and most cherished treasure-he loved and was beloved-and to die by an ignominious execution, with thousands of eyes to witness his degradation!-oh! the rush of thought was dreadful.

The

But the spirit of the beauteous Emilie was stirred up, her mind was strengthened, her frame was nerved with energetic resolve; and, without seeing the condemned officer, she returned to the metropolis, and sought by every means within her power to influence the mercy of the crown in favour of Montagu. letters from Denmark were but little noticed by the regent, and the loss of lives caused by the defalcation of the doomed one was aggrarated by the admiral; so that the only boon the supplicant could obtain was that the life of the lieutenant should be spared. This, however, was renewed existence to herself, for whilst he lived she was prepared to share his lot whatever it might be; and the heavy weight which threatened to crush the young bad of her future hopes was removed from her heart Yet the blow had been too severe for the parent of the prisoner; his situation had been incautiously disclosed to the fond mother; the tender fibres which bound her to the world were severed; and she sank to the grave, with no child to close her eyes in death, and to see her laid in the receptacle for perishing mortality. Montagu was dismissed the service. Every te that had bound him to his country was broken. He returned with the devoted Emilie to Copenhagen, changed his name, married the lovely girl, and rose to the rank of a Danish admiral, high in the confidence of the monarch.

THE BATTLE OF THE BALTIC.

Of Nelson and the North,
Sing the glorious day's renown,
When to battle fierce came forth

All the might of Denmark's crown,

And her arms along the deep proudly shone;

By each gun the lighted brand,

In a bold determined hand,

And the prince of all the land
Led them on.—

Like leviathans afloat,

Lay their bulwarks on the brine;
While the sign of battle flew
On the lofty British line:

It was ten of April morn by the chime:

As they drifted on their path,

There was silence deep as death;

And the boldest held his breath,
For a time.-

While the billow mournful rolls,

And the mermaid's song condoles, Singing glory to the souls

Of the brave.

THOMAS CAMPBELL.

AN UNFORTUNATE GENIUS.

I was one day walking through Finsbury Square. There sat a pale, sick woman, meekly and sorrowfully bending her eyes to the earth, while a child slept in her arms, upon whose thin pallid features were the traces of as much misery as can fall to the lot of sinless infancy. I had been reading that very morning chap. v. b. iii. part 3 of Paley's Moral and Political Philosophy, and all the better feelings of my nature had responded to every argument he employed for enforcing the duty of alms-giving. But I rather think it must have been a grand field-day with the beggars; that they had all turned out upon some special occasion; for I met eleven cripples, four widows with five fatherless children apiece, three starving industrious mechanics in clean white aprons, and one blind sailor, who had lost his "precious sight" by lightning, in the Bay of Biscay, between St. Paul's and the Old Jewry. It was this, I suppose, that soured the milk of human kindness within me, and made me pass, with an unpitying heart, the simple, touching appeal of the poor creature I have described, on whose lap lay a written paper with these words only: "Have compassion on us; we are destitute!" She asked no charity, either by word or look; but, with folded arms round her baby, and her head drooping over it, she trusted all to the tale which this little scroll told of her condition. Yet I passed

on !

I blush while I write this confession of cold, miserable selfishness, that could, even for a moment, stifle the yearnings of the lowest species of humanity, upon the paltry plea that perhaps I had (for I did not know I had) given my mite already to the unworthy. It is curious how conscience keeps tugging at a man to hold him back when he is going in a wrong path. Every step I took towards the City Road, leaving that poor silent suppliant behind unrelieved, I felt I was walking under the constantly increasing burden of a selfaccusing spirit-a consciousness that I had left something undone, which it was necessary, for my own comfort, I should return and do.

to show me to myself in my true colours, I sav a Greenwich pensioner, with a face as hard as a cannon-ball, and a look as crabbed as if be had just been fined a day's allowance of grog drop even his mite into the woman's lap. The rewarding look with which her eyes followed the maimed veteran, as he hobbled away on his wooden leg, smote me.

It would be a piece of tedious egotism to relate the conversation I held with this dis tressed creature after I had dispensed my bounty to her. But the scene to which it led I will describe.

It was with some difficulty I prevailed up a her to disclose her abode, or rather to consent that she should conduct me to it; and, not withstanding the sharp rebuke I had already received, in proportion to her reluctance the feeling grew strong within me that I was stil the dupe of imposture. At length she yielded. but with a mournful shake of the head, which might be interpreted, I thought, two ways either that she was conscious she could not escape detection, or satisfied that I should find her tale of misery too true. She arose, and I followed her slow feeble steps till we arrived at Street, leading into the New Road, near Pentonville.

She stopped at No. in that street; and. looking at me as she knocked at the door, sad faintly, "We live here, sir."

I had hardly time to notice the apparent comfort and respectability of the outward appearance of the house, before the door wa opened by a fine-looking lad about thirteen. whose dress denoted that species of pover which is the wreck of former competence. He was old enough to know what misery means beyond the mere endurance of its sufferings and privations; and his countenance, therefore, wore that melancholy expression which is stamped by the habitual presence of sa thoughts. Yet there was a sparkling gladness in his eye to welcome back his mother, mingled with a timid inquiring glance at the stranger who accompanied her.

No words passed between them, and I followed my conductress silently into the parlour. Here was my first evidence of the destitution which the paper she had displayed proclaimed. There was nothing but the bare walls; literally nothing else: not an article of furniture of any description.

"Take your sister, George," said the miserable mother, "and lay her-" tears choked her utterance. She might have added, "on the ground!" for, as I afterwards learned,

bed there was none, nor chair, nor table, nor aught, save the floor, for its resting-place. The poor fellow took the infant, yet asleep, and while his own tears started at those of his mother, left the room.

I heard a heavy tread above, as of one pacing up and down with a hurried, impetuous step. 'It is my husband," said she, anticipating the question which my look, I suppose, betrayed was upon my lips.

"Your husband! What is he?"
"An artist."

An artist!" I repeated, in a tone which I dare say expressed what I felt; for, judging from all that had occurred, I expected to find the lowest branch of the art of colouring, dignified with a name which it has grown into a fashion to apply to the most consummate masters of the pencil.

"Yes, sir," she replied, with something of offended pride, "an artist; and such an enthusiast of his art that it has turned his brain. Bat I will go to him and see if he will admit you."

She quitted the apartment, and the next moment I heard a loud laughing, clapping of hands, and vehement talking. I could not distinguish what was said; and before I had time to consider how I should act in the presence of a mad painter, quick steps descending the stairs apprised me of a visit for which I was wholly unprepared. The door flew open, and in rushed the husband followed by his wife entreating him to be calm, and assuring him that he was mistaken.

He made a sudden halt when he saw me, and with a wild, scrutinizing glare, surveyed me from head to foot. I was at once convinced of the disordered state of his mind, and wished our relative positions changed-I between him and the door, instead of his being between me and the only means of an escape, if it should be necessary, which the room presented, unless I made a precipitate retreat from the window He was tall, thin, pale, and haggard in appearance, with a beard that had not been shaved for a month; and had on a faded green greatcoat, one sleeve of which was half torn away, and the other hanging in In his left hand he held an ivory palette; his right grasped-not his pencil-but a large iron poker!

into the area.

tatters.

It does not require the experience of a lunatic ylum to know that insane persons are best managed by gentleness; and with a sort of instinctive consciousness of this, I saluted him very courteously, taking off my hat to render the homage which was due to the master of

the house from a stranger. The effect of my politeness answered my most sanguine expectations. He returned my bow with a great deal of exuberant dignity; dropped his poker, which hitherto he had held as if prepared either to repel or commit an aggression, and used it as a walking-stick, while with a stately measured step he approached the farther corner of the room where I had planted myself, and where, at that moment, I should have been well pleased to find the wall opening behind me, for the convenience of retreating two steps to each one of his in advance.

"Ha! ha!" he exclaimed, when he was so close to me that if I had not held my head as erect as a grenadier of the Guards, the bristles of his month's beard would have entered my own chin. "Ha! ha! do you think I would let them touch the Last Judgment?" and he brandished his poker over his head: "No! the rascals! They took everything else; and I stood by and laughed to see what trouble they were at for my convenience. What cared I for tables, chairs, beds? They were in my way. But when they would have laid hands upon the Last Judgment, Martha," he continued, turning to his wife, who stood trembling and dejected at his side; "what did I say to the fellow who looked like Michael Angelo when he came into the room for the Last Judgment? I knocked him down, sir," addressing me again, and elevating his poker"A judgment upon him, ha! ha! but not the last; for then I took him thus," seizing me by the collar, "and thrust him into the street, ha ha ha!"

"You did perfectly right," said I, with as much composure as I could possibly assume in my very awkward situation, and devoutly hoping he would not mistake me for Michael Angelo coming for his Last Judgment.

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Right!" he exclaimed. 'Had he been an R. A., or the president of the R. A. himself, I would have felled him to the ground like an ox, or any man who dared to remove that canvas from the easel till I had painted in the nose of Alexander: he is the principal figure in the foreground. If you are an artist I need not tell you that to paint the end of a nose well-true to nature is the climax of perfection in a portrait. Sir Joshua could never do it; West failed in all his noses; Sir

Look

Thomas is the only man in England, except myself, who can really paint a nose. even at the noses of the prophets and sibyls of Michael Angelo in the Sistine Chapel-they are lumps of putty, sir, stuck on by a glazier. YOURS would be a very difficult nose to paint!"

he added, fixing his eyes upon my nose with an earnest gaze of so equivocal a meaning, that I wished at the moment Nature had defrauded me of that prominent feature.

All this time he had never once shifted his position; neither could I mine. His wife continued to stand close to us, looking at me every now and then with an expression of countenance which silently but intelligibly conjured me not to cross him; while the son, with his infant sister in his arms, appeared at the door, surveying the scene in an attitude of intense curiosity and deep affliction for the state of his wretched parent.

At length he yielded to the persuasions of his wife, and consented that I should go up stairs and see the Last Judgment, after making me promise I would not approach nearer to it than he should point out. He led the way, shouldering his poker like a musket: the wife followed next, and I brought up the rear. When I entered the room I was amazed. It was stripped of every article of furniture; but in the centre, stretched upon the easel, stood a magnificent painting unfinished, as I saw at the first glance, and in more respects than the nose of Alexander. The grace and expression, united with grandeur of form, in the principal figures; the variety of the subordinate parts; the effective grouping; the rich yet complete harmony of colour; and in some of the faces the appalling passions that were portrayed, constituted altogether as fine a specimen of modern art as I had ever looked

upon.

The burst of admiration which escaped from me was so sincere, so fervent, that it fell like an electrical shock upon the shattered nerves and overwrought brain of the unhappy artist. He burst into tears With passionate sobs, with shrieks of alternate delight and sorrow, he uttered a thousand wild exclamations, half ludicrous, half heart rending, as he now gloried in his work, now execrated the age in which he lived, insensible as it was to his merits, and now deplored that all his genius had not been able to feed his children.

"Ha' ha' sir," he cried throwing away his poker, rubbing his hands, and springing like a tiger from me to the picture, and from the picture back again to me, as he spoke "Ha ha' sir, talk of your Titians, your Caraccis, your Raffaels, even the great Fiorentine himself. Michael Angelo'. Oh, Heaven' Had they given me bread the while for me and mine, I would have shed a glory upon my country brighter than that which now blazes over Italy La sono pittore. Look here observe this sweep

ing outline-and here, what anatomy! how finely that muscle is displayed! how I laboured to produce that! I have worked while the world slept, and worshipped my art in the stillness of those hours when the fainting soul languished for repose! Ay, sir-Martha ca tell you-I lived but at my easel. Do you see the ghastly expressions of that face? how beattifully it contrasts with the serene, seraphic. spiritual joy that beams from the features of that lovely maiden! This head conceived, this hand executed it all-and yet look at me I am mad-mad-mad!" pressing his clenched hands violently to his forehead: "for I have been left to dream of visions that are gone, and to feed upon myself, till now I sometimes seem to see my own heart's blood covering that canvas instead of the colours I laid on!"

He became more composed after this ebullition of his feelings, and gathered himself int an attitude of earnest contemplation of the picture. I was myself gazing at it with in creasing admiration, when he suddenly burd into a loud laugh.

"Ha ha ha! What would Michael Angelo say if he saw that? By Jupiter! that old man on the right, whom I mean for a cardinal, has too much of the sly, demure look of a Quaker. There, there, go, go! I must not be inter rupted any longer; we want money; and if they would empty before me the coffers of the Bank of England, they should not have it till I have bestowed my last touches upon the nose of Alexander, and painted up the cardinal's face to the true piety of a well-paid churchman. There, go, go!”

I obeyed, and leaving the maniae to his moody fancies, returned with his wife to the parlour, where I received from her all the par ticulars of her husband's calamitous history.

His name was, and he had not yet attained his five-and-thirtieth year. He was what is called a self-taught artist; that is, one who embodied the conceptions of genius (which are from Heaven in the same way as those men did who had no masters to study, being themselves the great originals in their art, and the models, by universal consent, for those who came after them. Such men were slf-taught. for where were they to find teachers? And auch self-tuition, which is but another word for inspiration, is the only school wherein the rarer works of Nature can study. In this sense Demosthenes was a self-taught orator among the Greeks, and Cicero among the Romans: Homer was a self-taught poet: and Shakspeare and Cervantes. Milton and Molière, were self-anght; if by the phrase we are to

understand that which, if it be not self-taught, is incommunicable. But to return from this digression to my crazed, self-taught artist. His father was a wealthy merchant; and designing his only son for the church, his education had been completed at Cambridge. But he was born a painter; and renouncing, with the recklessness and impetuosity of a youthful mind, goaded onwards by the fiery impulses of one predominant, one devouring passion, he renounced everything for it. This was an offence not at first to be forgiven by a father who had as strong a passion of another kind; who would rather have seen his son's name enrolled among the Tillotsons, Sherlocks, Taylors, and Barrows of the English hierarchy, than heard him hailed by the general voice as the Raffael or Titian of his country. But there was doubtless a pardon that might have been slowly won from the parental heart, had not every hold upon it been dissevered by a second offence, that of marrying a beautiful, virtuous, and amiable girl, who was as poor as poverty herself in all things else. Pride discarded him from his home, and pride kept him voluntarily a stranger to it ever after. He had now to struggle with adversity under all its most trying afflictions. He could not stoop to make the noble art to which he had devoted himself a trading commodity among the hopkeepers of the metropolis. He disdained to colour canvas for wages that would barely suffice to maintain him. He chose rather (when the small fund was exhausted which his father placed at his disposal in renouncing him, and which had been husbanded most thriftily) to depend for precarious subsistence upon slender loans solicited from former friends or acquaintance, while finishing his first serious effort in historical composition. The subject was a fine one-Oliver Cromwell surveying the dead body of Charles I. the night after his execution. It was exhibited. The best judges were struck with its grandeur and poetical conception as a whole, and with the felicitous power displayed in many of its details. It soon found a purchaser at the modest price demanded by the artist, who was thus

"While the assassinates that crept up and down afraid of every man they met, pointed at as monsters in nature, finished not their treason when they had erled his martyrdom, one (O. C.), to feed his eyes with ruelty, and satisfy his solicitous ambition, curiously arveyed the murdered carcass, when it was brought in a coffin to Whitehall, and to assure himself the body was quite dead, with his fingers searched the wound whether the head was wholly severed from the body or Do."-Lloyd's Memoirs,

VOL. III.

enabled to discharge his obligations to his friends, and provide for immediate wants.

In this way he continued to wrestle with his fate for several years, alternately a borrower and a payer, as his various pieces were bought. He buried himself meanwhile in solitude; for nowhere can a man live so solitary as in a crowded city, especially if he be poor. It is there only he may be one of thousands, without one of the thousands amid whom he moves knowing enough of him to call him by his name. His ambition was of the true quality; incapable of repose or satisfaction; discontented with all that it achieved; eager for all that its restless aspirings aimed at, and confident that all was within its reach. He denied himself rest, almost food; frequently sat at his easel eighteen or twenty hours together; and during that time contented himself with a few biscuits or a little fruit to rally his sinking energies. Then, fevered and exhausted, he would throw himself on his bed; not to sleep, but to dream and talk of the visions of his waking thoughts.

This ceaseless labour, this intense musing upon bright images of renown that were incessantly streaming into his mind, uniting with the distraction caused by pecuniary embarrassments, first shattered his health, and finally unsettled his reason! His wife imagined she perceived occasional symptoms of a disturbed intellect long before she was summoned to witness an alarming evidence of it.

One day she heard him shouting and dancing furiously in his room. She hastened to him. What was her dismay when she saw him with a large carving-knife in his hand, and the floor strewed with the shreds of three pictures for which he was to be paid a considerable sum when finished; but which, with the habitual improvidence of his character, he had suffered to remain unfinished for months (he and his family all but starving meanwhile), because he had begun, and was concentrating his whole soul upon the execution of, the Last Judgment. He had slashed them into ribands, and was exulting over his achievement with the boisterous rejoicing of a man who had vanquished some tormenting evil that had been pursuing him at every turn. When he perceived his wife he pointed to the bits of painted canvas, exclaiming with a strange mixture of ludicrous solemnity and the fierce flashing of satiated vengeance

'Now, my dear Martha, I am free! I have triumphed over these fiends, these insulting fiends, who stood grinning at me with looks of gaunt defiance, as if they were the personi

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