watch at the barrier endeavoured to detain him, but he galloped through like a madman, calling out, "Detain me not, I go to comfort a dying friend." The French soldiers laughed aloud at the sight of this gentle comforter, but he swore at them and hurried on.

The sick Luigi sat at the open window of the farmhouse, and enjoyed the enlivening sunbeams; but they dazzled his weak eyes so that he did not perceive Benvenuto till he stopped before the house, jumped from his mule, and hurried upstairs. Astonished at his furious appearance and drawn dagger, he said to him as he opened the door, "How unfortunate, my Benvenuto, that I should be so very weak to-day. You are going most likely to defend yourself or to attack some powerful enemy. And I am not able to share your peril and your victory. What else can your hurry and your warlike dress mean? Perhaps I may yet have strength sufficient to prove that my courage has not altogether departed from my expiring frame."

"It is nothing, nothing but another beastly trick of that Doctor Petitpré!" said Benvenuto highly delighted: "he sends me here on a fool's errand, as if it were the first of April! And yet I am quite pleased with him for sending me hither to see with my own eyes that all is well!"

"Did he, then, tell thee that some enemies had attacked me, or why camest thou with thy weapons?"-" No, no, I took my arms for another reason, and forgot to put them away again. But he told me you were dying."-" Indeed!" said Luigi gently, and bent his eyes to the ground. But soon a smile, more kind and heavenly than before, played on his handsome face, which shone with a brighter colour than when Benvenuto saw him last. He folded his hands and kept silent a few minutes, then looking up to his friend, he said-" When we look back on our past life, how odd it appears that the most cheerful and the most solemn moments should be mingled together in our memory. I felt just now as if the fair Laura Sansone were quite near me, and as if I heard her playful laugh; for she would have laughed, had she witnessed thy coming to visit the sick in arms and in a coat of mail. Oh! she laughed so lovely-spite of her noble and high demeanour ! And she could command all the powers of mimicry and disguise which belong to our countrywomen, whenever she wanted to play a frolicsome cheerful trick! How often has she stood in the midst of our social circle without our knowing her! She even deceived my sympathetic perception by the most extraordinary disguises! the lovely fairy!" He then told his friend several anecdotes of this the blooming time of his life, till he talked himself to sleep like an innocent playful babe!

Motionless, like a strong man guarding against the approaching of some mighty enemy, sat the armed Benvenuto close to his sleeping friend, holding his glittering dagger in his hand, and contemplating with many thoughts the various shapes with which his own face was reflected from the uneven surface of the shining blade. He there saw the source of many of the grotesque conceptions of the ancient sculptors. He was, however, soon brought back from the ancient to the modern world by a coach rolling up to the farmhouse. Highly enraged at the thought of his Luigi being disturbed in his refreshing slumber, he stepped to the window, and saw Doctor Petitpré assisting

the lady Isabel 'out of the coach. Benvenuto tried to make them understand, by many angry signs, that Luigi was asleep, that they must not disturb him, and had better stay where they were. They took little notice of him, but came upstairs, with noiseless steps, towards the room-door, which Benvenuto opened with anxious care to make as little noise as possible. The lady Isabel walked up to Luigi's armchair without noticing Benvenuto, who said to the Doctor very angrily "Who the deuce bade you bring that old woman here?"" Old woman," whispered Petitpré, quite shocked at this ungallant expression; "remember, Mr. Cellini, the respect you and we all owe to the ladies." This timely reproof checked Benvenuto's wrath, and he soon forgot every thing but his sick friend; for the lady Isabel turned suddenly to the physician, and asked with a trembling voice-" Oh, God! he will awaken once more, I hope ?"-" Yes," replied the physician, "but for an hour at most, and then all will be over with him!" The lady Isabel wept under her veil; but as it was impossible for Benvenuto to vent his grief in gentle accents, he left the room and hurried to the farthest corner of the garden, there to roar out his wild but honest grief. When the first violent storm had subsided, he wished to return to Luigi's death-bed; and scolding himself more severely even than he scolded others, and subduing his grief with all his power, returned to the house. At the door of the sick chamber he stopped; all was quiet within. He entered gently, but the Doctor, standing behind the door unexpected by Cellini, occasioned a slight noise by the lock touching him. The sculptor looked at him with a dreadful face which seemed to say "Why hide yourself there so foolishly?" The physician answered this look by simply pointing to an apparition near the sick man's couch, which struck Benvenuto in his turn with astonishment.

In the long mourning dress of the lady Isabel, but tall and stately, with her angelic face uncovered, stood a beautiful female beside the slumbering Luigi; sometimes anxiously listening to his breathing, and then again raising her beautiful eyes to Heaven in earnest prayer.

As Benvenuto, in dumb amazement, turned his inquiring eyes on the Doctor, the latter whispered-" I saw with my own eyes this unheardof metamorphosis! The veil fell back, she lifted up her head, and the lady Isabel was, by some magic power, transformed into an angel!"

"No angel," whispered the lady," but Signora Laura Sansone, the wife of the Advocate Giovanni Sansone. I come here by my husband's permission. It is at his request that the grateful Marquise gave me, together with her friendship, the means of relieving the pain of this young artist's sick-bed. Now it has become a death-bed she stopped, and a few precious tears rolled down her cheeks-" every deception must necessarily cease." She was silent, and soon relapsed into her former contemplation. After a little while the sick man moved, Laura bent over him. He opened his eyes with a cheerful smile, and seeing her, said-" An angel! how like my Laura! thou, then, gone before me ?-and dost thou give me thy pardon?" He attempted to rise, but the pain in his breast made him fall back, and he said sighing "No, I am yet suffering on earth !"—" Not much longer," said Laura, consoling him; and kneeling down beside him, she added" let us pray together." He nodded his assent, and folded his

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Art

hands; and during the fervid prayer, full of hope, which the beloved voice pronounced, he sunk quietly to sleep, never to wake again!

Cellini knew now what to do with the sketch he had made in the morning. Over Luigi's grave was placed a basso-relievo, carved in the whitest marble by Benvenuto's masterhand. The victor in the race was sinking exhausted, while the judge of the contest, in the form of a beautiful female, was hastening towards him with a crown of palm in her hand. Around it stood, in letters of gold, these words"Death in the arms of Victory."

QUEEN ISABEL'S WISH.*

FROM the magic walls of her Santa-Fé
Queen Isabel parts at dawn of day,

While the dew-drop is on the earth :
Her lord, her court, and her knights attend;
In a brave procession their course they bend,
With soft music, pomp, and mirth.

O sweet is the breath of that rosy morn,
And sweet the sound of the martial horn,
As they march on their joyous way;
And the woods and the mountains hail the sight,
And the rivers sparkle with silver light,
And the sun gilds their rich array.

To Zubia they go, that the Queen may gaze
On Grenada fair, where the hallow'd blaze
Of past glory is lingering yet;
Where beauty, and love, and chivalry
In the Zambra shone, and the red war-cry
Woke deeds time can never forget.

To Zubia they're come; from its battlement
Queen Isabel looks on the wide extent
That outspreads upon either hand;
And before her lies, with its clear blue sky,
Grenada the city of gallantry,

With its high wall's circling band.

O bright is the scene and the view around
'Tis a picture of heaven on earthly ground,
The rich tale of a minstrel's dream :
Queen Isabel longs for the glowing prize,
And to hail as her own that fair paradise,
Enlaced by the Daro's stream.

She sees the Alhambra before her there,
And its vermeil towers look out in the air

O'er minaret, crescent, and wall;

;

Where the kings of the Moors had reposed in pride,
When valour and pleasure, enthroned at their side,
Were the lords and directors of all.

The superb Alcaçava, with parapet strong,

And the fortresses stretching their white walls along,
Seem islands in seas of delight :-

* The original of much of this will be found in Gines Pérez,

The Queen, by enchantment, is chain'd to the spot ;
She is speechless with joy-she all else has forgot-
Till warn'd of the foe and of night.

Then regretful she turns-" Thou pride of the Moors!
Thou Alhambra," she cries, "thy outworks and doors
Shall be open'd by Ferdinand's hand :

Thou soon shalt be mine; and the boast of a race,
For ages the fiercest in story, give place

To the cross and a Christian band :

"In thy courts I shall wander, thy gardens explore,
For they never again shall be trod by the Moor-
His empire and grandeur are past;

And I will enjoy thee, and thou shalt remain
An heritage fair to my kingdom of Spain,
While Castile and Aragon last."

She says, and returns to her Santa-Fé,
Till Grenada yields to the Spaniards' sway,
And soon they the triumph gain :-

Thus the pride of the Musulman yestermorn,
To-day is the Christian's; and Time in his scorn
Mocks man and his glories vain.

THE SPIRITS OF THE AGE.NO. III.

The late Mr. Horne Tooke.

MR. HORNE TOOKE was one of those who may be considered as connecting links between a former period and the existing generation. His education and accomplishments, nay his political opinions, were of the last age; his mind and the tone of his feelings were modern. There was a hard, dry materialism in the very texture of his understanding, varnished over by the external refinements of the old school. Mr. Tooke had great scope of attainment and great versatility of pursuit; but the same shrewdness, quickness, cool self-possession, the same literalness of perception and absence of passion and enthusiasm, characterised nearly all he did, said, or wrote. He was almost without a rival in private conversation, an expert public speaker, a keen politician, a first-rate grammarian, and the finest gentleman (to say the least) of his own party. He had no imagination or he would not have scorned it!-no delicacy of taste, no rooted prejudices or strong attachments: his intellect was like a bow of polished steel, from which he shot sharp-pointed, poisoned arrows at his friends in private, at his enemies in public. His mind, so to speak, had no religion in it, and but very little of the moral qualities of genius; but he was a man of the world, a scholar bred, and a most acute and powerful logician. He was also a wit, and a formidable one: yet it may be questioned whether his wit was any thing more than an excess of his logical faculty: it did not consist in the play of fancy, but in close and cutting combinations of the understanding. "The law is open to every one: -so," said Mr. Tooke," is the London Tavern!" It is the previous deduction formed in the mind, and the splenetic contempt felt for a practical sophism, that beats about the bush for, and at last finds the apt illustration; not the casual, glancing coincidence of two objects, that

points out an absurdity to the understanding. So, on another occasion, when Sir Alan Gardiner, who was a candidate for Westminster, had objected to Mr. Fox, that "he was always against the minister, whether right or wrong," and Mr. Fox in his reply had overlooked this slip of the tongue, Mr. Tooke immediately seized on it, and said "he thought it at least an equal objection to Sir Alan, that he was always with the minister, whether right or wrong." This retort had all the effect, and produced the same surprise as the most brilliant display of wit or fancy yet it was only the detecting a flaw in an argument, like a flaw in an indictment, by a kind of legal pertinacity; or, rather, by a rigid and constant habit of attending to the exact import of every word and clause in a sentence. Mr. Tooke had the mind of a lawyer ; but it was applied to a vast variety of topics and general trains of speculation.

Mr. Horne Tooke was, in private company and among his friends, the finished gentleman of the last age. His manners were as fascinating as his conversation was spirited and delightful. He put one in mind of the burden of the song of "the King's old courtier, and an old courtier of the King's." He was, however, of the opposite party. It was curious to hear our modern sciolist advancing opinions of the most radical kind without any mixture of radical heat or violence, in a tone of fashionable nonchalance, with elegance of gesture and attitude, and with the most perfect good-humour. In the spirit of opposition or in the pride of logical superiority, he too often shocked the prejudices or wounded the self-love of those about him, while he himself displayed the same unmoved indifference or equanimity. He said the most provoking things with a laughing gaiety, and a polite attention, that there was no withstanding. He threw others off their guard by thwarting their favourite theories, and then availed himself of the temperance of his own pulse to chafe them into madness. He had not one particle of deference for the opinions of others, nor of sympathy with their feelings; nor had he any obstinate convictions of his own to defend

"Lord of himself, uncumber'd with a creed!"

He took up any topic by chance, and played with it at will, like a juggler with his cups and balls. He generally ranged himself on the losing side; and had rather an ill-natured delight in contradiction, and in perplexing the understandings of others, without leaving them any clue to guide them out of the labyrinth into which he had led them. He understood, in its perfection, the great art of throwing the onus probandi, on his adversary; and so could maintain almost any opinion, however absurd or fantastical, with fearless impunity. I have heard a sensible and well-informed man say, that he never was in company with Mr. Tooke without being delighted and surprised, or without feeling the conversation of every other person to be flat in the comparison; but that he did not recollect having ever heard him make a remark that struck him as a sound and true one, or that he himself peared to think so. He used to plague Fuseli by asking him after the origin of the Teutonic dialects; and Dr. Parr by wishing to know the meaning of the common copulative, Is. Once at G's he defended Pitt from a charge of verbiage, and endeavoured to prove him superior to Fox. Some one imitated Pitt's manner, to shew that it was mono

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