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study of the occult sciences, and to wholesale invocations of the

Scientific investigations of this kind were very dangerous in those days. People reasonably objected to raising what they might be at a loss to get rid of when once raised; and burning alive, anathematizing, strangling, and other gentle punishments of a similar character too frequently rewarded the learned in their inquiries after the supernatural. Mysterious lights were seen to twinkle from a turret in our knight's castle, and, although he was merely supposed to be going to bed--the unaccountable disappearance of two children, and the popular superstitions about their use in raising persons whom other persons had no wish to see, proved the means of bringing Sir Cœur Shaverre into serious trouble.

Whatever may have been the nature of our knight's connexion with the it is certain that it cost him his life. Scandal says, that the extent of his property had a terrible effect upon the mind of his judges, and that the charge of sorcery was only an excuse for getting at his estates. Be that as it may, poor Sir Cœur Shaverre terminated his life in an upright position, and with such a degree of feverish heat as might arise from being placed in the centre of lighted faggots, smeared with pitch and sulphur. His property went either to the king or the church; and, strange to say, although two-thirds of it had been pillaged from other people, neither king nor church ever thought of giving any of it back to the original owners.

Long, very long after, when the stake had become unfashionable as a mode of punishment, and when the Bible was more read, and the priests less superstitiously reverenced, the castle in which the iniquities of Sir Cœur Shaverre were said to have been perpetrated, was in ruins, and might be scen, at particular hours of the day, for a shilling a head. The neighbouring cathedral, built out of the knight's confiscated property, was a noble place, and the chapter were as rich as people who have next to nothing to do, and who are obliged to live in good society, ought to be. No one ever complained that they did not keep their carriages, give dinner parties, and do other things like gentlemen. No one ever said the bishop's town house was shabby, or that his sons were ill provided for; and no one ever hinted at a canon living upon his canonry without other preferment.

Everything was in a comfortable condition! The cathedral lands brought excellent revenues, and every now and then a good fine would

drop in, or a lease would require renewal, and this gave the dean and canons a good lift for the time-being, and they looked more sleek and agreeable than ever. But there are troublesome spirits in all ages, who will not rest quiet with things as they are. In former times, the knight Coeur Shaverre had been burnt for meddling with the dead; in the present, a less distinguished personage would doubtless have met with the same fate for interfering on behalf of the living-only burning is out of fashion.

Most cathedrals have some kind of school attached to them; and some of these schools are treated very much as if they were left for the amusement of the chapter, rather than for the education of the scholars. Such was the case with the present establishment. Whether from a taste for the picturesque, or from negligence, the old school-house had been suffered to become a heap of ruins; and the boys' educational accommodation was confined to a miserable dilapidated house in another part of the town. All was dullness and mismanagement, and there seemed to be no funds for anything. The boys, so far from being boarded and lodged gratis, as in the old times, when the school was founded, paid more to the school than they received from it, were few in number, and had no scholarships or exhibitions to assist them on leaving school.

But an unquiet spirit was at work. The Reverend Speakout Shameall, head-master of the school, was given to reading canon's books, especially those about the history of cathedrals and schools. It was a great pity he employed his time so unprofitably, for he would have gained much more by attending to arithmetic and the interests of the chapter—not that he was at all ignorant of arithmetic-but, somehow or other, he could never make the sums worked by the dean and chapter "come right."

The fact was, Mr. Shameall had for some time been comparing the incomes received by the chapter with those accruing to the school, and the result of his calculations was, that while the incomes of the dean and canons had increased, like the offshoots of a Banyan tree, those belonging to the school had either melted into oblivion, or remained in a state of stunted unproductiveness. This was an awkward state of things; and Mr. Shameall felt himself called upon to call upon the dean and chapter for an explanation.

Whether these excellent gentlemen had really forgotten the arithmetic they had learned at school, or that they thought fit to keep their knowledge to themselves, is not known; but

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certain it is, that they evinced no more desire to assist Mr. Shameall in his researches than was shown by turning him out of his situation. Fortunately, Mr. Shameall had some property, and so eager where his exertions in the pursuit of knowledge, that he appealed to some other gentlemen, connected with the legal profession, for a solution of the difficulty.

Although, unlike the sorcerer of the old castle, the dean and chapter could not burn the reverend Speakout Shameall, they did their best to show their sense of the impropriety of a schoolmaster studying any arithmetic but that of his employers. They called him an atheist, they prosecuted and persecuted him in every way possible; but they forgot both the character of the man and the times they lived in. Mr. Shameall was a good and a learned man, and people who heard atheism

talked of, thought that those who used bad words must best understand their meaning; and the newspapers did all in their power to show that the schoolmaster's arithmetic was the best; and that he had been tried, like the sheep in the fable, with the wolf for his judge, and the fox for his accuser and witness; and men began to ask what right those who were of no use had to meddle with useful people, and what right people had to be punished for giving information respecting stolen goods or misappropriated property. And the dean and chapter grieved much because they could not make a martyr of Mr. Shameall; but public opinion said, that if anybody deserved that honour, it was the party of respectable gentlemen who had robbed poor boys, and then sought to stifle information by persecuting the only man who dared to speak on their behalf.

THE COUNTESS.

PEOPLE who visit a picture gallery for no other purpose than to wile away an hour or two of time that they know not how else to employ, will, generally, find little amusement in the contemplation of walls hung round with a series of portraits only; half-lengths, threequarters, or whole-lengths, are equally incapable of giving to the mere idler the transient enjoyment of a few bright and cheerful thoughts. The painted canvas, which transmits to us, it may be, all we can learn of the forms and lineaments of past greatness and goodness is altogether inadequate to rouse with its "mute eloquence," or to charm with its smiles. Nor is it alone the person represented gazing upon us, perhaps, in silence and solitude, from his quaint and richly-gilded frame, that seems to address the spectator; we see, or ought to see, the artist through his work; for, says Mrs. Jameson, "almost every picture (which is the production of mind) has an individual character reflecting the predominant temperament -nay, sometimes, the occasional mood-of the artist, its creator. Even portrait painters, renowned for their exact adherence to nature, will be found to have stamped upon their portraits a general and distinguishing character. There is, beside the physiognomy of the individual represented, the physiognomy, if I may so express myself, of the picture; selected at once by the mere connoisseur as a distinction of manner, style, execution, but of which the reflecting and philosophical observer might

TOL. I. N. S.

discover the key in the mind or life of the individual painter."

Then, after all, what a "palace of thought" is a portrait gallery-what memories may it not stir within us-what feelings re-awakenwhat substance will not fancy give to those enchanting deceptions, which, by the painter's art,

"Bring the long-buried dead to life again."

Inferior as portraiture usually ranks in comparison with other branches of art, viewed historically it is superior to all. But an educated mind is required to appreciate its value in this sense, and to understand the records of which the painted figure remains as the symbol or type.

Now, just to apply these observations, suppose I introduce the reader into an apartment devoted entirely to portraits: we will enter, for example, the Van Dyck room, as it is generally called, in Windsor Castle. A rare painter was Van Dyck at all times, but especially so ere multiplicity of business made him somewhat careless, and compelled him to call in the assistance of those who were far inferior to himself. Well, as we walk round the apartment, the eye and the thoughts are naturally most engrossed by the portraits of Charles I. and his family, both grouped and singly, and the mind becomes absorbed in the long and melancholy story of the "royal martyr." There is a "half-length" of his queen, Henrietta Maria, a true daughter of " Henri Quatre," a "lively,

M

elegant, wilful French woman," who could rush through a storm of bullets to save a favourite poodle, and command the captain of the ship to blow the vessel up, with all on board, rather than strike his colours to the "Roundhead" fleet that pursued her. Van Dyck has dressed her in white satin, and has beautifully represented those bright eyes and graceful airs which so fascinated her husband, and influenced his fortunes. What a noble composition is that of Lady Digby, wife of Sir Kenelm Digby, with all its allegorical allusions to some real or fictitious action of her life, whose mysteries have never yet been revealed to us; a picture of which, Hazlitt says, "it would be next to impossible to perform an unbecoming action while it hung in the room." There, too, stand two young boys together, brothers-George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, who fell by the dagger of Felton, in the streets of Portsmouth; and Lord Francis Villiers, remarkable for his accomplishments and extraordinary beauty of person, who was slain during the civil wars, at the early age of nineteen. "He stood," says Clarendon, "under an oak-tree, with his back against it, defending himself, scorning to ask quarter, and his enemies barbarously refusing to give it, till, with nine wounds in his beautiful face and body, he was slain." Then, again, in one picture, we find two individuals attached to the court of the first Charles-Killigrew, one of the monarch's pages, and Carew, a gentleman of the privy chamber; the former, afterwards the licensed

jester of the profligate court of the second Charles; the latter, a lyric poet, of exquisite taste and feeling, and a lively but decorous wit. And nearly opposite these, if our memory serves us, is Lucy Percy, Countess of Carlisle, whom Waller panegyrises, in some elegant verses, albeit her intrigues are said to have greatly perplexed the king's affairs, and vexed him.

This, then, is one of the uses to be made of portraiture; each individal example constitutes a page of history, when the person represented has established a claim to become a portion of it. If this be not the case, still something may be learned from the attributes with which the painter will invest his subject; for as Mrs. Jameson remarks, "Could Sir Joshua Reynolds have painted a vixen without giving her a touch of sentiment? Would not Sir Thomas Lawrence have given refinement to a cookmaid?" The picture indicates the artist's mind.

Which of the ornaments of our modern female aristocracy was the model of Mr. Parris's "Countess" we have not been able to ascertain; and it is most probable that, did we know, there might be no remarkable history to relate concerning her. All that can be said of the work is, that it represents, in very elegant style, a lady belonging to the class which, in our own day, more than in times past, find their chief happiness in other matters than political strife and turmoil. The pencil of this artist is always graceful in female portraiture, but his exhibited pictures are few in number.

THE BONNIE, BONNIE BIRD.

A SCOTTISH SONG.

O! where snared ye that bonnie, bonnie bird?
O! where wiled ye that winsome fairy?

I fear it was where nae ear heard,
And far frae the shrine o' guid Saint Mary.

I didna snare this bonnie, bonnie bird,
Nor try ony wiles wi' this winsome fairy;
But won her heart where the angels heard,
In the shadowy glen o' guid Saint Mary.

O! what want ye wi' sic a bonnie bird?
I fear me its plume ye will ruffle sairly,
Or bring it low to the lone kirk-yard,

Where the flowers o' grace are planted early. 1852.

As life I love my bonnie, bonnie bird,
Its plume shall never be ruffled sairly;
Till the day o' doom will I keep my word,
An' cherish my bonnie bird late an' early.
O! whence rings out that merry, merry peal!
An' O! but the song is chorus'd rarely!
It is, it is the bonnie, bonnie bird,

An' three sma' voices piping early.

For, he didna snare the bonnie, bonnie bird, Nor work ony guile wi' the winsome fairy; But made her his ain, where the angels heard, At the holy shrine o' bless'd Saint Mary.

FRANCIS BENNOCH.

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