as it is, there is something peculiar in the turn of | dent his visits there will be acceptable: "In our the adventure.

house," adds Anna, "there live only my mother and myself. My mother keeps house; I tend our flock on the mountain in the day time, and at night work with my mother. Sometimes we sit together at our hearth with nothing new to say to one another, which is dull; now and then we have the company of some young women who live about a quarter of a league from us: I came with two of them to-day; and we are to return together. But for them I should have missed this wedding; and that would have been a pity."

On a dark night of last winter, there was a wedding ball in a certain village near the foot of the Mountain Estrella. The wedding-dinner was over at two o'clock in the afternoon; and from that hour till midnight, the clattering dance of wooden shoes had been almost incessant. During all this time, the merriment had been kept alive by liberal supplies of green wine, by love, and by a fiddle, the never-failing guest and companion of every merry-meeting in all the hamlets of this neighborhood. The fiddler, who possessed nothing in the world but a musical ear, (for which we do not know how much per centage he paid out of the hours of industry,) had been one of the nu-ness of a newly rising passion. It imparted more merous candidates for the bride; but having been supplanted by the pecuniary charms of his happy rival, he was here on this occasion-no unhappy man either, but in good humor with his ill fortune. A philosophical fiddler, he had not only had the courage to attend the marriage-ceremony without concealing himself behind one of the church-pillars and rushing forth at the critical moment with a romantic cry of despair, to the dismay of the assembly, but he had helped to twine the arches of pine-boughs for the passage of the triumphant couple. At dinner he had filled repeated bumpers to the health of both, and also of a tawny rustic lass who happened to sit next to him; and all the evening afterwards, and all the night, he animated, by his quaint old minuets, and his inexhaustible store of old-fashioned tunes, the fun of the dancers, male and female, of that economical club, whose vagaries were superbly illuminated by four classical iron lamps, stuck against four newlywhitewashed walls. Some malicious judges of motives for there are such even in the country-did not fail to set down his gratuitous perseverance to a lurking desire of putting off as long as he possibly could, the fatal moment when the company should disperse, and the doors of his ungrateful fair one exclude him from her presence. Others merely supposed that his zeal was inspired by a newly awakened fancy for another pair of bright eyes, and that he was naturally unwilling to quit a scene where the lady of his thoughts saw him unquestionably playing the first fiddle. As to us, without rejecting or admitting either of these opinions, we think it more orthodox to believe, that his pure self-love, as an artist, is a sufficient explanation. Paganini in the theatre at Paris, or on the stage of the opera-house in London, was not a greater personage than our poor fiddler, in a farm-house of the Estrella mountain.

During one of those brief intervals of the ball, when the din of music and feet ceased, only to give play to the much more uproarious clamor of conversation, our hero, whom we shall call Baptist, found his opportunity of insinuating a sly compliment into the ear of her to whom his looks had already been still more eloquent; a smile and a modest look of pleased acknowledgment gave him fresh force for a second attack; he dared to whisper the word love; he saw her blush, and once more he saw her smile; he ventured to seize a pretty little hand of this damsel fifteen years old; and from the moment of that endured audacity, he considered his felicity certain. He asks her name, Anna; her condition, single; her residence, another farm-house, distant about half a league in a locality that he is unacquainted with; but which she describes so minutely, that it is evi

The dancing was renewed; Baptist surpassed himself, if that were possible. The fiddle seemed animated with all the fire, all the brilliant freshlife, more ecstasy to the dancers; and Anna, every time that the mazy whirl brought her near to the musician, showed by a look, a movement, an air, that she felt something more than gratitude for the performer. The bow of Cupid, to use the phraseology of the poetico-arcadian schools, never twanged off more sharp and quick arrows than did the bow of a fiddle on this night. The bridegroom, fearing that the transport might not subside before sunrise, availed himself of a momentary pause to call Baptist apart into the garden, and there, after some trifling apologetical preamble, with which Baptist would have willingly dispensed, gave him to understand, in as few words as his embarrassment and the sense of his discourtesy would permit, that it was time to close the entertainment, and for the guests to retire. Baptist, who, like all happy lovers, had kept wholly out of view the fact, that such pleasure must have an end, and in whom (trust the hearts of men!) the thought of his first love, now hopeless, was already partially eclipsed by the radiant image of his new star; Baptist stood undecided for an instant whether he should obey the master of the house, thanking him for his good cheer, or break the fiddle about his ears. A visit to the cellar, to which the host sagaciously invited him, gave him time to recover his temper; and, thanks to a copious draught that prepared him for the journey, the inward strife that had arisen between the two spirits that contend for mastery in the human breast, terminated in the victory of the good angel. During this absence of the life and soul of the party, the greater number of the guests disappeared: and Anna, urged by her companions to withdraw, and persuaded as were the rest, that Baptist would not come back, sadly set out on her way home.

Returning to the room, and finding it deserted by her who alone had filled it, to his eyes, Baptist wished his host good-night. Hardness of heart is not the vice of the truly happy. The bridegroom accompanied him a few steps beyond the threshold, and laughingly told him, in a key sufficiently loud to ensure his being overheard by his wife, that the beauteous Anna, the flower and envy of the night, was the best tender of flocks in the district; that she had a good fortune; excellent hands for the spindle, and a voice for singing that charmed all who heard her; that he therefore advised him to cultivate the good graces of the mother, for that he well knew the girl would think herself fortunate to be able to warble her youth away with such an accompaniment :

Oh, life of my life!

Who can show me your fellow

At fiddle or fife

On the mountain Estrella?

And with this he bade him farewell; but not before he had further explained, what Baptist had already known above two hours, that the house was situate at the top of a winding steep, between hills; that by day two great oak trees, standing close together on the right of the road, would show him that he was near the place, and that at night he would be led to it by the bleating of numerous goats folded in the pen, so that there could be no risk of going astray among those wilds. The night was still dark. Baptist at first, though his mind was all abroad, took the melancholy road that led to his home. But what was he to do there? Sleep? who ever slept on the first night of a new love-fever?-To lie awake and sigh? that is better and more poetically done on the open stage of nature. To transcribe from the tablets of his heart an account of his sensations and wishes in a letter? Anna probably cannot read; and he himself, satisfied with his talent as a musical artist, never felt any ambition to accumulate knowledge. Baptist does not know how to write. All such of my readers as have passed through the paradise of youth will readily divine, without my telling them, whither the steps of Baptist led him against the bent of his wiser intention. As full of wine and passion as an elegy of Propertius, with his fiddle under his arm, and his Anna in his heart, and with as good speed as the obscurity of the hour, and the ruggedness and strangeness of the way permit, there he goes, entreating the solitude to favor his blind searth of the temple of his divinity, and already, in spirit, making the tour of those walls which he fancies he discovers in every white stone that he discerns before him.

hear the bleatings of her goats hard by; and, if the stars be not utterly hostile to his hopes, he cannot be discovered, watch her as she passes may, in the morning, hiding himself where he with her flock, blithely treading the dew in her little slippers of orange-tree wood, her distaff stuck in her girdle, a shade of soft anxiety setting off the sweetest smile that ever dawned from under the broad flap of a large black hat; and, perhaps, he might hear that chant of the mountain, and now, more than ever, the song for him, sent forth to the echoes by the most bewitching voice of the Beira-alta

Oh, life of my life!

Who can show me your fellow

At fiddle or fife

On the mountain Estrella?

He

As these fancies thickened upon him, Baptist, who was absolutely carried away with them, and was every moment quickening his pace, less attentive to the road than to the stars, with which true lovers have always an indefinable sympathy, suffered himself to be hurried on, he hardly knew whither, till he suddenly remembered-what none but a lover would have forgotten for a momentthat he ought to examine, by the notices which he had been warned to take heed of, whether he was on his right course or not. He stopped, he doubted, he was about to turn back, when lo! he observed, on the side of the path, certain trees, which might very possibly be the two oak-trees : he flies towards them; they are the very same; and that is the exact site-a site as familiar to him, now that he views it for the first time, as if he had been born there. He accelerates his speed-his heart leaps as if it wished to get there before him-the sandy and barren soil of the steep And what a wretched gratification is he seek- seems to him a gentle declivity, matted with roseing! He will not see her; no, he will not hear leaves; and, to crown his success, he hears the her voice. At such an untimely season of the bleat of a lamb close by: he who hears the lamb night, he will not even, through some compas- cannot be far off from the shepherdess. sionate crack in the door, have his eyes fascinated rushes towards the spot where so tender a greetby the flickering gleam of a lamp lighted by that ing invites him. He already discovers the withies very hand which so lately trembled in his own. of the fold-he almost touches them. All at once She herself will not know to-morrow that he has the ground gives way under him, and he finds been keeping watch near her, and surrounding her himself at the bottom of a pitfall. Astounded dreams with his love. No sign will remain to with the shock, though he had lighted on his feet, reveal to her the devotion with which he will have with his fiddle safe under his arm, he at first been kissing, as a pilgrim kisses a reliquiary, the imagined that some evil witch had laid this wicked insensible walls that enclose the talisman of his trap for him; and he now called to mind that an existence! When she shall arise and go forth old woman at the wedding had very constantly with Aurora, placid and rosy like her, and, like eyed him with an expression of countenance of no her, hailed with delight by everything that be- good augury-but after his first confusion was a holds her, not a vestige of his kisses will be left little allayed, he perceived that he was in one of on the stones of her house, on the threshold of those deep holes which it is the custom to excaher door; not one of all the sighs that night shall vate on the mountain to catch wolves. These have gathered in its lap will be felt with the holes are made wider at bottom than at top, so as morning breezes, as they sigh among the foliage. to make it impossible for the prisoner to escape; No; but he will have enjoyed, in three or four the mouth is lightly covered with a few slender hours of careful vigil, whole ages of felicity. It boughs, which, yielding to the pressure of any is even possible, that something of reality may be weight, let it fall through, and being elastic, remingled with his delicious reveries: it may sume their deceitful appearance: as a lure to the chance, that, while with ear applied to a case-beast of prey at night, it is usual to place behind ment, and breath suspended, he interrogates the this masked abyss, and within a strong fence of silence of the sleeping house, some audible sound, hurdles, a kid or a lamb, whose cries for the dam some word addressed by the daughter to her mother, some rustling of the mattress, stuffed with the straw of Indian corn, will aid his fancy to picture the interior of that Eden, and to perceive, as it were, through his ears, the position, the attitude, the expression, the thoughts, of the most beautiful of slumberers. He will, at least,

entice its enemy to certain destruction. The hopelessness of evasion from such a den, for the rest of the night, was evident to poor Baptist. He tried to accommodate himself to his situation. He had not room to console himself, as men incarcerated are wont to do, by pacing to and fro to give life to his imprecations. He laid himself

off her allegiance to Spain, and during the whole | ries of the United States in Texas, who are avowof that period the decline of the nation has been edly engaged in promoting the work of annexation inconceivably great and rapid. The result is now solely with reference to the interests of their own pitiable. The country is stated by a recent ob-party in the United States, and to the cause of server to be as defenceless as it was in the days of slavery with which that party is identified. Montezuma. Another Cortez might march with The part taken by England and France in this a few hundred men upon the capital; and as for question-for we are happy to find that the most the northern and western provinces, more es- entire concurrence prevails between the two great pecially the magnificent territory of California, powers by which Texas was first recognized in since the sequestration of the missions and presi- Europe-has been dictated by no such selfish or dios, they are without even the semblance of a gov- exclusive objects. To them individually the anernment. The whole white population of Cali-nexation of Texas offers no very formidable danfornia is hardly more than 5000, scattered over gers, and her independence promises no very cer2000 square leagues of territory: the Mexican tain or conspicuous advantages. But they are acadministration does not even communicate with tuated by a sincere desire to uphold in America the province; and to conquer the whole of it would that respect for territorial rights which is the only not be more difficult than to take possession of a sure basis of peace; and in maintaining the indedesert island. In these thinly peopled regions pendence of Texas they may hope to establish an the inhabitants are manifestly unable to defend important element in the distribution of power their territorial rights; and when they have lost over North America. There as well as in Europe the protection of a great power, whose policy is an universal dominion is impracticable. jealous of all encroachments on the future interests of its subjects, they fall an easy prey to a sort of retail invasion, until the sovereignty of the country is filched away before an effort has been made to challenge the assailant.

If, however, the annexation party be successful, and the patriotic intentions of the President are defeated by the foreign party in the commonwealth of Texas, that only opens the door to fresh difficulties of the most serious character. The claim of the United States to Texas is a claim studiously undefined, and purposely obscure; but once admitted, it would be found to embrace the distant objects of American ambition, even on the shores of the Pacific. Already several attempts have been made by the ministers and officers of the United States to obtain the cession of the great harbors on the coast of California. In 1835, Mr. Forsyth offered to the Mexican government five millions of dollars for the port of San Francisco-one of the finest naval positions in the world; and a few years later an American commodore actually seized, on some pretended rumor of war with Mexico, the town and harbor of Monterey.

The eager, gain-seeking and roving population of the Western States of the Union are fitted beyond all the rest of mankind to carry on this kind of surreptitious warfare. They conquer provinces as the cuckoo steals a nest; and if their irregular enterprises be allowed to carry with them all the political consequences of lawful war, it is evident that at no very distant period they will have made themselves masters of all such parts of the North American continent as are not defended by the forces and the resolution of Great Britain. But the conduct of Texas in the present emergency will determine whether these political consequences are to be realized. It depends on the acceptance or rejection of the proposed measure of annexation by the people and government of Texas, whether every fresh step of the AngloAmerican race is to add citizens to the Union; or whether the new states which may be forined in course of time on either shore of that vast continent may not uphold an independent flag, inde-ally be animated with the stir of nations and the pendent interests, and an independent policy.

The time is now rapidly approaching when the western coast of North America-hitherto the least peopled, the least productive, and the least frequented portion of the globe-will become the scene of great political interests, and will gradu

activity of social life. The United States are When we take into consideration the position of seeking to subject these future races and states to Texas, the decline of Mexico, and the future con- their dominion, and without an army or any of the dition of the unappropriated lands, rivers, and re- ordinary instruments of conquest, to extend their gions lying between the coast of Upper California sovereignty over nations yet unborn. The scheme on the Pacific Ocean and the Rio Bravo del Norte, for the annexation of Texas is the most decided it is impossible to doubt that such a country ought step they have made in this direction; but this is to possess an original character and an independ- only the prelude to their ulterior designs. The ent existence. Its annexation to the United States, claim to the exclusive possession of the Oregon if that measure be consummated at the present territory is another indication of the same policy; time, would only lead the more surely to the it will be followed by an attack, either by force or eventual disruption of that wide and imperfectly- by fraud, on California. On all these points the united confederacy, and to a struggle which would same unlimited spirit of aggrandizement prevails. prove injurious to the best interests of the whole For the protection of the British dominion in continent. But Texas independent is peculiarly North America ample means exist; and, indeed, qualified to interpose, as it were, the keystone of the possession of the Oregon territory by the an arch between the United States and Mexico, on Hudson's Bay Company, under the joint conditions the one hand, and between the maritime interests of the convention of 1818, is practically conclusive of European and American nations on the other. on the point. But in provinces in which no EuroThese views are so clear and evident that they pean power has any direct concern, the only check will probably have a decisive influence on the ex- to the rapacious encroachments of the United ecutive government of Texas, provided the Mexi-States will be found to consist in the establishment cans can be brought to recognize in a liberal spirit of another energetic and independent power to an arrangement which is the sole guarantee of share the dominion of North America; and such their national existence. Nor can we believe that a power we still hope Texas may become. this policy will be defeated by the popular emissa

From the Foreign Quarterly Review.

Catalogue des Tableaux composant la Gallerie de feu son Eminence le Cardinal Fesch. Par GEORGE, Commissaire-expert du Musée Royal du Louvre. Première Partie; première et seconde vente; à Rome, 1843, 1844.

visiters will ever be conscious of their existence; but the people employed to arrange or pack them, your servants, the tradesmen who chance to enter, the interest they feel in your tastes, and by an inwill ever be ready with an observation dictated by telligence, misdirected it may be, but, at least, awakened. Whilst residing among a people who thus inhale taste as with their native air, and surrounded by monuments of genius, it is not difficult to imbibe a sympathy with such feelings. From admiring to acquiring is an easy step, but one which should be taken with discretion. Those who can afford to pay dearly for their experience may yield to a momentary impulse of fancy, and purchase pieces which they will soon part with at any sacrifice. But others, with greater prudence, or smaller means, will form, and to a certain point cultivate, their taste ere they begin to gratify it. Even persons who, in England, had some pretensions to connoisseurship will do well to observe the like caution, for in Italy their ears will be confounded by new names and schools previously unheard of, in connection with works of high merit and unquestionable attractions.

FATAL as her gift of beauty has been to Italy, it has brought her many compensating benefits. Her bright skies, her balmy climate, her luxuriant vegetation, her fair cities, her gorgeous temples; her ruins ennobled by glorious memories, and entwined in the graceful garlands of prodigal nature; her statues and her paintings, the proud creations of man's genius and imagination-these have, alas! too often attracted and enriched the spoiler. But have they not also cheered her sons, even in the saddest hours of their sufferings? Did they not preserve to her, through the long night of the dark ages, those dormant sparks which, in better times, diffused the light of civilization over Europe? Have they not imparted to her children that susceptibility of refined taste, that perception of the beautiful, which assuredly, in a land teeming with beauty, afford unfailing solace? These Why in this age of hand-books have we none features in the national character of Italy cannot for the business of picture-dealing? Its mysteries, fail to strike all observers, for they prevail from if unequal to those of Paris in variety or thrilling the palace to the cottage, though variously de- emotion, might well fill a volume with curious and veloped. The hierarchy of Rome, the merchant instructive gossip. For such a compilation an opprinces of Venice, the successive tyrants of the portunity has recently occurred, which will, perminor communities, built for themselves palaces, haps, never recur, but which, we fear, no pen was and called in the best sculptors and painters to at hand to seize. A cardinal prince of Rome, adorn them. The craftsmen associated themselves uncle of an emperor and of four kings, devoted the to erect churches and found chapels, which they latter half of a very long life to the purchase of made shrines of art as well as of piety. The pictures, as the grand object of existence, and left peasantry adopted costumes, whose rich hues and behind him the most numerous and valuable colhappy combinations are still favorite ornaments for lection on record as accumulated by one individual. a fashionable masque. Even among the humblest Had his eminence noted the circumstances under classes, the same turn for the picturesque is in- which most of his acquisitions were obtained, little voluntarily manifested. Observe the tattered laz-more would have been wanted to illustrate the zarone asleep in the vestibule of a Neapolitan ways of picture-getting. Were the means adoptchurch, the fishermen of Baja stretched on that ing, or yet to be adopted, for dispersing what he secluded beach, the shepherd of the Campagna so indefatigably amassed, to be displayed to the gazing over the desolate plain; their ragged vest- world, the mysteries of picture-dealing would be ments, their rough sheep-skins assume an origi- laid bare. nality of character, their attitudes manifest a pic- Of the Fesch pictures a comparatively small torial effect, which the inspired artist is glad to portion formed the cardinal's show gallery, the copy, hopeless of improving upon them. We fame of which depended chiefly upon those of the have seldom enjoyed a greater treat than in look- Dutch and Flemish schools. Specimens in that ing over some studies of the late Baron Camuc- style, of at least equal beauty, may be found in cini, the first Roman painter of our age. They England, France, and the Netherlands, but no consisted of groups slightly shaded in water- similar collection ever appeared south of the Alps. colors, designed with a purity and accuracy wor- The Italian rooms, on the other hand, though inthy of the cinque-cento There were warriors including many chefs-d'œuvre, could not stand the action, cottage groups in repose, inspired Madon- comparison so readily drawn between their treanas, joyous children, smiling babes-in short, sures and those of other neighboring palaces. The every variety of figure composition, conceived and cardinal began to form his museum in France, executed with almost faultless taste. To our sur-when the property cast loose by the Revolution, prise the baron said that each was strictly a transcript of Italian nature. In his walks, he had the habit of hastily jotting down every striking attitude or picturesque combination that met his eye, and every evening he embodied these fugitive ideas, accommodating them to any subject or character they might appear to sui.. Alas! that he had not drawn more largely upon these materials in composing his historical works!

and the spoils of half Europe, were to be gathered with little trouble, and at moderate cost. Having afterwards, in common with the rest of his family, found that country no longer a licensed residence, he naturally sought a home in the metropolis of his church, and on transporting his pictures to Rome, he stipulated for their removal, at pleasure, from the papal states, exempt from the usual restrictions or export duties. To the choice productions of the ultramontane schools which the collection already possessed, the constant augmentations which it subsequently received added but few gems, and these from Italian pencils. The cardinal had little more to wish for; eminent rank. and ample wealth were his, and the picture-gallery