living Saul had done, and the demons believed that he lived, and laboured on. But the white ants came, and grew bold as he moved not, and they devoured the wood of the staff on which the dead Saul leaned and the staff crumbled and fell down, and the dead body of King Saul fell also, then the demons saw and knew that their master was dead, and they gave one loud shout of triumph, so that such a sound was never heard before, and they fled home. And Prince Affghan left the unfinished palace, which he had no workmen to complete, and wandered into Affghanistan, where he founded a great kingdom, and all his children and his subjects spoke his tongue, which is the tongue of the demons." "So we are to fight with the friends of the demons, who, no doubt, will lend their help to their allies, and give the word of command in this exquisite tongue which none of us understand. It is hardly fair play, especially as I dare say these delightful foes of ours are informed first by their allies which of us are to fall before them. We will try what mortal steel and lead will do to battle against their prophecies." "At this instant," said the stranger, "the demons know well which of you will fall in battle with the Affghans; and it is granted to mortal eye to share in this knowledge, the powers of nature invisible in their origin are so subject in this visible world, and each of you may read his doom of death or life for himself, and with the eye of flesh." "Are we to see our apparitions pass before us?" asked two or three officers at once. The stranger without replying led the way out of the tent into the open air. All the of ficers followed, curious to see the end of this kind of eastern fortune-telling, as they esteemed it. Words of admiration broke from some of them at the remarkable beauty of the night. Nothing | could be more resplendent than the sky, every star was visible, not the slightest rack of cloud dimmed the full effulgence of light. The stranger pointed to the northern quarter of the heavens. "There is a star there," said he, "the ray of life and light from which does not reach the eve that will not long be quickened by the universal principle of life. The first failing in the powers of life is here, the eye that can see this star, may sparkle long and brightly, but for him who sees it not, the shadow of the Angel of Death lies black upon the snow of Affghanistan." It was the "Star of Destiny" of which he spoke. "Show us the star" was the universal cry from his listeners. "You see that great bright star to which I point?" "Yes, distinctly; is that the Star of Destiny? we all see it!" "A little to the left of that star, just above it, is a smaller star-who sees that?" Silence ensued: many, after a long and anxious gaze, declared finally that they did not see it, and believed it was all a hoax several said they had a long sight, as was well known VOL. I. to their friends around them, they saw all the stars they were accustomed to as brilliantly as possible, more clearly than usual; it was impossible there should be a star in the place indicated to them; one or two, on the contrary, declared they certainly saw the star. repeatedly and clearly; there was no imposition on the part of the stranger, the star was certainly shining brightly, exactly in the spot he described, but the seers were much in the minority. The stranger himself expressed surprise at the great proportion of those who professed themselves unable to see it. Finally, it was agreed that the names of each party, those who did not see, and those who saw the, star should be written down, and delivered to the keeping of a civilian in Bombay, that the results of the Affghanistan expedition might decide the question of the "Star of Destiny." Of the party of twenty-two, there were found eighteen of the former and only four of the latter. The name of William Howard was in the first list. The spirits of the party who had a slight tincture of superstition were much raised by finding that the proportion of non-seers was so much the larger. It far exceeded any proportion of British officers who had hitherto fallen in open warfare in India, and they were too confident in British power, to believe it could be realized. The faith of the whole party in the prophecy much damped by this great disproportion, which seemed to deprive the question to be resolved of its probability and of its zest, the whole group returned, to the tent. Just at the door, William Howard looked back at the place where he had endeavoured in vain to see the "Star of Destiny." "It is strange," said he, "but I see the star now, though I could not before, yet there was no cloud, I see it clearly and steadily." "Write down what the young man says on the sheet you leave in Bombay," said the stranger. "Your thread of life will be bruised, but not broken; I rejoice in it.” But four months had passed from the time I have spoken of, from the departure of this. portion of the British troops for Cabul, when a wretched, solitary figure crawled in the utmost exhaustion into Jellalabad. His limbs, torn by the hardships of the road, bleeding from many wounds, his clothes rent, burned by the sun, and blinded by the snow he had passed through, William Howard, the sole survivor of the gallant band who were cut to pieces at Jugdulluk, rushed into the arms of his fellow-soldiers which were eagerly opened to receive him. The first bearer of the dreadful tidings of the fate of our arms in Affghanistan, he was eagerly questioned, but he could only assure them of. the safety of four officers of his detachment, who had been given up as hostages before leaving Cabul, when the surgeon enjoining silence, commenced the examination of his wounds. "I think none are very deep," said poor Howard; "the last ball I received from an Affghan would have shot through my heart, but something hard in my breast-pocket, here deadened it." 22 "How providential!" cried the surgeon, as | he drew out the Afghan's ball from the singed and blackened leaves of a little red morocco book next Howard's heart. It was the Bible his mother had given him. He sank on his knees in prayer as he kissed its pages. Reader, for the truth of the tale I have related, I appeal confidently to the recollection of many officers who have served in India in the Affghanistan war, and elsewhere before it commenced. The tradition of the origin of the Affghan race and language is from their own lips: and the Indian belief in the "Star of Destiny," is known from the natives by many Europeans, though I purposely forbear giving any further clue to it. The party of twenty-two officers who agreed to test the truth of the tale they heard in their own persons, eighteen of whom failed to see it, just before being called upon active service, and four distincly saw it, the writing down of their names, the death of those eighteen, ten by the sword, and eight by illness, the survi| val of their four companions-all these are true THE ADVENTURES OF A PICTURE. BY CAPTAIN MEDWIN. TRAVELLING many years ago in the South of France, I inquired at a small town, whose name has now escaped me, whether it contained any pictures, public or private. My host replied in the affirmative; and under the guidance of a ragged urchin, I found myself, after a walk of four miles through muddy lanes. at the gates of a chateau. From the account which the boy, who was communicator, gave of its owner, en route, I was led to suppose him either a misanthrope or a hypochondriac: and the pitiable condition of the house, and the long grass waving between the interstices of the flagstones that paved the court-yard, tended to confirm me in this opinion. I, therefore, to the sight of some Watteau, or Le Brun, or, perhaps, Karl de Jardin, or Mignard, or Greuse, expected to add that of a living curiosity. Great, however, was my surprise, on being ushered into the gallery, to recognise, in the "Seigneur de Village,' friend whom I had not seen or heard of for twenty years: he having changed his name with this estate, inherited from a distant relative. The Count and myself frequently met at Rome and Florence: and had been, in more than one instance, rivals for works of art; but his affections were divided. If a connoisseur, he was also a religious enthusiast. Often and often, in visiting one of the three hundred and sixty-five churches which the City of the Faithful boasts, have I seen this French dévot kneeling before some Madonna, or with uplifted eyes rapt in contemplation of an Assumption of the Virgin, and half fancying himself borne by the skirts of her robe to heaven. a strictly devotional. Among them were many undoubted originals; but they depicted, with such circumstantial minuteness, the sufferings of St. Sebastian, St. Agnes, and other worthies, as chronicled in the Martyrology, not to speak of Infernos and Purgatorios, that their merit, as works of art, wa's forgotten in the unmitigated pain they produced in me, which I could not altogether disguise. The Count was grievously disappointed; but he was determined to have his revanche, and had it. Supper, the principal meal among the French, ended, and a bottle of exquisite Bordeaux (Comet wine) scarcely discussed, my host, who like a picture-dealer or auctioneer, had reserved his chef d'œuvre to the last, said "I have one more treasure to shew you. Come!" I followed somewhat reluctantly, and after many windings, we entered a chapel brilliantly illuminated, where, over the altar, a green veil hid from the gaze profane the mysterious picture, which I had been brought, at what I deemed so unseasonable a moment, to admire. The obstacle being removed, my eyes rested on a painting such as I have never beheld, which I firmly believe excels whatever yet was looked upon, or hand of man hath done. Shall I call it a painting or a reality?—a woman or a goddess? I needed now no other proof to be convinced of the empire of imagination over art, or rather how much the ideal excels the actual. I fully comprehended what the ancient writer meant by saying of a hero, that he as far surpassed his son as a statue does a man. Absorbed in such contemplations, I stood riveted to the spot, gazing with all my soul on this apparition, till I gifted her with life-thought that the bosom actually rose and sunk, and the limbs moved from beneath the folds that flowed around them. If such was the effect on me, could I wonder that some poor penitent should deem that this Madonna might listen to her prayers, and look on her with eyes beaming forth pity and tenderness and consolation? Meantime, I had not once thought of the Count: he had been lying motionless on the steps of the altar. At length he rose, and, with three pros: trations, replaced the curtain, and beckoning to me, led the way out of the chapel, carefully locking the door, as a miser does that of his chest, when I had passed. We neither of us spoke till we were reseated at table. There we could talk of nothing but the picture, whilst we emptied flask after flask of his Lafitte. At length, his heart was opened, and he said | to treat the subject with mystery; and in order to make me the principal figure in the piece, placed me on a sort of throne, as you see, surrounded by a throng of patriarchs, sibyls, and angels. "Scarcely had a year elapsed after the mighty painter's untimely removal from this world when I was attacked by a rapid consumption, and fell a victim to its inroads. As it is permitted to those translated to a better sphere occasionally to visit what is dearest to them below, so it was fated that I should, by way of a purgatory for early sins-for I had too much loved the Lares and Penates of old were, a blessing and a safeguard to our house, making honour and virtue the characteristics of the Colonnas. "Nor did my good offices stop here. As the fame of The Annunciation got abroad, our chapel, of which I was the presiding genius, became thronged with the first and noblest, and through my powerful mediation, the weak were strengthened, the wavering supported, and the afflicted consoled. Nor let me omit to mention that my glory was still further enhanced, when, on the great festivals and solemn occasions, carried in the processions, or suspended from the tapestried balcony of our palace, I received the homage of assembled Rome. "Many years have now elapsed since I have lived here in the strictest retirement. Those years seem to me but a day. They have fled, winged with ever new delight, full of a sweet intoxication. You smile. I allude not to the fumes of wine, but to my intercourse with that--animate this "dead likeness:" becoming what picture-to my companionship with it, which has been to me better than all society. Listen to me. Three summers ago, this very month, if not this very day, I had, till a later hour than usual, lingered in the chapel, and had no sooner retired to my couch than I fell into a trance, and under the influence of somnambulism, proceeded to my sanctuary. You have seen the Notte of Correggio, where the light proceeds from the Bambino; in like manner, the chapel was dazzlingly brilliant with a glory that issued from the Madonna. I was neither awe-struck nor surprised, when about to worship at the shrine, to see her stretch forth her hand in the act to raise me, nor-so prepared was I for a miracle-did I wonder to see her lips move, "But evil days came; and, alas! I must now and hear myself, in soft and silver tones, thus enter on the narration of my sad history. addressed :When the Gallic hordes, under the false "Your devotion has conquered my silence-pretence of liberty and equality and brotheryour more than mortal love prevailed-you | hood, swept down from the Alps and Apenshall hear my story and adventures.' Overcome by the remembrance of this scene, my friend here paused, and gave me time to glance rapidly in my mind over the relations, as told in romance, of portraits slipping out of their frames, of statues that walked and talked, and I was quite prepared to believe all that might follow. The Count seemed to read my thoughts with exultation, and thus continued the narrative of the Picture: "I am from the hand of Raphael; on the day that he was crowned in the capitol, after refusing the purple, that he might not be distracted by worldly cares from his immortal pursuit, I saw for the first time, that greatest of painters. At that moment I experienced what may be deemed an inspiration from above, and in obedience to its impulse, presented myself at the studio of the artist. Do not mistake me for a Fornarina-no, you behold the only daughter of the Prince Colonna! a name, great in itself, but still more ennobled in the page of Petrarch. "It is erroneously supposed that the last of Raphael's works was The Transfiguration. He afterwards painted one, and a greater-painted, I say, for of that divine picture I am the sole record-that picture was an Annunciation; and in compliance with the custom of the times, that the sacred personages should each have their living representatives, I sat for the Virgin. If the author had wished to commemorate that event historically, he would have represented her, as has been often done, in a simple room, with no other attendant save the Angel, bearing her emblem flower; but Raphael resolved nines upon our smiling plains, not even the Goth and the Vandal, who, at the sacking of the eternal city, encumbered the bed of the Tiber with the ruins of temples and the wreck. of statues, made a more barbarian abuse of conquest. Who can describe my horror, when a band of lawless soldiery burst into my sanctuary, laid their profane hands on the work of the divine Raphael, and cast lots, on the steps of the altar, to part it among them? I felt the knife-it seemed to lacerate and dissect me limb from limb: separating me from all that I loved-patriarchs, sibyls, angels, one by one were torn away, till I found myself in a frightful solitude, and not without a struggle and bloodshed. "Happy was it for me, great as my sufferings were, that I had not been painted in fresco, and immovably fixed to a wall, or I might have shared the destiny so many masterpieces of art were doomed to undergo in "the time of the French.' I shudder to think that I might else have been shut out from the light of day--"dark! unutterably dark!"-lost to the world for ever! My fate, indeed, was far from enviable. Sometimes, I lay smothered beneath a pile of baggage on the fourgon; or after a battle, always a victory, was dragged forth, diced for, The chapel that contained the Supper of Leo nardo da Vinci, was turned into a stable at Milan; and the beautiful medallions of Perrin del Vagaequal to any works of Julio Romano's--when it was made the quarter of the French general in command, were covered with distemper, and utterly obliterated. raffled for, and transferred, from hand to hand, till I fell into that of a heretic, who transported me to London, where I at length became pledged at a vile price, and deposited in a vile place, where you may suppose, when I tell you, that over the door hung the arms of the Medici. Here, nailed against the wainscot, I grew fa- | miliar with misery and degradation in all its forms; my cars assailed with profane jests and drunken laughter: my eyes not less shocked with the sight of the degraded beings who bartered their filthy rags-thrown afterwards contemptuously at my feet-for the means of supplying their necessities or their vices. After a twelvemonth, being unredeemed, I was exposed to public sale, and purchased by one of those unconscionable plunderers-a picture-dealer. By him I was dispatched to Leghorn, whence I was conveyed to Florence. Here, despised and rejected, I was made over to a broker, who hung me up, and not in the most conspicuous part of his stall, nor the best sheltered from the sun and wind and rain; and here, for four long years, no passer-by deigned to honour me with a look, much less to bid for me the lowest coin in the Tuscan dominions. "A canonico of the Dominican order, stricken in years. poor as an apostle, and remarkable for his saint-like piety, was seized with one of those malignant fevers common in the autumnal season, which he had taken by infection from a peasant in administering the last unction in extremis. As he lay on his sick pallet, and death stood in act to strike over his head, his niece, a lay sister of the Sancta Maria Novella, was unremitting in her attentions to him: and passing daily, in her way to the convent, the stall of which I have just spoken, bethought her of me, purchased me for two pauls, and hung me, fronting the good old man, over the crucifix in his cell. His eyes, already dim with the coming shadows of dissolution, were mechanically fixed on mine. 1 regarded him with a look of pity and affection. That look shot comfort into his soul. He prayed devoutly to the Virgin-I seconded his Prayers. From that moment his malady abated; and in fourteen days he resumed the holy offices of the church. But he did not forget her to whom he firmly believed he owed his recovery; nor did he forget me and after having collected several scudi by the contributions of pious communicants for the praiseworthy purpose, he deter mined on my restoration. I was now placed in the hands of an honest and excellent young painter, who, a rare thing in Florence, had, with a conscientious regard and veneration for the martyr, just completed the cleaning of an Andrea del Sarto, that formed the altarpiece of the Dominican Chapel. Had you beheld me on the eve of this operation, you would have shed over me heart-wrung tears. "I have detailed to you what I had suffered, now shudder to hear what I was! Blackened and begrimed with layer after layer of varnish and dust and smoke-my canvas mildewed by damp and pierced by worms-mutilated and disfigured; such was the ruin the artist was engaged to repair. When he began to tear me from my original canvas, and with a pallet knife to make the adhesions yield, in order afterwards to glue me on a new fond,' not the tomahawked Indian, Marsyas, nor the martyred Bartholomew, endured agonies more intense. Then, indeed, in utter despair, I deemed myself ruined and undone, torn in pieces, and irreparably destroyed. But no: after the manner of the practitioner, who, with steady hand, unerring eye-a full confi dence in his own skill, and a thorough knowledge of the nature of the disease-cruel only to be merciful-separates the morbid from the sound, and by the very wounds that he inflicts, restores the patient to renovated health-thus did the painter create for me a new constitution-lay the foundation, as it were, of a new life and being. This accomplished, he proceeded to remove, with certain cosmetics, the filth of centuries and this very accumulation was it which proved, as he had expected to find, my preservation; that alone tended to save me from decay. Inch after inch was developed, till, to my perceptible delight, I issued forth, like a butterfly from its chrysalis, glowing with im mortal youth-nay, more beautiful than I first appeared, fresh from the easel of the mastermy complexion richer, my robe more graceful and easy in every fold, and my whole mellowed and softened down into a more exquisite harmony of colouring. But on this I need not further enlarge-you see what I am. The discovery of a new work of Raphael was soon noised about Florence, and multitudes flocked, on all sides, to the studio of the artist. I was seen, admired, adored! All desired to possess me. An English nobleman was willing to cover me with pieces of gold, as my price, but he found a rival in you-a more successful competitor. The ten thousand scudi you offered were too great a temptation for the fortunate Canonico. With tears in his eyes, he counted out the coins, and handed me over to my new master. Since when, you know my fate-for you have made it.' At this moment, a bell of silver sound ringing through the chateau announced the vesper hour, and the Count, rising and waving his hand almost imperceptibly to me, hurried to the chapel. I now heard the pealing of an organ, and three voices, a bass, a tenor, and a treble, joining in the evening hymn to the Virgin. The shades of twilight had begun to deepen; and without wishing to take a formal leave of my host, I made the best of a bad way to the auberge. There I reflected on all I had seen and heard, and became the more convinced, that in making "nil admirari" my motto and rule of life, I had judged rightly. I felt no surprise that a bigoted Catholic, immured in a dilapidated chateau, with no other companions than a confessor, a chorister, and a Madonna, should confound dreams with realities, and speak and think as Count B-- had done of his picture. It was a new version of the old story of the Sculptor and his Statue. The history of the picture is not yet com pleted. The Count is dead; and the Madonna forms one of the most distinguished ornaments of the Munich Gallery. THE YOUNG GREY HEAD. GRIEF hath been known to turn the young head grey- The bright locks of the beautiful, their prime Of Gallia's madness, that discrowned head What must the sufferings of that night have been- I have to tell an humbler history; A village tale, whose only charm, in sooth, (If any) will be sad and simple truth. "Mother," quoth Ambrose to his thrifty dameSo oft our peasant's use his wife to name, "Father" and "Master" to himself applied, As life's grave duties matronize the bride"Mother," quoth Ambrose, as he faced the north, With hard-set teeth, before he issued forth To his day labour, from the cottage door"To thinking that, to-night, if not before, There'll be wild work. Dost hear old Chewton It's brewing up down westward; and look there, One of those sea-gulls! ay, there goes a pair; And such a sudden thaw! If rain comes on, As threats, the waters will be out anon. That path by th' ford's a nasty bit of wayBest let the young ones bide from school to-day." ་ "Do, mother, do!" the quick-ear'd urchins cried; Two little lasses to the father's side Close clinging, as they look'd from him, to spy roar? And so she ought-she's seven come first of May— The mother's will was law, (alas for her That hapless day, poor soul!) She could not err, A fresh-water spring rushing into the sea called Chewton Bunny. (Submissively resign'd the hope of play,) Towards the serious business of the day. To me there's something touching, I confess, So to the mother's charge, with thoughtful brow, So standing hand in hand, a lovelier twain "Now, mind and bring Jenny safe home," the mother said "don't stay Was there no sinking at the mother's heart, Such warnings have been sent, we know full well, And, now I mind me, something of the kind Yet so it was, that morn she could not stay |