pleasure and idleness. Every palace blazed with light in the calm evenings, and sounds of lute and serenade came wandering by on every gentle breath of air that stirred the orange blossoms in the moonlight.

The senate was assembled at the justice-hall to regulate the interests of the province, and all the wealth and hospitality of Pisa was employed to do honour to their visit.

During one of the sittings of the court, a letter was laid before them, written by a trembling hand, and signed Marcello, Its purport was as follows:

"Illustrious Lords,-An humble and unknown painter, at the hour of his death, entreats your attention. For more than two years he has lived in solitude, alone with art and his own soul; he has sought to combat enmity and unjust criticism; and, in dying, he has no wish beyond the pardon of his God and the glory of his work. His hand, he believes, has not proved unfaithful to his thought; but, broken down with labour and sorrow, and the desire of fame, he feels that rest is near at hand. The prayer of the dying is sacred—deign, then, to send some members of the senate to judge his picture, and to declare if it be worthy of a space in the chapel of St. Augustine, to which he bequeaths it."

This strange missive became at once the subject of deep interest to all in the assembly. On the previous evening the artist was unknown, or, if known, despised; now he was reverenced and esteemed by all. Some of the senators who patronised the convent declared that they had observed the frescoes of Marcello, in which, despite many errors, they had recognised the hand of a master. These eulogiums produced a great effect upon the public mind. Within an hour the home of the artist was approached by a brilliant company, who descended from their equipages at the door, where they were met by a procession of monks, coming at the same moment to view the picture given to their convent. The friars passed in first, chanting a mournful hymn; the noble signors followed them in silence.

There was a poetic calm brooding over the death-chamber, which impressed the visitors with reverent awe. Stern busts, and silent forms of sculptured loveliness stood around; an ample drapery at the farthest extremity concealed the picture, and the daylight fell in rose and azure chequers through the stained glass of the lofty casement, and cast uncertain splendour on the bed where laid the dying painter, worn and wan, yet still with some appearances of life in the wildly brilliant eye and quivering lip. Ile strove to speak, but he could only point feebly to the curtain; then, supported by the aged monk in whom he had confided at the chapel, he raised himself on the couch, seized a cord beside his bed, and in a moment drew the drapery aside, and exposed the picture. One only word escaped from every lip: "Admirable!"

And admirable it was. In this narrow space of canvas the mind of the painter had assembled all ideas that are most noble and sublime in man. Religion was there; religion with all its heavenly aspirations and its heavenly glories. There he had represented in one part the heavens, in another the earth-here the dreadful judgment, there the eternal happiness. Now, upon an arid and stony soil, the Solitaries occupied in the austere labours of their lives-one excavating a cell in the hard rock, another digging his grave, a third in meditation before a cross and a skull-all inspired with the double activity of the soul and body, where all around is silence and desolation. Angels with glorious wings hover over the Fathers of the desert, and seem to guard their sanctity. Here is the Evil Genius presiding above the ruins of Pagan worship; and, in the empyrean heaven, above all, in the centre of Light and Peace, God himself was dimly shadowed forth, as if in a radiance whose beams enveloped him from the too daring gaze of mortal eyes. Above and around seraphic legions hovered, hymning praise in song. Such was the work before which the Pisan senate stood in breathless awe and wonder-such the triumph of the artist, to whom they turned with one accord, and cried, "Glory to thee, Marcello !"

The painter raised his head, and turned to them a counte-.

nance now paler than before; his lips trembled, his breath came quick and short-" Glory!" he murmured, and so died. The next day Pisa was the scene of a solemn and touching event. Amid the deep clamour of the death-bells from every church around, an immense procession wound slowly towards the chapel of the Augustines. The whole city rendered homage to a painter. In life they had denied him every merit; in death they deemed no honours and no funeral pomp too great to glorify a sublime labour and a saintly death. Arrived at the chapel, the picture was installed above the great altar, and the corpse deposited on a magnificent bier, surrounded with lighted tapers. Clouds of incense float into the vaulted roof; the solemn chant swells and falls; the organ's noble voice rolls round in rich resounding harmonies; all the wealthy and noble of the land kneel there in prayer, and the light vapours of the incense curling up around the altar-piece invest the painted legions with strange life. The Solitaries seem to have new meaning in their stern features; the ministering angels appear descending to do homage to their Creator, and the ineffable glory shines forth more etherial and divine than before. On the morrow, Marcello is to receive the last sepulchral honours. Night clothed the city in its solemn mantle. Festivity for a brief space was suspended. The chapel, now empty and silent, was at length free from every curious visitant; by degrees the lights were extinguished, and, save the wax tapers around the bier, a profound darkness brooded in the aisles and galleries. Near the corpse a monk was watching. It was Friar Eusebius, the same who had two years before pointed to the gravestone over which Marcello's coffin rested: he had solicited this pious vigil, and, kneeling there, with his face buried in his hands, the good monk reflected bitterly upon the fate of the man whose thirst of fame had brought him misery and death, and of the homage which had been accorded only to his remains. While absorbed in these reflections, a light sound, almost resembling a sigh, attracted his attention. He rose and looked around- -no creature was visible. He was too wise to be influenced by any dread of supernatural agency, and so, reassured, knelt down again and commenced his fervent prayers for the soul's repose of the only man in whom he had taken an earthly interest. At length the old monk's words came indistinctly, his head drooped on his breast, he was asleep.

The night advanced, the old man slumbered profoundly; a second sigh echoed in the dim silence of the church. The coffin stirred-there was a movement within-can it be he who raises himself with a labouring effort as if chained down by a magnetic influence? Yes, he lives-he breathes-he feels! It is Marcello himself-a living corpse issuing from the tomb! For an instant he hesitated-he shuddered: the immensity of the church, and, by a fleeting comparison, the immensity of life weighed heavily upon him. He wished to extricate himself from the bier, but he wanted courage: at this fearful moment of resurrection, when he might, by a slight effort, free himself from the panoply of burial, he experienced so much difficulty in the passage from death to life, that a horrible foretaste of the transition from life to death seemed presented to his imagination.

"O God!" he murmured, "must I live?"

Unbroken silence laid on the monuments and columnsdarkness and midnight chained all things in a solemn harmony -his courage returned, he raised himself softly, and extinguished all the lights but one which he retained in his hand.

Then he went towards his picture, his beloved picture, and gazed upon it in that high and holy station which he had dreamed and hoped for. Bewildered, weeping, joyful, yet sad, Marcello cast himself upon his kness, and prayed aloud in a voice broken with emotion.

"Merciful Father! an ardent desire of glory led me to employ deceit led me to strive for pity when I deserved it not-led me to feign death, and mock Thine awful summons. Pardon, O Lord, pardon! I go to other lands, where, perhaps, I may never hear even the echo of my fame! I go to live a stranger and a pilgrim, to expiate my sin, and end my days in thanksgiving for all Thy mercies!"

JEAN JACQUES PRADIER was born at Geneva, in the year 1790. He is, perhaps, the only native of a mountainous region who ever attained any eminence as a sculptor. It would seem that the contemplation of the grandeur and sublimity of mountain scenery is but ill calculated to encourage the statuary in his art; for however grand the design and delicate the workmanship, his productions must only appear to him paltry and trivial when compared to the magnificence of the Alps and Pyrenees.

Pradier was a Genevese by birth only; he had no other resemblance to Rousseau but that of bearing the same Christian name. He was still a child when the union between France and Switzerland took place. His inclinations and aspirations were opposed to the wishes of his parents, who intended to make him an engraver. M. Denon, having noticed this interesting neophyte at the municipal school of Geneva, predicted for

triumphs of that period. The following year the young artist eclipsed all his rivals in the conception of the subject given for competition, Ulysses and Neoptolemus in the Isle of Lemnos. After this, Pradier set out for Italy, that land so dear to all artists, and which he had so ardently longed to behold. The works of ancient art, and those of Lucca della Robbia, impressed him most deeply. At that time Greek and Roman art was almost exclusively admired; Pradier partook of this enthusiasm, without troubling himself to form an opinion of his own. He dwelt with delight on the figures of Jupiter, Bacchus, Neptune, and Amphitrite, Venus, Love, and the Graces; he even asserted that he had discovered a new explanation of the history of these symbolic deities; in short, mythology had never a more ardent admirer. Consequently, he earnestly studied the statues executed by the great masters of the pagan art. He remained unmoved before the stern pro.

him a brilliant career, and in order to his advancement placed him in the atelier of Lemot, who perfectly understood the mechanical part of his art, but whose productions were devoid of all pretension to sentiment and ideality. His forte was beauty of workmanship, but he failed in the poetic development of his subject.

Two others beside his master exercised a powerful influence over the genius of Pradier. The grace of the compositions of Prudhon, a painter long unappreciated, and the statuettes of Chlodion, made a vivid impression upon his mind. These two artists, who were the last representatives of the flippant school of the eighteenth century, attracted him from the correct and classical style of David, to that of the voluptuous age of Louis XV. Pradier, by the character of his works, has united that age with the present.

Towards the close of the French empire, in 1812, he became a competitor for the great prize, and obtained an honourable mention, which exempted him from taking part in the bloody

ductions of Michael Angelo; his soul was not capable of attaining the heights reached by the superior and more vivid imagination of the Florentine sculptor. The exquisite grace and nature of Lucca della Robbia were more to his taste, and he copied all the casts by the hand of this most admirable master which are to be found in the capital of Tuscany.

At this time Pradier was probably entirely occupied in study, for the whole of his productions, during his stay in Italy, consist of a head of Orpheus, and some plaster casts, which he brought into use at a later period. He did not positively make his debut until the year 1817, when two works in marble, one representing a nymph, the other a centaur and a bacchante, were exhibited. A new era in the history of French literature and art was now commencing; people now studied, and sought with poetic enthusiasm, for the original works of their writers and artists which had been so long sunk in oblivion.

Pradier's talents were of a high order. He had a perfect

of the Parthenon. But this is not the case, and the statue of that artist who so excelled in the drapery of his figures, is most deficient in this particular.

Pradier's statues have the same characteristics as his statuettes-they are equally graceful and possess as little loftiness of conception; they are only to be distinguished by their dimensions. "Phryne" and "Poetry," which many artists consider his most successful pieces, only require reducing to be in perfect harmony with his collection of little casts. It may be questioned if the figures of "Tragedy" and "Comedy," which adorn the Moliere fountain in Paris, have the dignity of monumental style, or the elevation of sentiment which the genius of the great man demands; they scarcely offer symbolic images of his drama, in which so much reason is blended with much wit,-in- which laughter veils so many secret

SO

sorrows.

In 1842, a group by Pradier, representing the Marriage of the Virgin, was placed in the Church of the Madeleine, in Paris, but the capacities of the artist were not suited to a subject of so serious a nature.

Besides the works of which we have here spoken, Pradier executed a multitude of others, which, if collected, would form quite a gallery of mythology. Among these would be remarked the "Wounded Nymph," which is in the PalaisRoyal; a "Venus of the Shell;" the "Venus of the Butterfly," which adorns the Luxembourg; the "Three Graces," "Psyche," "Chloris," "Nyssia," "Spring," the "Satyr and the Nymph," "Anacreon and Love," "Love and Venus," and three "Sapphos ;" an engraving from the most recent of which, and his last production, is now before the reader. His statuettes and other pieces are too numerous to be here specified.

In the Great Exhibition of 1851 Pradier obtained a council medal for his exquisite marble statue of "Phryne," which excited the admiration of all visitors,-the only other council medal being given to Professor Kiss for his "Amazon and Tiger;" Baron Marochetti for his "Richard Cœur de Lion;" and the late Richard Wyatt, Esq., for his admirable statue of "Glycera."

On Friday, the 5th of June, 1852, as Pradier was walking at Bongival, surrounded by friends and pupils, he fell down in a state of insensibility. All attempts to revive him were unavailing an apoplectic fit suddenly terminated his life.

THUNDER AND LIGHTNING.

THUNDER has long been suspected, rightly or wrongfully, of all sorts of mischief, which has furnished innumerable little paragraphs to the newspapers, much relished by non-scientific readers. But in the following narrative, read by M. Biot before the Academy of Sciences, and published by M. Leon Foucault, lightning is seen in the act of uncovering a passer-by, of rummaging in his pockets, of deranging his watch, and taking his purse, while leaving him his life. The fire of heaven would be a very dangerous footpad to encounter, if it should take to repeating such rascally proceedings, for all was done in an instant, a flash, the millionth of a second, and in a way which defies the vigilance of the detective police.

“About eleven o'clock in the evening of Monday, the 17th of May," says M. de H., "I was returning home by the Rue Saint-Guillaume, the Rue de la Chaise, and the Rue de Varennes, when a very loud thunderclap made me quicken my pace in expectation of a very heavy shower very soon. I had scarcely gone twenty paces when a second thunderclap resounded almost at the same time that the lightning flashed. Large drops of rain began to fall: I was not more than two or three hundred steps from home, and I began to run.. Suddenly I found myself enveloped in an effulgence so powerful that I felt a keen pain in my eyes. A frightful thunderclap pealed instantaneously, and my hat flew ten yards from me, although there was not a breath of wind. The pain in my eyes was so violent, and my fear of blindness so cruel, that all my attention was turned to it; so much so, that I cannot say that I felt anything else than the electric shock, properly so called, which was not indeed

in itself very violent. The last thunderclap was followed by a torrent of rain. The water which fell upon my head dissipated very quickly the giddiness and dimness which had lasted about seven or eight seconds, and my joy was so great in seeing that I saw quite well, that I cleared very quickly and very joyously the distance which still remained to be run over to reach home.

"When going to bed I took out my watch, and then perceived the tracks of the electric fluid across the left pocket of my waistcoat. In the bottom of the pocket was a hole through which I could pass two fingers, of which the sides appeared to be at once burned and torn. The waistcoat was of cashmere, the lining of glazed cotton, and the second inside lining of cloth. As I ran to reach home before the heavy shower, my watch-chain formed in front a free circuit jumping over my waistcoat; the thunder was attracted there, probably by the middle, which was the lowest part of the curve, the part above being fixed to one of the button-holes of my waistcoat was not the least injured, whilst the swivel (porte-mousqueton) which held the watch, had disappeared with the first two links of the lower part. The swivel was of silver like the whole chain, but it was furnished inside with a small ferrule of steel, necessary to give solidity to the screw. As for the chain it was solid, and made in the form of a curb. Here are the remainder of the effects which I experienced.

"A broken gold ring, which united several gewgaws, was cut in five pieces. The steel watch-key, covered with goldleaf upon the cannon, was completely carried away, all except the gold-leaf, which remained intact. A little compass in silver had had its poles interverted. As for the watch, it had no exterior sign of having been injured, not even the link whence the swivel of the chain had been torn. But although

the time was only half-past eleven, the hands marked threequarters after four. Persuaded that the main spring or some other piece was broken, I left the watch upon the table, intending to go to the watchmaker in the morning. But in the morning I was advised to wind up the watch, just to see how far it was damaged; and I saw the hands move with a regular march, which never varied, as if the lightning at the same time that it displaced the hands had unwound the mainspring and conducted it rudely to the end of its course.

"Near the watch there was, on the day of the storm, a little iron medallion from Berlin, surrounded with gold, and a little gold key of a piece of furniture. These two objects disappeared completely, carried away, apparently, with the swivel through the hole made in the waistcoat-pocket. The chain, which had acted as conductor, did not retain any outward trace of the passage of the discharge. For myself, I felt, on the morrow, only an extreme lassitude, like that from unaçcustomed and violent exercise, without any mark upon my clothes or upon my skin.

"I ought to notice here a peculiarity of my dress, which may not have been without influence in the production of these effects. I have contracted in Spain the habit of wearing upon my shirt and under my waistcoat a band of red silk, which went four or five times round my body. Did not this band preserve me by determining the passage of the discharge by the surface of my clothes rather than by the interior of my body"

M. Biot read this statement before the Academy, and the objects injured were exhibited-the little silver compass and the empty golden envelope of the key.

Certainly not upon evidence comparable with that which establishes the extraordinary narrative attested by MM. Biot and Leon Foucault, but on excellent and credible hearsay testimony, we think it right to record the following statement: -An American, who has the fact directly from an eye-witness, tells it us seriously. A stroke of lightning killed a man in a forest among the trees, and on his neck, on his white skin, there was distinctly and unmistakably seen a picture, with all their natural colours, of the trees through which the flash had reached him. It was just a photograph, with the natural colours. Mr. Talbot, the inventor of the Calotype, has produced a paper so sensitive, that, when he placed a column

of the Times upon the rim of a wheel, and set it in rapid motion, he was able, notwithstanding in a dark room, to obtain a representation of several lines of the print in the instant occupied by the flash of an electric spark. But, should the fact we have narrated be examined, it may be found that the electrical power can display far greater marvels than have yet been dreamt of.

In a thunderstorm the clouds are mere non-electrics, or conducting surfaces, positive with a negative sphere extending to the earth; and the discharge, at a point from one large surface to another, is the lightning; or the earth is negative, and the elouds correlatively positive. All bodies in the sphere of action are affected, and the stroke produces an extensive lateral action in all conductors, and affects all combinations of oxygen, &c., with weak affinities, such as beer, wine, &c., which require the protection of conductors. The cloud, the air, and the earth, resemble the zinc, fluid, and copper in a

galvanic combination. The human body and all animal bodies are electrical, or galvanic combinations, and the excitement is the principle of vitality and energy. The surfaces positively excited are those of the lungs and the skin. The lungs fix oxygen and are positive, while the skin fixes an equivalent, and is negative. The circulations and secretions are intermediate results, and the action of the heart arises from the proximity of positive arterial blood with the negative venous blood. The action exhausts itself, as it ought, in the system. Crosse enumerates the following circumstances which increase atmospherical electricity :

1. Regular thunderclouds. 2. A driving fog and small rain. 3. Snow, or brisk hail. 4. A shower on a hot day. 5. Hot weather after wet, and wet after dry. 6. Clear weather, hot or frosty. 7. A cloudy sky. 8. A mottled sky. 9. Sultry and hazy weather. 10. A cold damp night. 11. Northeast winds.

AUTUMN was approaching as three small vessels rounded the cape which has since been named Point Levi, and came in sight of the bluff peak on which Quebec now stands. They were Frenchmen, a sturdy band of sailors, equally prepared to face the terrors of the climate, or the fury of the savages,— well disciplined, and having full faith in their commander, Jacques Cartier, whose flag floated from the mizen of La Grande Hermine. Some of them had undertaken the voyage from a reckless spirit of adventure; others, because the narrowminded police of France interfered materially with their comfort at home; one or two from a vague hope of gain, and as many from disappointed love. There were several gentlemen of good old Breton blood among the number, cager to verify the marvellous stories which Cartier had told of his first voyage. On the deck of the Grande Hermine stood Raoul de Mornac, as brave a Breton as ever trod a plank. On him the grandeur of the scene was lost; he gazed listlessly at the bold peak of Stadacona, the gloomy forests of pine and fir stretching as far as the eye could reach, the mighty river rolling slowly between the cliffs, and the silver line traced down the precipice by the falls of Montmorenci. For, though the perils of the sea and the arduous nature of his duties had for a time diverted his thoughts from the past, the sight of land had recalled to his mind with a painful freshness his native Brittany, the terrible image of a father's curse, and his broken-hearted Marie. She is no doubt by this time, thought he, another's bride. Beside him, a rough weather-beaten face, with receding forehead and protruding teeth, stood in bold contrast; a sad reprobate, in truth, was Jean Truchy, and well it was for him that Cartier waived his scruples to his forbidding physiognomy, and enrolled him among his crew. Lost in rapture at the novelty and grandeur of the scene, Ernest de Mony, nephew of Cartier's protector, and a welcome guest at the court of Francis I., had forgotten everything he had sworn to remember, even the cross hung round his neck by his devout mother, and the diamond ring which the beautiful Duchesse de Livray had, with many a prayer and many a tear, placed on his finger, as he tore himself from her arms. Here stood a reputed son of Louis XII., endowed with all the mildness and fainéantise of his father; he was no willing sharer in the toils of the voyage, but high birth, even when tarnished by the bar of bastardy, often involves heavy penalties. On the deck of La Petite Hermine, two brothers, natives of Normandy, looked heavily over the side, seemingly engrossed in their thoughts. Ruin had overtaken the house; their father, the old Marquis d'Evreux, had poured all his wealth into the royal coffers after the disaster at Pavia; and, as not unfrequently happened in those days, prosperity effaced all recollection of the service in the royal mind, and the old man died a beggar, leaving his sons houseless with a great name. Nor did the Emerillon bear less noble sailors among her crew. Her commander, Guillaume le Breton, owned a pedigree, and descended, if he

was to be believed, from the oldest house in the Province. The second in command was a Provençal, a man of immense bodily strength, imperturbable good temper, and a love for music which had frequently jeopardised the friendly relations existing between himself and his captain. Marc Jalobert, whom we ought to have mentioned before, commanded La Petite Hermine; he was, like Cartier, a mere sailor from St. Malo, but infinitely superior, in point of experience and judgment, to the nobles who served under his orders. The rest of the crew-amounting altogether to 110 men-were, as we said, a heterogeneous assemblage. Vice and depravity were stamped on as many faces as youthful ardour and enterprise. Men who had murdered their rivals, who had fled their creditors, who had held office as farmers of the revenue and tampered with the funds entrusted to their care, had smuggled themselves on board the vessels. One trait of character and one only, perhaps was common to all; and that was an unquestioning faith in religion. The most hardened criminal of the band had listened with devout awe to the pious prayer of the Bishop of Malo, as he implored the blessing of God and St. Mary on the daring mariners.

rence.

Such were the first Europeans who ascended the Saint LawCartier, their leader, had already made one successful voyage to America, and carried home, from the territory bordering on the gulf, two of the natives, whom he called Taignoagny and Domagaia. Stimulated by his own ambition, and encouraged by the representations of these Indians, he had resolved to endeavour to penetrate the continent by sailing up the great river he had named St. Laurent; and, through the support of Admiral Chabot and Charles de Mony, Seignior of Meilleraie, had succeeded in obtaining an armament of three vessels from the king. With these, well equipped and manned, he sailed from St. Malo on 19th May, 1535, reached the coast of America about the close of July, and slowly ascended the stream. As soon as he reached the Saguenay River, he began to hold intercourse with the inhabitants through his native interpreters, and received on every side marks of goodwill and kindness. While he lay at anchor some twenty miles below Quebec, the Agouhanna, or chief of the country, named Donnacona, visited him with twelve canoes, and presented the travellers with fruit, fish, and bark. So high was the chief's consideration for Cartier, indeed, that on parting from his distinguished visitor, the French sailor was requested to suffer his arm to be kissed, in Indian fashion. Thus pleasantly occupied in a reciprocal interchange of civilities with the Indians, the expedition were overtaken by symptoms of the approach of winter before they had thought of preparing for their return. Some were terrified at the stories which were told of the rigour of the climate; others, among whom the gentlemen were fore most, rather relished the idea of the new sensation of extreme cold; the Indians were loath to part with their new friends; and, after mature deliberation, Cartier resolved on wintering