And the fanciful pendules of ice I hold,

Where the rain-drops stay'd in their course had roll'd ; And I patter the hail and drift the snow,

As a remnant of majesty here I shew;

While sometimes in pity I temper the brow

That fever had burnt, and send back the tide

Of health to the veins that sickness had dried,

And brace up the frame, till its twin-born, the mind, In gratitude loves the Wintry Wind.

But little for love or hate I try,

I do but the bidding of ONE on HIGH!

And often I creep to the chamber warm,

(One chink is enough to work the charm,)

Where the high-born and gifted, and young and fair,
Is guarded and tended with anxious care;
But the hectic is there, and the cough so quick
Heard through the folds of the curtain thick,
And the sparkling eye, and the fingers weak,
And the heart that dares not its fulness speak;
But here is my mission-my icy breath

Is the herald, and signal, and signet of death!
Then I bluster away to a hovel low,
But quicker my work is there, I trow.

And so for awhile I lord it with all,

Though weaker and weaker my power doth fall,
Till the golden sun and the zephyrs mild
Chase me again to the northern wild!

WHITEHALL AND THE BATTERY.

A FARCICAL SCENE OF ACTION.

BY UNCLE SAM.

SCENE. "Whitehall" and the "Battery," New York.-Great collection of loafers (loungers).—A steam-boat advances: enter from it a "News Collector" and "Commodore Martin," of the "News Collectors' fleet," with an enormous bundle of newspapers.

FIRST NEWS COL. Three cheers for the "Morning Herald" and the cash system! Down with the locofocoes and kitchen cabinet!

[The loafers cheer. Enter two News Collectors in haste. SECOND NEWS COL. Are we too late?

FIRST NEWS COL. To be sure you are, you loafing Wall-street incapables. I snuffed the steam when it was a hundred and thirty-five miles off at sea: seven editors and a hundred and fifty compositors are all ready for a second edition frolic, and in twenty minutes we shall have the Herald out with the most talented extracts from the European papers ever seen in this or any other country. Another cheer for the go-a-head principle!

[Loafers give a faint cheer. Exit first News Collector with the

newspapers.

SECOND NEWS COL. I say, Commodore Martin.

MARTIN. Out with it, as I says to the knife when I opens a clam.* SECOND NEWS COL. Couldn't you give us some of the news by the Great Western?

MARTIN. I guess I could purty smart. I carried the whole of the papers ashore with my own hand, and read some of 'em while boating. SECOND NEWS COL. How many passengers did you see on board? How many are there?

MARTIN. Why, I saw twenty, and another man saw thirty; that makes fifty altogether.

SECOND NEWS COL. (Writes in a pocket-book.) "Fifty passengers." Did you hear any of their names?

MARTIN. Yes, there was the Hon. Aldin Stephanoff, of Alabama, and the young Marquis of Wilfulton.

SECOND NEWS COL. (Writes.) "One of our most talented citizens, the Hon. Aldin Stephanoff; and his Excellency the Marquis of Wilfulton, a young European nobleman, about to make the tour of our great country." But what political news did you read?

MARTIN. Why, the Lord Mayor of London or Liverpool, I forget which, had dined with two famous giants and other men in armour, counted twenty nails before Lord Chancery, and had gone swanhopping up the river.

LOAFER. He's joking; that's a fact.

MARTIN. Well, I may be, but don't know as I am, for I'll take an immortal oath I read it.

SECOND NEWS COL. O, like enough! I've made more curious extracts than those.

MARTIN. Another paper I read said that all the ministers in

* A shell-fish like an overgrown muscle.