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might have free disposal of the priors and monks, both in constituting and in removing them, as might appear expedient.

A. D. 1092.

Vision of the Monks at Fulda. In those days a pestilence sorely afflicted the monastery of Fulda, by which, first the abbot, and afterwards many of the monks were slain; but the brethren who remained alive, betook themselves to alms-giving and prayers, both for the souls of their deceased brethren, and for the health of the living. However, in process of time (as generally comes to pass) the devotion of the brethren began a little to fail, and the cellarer* ceased not to affirm that the funds of the abbey were not sufficient to maintain so great an expense. He also added, that it appeared foolish that the dead should consume what was necessary towards the support of the living; wherefore, on a certain night, when the cellarer had deferred a little his night's rest, on account of some necessary business, and at last, having completed his affairs, was hastening to his chamber; behold, as he passed the door of the chapter-house, he saw the abbot and all the brethren who had departed that year, sitting in the chapter-house, according to custom. The cellarer, affrighted at such a vision, began to fly, but at the abbot's command he was seized by the brethren, and brought into the chapter-house. He was first reproved for the sin of avarice, and then severely beaten with scourges, after which the abbot said, with a stern countenance, "It is too presumptuous in any one to seek after the profit to arise from the death of another, especially as death is common to all;" and added, “that it was an impious thing when a monk had passed all his days in holy offices, that he should be deprived, after his death, of the necessary nourishment of a single year." He then said, "Depart, for thou shalt soon die, and reform all the monks whom thy avarice has corrupted by thy example." The monk therefore went to his companions, and gave evi

dence that it was no vain delusion which he had witnessed, as well by the marks of recent stripes, as by his death, which followed shortly after.

A.D. 1099.

Narrative of the Death of William Rufus, and the Prodigies which at

tended it.

In the year of our Lord 1100, William, king of England, surnamed "the red," having kept with great pomp his Christmas at Gloucester, his Easter at Chichester, and his Pentecost at London,-on the day after that of St Peter ad vincula, went into the new forest to hunt, when Walter Tyrrell, aiming at a stag, unintentionally smote the king with an arrow, who, pierced through the heart, fell without speaking a word, and thus ended a cruel life by a miserable death. Several prodigies also preceded his decease. For the same king, the day before this event, saw in a dream his own blood issue out as from the stroke of a lancet, the stream whereof spouted up to the sky, overshadowing the sun, and darkening the brightness of the firmament. As soon as he was awakened, he called on the Virgin Mary, and having a light brought, and forbidding those of his chamber to depart from him, he passed the rest of the night without sleep. But in the morning, when the day broke, a certain monk, a foreigner, who followed the royal court on the business of his church, related to Robert Fitzhamon (a man of influence, and a familiar of the king's) a wonderful and terrible vision which appeared to him the same night. For in his sleep he saw the king enter a certain church, and, with a haughty and insolent mien, as he was wont, look on the standers by; then seizing a crucifix with his teeth, he began gnawing the arms and legs till he had almost destroyed them; all which the crucifix endured for a time, but at last struck the king with its right foot, insomuch that he fell backwards on the pavement-and he then beheld a flame issue from the mouth of the prostrate king, which extended itself so widely, that the cloud of smoke, like a great

Cellarer. This was the appellation given to an officer, "who was to be the father of the whole society, had the care of every thing relating to the food of the monks, and vessels of the cellar, kitchen, and repertory." See Fosbrooke's History of Monachism (page 177), where the duties attached to this office are accurately and minutely detailed. In the original he is called "Cellarius sive Promus."

shadow, rolled to the sky. This vision, when Robert Fitzhamon related it to the king, he only laughed, and redoubling his shouts of laughter, said, "he is a monk, and has dreamed like a monk for the sake of a fee. Pay him a hundred shillings, that he may not complain that his was an empty dream."

Howbeit, the king himself dreamed another dream the night before his death, wherein he saw a most beautiful child laid out upon an altar, and being hungry beyond measure, and urged by vehement inclination, he went up and began eating of that infant's flesh, which appeared to him delicious when he had tasted it; but when he was about to indulge still further his voracious appetite, the child turned towards him with a fierce countenance, and threatening voice, exclaiming, "hold! you have had too much already." The king consulted a certain bishop in the morning on the subject of this dream; and the bishop, suspecting the cause of such a judgment, admonished him to desist from persecuting the church; "for this," he added, "was a forewarning of Heaven, and a merciful chastisement-neither, as thou hast designed to do, go to hunt this day." The king, slighting this salutary admonition, went into the wood to hunt, notwithstanding. And lo! by accident, a great stag running before the king, he exclaimed to a knight who was by his side, Walter Tyrrell by name, "shoot devil," whereupon instantly parted from the bow that arrow, (of which it may well and truly be said, as if it had been prophetically written,

"Et semel emissum volat irrevocabile te

lum.")

and glancing against a tree which sent it back in an oblique direction, it pierced the heart of the king, who fell dead to the earth at the same instant. The people who were with him fled different ways, that unfortunate knight being foremost. But a few of them returning, found the body lying bathed in its own blood, and beginning to mortify, and placing it on a miserable coalman's car which happened to pass that way, drawn by a half-starved horse, compelled the poor peasant to convey it to the city. On its way thither, passing through a deep and clayey road, the carriage broke down,

and the now stiff and stinking corpse was left in the road for those who were so disposed to carry away.

In the same hour, the Earl of Cornwall, hunting in a wood two days journey distant, being left by his companions, met a great hairy black goat, carrying on its back the king discoloured and naked, and pierced through the body by a grizly wound. And the goat, being adjured by the Triune God to discover what thing it was, answered, "I bear away to judgment your king, even the tyrant William the Red, for I am a malignant spirit, and the avenger of that raging malice with which he persecuted the church of Christ; and it was I who contrived his death, by the orders of Alban, the blessed protomartyr of England, who made his complaint to the Lord, that in the isle of Britain, of which he was the original sanctifier, this king's evil deeds passed all measure of forgiveness." This adventure the Earl immediately related to his companions, and, in the space of three days, he found all things to be true as the vision had warned him, by means of Over and above ocular witnesses. these several prodigies, the earth emitted fountains of blood in various quarters, by way of further foretokening the event which was to take place.Also Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, who had been banished to parts beyond sea for three years by his tyranny, came about the kalends of August from Rome to Marcenniacum to enjoy the converse of St Hugh, the bishop of Clugny; where, on occasion of some discourse between them concerning King William being had, that venerable abbot bore witness to the truth in these words, saying, "last night I beheld that same king brought before the throne of God, and accused, and heard the sentence of damnation pronounced against him." But in what manner these things had come to his knowledge, neither the archbishop, nor any that were there present at that time inquired, such was the awe with which the abbot's eminent sanctity inspired them. The following day the archbishop, having departed thence, proceeded to Lyons; and the next morning, while the monks were singing the matin-song in his presence, lo! a youth delicately attired, and of a serene countenance, stood by the side of one of the arch

bishop's clerks, as he lay in bed near the door of his chamber, and had closed his eyes, but was not yet asleep "Adam!" he cried, "sleepest thou?" Whereto the clerk answered that he did not. "Wilt thou hear of things that are new," said the vision; and the clerk said, 66 willingly." Whereupon straightway the vision replied, "know then this thing for certain the discord which has fallen out between the archbishop and King William is at rest for ever." At this

the clerk, becoming more alert, raised his head, but when his eyes were open could see nobody.-The night after, as one of the monks belonging to the same archbishop's company was chanting his matins, behold! one offered him a scroll of parchment to read, whereon he saw these words written, "obiit Rex Willelmus." And, when he looked up, he saw none besides his companions. In a very short time afterwards the king's death was announced to the archbishop.

Transactions of the Dilettanti Society of Edinburgh,

No II.

Viator's Letters on the History and Progress of the Fine Arts. LETTER II.

MR NORTH, WITH your permission I will now resume my "observations on the history and progress of the fine arts." It has often been remarked, that many other circumstances besides the endowment of genius are requisite to form a great man, whether in arts or arms, in business or in policy. What these are with respect to artists I shall not, at present, stop to inquire, nor is it, indeed, necessary; for the sketch which I gave in my last letter, relative to the progress of the arts prior to the appearance of Raphael, contains a sufficient comment on the subject. But all favourable circumstances are, without patronage, nugatory; and the genius of Raphael would have languished and expired-" sunk into the grave unpitied and unknown," had he appeared in any other province of Christendom but Italy. In that country alone, at that time, the arts were studied in their true spirit, and applied to their proper purpose, not merely as the decorations of grandeur, but in the visible illustration of religion and history.

The munificence of the priesthood drew forth the latent energies of talent for the one, and the pride and taste of the nobility fostered the effects directed to the other. It was, however, the good fortune of Raphael, while he met with a degree of encouragement, such as few artists ever obtained, to be allowed the free exercise of his genius, to embody, not only in

his own way, the conception which he formed of his subjects, but even to choose whatever subject seemed most agreeable to his particular taste and fancy. The dispute on the sacrament and its companion, the school of Athens, he painted before he had attained his twenty-eighth year, and I know not two works, either in art or in literature, that evince a more clear perception of human nature than these truly mas terly productions. Placed at Rome in the centre of a splendid and refined court, surrounded by the intellectual and the powerful, the reverend and the honourable of the earth, he seems to have contemplated, with singular faculties of discernment, the grand of the human character, and to have transferred the result of his observations to his canvas with the felicity of a creative hand; and yet in the midst of this effulgence of superior genius, we may trace the skilful adaptation of great professional learning, showing with what care he studied the works of his predecessors, and with what industry he must have previously devoted himself to the imitation of their beauties.

In the upper part of the dispute on the sacrament, something may be discovered of the superb taste of Bartholomeo in drapery with that hardness of outline which the artist had acquired from his first master Perugino, but in the general aggregate of the work we perceive the power and happiness of his own peculiar genius. The

school of Athens is more purely his own production, and being free from the traces of imitation, is, upon the whole, a more perfect work.

The pictures which he executed immediately after these, with the exception of his Heliodorus, which, perhaps, in dignity and enlargement of style, is superior to them both, are marked with the negligences of a more careless pencil. This has been attributed, not without plausibility, to the dissipated habits into which he was at that time allured, by the mistaken kindness of his admirers and the patrons of his talents. They drew him from his studies into company, and forgot, that every moment which he spent in their convivial entertainment, subtracted something from his ability, and tended to impair his fame. His mind, however, was of too high a cast to be entirely enslaved by their dan gerous adulation, and, with an effort that could not have been performed without a strong inherent taste for purity and virtue, he broke from the Circean enchantment of dissipation, and resumed the proper path of his glorious destiny. The Cartoons at Hampton Court, and the Transfiguration, are the monuments at once of his repentance and his power. And here I am enabled to present you, Sir, with a very curious piece of criticism on the latter production, from the pen of no less a personage than the probable author of the celebrated letters of Junius. It was transmitted to a friend of mine, and it serves to show that what has ever hitherto been considered as a fault in the Transfiguration, is, perhaps, its greatest and most skillfully contrived beauty. Be this, however, as it may, the critique is a literary curiosity, not merely on account of the pen from which it has come, but the intellectual acumen which it exhibits.

"The title of this picture is a misnomer. The picture tells you it is the Ascension.The transfiguration is another incident which

happened long before the ascension, and is recited in the ninth chapter of St Luke, when the countenance of Jesus was changed, and he became 'Ersgov, and his clothing was white and lightened. The robe of the ascending Christ is blue.

"The painter brings different incidents together to constitute one plot. The picture consists of three different groups, combined or united in one scheme or action.

1. Jesus ascending perpendicularly into the air, clothed in blue raiment, and attended by two other figures.

2. Some of his disciples on the mount, who see the ascent, and lie dazzled and confounded by the sight.

3. A number of persons at the bottom of the mount, who appear to look intently on a young man possessed by a devil and convulsed; none of them see the ascension, but the young man, or rather the devil who On all similar occais in him, does see it. sions these fallen angels know the Christ and acknowledge him. The other figures are agitated with astonishment and terror, variously and distinctly expressed in every one of them at the sight of the effect which they see is made upon him by some object which they do not see. This is the sublime imagination by which the lower part of the picture is connected with the upper."+

Had the life of Raphael, which closed on his birth-day, in his thirtyseventh year, been prolonged to the period of Leonardo da Vinci, Michel Angelo, or Titian, when in so short a time he produced so many great, so many unrivalled works, to what excellence might he not have carried the art!

The next eminent artist who comes under our consideration is Titian.The grandeur which Michel Angelo gave to the human figure-Titian has rivalled in colouring. But I do not propose, on the present occasion, to investigate the merits of his colouring, but to pursue the consideration of the intellectual powers of the artists whom it falls within the scope of my present purpose to notice. It is the mental, not the mechanical department of the art to which I wish, in this historical Perview, to draw your attention.

* In the common version thus: "And, as he prayed, the fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment was white and glistering. And, behold, there talked with him two men, which were Moses and Elias; who appeared in glory, and spake of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem. But Peter and they that were with him were heavy with sleep; and when they were awake, they saw his glory, and the two men that stood with him.

+ We possess some curious facts about Junius, which, on some other occasion, we may be permitted to divulge.

haps at some other time you may give me" room and verge enough" to treat of that also. I shall, therefore, pass over the numerous portraits of Titian, and only notice one of those works in which the mind was even more employed than the hand-for example, his St Peter martyr, which, perhaps, as a composition, may deserve to be ranked among the finest conceptions of genius; in execution it had no superior. As the legend on which it is founded is not much known in our presbyterian region, it may be necessary to give you some account of it.

This St Peter was the head of a religious sect in some part of a foreign country, but the particular place I really cannot exactly tell; and on his way from Germany to Milan, with a companion, he was attacked by an adversary to his religious opinions while passing through a wood and murdered. His death is the subject of the picture.

The prostrate figure of the saint just fallen beneath a blow from the assassin, raises one of his hands towards heaven with a countenance of confidence in eternal reward for the firmness of his faith; while the assassin grasps with his left hand the mantle of the victim, the better to enable him, by his uplifted sword in the other, to give the fatal blow. The companion is seen flying off in terror, having received a wound on the head. The ferocious and determined action of the murderer, bestriding his victim, completes a group of figures which have not their rival in art, no not even in the Laocoon. The majestic trees of the wood, as well as the dark and shaggy furze, form an awful and appropriate back-ground, in deep and dreadful harmony with the tragedy of the subject.

The heavenly messengers seen in the glory above, bearing the palm branches, the emblems of reward for martyrdom, form the second light of the subject. The first is the sky and cloud which give relief to the black drapery of the wounded companion. The rays from the celestial effulgence above, sparkling on the gloomy branches and foliage of the trees, like so many diamonds, link, as it were, together, all the other gradations of light from the top to the bottom of the picture.

The terror which the murderer has spread, is denoted by the speed of the horseman passing into the dark recesses of a distant part of the forest.

This picture is the first work in art, wherein the human figure and the scene are combined as an historical landscape, where all the objects are the full size of nature.

It is unnecessary, Sir, I presume, to remind you, that this sublime production was greatly damaged while in the possession of the French. The vessel, you will recollect, in which it was shipped, with other plunder of Venice, in passing down the Adriatic Sea, was chased by one of our cruizers, a shot from which struck the picture, and shivered the panel on which it was painted.

The next great master, in point of time and rank to Titian, is Corregio. Enthusiasm, in contemplating his works, might be almost led to fancy that he had received his instructions in another and a better world. His figures seem to belong to a higher race of beings than man, and possess a holiness and grace of semblance too celestial for this earth. His celebrated Note is a fine illustration of his peculiar taste and sentiment. The idea of representing the body of the infant Jesus as resplendent, is not only a sublime poetical conception, considering that he was sent to illuminate the mind from Pagan darkness, but a beautiful allegory, told, if the expresssion may be allowed, with all the propriety of a classical mythologist.

The inspiring power of Corregio's genius is always supposed to have had a great effect on the mind of Parmegiano, whose graceful figures have so much ease and motion, that they have rarely been equalled. His Moses breaking the tables, and the vision of St Gierolimo, are full of the impress of intellectual power, and works of the first class of art.

After these great masters, the decline of the general prosperity of Italy caused a falling off in the arts for some time. They began, however, to revive again under the three Carracci at Bologna, and the names of Guido, Dominichino, and Guercino, may in some respects be deservedly placed with those elder worthies, to whose peculiar powers I have so particularly drawn your attention. Where I can refer to examples, I will not

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