cool, and Bernard watches anxiously. As it hardens, it grows white. At length it is cold; it is the long-sought enamel : "singularly beautiful" to the longing eyes of Palissy. With what joy he turned his steps homeward that day one can easily imagine.

In possession of the secret, the next question was, how to make use of it. Palissy did not deem the housewives of that day worthy of enamelled cooking utensils, and he therefore disdained to expend his skill on the jars and pipkins which the neighbouring potteries could furnish. Without ornamental pottery his enamel was useless, so he set himself to make vessels suitable for his purpose, and this labour cost him seven or eight months. These vessels must next be baked, and straightway we find Palissy toiling at the construction of a furnace, such as he had seen at the glass-house. His finances were now so low that he could not procure himself the help even of one man; he had to carry the bricks on his back, to temper the mortar, and to erect the works with his own hands. The first baking of his cups was successful, but the more difficult task was yet to come. For more than a month he worked night and day in preparing the materials of "that beautiful enamel," and, carefully applying it on his vessels, he put them in to bake. Six days and nights he watched and fed the fires, but the enamel did not melt. Suspecting an error in the proportions of his compound, he began to grind and pound afresh, and all the while fed the insatiable double-mouthed furnace, that it might not cool.

The fresh compound being ready, he was forced to purchase pots on which to try it, for his own were all lost by the last failure. These being prepared were put in, and the whole of his remaining stock of wood was thrust into the furnace. Anxiously he watches, but no sign of melting appears. The fire is burning low; what is to be done? He has neither fuel, nor money to purchase it. There was no time to be lost; now or never, thought Palissy; so he tore up the palings of his garden, and they were soon consumed by the devouring element: but all in vain. Half frantic, he rushed into his house, and, bringing forth the tables, broke them in pieces and cast them into the furnace. Still no change in the inexorable chemicals. Once more he appears before his astonished household, and, tearing up the flooring of the little dwelling, consigns it likewise to the flames. His resources, and the demand upon them, are at an end together-the enamel is melted.

Another such victory and I am undone !" was the exclamation of Pyrrhus after a battle with the Romans; and in such a spirit might poor Palissy have spoken of his hardlyearned triumph. He had succeeded in producing a beautiful white enamel, but it glistened only on fragments of broken pottery, which were of little account in the eyes of his practical wife. Exhausted by the heat of the furnace, and the excessive labour he had undergone, Palissy turned to enter his dwelling. Alas! it had been dismantled by his own hands; while his wife, she "from whom solace was due," as he touchingly expresses it, had run to proclaim publicly the insane conduct of her husband, and to incite vulgar mockery against him whose sins she should have tenderly covered. Poverty and reproaches saddened him at home, while the finger of ridicule everywhere met him abroad, and for a time his soul fed upon its griefs; but soon again he was up and at work. Having made drawings of such vessels as suited his purpose, he hired a potter to execute his designs, and once more set about the erection of a furnace. His means being quite exhausted, and the potter discharged, he was forced to build it himself, with incredible labour, out of the materials of the former furnace. Borrowing money for the purchase of wood and chemicals, he had now, at length, a fair prospect of success, and confidently reckoned on the proceeds of the batch to clear his debts and give bread to his household. His creditors hastened to the furnace in the morning when the time for drawing out arrived. But alas! alas! an unforeseen misfortune had destroyed all his hopes. The mortar employed in the brickwork had been full of flints, and the intense heat had caused them to explode, while at the same time it had liquified the enamel. The cups and medallions were, in con

sequence, stuck all over with sharp fragments of flint, and thus, though otherwise very beautiful, were entirely spoiled. Some there were who offered to buy them at a mean price, but Palissy preferred to break them in pieces with his own hands; and then he lay down on his bed in melancholy- not in peace, however, for we hear some hints of maledictions added this time to the reproaches.

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But, reflecting that "if a man had fallen into a pit, it would be his duty to endeavour to get out again," Palissy arose at once, and gaining a little money by painting and in other ways," expelled want for a season from his hearth. Many times more he laboured, and saw his work destroyed by some unforeseen mischance. But he was gaining knowledge by these bitter experiences, and gradually approaching the mastery of his art. During fifteen or sixteen years he "blundered" on, as he himself tells us, but for the last six or eight of these he accomplished works which had a ready sale, and supplied him with means not only to maintain his household, but to carry on his experiments. Vigorous, indeed, must have been the frame that could endure such labour, and execute the behests of that dauntless spirit. But "sweat of the brain" and sweat of the arm" had sapped the strong man in those days of sorrow. He tells us that for ten years together he was wasted and worn to a shadow; but most keenly of all he felt the isolation of soul in which he lived. "I often walked about the fields of Saintes," he says, "considering my miseries and weariness, and wondering, above all things, that in my own house I could have no peace, nor do anything that was considered good." True misalliance this-where a noble soul of either sex is mated with one that has sympathy neither for its sorrows nor its aspirations. True solitude-where there is association without companionship, and personal intercourse without communion of spirit.

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It is curious to find, in looking at the history of one who lived three centuries ago, that with all the difference produced by the manners of a time so far distant, men and women were then very much what they are now. A curtain lecture seems a modern thing, and brings up before us the image of Mrs. Caudle; but if the dead could speak, poor Palissy might tell us "there is nothing new under the sun." After recounting the hardships which attended his labours, chiefly because he had not means to protect his furnaces from the inclemency of the weather; and how, many times, at midnight or near dawn, he went to bed cold and weary, "filled with great sorrows," inasmuch as, having laboured long, he saw his labour wasted - he adds, "then I have found in my chamber a second persecution worse than the first, which makes me to marvel now that I was not consumed with suffering." But we would not deal too hardly with the failings of Palissy's wife; it would have required the devotion of a true-hearted woman to last through nearly ten years of failure and defeat. We will add but one word more, and rest content to leave to our fair readers the judgment of her sins. One night, the wind being high, and the rain falling in torrents, Palissy found that the poor hut which sheltered his furnace would no longer resist the inclemency of the weather. His precious cups and vases would be destroyed by either cold or wet, and something must be done. Entering the house he sought about for what might suit his purpose, and failing to mect with anything more portable, he carried off his wife's chamber door! We should be glad to know where is the American matron that would not be indignant at such usage!

Palissy now began to take heart to call himself a potter. No longer weighed down by poverty, he was able to procure assistance in his work, and the nobility of the province were eager to purchase the beautiful productions of his skill. The name which he assumed for himself was that of "Worker in Earth and Inventor of Rustic Figulines." These figulines were models from nature, of animals, reptiles, and plants, with which he adorned cups or vases. Palissy was an ardent lover of nature; from his youth he had delighted to wander in the forest, through the meadow, or by the sea-shore; nor was it with an uninquiring eye that he gazed upon the wonders they present. He was a close observer and a careful

analyser; and in the beautiful adaptations and contrivances which he everywhere discovered in creation, he devoutly recognised the care which the Maker has exercised for all his creatures, and the wisdom which presides in every department of the universe. So fully did the artist prove himself the naturalist, that, as his biographer remarks, "his leaves and reptiles, and other rustic designs, are so copied, in form and colour, with minute accuracy, that the species of each can be determined accurately. There has been found scarcely a fancy leaf, and not one lizard, butterfly, or beetle, not one bit of nature transferred to the works of Palissy, which does not belong to the rocks, woods, rivers, and seas of France."

We have been so intent on watching the experiments which were carried on by Palissy, that we have not even cast a glance at the affairs of the outer world. Thus it was that Palissy himself would fain have lived; forgetting in his study of nature and his researches in art the sorrows and distractions of his native land. All minor factions were then being merged in the two great parties of Catholic and Huguenot. And as Palissy stood in the light of his glowing furnace, his soul had burned within him at the thought, that other fires were being kindled in France, not for purposes of science or of art, but in the vain attempt to purge the land from "heresy." But while he sought to keep aloof from scenes of suffering in which he could neither restrain wrong-doers, nor protect the weak, he yet fearlessly asserted in his own person the right of free speech and free action. We have a touching chronicle from his own modest pen of the first Reformed Church of Saintes: "A certain artisan, marvellously poor and indigent," already known to us as a diligent and reverent student of the Book of Nature, met daily with "another as poor as himself," to search the pages of that other divine volume, the Book of Life. The small beginning grew; the "little one" became a "thousand," and after a time Saintes was largely leavened with the purifying doctrines of the Gospel. Sometimes the members of the little church stole at dead of night to the secret rendezvous; but the days grew brighter, and, as Palissy tells us, the fields and groves of Saintes echoed with the sweet voices of virgins "who delighted to sing of all holy things."

The storm came at last, however. It swept over Saintes, and Palissy's home did not escape. He was seized at night, and hurried to a dungeon.

If this had happened in the days of unsuccessful toil, Palissy's name would have been quickly entered in God's Book of Martyrs; but his noble patrons could not afford to let his beautiful art perish. The works which he had in progress for the Constable Montmorencie and the Duc de Montpensier would have come to an abrupt termination if the hand of the cunning workman had been suffered to grow cold in death. Palissy was appointed "Inventor of Rustic Figulines to the King and the Constable," and was, of course, immediately set at liberty. This was in the year 1562, the date of the massacre of St. Bartholomew.

Another year or two the potter carried on the practice of his art at Saintes, and then removed to Paris. The Palace of the Tuileries was then in course of erection for Catherine de Medecis, and he was employed in its decoration. All that we know of the remaining years of his life in the licentious capital is highly interesting. Collecting around him such lovers of science and literature as could be found in the precincts of Henry the Third's riotous court, he delivered a course of lectures, in which he propounded his discoveries in science, his own rich collection of specimens serving him for illustration. He continued this practice for many years, and in 1580 published some of these lectures, together with a treatise on agriculture. Two other volumes from his pen had before, at intervals of some years, issued from the press. The first, a medical treatise, is lost; the others which remain prove Palissy to have been far in advance of his age, and establish his claim to many discoveries in chemistry, geology, and natural history.

During his years of court favour, as in his rustic retirement, the Huguenot potter fearlessly avowed his religious opinions. It was the fashion to patronise " poor Master Bernard, of the

Tuileries," and for a long while he stood unharmed. But in the year 1585, a royal edict was issued which made death the penalty of exercising the Reformed faith. The noble old man, then seventy-six years of age, had served the crown for forty years, but was forced to abandon for the Bastile the laboratory which his genius had enriched with gems of art. Yet, even the rude hands which spared not tender virgins, hesitated to strike Palissy. He had passed three years within those gloomy walls when he received, one day, a visit from the king.

"My good man," said Henry, "you have been forty-five years in the service of the queen, my mother, or in mine, and we have suffered you to live in your own religion, amidst all the executions and the massacres. Now, however, I am so pressed by the Guise party and my people, that I have been compelled, in spite of myself, to imprison these two poor women [fair girls-guilty of heresy] and you; they are to be burnt tomorrow, and you also if you will not be converted." "Sire," answered the old man, "the Count de Maulverier came yesterday, on your part, promising life to the two sisters They replied, that they would now be martyrs for their own honour, as well as for the honour of God. You have said several times that you feel pity for me; but it is I who pity you, who have said, 'I am compelled.' That is not speaking like a king. These girls and I, who have part in the kingdom of heaven, we will teach you to talk royally. The Guisarts, all your people, and yourself, cannot compel a potter to bow down to images of clay."

The sisters were burned as the king had said, but Palissy was spared the fiery trial. After four years of captivity he died in the Bastile.

With the potter perished his beautiful art. Two sons survived him; but the genius which presided in his laboratory had departed with Bernard Palissy.

THE POET'S MISSION.

BY W. J. LINTON.

"The Poet's mission Is but prophetic vision: To him the daring heart is grantedNot the hand."

From the German of Herwegh.

Learn higher apprehending

Of the Poet's task!

To him are God and Nature lending
Ore of mighty thought,

That for such use as the world's need may ask,
Fit iron may be wrought.

The passionate impulse furnaced

In the Poet's heart

Must weld stern work and action earnest :

Poet word and deed

In harmony that he may take God's part, And earn a true life's meed.

Clear vision ever lendeth

Faith to his life:

Then only he his mission comprehendeth,
When he can wield his soul
Or to creative thought or the daily strife,
With artist-like control,

Not in the purer heaven
Of his own thought

To dwell, enparadised, to him was given
The poet-fire:

But that a grander, truer life be wrought,
The world exampled higher.

Not only do God's angels

Behold him with clear eyes:

But day and night they speed his dread evangels
Over the world;

Their seraph-wings of act and sacrifice
Eternally unfurl'd.

[ENGRAVED BY H. LINTON AND G. PEARSON.

INTERIOR OF ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL DURING THE INTERMENT OF THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON, NOVEMBER 18, 1852.