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may be the old maid of the next generation. A remarkable instance of this kind is that of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, who, it appears, is Delia, in her triple capacity of saintly Phoebe, wicked Hecate, and middling Diana. Few ladies will envy her first marriage, which was with Cain. She was next Nitocris, queen of Babylon, and then Rebecca, wife of Isaac. Forgetful of her sex, she next became Janus, celebrated for his memory and foresight; and was next Medusa, who murdered her own brother and children. For several migrations after this she was more fortunate in her morals, but subject to many sorrows, being in succession Penelope, wife of Ulysses; Atalia, queen of Israel; Egeria, Thales, Telesilla, Olympia, mother of Alexander the Great, and St. Lazara, the sister of Lazarus. Next she was Lucian; Fatima, daughter of Mahomet; Bianca, mother of Louis; Laura, the loved of Tetrarch; Borgia, daughter of Pope Alexander VI.; Henry IV., king of France; and Voltaire. Thus the soul that moved the hand that wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin was the same that had previously moved the hand that wrote Candide.

Mrs. Stowe, however, is not the only one whose migrations may astound us. Mr. Sumner, the Ainerican statesinan, has been successively Methuselah, Elisha, St. Andrew, Gregory IV., Chaucer, Hampden, and the Grand Duke of Tuscany (Leopold). Garibaldi was originally Gideon, and delivered Israel in his first life as he has done Sicily in his present one. Mazzini was Ephraim, Gavazzi was the prophet Habakkuk, and Lamartine has been in succession Lot, Paris, Jeremiah, Herodotus, and a host of other people. The prophet Daniel is at present Victor Hugo, and Lamech, the father of Noah, is now Mr. Smith, but which gentleman of that name Miranda does not inform us. The present proprietor of Drury Lane had better put in his claim, since the Mr. Smith who was Lamech has also been Marlborough, Lord Bacon, and we know not whom besides. Sir Walter Scott was the last migration of Issachar; and the prophet Nahum is at present

Mr. Charles Dickens.

It is only just to the author to state that to his mind there is something very noble and also exceedingly instructive in all this. Hence his book is interlarded with the most sublime moral reflections and pious exhortations. The following may be taken as another specimen of his style. The author is speaking of the murderer Barthélemy, who was executed at Newgate for the double murder of Mr. Moor and Mr. Collard. This assassin was no other than Jehu, the son of Rimshi, in his first birth; and was subsequently the impenitent thief who was crucified on the left hand of the Saviour. He was afterwards Charles IX., king of France, author of the atrocious massacre of St. Bartholomew, and lastly the murderer hung at the Old Bailey. Miranda says:—

"Collard died in University College Hospital, situated a few doors at the left of my dwelling, and Barthelemy was carried there for the ostensible motive of being confronted with his victim, and for the occult reason that he had been Festus (the crucified thief). In his last moments, before being hanged, on the 22nd of January, 1855, being exhorted to repentance, he answered, with what he thought an irrefutable objection against Divine Providence. There is,' said he, 'a man who has committed wholesale murder in Paris: is he to be brought to punishment?' He alluded to the massacre of the 4th of December, 1851 : but the occult influence which inspired his words alluded to his former self, and to the massacre of 1572, when in Paris only more than five thousand persons were killed. If Charles IX., being still a king, had been put to death by a human tribunal, as a just punishment for his treachery and cruelty, the foolish people of Old Paris would have wept for him. But the populace of modern London, which assisted at Barthelemy's execution before Newgate, thinking him only a poor French refugee, were not ashamed to hoot him. The soul of Charles IX., as it left the strangled body of Barthelemy, changed its notions on the justice of God, on being made aware that, amongst the populace that was now shouting at his ignominious death, there were the migrations of many of the Protestants whom he had murdered in Paris."

-p. 383.

When the progress of the wealth of the receivers of the new revelation will permit, a network of electric wires for sacramental communion is to be laid down all over the world. The system must be so contrived that the current from a central battery at Jerusalem shall set free the currents from subsidiary batteries, and mix its electricity with theirs. All the Christians in the world having joined hands, the galvanic fire shall pass from one to another, until the last shock is received by the supreme pontiff in the holy city, the electric current having established a communion of all the saints. Such are some of the varied contents of this strange book. It is sufficiently logical to be redeemed from the charge of absolute insanity, and has characteristics enough of madness to place it beyond the bounds of sober reason. It is a book that many will read and marvel at, very few believe in. Like the bones of some extinct reptile, men will look upon it with wonder, and leave it where it is until some one skilled in comparative anatomy shall assign it its place in the scale of creation. Unfortunately, however, up to the present time we have had no Cuvier who has been able to determine the anatomy of lunacy.

After differing from an author so long, it is pleasing to find, upon almost the last page of his book, something with which we can perfectly agree. At page 393, we are told :--" The supreme law of the universe is this: ALWAYS AND EVERYWHERE DO WHAT TENDS TO INCREASE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE THE BALANCE OF THE ABSOLUTE SUM OF EXISTING GOOD OVER THE ABSOLUTE SUM OF EXISTING EVIL.”

LUCILE.*

HAVING commenced the perusal of this latest production of Owen Meredith's pen, with a vivid remembrance of the voluptuous materialism and cynical daring of the Wanderer, we very naturally expected a further development of the same qualities in the more ambitious story of Lucile. We lose no time in confessing that we have been agreeably disappointed. We even make bold to say, in defiance of the flippancy, or the total want of appreciation that has characterized Mr. Meredith's reviewers, that we have in this volume not merely a work of the imagination, but one of the purer intellect and the heart: a work which definitively marks out for the author a distinguished place among the poets of the Victorian age,-a place certainly higher than Tennyson's, although Mr. Meredith can by no means approach Tennyson's exquisite sense of colour and form in nature, and if not level with Mrs. Browning's in respect to spiritual insight, certainly rising towards her level. It requires, however, a far sadder experience, or an earnestness and truthfulness of longer growth than the author has yet encouraged, to perfect the character which we nevertheless claim for Lucile, as a potential quality.

The fact is generally known that "Owen Meredith" is only the nom de plume assumed by Henry Bulwer Lytton, the son of the celebrated novelist. We mention it here for the purpose of remarking that we have felt how much this poem owes to the author's parentage and to his home experiences, which is only another mode of saying how much there is in it of what is real and true, and therefore of what is essential poetry. It were an impertinence,-an unpardonable one,-to make the remotest allusion to such circumstances with any other purpose than to indicate this reality; but with this object before us, and the author's dedication of Lucile to his father, a dedication which must have been well considered and deliberately resolved upon for special reasons,-we cannot convict ourselves of a misplaced curiosity, or of insensibility to feelings which ought always to be respected, if we affirm that the poem contains many passages which evidently owe their existence to a private sorrow. The dedication of the book, no less than the characters portrayed, The second part of Miranda is to all ordinary readers and the elevation of moral and spiritual life to which they utterly unintelligible. The author is entirely absorbed in are finally raised, do, in fact, invite the reader to the comoccult calculations, and whatever meaning mystic numbers parison. So far as intellectual power and the waywardness may have to his mind, they have none to the ordinary reader. of a woman of spirit is ascribed to Lucile in the early part of The whole, therefore, of the second part of the book, with the poem, there is possibly a reflection of a real life in her the exception of the concluding chapters, may be dismissed character, and what she becomes, under the bitterest of all as having little or no intelligible significance except to the disappointments, is what a son might well desire for one author, or to those initiated into the mysteries of the Sybil-naturally dear to him. A similar remark, with a different line numbers. application, applies to the character of Vargrave. It is unIn the last chapter, on the religious duties of believers, necessary to be more minute in the indication of these points. there is a summary of the duties required from those who We are only groping in the darkness, perhaps; but as we receive the doctrines propounded in Miranda. It is, how-read on in the charmed pages of Lucile, shadows passed ever, a very plain, simple, and pious exhortation, and, with one or two exceptions, such as might be given by any one who desired to preach to his fellow-men. Of the three great reve lations which have been made to mankind, the author tells us that the first enforced love to God; the precept of the second was, love thy neighbour as thyself; the precept of the last is, LOVE TRUTH,

before us which we instinctively felt were thrown on the page by substantial existences. We read, therefore, not so much a One of the shadows,-the cross in the wilderness,—to which romance as a reality,-a veritable transcript of a human life.

Lucile. By OWEN MEREDITH, Author of the Wanderer, Clytemnestra, et London: Chapman and Hall. 1800.

the Duc de Luvois almost clings, under pressure of the agony wrought in his selfish passions, is no fiction of the inventive imagination. It is, as we apprehend, the reproduction of a fact. It betokens an experience which is suggested again and again by the turning points of the drama that Owen Meredith has presented to us.

It is time, however, that we made our readers acquainted with the outlines of the story, which opens with a singular notification of the approaching nuptials of Lord Alfred Vargrave and Miss Darcy. A letter addressed to the intended bridegroom by the Countess de Nevers (Lucile) claims the return of her letters, in accordance with a mutual pledge made when they parted company some ten years previously. Lord Alfred is exhorted to avoid the temptation which a renewal of his acquaintance with Lucile might prove to him, but deems his heart perfectly safe in his own keeping, and resolves to obey what he regards as the dictate of honour. Lucile is no longer a girl but a ripened beauty, and, moreover, a woman of remarkable intellect and strength of purpose. With regard to the essential point of all,-her moral character, and the probable bent of her strong will,-the reader is kept in suspense. It soon becomes apparent that the hero of the story is utterly unable to resist her attractions. In fine, he resolves to break with Miss Darcy, and endeavours to win back the old love, who nobly repulses him, and sends him back to his bride in a state of mind that may be more easily conceived than described, except by quoting the poem. Another claimant for the hand of Lucile,-the Duc de Luvois,-meets with no better success, and the first part of the poem closes sadly with the departure of Lucile for India; heart-broken on account of the now hopeless love she had treasured for Lord Alfred, and with the despair of the Duc de Luvois, who is also maddened by the conviction that Lucile would have accepted his hand if her old love had not crossed his path.

The second part of the poem opens at Ems. Some three years have elapsed. Lucile has returned from India. Lord Alfred and his wife and the Duc de Luvois all encounter her at Ems, and from this point of the story the self-denying perfection of the heroine's character becomes manifest. The duke basely resolves to be revenged on Lord Alfred by alienating the affections of his wife; and as some coldness had sprung up between them, he succeeds in shaking her confidence, and casting suspicion on Lucile. This part of the story is managed with exquisite tact, and with a purity of conception beyond praise. The disenchantment of the Lady Matilda, who had never before doubted her husband's love, or the strength of her own heart, is wrought by Luvois with the cunning of a second Mephistopheles, and the chances of a fashionable resort all conspire to aid his purposes. At last the critical moment arrives when he doubted not the poor distracted wife was fairly in his toils. Light suddenly shines in the darkness. He is confronted and baffled by Lucile, who had watched over the young wife with the zeal of a guardian angel, and a scene of inexpressible tenderness closes the story of her temptation.

The revenge of the duke has now Lucile for its object as well as Lord Alfred Vargrave, and yet he madly loves her. The enduring faith of the woman,-her self-denial,-her noble constancy,-her reliance on a more than mortal arm, are brought into fine contrast with the fiery passion of the man's heart; and she not only succeeds in saving her friends, but in bending the duke's temper from evil to good, and, after many years, in sending him forth as one of the heroes of France. We offer the story thus broadly to avoid details, which it would be impossible to give in our limited space, and which it will be better for the reader to seek in the poem itself. Our desire has been to lift the veil thrown over this really fine poem by Mr. Meredith's critics; and though it has only been possible for us to speak of it in the most cursory manner, we trust that we shall have helped many to a recognition of its true character, or at least have induced many to give it a careful perusal who might otherwise have passed it by as unworthy of serious notice.

Desiring to support our statements by absolute proof, we shall proceed to make a few extracts, culling them here and there as they occur to us. The following is from the opening of Canto III., and we know beforehand that the reader will smile to think that the cynicism of the Wanderer should have prevailed so soon over the new-born faith and love we have ascribed to the poet. But wait. Lord Alfred Vargrave has left the side of his fiancée, and is soon to see Lucile, who has demanded the return of her letters, as before explained. It must be remembered, therefore, that we are reading the prelude to a full discovery of his false heart, and of his selfish feelings in all their intensity:

"Rise, O Muse, in the wrath of thy rapture divine, And sweep with a finger of awe every line,

Till it tremble and burn, as thine own glances burn
Through the vision thou kindlest! wherein I discern
All the unconscious cruelty hid in the heart
Of mankind; all the limitless grief we impart,
Unawares, to each other; the limitless wrong
We inflict without heed, as we hurry along
In this boisterous pastime of life. So we toy
With the infinite! so, in our sport we destroy
What we made not, and cannot remake thro' the whole
Of existence, those feelings which are, in the soul,
Future heavens or hells! so we recklessly scorn,
In each other, Life's solemn significance!

Worn

In a too careless breast, lo! the flower left to bloom
Round the desolate moral inscribed on a tomb-
"Youth, Hope, Beauty, Innocence, Tenderness, Trust,'
(So it runs,)'this was Woman. Behold, it is dust!
This was Woman: it lived and it breath'd: and it said
"I love, and love dies not." Behold, it is dead.
This was Woman: our hearts at her feet we laid down;
"It is dust and we trample it under our own.'
Are we doom'd then, O sister, O brother, to war
On each other for ever? half-lives as we are!
Still impell'd to unite, still from union self-thrust,
Like those poor wounded worms we see writhe in the dust,
Blindly groping about, with the instinct of pain,
For each other, their maim'd life to mingle again.
We, that need help and healing, O sister, O brother,
Are we cannibals still of the hearts of each other?
In despite of its much-boasted science and art,
Is this civilized world still a savage at heart?
Mourn, O Muse,-not indeed for the wrongs Life hath felt-
These have mourners enough in the world; mourn, and melt
Into tears else unshed, for the wrongs Life hath wrought,
By the transient desire and the trivial thought;
For the man (be he lover or loved) that doth jest
With the passionate earnest of love in the breast
Of a woman; for the woman (or maiden, or wife)
That doth sport with the passionate earnest of life
In the heart of a man. Mourn, O Muse, for the soul,
When her truest seem truthless, her fairest so foul!
I have seen falsehood veil'd by the virginal cheek
Of a child; I have seen the immaculate, meek
Desdemona false; Imogen wanton; have seen
Juliet faithless; and she, the chaste Ithacan Queen,
Choose a swine from her suitors, and from his embrace
Rise to write to her lord that she pined for his face
In a tender Ovidian strain! I have seen

The young bride shrewdly eyeing the cypress between
Her first year's orange blossoms, and blush not to crave
From the couch of a bridegroom the price of his grave!
Blush, O Muse, blush and burn! I have seen, I have seen,
At the feet of a wanton with false-modest mien,
The giants of Genius and Power enchain'd,

While paler and paler their foreheads have waned."

We grant that no ordinary experience,-no generous interpretation of human nature,-could have suggested these lines. We should be disposed to say, if this were all, as we said of the Wanderer, and as Lord Alfred is permitted to say of "Cousin John:"

"I see that your heart is as dry as a reed;
You're a blasé unprincipled roué. I see
You have no feeling left in you.

Cold as a stone

To the warm voice of friendship. Belief you have none;
You have lost faith in all things. You carry a blight
About with you everywhere."

This, however, though very proper according to the ordinary canon of criticism, which lays down that any part is equal to the whole, would be utterly irreconcileable with the more vulgar mathematical kind of justice which maintains that the whole is greater than any part. We will now, therefore, give the lines which follow the above, and up to which they lead. The Wanderer no longer speaks, but the poet rightly so named, as having uttered these noble words :—

"Yes! this life is the war of the False and the True.
Yet this life is a truth; though so complex to view
That its latent veracity few of us find!
But alas! for that man who, in judging mankind
From a false point of view, should disloyally deal
With the truth the world keeps, though the world may conceal.
Ay, the world but a frivolous phantasm seems,
And mankind in the mass but as motes in sunbeams;
But when Fate, from the midst of this frivolous nature,
Selects for her purpose some frail human creature,
And the Angel of Sorrow outstretching a wan
Forefinger to mark him, strikes down from the man
The false life that hid him, the man's self appears
A solemn reality: Him the dread spheres
Of heaven and hell with their forces dispute,
And dare we be indifferent? Hence, and be mute,
Light scoffer, vain trifler! Through all thou discernest
A Greater than thou is at work, and in earnest;
And he who dares trifle with man, trifles too
With man's awful Maker.

There's terror that's true,
In that tale of a youth who, one night at a revel,
Amidst music and mirth lured and wiled by some devil,
Follow'd ever one mask through the mad masquerade,

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common feelings-the test of all the products of true geniuswhich they reveal, but must have longed to become acquainted with the personal history of an artist so transcendently great in the expression of the deepest emotions of human nature. And who can advance to the perusal of the story of such a life without an inward apprehension that, beyond the peculiar and original endowments and temperament of the man, there must have come over him the shadow of outward and inward struggles, of grievous losses and tempering sorrows, to have developed to their perfection and purity his tender sympathies, and to have shed a reflected and pathetic hue over all his works. We confess that such was our own feeling long before we had heard a single particular of his earthly conflicts, trials, and disappoint

ments.

In this country, however,-as might be expected in the case of a foreigner, and of one who, though a very significant, was by no means a noisy and obtrusive actor in contemporaneous history,-but little of the private and public life of this eminent artist has hitherto been known.

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Mrs. Grote, an intimate, old, and appreciative friend of the illustrious departed, has herself felt the imperfection of all previous biographical "sketches" of him, and has accordingly collected such incidents and particulars concerning Scheffer as might prove interesting to his admirers, and at the same time might afford, especially to her own countrymen and countrywomen, a better means of appreciating the intimate connexion of Scheffer's "personal life with his artistic progress," and the extent to which his life was reflected in his works." Besides keeping this point in view, Mrs. Grote states that it has been her desire also to throw "into somewhat fuller light those qualities and those social and political relations which not unfrequently exalted the artist into the patriotic citizen." Her little volume, to which we are indebted for the materials of the following sketch, is a tender and graceful tribute of love and respect to the memory of Scheffer as a Man, a Patriot, and an Artist.

that on the death of her husband, about 1809-10, Madame Scheffer found, to her dismay, that she had to support and educate her three sons on an invested capital diminished in that way to £6,000. Then, as ever, she proved how paramount was her sense of the duty of self-sacrifice. She had foregone an early and not unwelcome prospect of marriage out of devotion to her father; and she had injured her health in the patient and tender nursing through several years of her reserved and somewhat unsympathizing husband. The effects of her long attendance upon the latter produced a disease of the heart, from which she never entirely recovered, whilst his death, and that of a daughter about five years of age, also seriously affected her health.

For

Fresh sacrifices now awaited her; but to this heroic yet affectionate woman, who had shown that filial and conjugal duties could be willingly performed, it was easy, impelled by a mother's affection, to fulfil all maternal duty likewise. the sake of her sons she underwent the pain of parting from old Dort and its circle of dear friends to remove to Paris, where she would be alone and friendless. Already, though not twelve years old, Ary had exhibited a picture in the "Salon" at Amsterdam; and his brother Henri was also inclined to the pictorial art. The widowed mother resolved that Paris would be the most fitting place in which to carry on their education. For a short time, however, Ary was sent to school at Lille, where his mother wrote to him frequent letters, loving and wise, full of affection and advice. In one of these, after justifying herself for combining authority with her love, she adds:-"I cherish the fond hope of seeing you one day take your place among the first painters of the age, perhaps of any age. Work diligently; above all be modest and humble; and when you find yourself excelling others, then compare what you have done with Nature herself, or with the ideal' of your own mind, and you will be secured, by the contrast which will be apparent, against the effects of pride and presumption."

On her arrival in Paris with her son Ary, now nearly sixAny thorough student of such works as Scheffer's would, teen, she placed him under M. Guerin, a painter of Louis we think, without the clue afforded by his name, speedily David's then declining school, but still in great repute as a discover that there was something peculiar in them, in com- teacher. In M. Guerin's studio he acquired, though apparently parison with the paintings of contemporaneous members of the imperfectly, certain necessary technicalities; but, as he himschool to which he had attached himself. Although in cer- self said, he learned "but little beyond the art of framing in tain technical qualities they bear evident marks of having after time a system of study for himself." When near dying, been produced within the atmosphere of that school, yet. Scheffer's father had warned Madame Scheffer against perthey are as evidently not altogether of it. Their subjects, mitting Ary to compose pictures before he led studied drawfor the most part scriptural or devotional, or gathered from. ing, anatomy, and perspective. But stern necessity compelled the realms of German mysticism and romance, and treated him to aid his mother by painting for gain before he reached in a manner so earnest yet so spiritual, so poetic yet so pure, the age of eighteen. She, brave soul, parted with her jewels, so sad, devout, and religious, severed them from all that was and deprived herself of a servant, to enable her second son, characteristically French at that date. It would have been Arnold, to study the oriental tongues, and her youngest son, difficult, we say, for any close observer of such works not to Henri, to join Ary in Guerin's studio. Between this time have detected that their author was French neither in and 1818, Ary painted a great number of small pictures, of mind nor spirit, though he might be in his external surround-tender and familiar subjects, now dispersed in many private ings. We well remember experiencing a peculiar satisfac collections. tion, many years ago, when we first learned that Ary Scheffer not only was not a Frenchman by descent, but that he had actually not entered France until he was about fifteen years old.

France, fresh from the pressure of the Napoleonic régime, was in an exuberant state of material progress when Ary entered upon manhood. New schools arose, which revolutionized the arts. The classic and conventional were replaced by the romantic, passionate, and sentimental. Victor Hugo reigned over the drama, Rossini over the opera, and Géricault and Delacroix over painting. Already some aid was lent to the cause by Scheffer, who, in his twenty-fifth year, finished his first important composition, the Burgesses of Calais (1819), in which he broke through tradition, and

Ary Scheffer's father was a German artist of competent means, who had settled in the city of Dordrecht, or Dort, in Holland. His mother, "the principal figure in the family group,"-for the father died when the children were still young,-a most admirable woman, and "the object of the unbounded love and veneration of her three sons, was i Dutch lady, the daughter of a M. Arie Lamme. This gentle-"aimed at expression and feeling." That, as early as 1818, man, having been implicated in the revolt against the Prince of Orange in 1787, fied into Belgium, leaving his wife and family, a son and daughter, behind. The first interesting trait we meet with in the character of the future Madame Scheffer is her filial devotion to her father, manifested first in her begging leave to share his two years' tedious exile; then in her refusal, during that period, of more than one offer of marriage, even though the suitor might be acceptable to her, rather than desert her father; and, finally, on their return home to Dordrecht, in marrying M. Scheffer, "mainly indnced" to this (so Mrs. Grote has it) by the fact that her husband would reside in the same city as her father, "from whom she could not bear to separate herself."

the res angusta domi had led him into portraiture, never a favourite branch with him, we learn from Lady Morgan, who met him thus employed at the "Chateau de la Grange," the residence of General Lafayette; and that distinguished woman then predicted his future rise, as also that of his newly-acquired and equally youthful acquaintance, Augustin Thierry, the future historian and statesman, with whom, at La Grange, Scheffer commenced a life-long friendship. Admitted into the illustrious circle which centered around Lafayette, Ary got drawn into the meshes of political intrigue. The eloquent oppositionists there assembled won his support; though he was of a more democratic turn, whilst their aims were strictly constitutional, and directed towards checking the Of several children. the result of this union, three sons unteachable Bourbon," who, as of yore, was trying to resurvived, Ary, the eldest, being born on the 10th of Feb-store the power of the nobility and priests. All three of ruary, 1795. As a child he was fond of drawing and paint- the brothers Scheffer became "Carbonari," and actively coning, playing with the tools and materials of his future art inspired at great peril,-their noble-minded mother repressing his father's studio, whilst his mother devoted much attention her fears for their safety, out of respect to their motives. Ary to his and his brothers Arnold and Henri's general edu- and Henri were concerned in the affair at Béfort, where Ary cation. When Ary was about ten years old, that is in 1804, incurred the danger of arrest by re-entering the town in Holland was annexed to the French Republic; and subse- search of his brother. In the meantime, Arnold was plotquently to this, by a stretch of power too often exercised by ting at Marseilles. By good fortune, they escaped the usual Napoleon, the public funds of Holland were despoiled; so i consequence, of such abortive attemrts. Conspiracies fai'

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AUG. 1860.

REGISTER.

ing, art claimed Ary as her son. His pencil began to soar, his reputation to augment, and his pictures to sell. The sincere young painter, a father to his family, worked hard, zealously contributed to the common purse, and then, as always, was generous to a fault, listening to all appeals for charitable help. His mother, too (who also painted very well, so that he derived his artistic tendencies from both his parents), assisted in the studio, by copying his best pictures and executing miniatures, -at least when her health permitted. She was, however, frequently ill, and thus already a cloud occasionally crossed the otherwise sunny path of the sensitive and aspiring painter. Between the years 1822 and 1825, besides portraits, executed not for love but for money,-that of the Duchesse de Broglie was the most successful of them,-Scheffer produced many easel pictures, mostly of tender subjects, such as the Soldier's Widow, the Convalescent Mother, and others, some of which exhibited the influence over him of the style of Greuze in regard to sentiment, arrangement, and execution. This is especially noticeable in the Baptism (1823). From 1825 to 1828, however, he passed, influenced by the fervour of youth and his love for the cause of liberty, to subjects in which action united with sentiment, as in the Defence of Missolonghi, the Retreat of Alsace, the Battle of Morat, the Souliote Women, and others of the like kind. In these works, however, there was a great deficiency of colour.

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Cornélie," often gilded the sorrowful days which so clouded his later and sadder years.

In the course which public affairs were taking from 1827 to 1830, Scheffer, as an ardent patriot, and an intimate friend On that of the Lafayette party, could not fail to be intensely interested. On the morning of the 28th of July, reproving a friend "The game is begun, and we must play it out.' who was going out of Paris by one of the barriers, he said,day and the next, the two first of the "three glorious days of July," he fought incessantly, and with great courage; the 30th, exhausted by his previous exertions in that prolonged and it was whilst resting at his house in the Rue Chaptal, on conflict, that he was surprised by a visit from M. Thiers, who begged him, as joint commissioner with himself from the Liberal leaders, to aid in conveying a communication to the Duke of Orleans, then at Neuilly. In executing this charge, Scheffer displayed good horsemanship, at which his diminu tive colleague was not so au fait, and also much boldness and When, at length, Louis Philippe was seated on the throne, address. his patronage naturally fell upon so old and esteemed a friend of the family. Scheffer received orders for pictures suitable for the galleries of Versailles, whilst the young Duke of Orleans gave him commissions more congenial with his tastes. now he did not lose his self-respect in his relations with It must be noted, however, in justice to Scheffer, that even During this latter period there had occurred an event royalty. Having once removed one of the Princes from his which exercised a lasting influence over Scheffer's fortunes. class for some impertinence, he resigned his post on the At La Grange and elsewhere he had shown an aptitude for Queen's interference, and resumed it solely at the request of teaching as well as practising his art; and when he was the King, and on condition that the offender should be hencepast thirty, being introduced by Baron Gérard, he was forth excluded. Rather unforgiving, perhaps; but we must appointed instructor in art to the family of Louis Philippe, remember his republican spirit. On another occasion, the a design by Scheffer to the memory of the Duke of Orleans; then (1826) Duke of Orleans, and afterwards King of King desired to commission M. Pradier to execute in marble the French. Once received into that household, his rare powers and cultivated mind,-for his reading in German, but Scheffer declined to sanction such a step. The King Thus do even kings submit to just claims, English, French, and Italian, was already tolerably exten- lost his temper; but the next day he sent to apologize to sive, speedily engendered between the members of that the inflexible artist, who maintained his entire right over his family and himself the nobler relations of intimate and lasting own design. That most beautiful and touching episode in Scheffer's life, friendship. Moreover his poetic feeling, which he had nur- firmly asserted. tured by reading and cultivated by study and reflection, there d'Orleans,- -an episode which is admirably related by Mrs. received congenial encouragement and support; and the re- his attachment, as master and friend, to the Princess Marie sult was that the conceptions in which his transcendent power On many points, their opinions and of sentiment craved to exhibit itself, now continually mani- Grote,―must also be regarded as one of the causes operating fested a higher and higher poetic strain. His mother's declin- in the deepest recesses of Scheffer's nature, and influencing ing, and indeed frequently alarming, state of health,-for vio-his artistic tendencies. lent palpitations of the heart had often threatened to deprive tastes were in accord. In return for his instruction and his her sons of their beloved parent,-the wear of mind and bodily watchful anxiety for her advancement in art, she loved and strength involved in the constant necessity for working to sup-appreciated him; in discovering and developing her genius port his family and assist his many pensioners, and the poli- for sculpture, and leading it onward and upward to her tical ferment of the time,-for Charles the Tenth's govern- chiefest and most enduring triumph, the Joan of Arc watchment was beginning to totter to its fall,-all served to keep ing by her Armour, erected at Versailles,-he must have the sympathies of such a mind as Scheffer's on the stretch, to profited by many a tender feminine remark, and many a pure fit him for loftier poetical flights, and to intensify his powers of and holy suggestion, from the lips of the young, and virsentiment and expression. About this time, too, M. Ingres, a tuous, and short-lived Princess. In her political views, her painter of elevated style, with much mastery of art, returned reading, her thoughts, her conversation, and prayers; in her from Italy; and Scheffer, on seeing his works, excellent for gentleness and nobility of mind, in her patient resignation many merits in which his own were most wanting, was fired to the too evident inroads of a surely fatal disease, Scheffer with emulation, and his mind and taste received new and could feed his own love of liberty, poetry, and religion; could Some lasting impressions for the better. One of the earliest examples realize those sweet, yet saddening, touches of human nature of his new inspiration was taken from Goethe, henceforth his in life, suffering, and death, with which his own works were favourite poet. This was Faust in his Study. Next suc- hereafter to be so profoundly penetrated; and could rise to a "Notes" from the pen of Ary Scheffer himself on this inteceeded the Giaour, from Byron, a vigorous and vehemently finer and purer conception of the life that is to come. expressed single figure. Then came two other subjects from the and whose memory is still cherished by all good FrenchFaust, viz., Margaret at the Spinning Wheel,-which, though resting lady,-who was adored by the soldiers and the people, wanting in colour, or faded, and insufficient in attitude, is very fine in its pathetic depiction of abject depression,-and men, are amongst the most delightful portions of Mrs. then Margaret at Church, in which the composition is good, Grote's work. They were written, in 1839, for an intended the contrast of Margaret's figure with those of the indifferent biography of the Princess by his brother Arnold. Very reUnder such circumstances as we have seen,-with such a personages in the scene very happy, and the feeling wrought luctantly do we restrain ourselves from quoting them. into her countenance exceedingly impressive. mother, high souled, the mainspring of his exertion, yet already slipping from his vision,-with a little daughter motherless, and perchance oft reminding him of her whose name he kept in resolved silence, with such patriot friends, now struggling, now triumphing, but anon disappointed in -no wonder that Scheffer's religious the cause of freedom,-with access to the highest circles in his adopted country,-and with such a pupil to stimulate and re-act upon him,feelings, his poetic faculty, his love for his art, his love for humanity, his sympathy for all that was suffering and pure, his consciousness of a power of expression not common amongst his contemporaries, and his deep conviction that all these gifts should be devoted to the highest purposes, nerved him to tasks more and more worthy of himself.

But events, private as well as public, continued to press
even more closely on Scheffer's heart and mind. Love, the
love of woman,-wreathed its softening influence around him;
deprived, we may well believe, of its complete effect, in the
case of so sensitive and devout a mind, by the consciousness
of a frailty and a wrong; sweetened on the one hand by
paternal joy, but embittered on the other by the early
bereavement of the chosen one of his affections. In 1830,
Scheffer became the father of an infant daughter, the name
and quality of whose mother (who soon after died) he never
For seven years he watched over the
revealed to any one.
child with paternal care, as it was nursed and brought up
in the country. At the end of that time Madame Scheffer
discovered its existence, and, obeying a truly noble and gene-
rous impulse, she instantly begged her son to acknowledge his
daughter, and place her under her own care,-little thinking
how great a blessing and benefit she was conferring on her
son; for the filial love and fine qualities of his only child,

After having opened an acquaintance with Goëthe in the pictures we have already mentioned, he next peered with Dante into the other world; and in 1835, when he was at the age of forty, there burst upon his friends and critics the

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