stitious folks shake their heads doubtfully, when they see you go into the woods every day with your satchel.'

'Do they, indeed? But you wander here alone, it seems.'

'Me! I love the woods. I feel a new life under these grand oaks and solemn-whispering pines. I talk to them, and they seem to answer me, and wave all their green tops over me in gladness."

'Why, you talk like an angel!'

'No; angels do not talk to men, as they once did. Father says they may, perhaps, visit us again, if our lives are pure and our souls transparent.'

Greenleaf felt rebuked. Here was a maiden, nearly come to womanhood, who did not know what flattery meant. He turned his picture toward her.

set.

'How do you like it?' said he.

'It is beautiful; the church, the river, the trees, hills; all but the sunYou have not painted those great rose-colored clouds, nor those bars of crimson, edged with gold, nor the amber hues of the sky above them.' 'My pallette has no colors with which to mock the glories of sunset. But, my little wood-nymph, where did you learn to criticise paintings?'

'My father, the school-master, has a few pictures. The wood-nymphs, I suspect, have been long ago frightened away by our rough wood-choppers. I have never met one, though I used to call them till the echoes rung again.'

Thinking she had talked quite long enough with a stranger, she turned to leave, but stopped as he spoke again.

"In finishing this sketch, I could not but notice the peculiar vane on the church-spire. How came it to be of such a shape?"

'You will but laugh if I tell you.'

'How so? Was it the master-piece of some rustic blacksmith, who strove to forge out an immortality for himself on his sounding anvil?' 'No; at least, I do not know who made it. It is but a few years since it was put up: I remember the day. A stranger brought the vane, and gave it to the church. He affected some mystery about his movements; and his singular air, the unusual shape of the vane, and its horrid creaking, all gave rise to some odd conjectures among our old people.' 'And pray, what may they be?'

"Why, some people pretend to believe that the arch-enemy' brought our former wicked minister, and put him on the pivot for a vane, that he may swing over the church which he profaned as long as it stands.'

And I suppose there are a plenty of old women who have seen him squirm on stormy nights, when witches and other wild fowl are sailing about!'

'Oh, yes, such stories are current here.'

Capital! I'll paint the steeple in a storm, with all due adornments. Thank you for the story. Don't mention my profession to any but your father.'

It was nearly night, and the painter returned home with an exhilarated pulse and a bounding step. The rustic legend, or some other subtle influence, kept his mind fixed upon the unlooked-for interview with the maiden. With the first dawn he awoke; the accessories of the picture

had been planned during sleep, and with a few rapid strokes, the spire, with the struggling man impaled on it, with witches, bats, and divers other fearful shapes around it, and with clouds as wild as the dishevelled locks of the storm-king sweeping over it, was boldly and powerfully depicted.

One evening, not long after, when the children came down the street rejoicing from school, the painter took his picture of the spire, and his sketch of the village, and walked toward the school-master's house. Mr. Lee was sitting under the great elm, and his daughter, as usual, was by his side. At Greenleaf's approach, she rose gracefully and without embarrassment, and bade him welcome. Her father had heard of their chance meeting with some secret regret, but a glance at the open and ingenuous face of his visitor reassured him, and, at his bidding, Mr. Greenleaf entered the house. The pictures were first admired, for Alice remembered the painter's promise, and prevailed on him to open his port-folio at once. In a few minutes, conversation was in rapid progress. Such men as Augustus Lee and George Greenleaf could not meet without creating a strong mutual interest. Their minds were cast in different moulds; still, it would not be easy to determine which was the superior in natural gifts. Lee was profoundly learned; the painter's information, though perhaps as varied, was not as minute and accurate. The one had devoted himself to books, the other was a student of Nature, and her glorious beauty had filled his soul as with a visible presence. Thus finely balanced in their organizations, the new friends conversed until a late hour, each separating with a cordial regard. Alice, as was her custom when her father had visitors, listened with eager attention, but took no part in the conversation.

A change, hardly perceptible to himself, came over the painter. His taste for sketching landscapes began to lose its exquisite relish. The woods were not less beautiful to his eye, nor their mystical influences less potent over his soul. The skies still hung with changeless beauty over the valley; and the pomp of morning, and the Assyrian splendors of evening, still touched the hidden springs of poetry; so that the full heart had but to speak, and its glowing thoughts, like molten glass, would have issued, to be crystalized in forms of perennial grace.

But the children of art, in all their various spheres, are haunted by a vague sense of the unattained. The 'vision' is glorious, but for its perfect representation the 'faculty' is not often completely divine.' Years before, forms of beauty had hovered over the painter in his earliest attempts in his art; but their changeful, evanescent images, had always eluded his grasp. They seemed to allure him with graceful smiles, and then dissolve into air; he could not reproduce them upon his canvas. Weary with fruitless efforts to arrest and embody these subtle and enchanting eidola, he turned to the more tangible charms of nature; and in the quiet enjoyment of sketching actual scenes, strove to forget the opal-hued dreams that had mocked him. Now, however, the visions of former days returned with an unwonted vividness; they hung over his pillow by night, and the glare of day did not dissipate them. Bright eyes looked at him from every flower; and if he turned to the skies, forms of ethereal grace bent over him from every summer cloud. Impelled by a new and unaccount

able enthusiasm, he took his implements, and upon a piece of canvas he had prepared for a view from Holyoke, not many miles distant, he commenced the head of a Madonna. The child who first sees the lines made by a stick of phosphorus, glowing in the dark upon a wall, could not be more surprised than was Greenleaf with the outlines which his rapid pencil had traced. As the thoughtful features of the Virgin MOTHER were brought out, stroke by stroke, the canvas seemed instinct with life. The picture regarded him almost like a human soul, with its calm eyes and open brow. It seemed to Greenleaf that he had evoked a spirit, and that its impalpable presence was now made manifest in the form he had created. The day passed, the village bustled through its usual routine, and the painter yet stood before his easel, still fixed, as by fascination, upon the marvellous beauty of that face, whose spell had scarcely less of awe than of gladness for him, now that twilight gradually stole into the apartment. Duskier still grew the shadows, and the painter yet gazed; and it was not until night fell, wrapping all objects in indistinguishable gloom, that he awoke from his reverie, remembered the long hours of labor, and was conscious of the prostration that always follows a season of protracted excitement.

The painter was now in a new world. Satisfied hitherto with delineations of picturesque scenery, such as Innisfield and its vicinity afforded, he now remained in his chamber, and exulted in his newly-found powers. When the devotee first lifts his eyes under the lofty dome of St. Peter's, he is oppressed by the sense of vastness, and is lost in the unimagined wealth of architecture around; but his soul, if he be a true man, soon expands and fills the great temple, as though it were to be the place of his daily abode. Greenleaf began at once to turn his thoughts backward to the great artists, whose fame had before appeared to him like the radiance of the inaccessible stars. Now, in the exulting confidence of youth, they seemed his brethren; he would clasp their hands, and claim a place in their immortal circle. Greenleaf's knowledge of art as derived from the study of great works was not very extensive. The country had not then a reputable gallery, and pictures in private collections are rarely accessible to young artists. The world-renowned galleries of Florence and of the Vatican now contained for our painter more attractions than the treasures of Aladdin's cave. The thought came instantly; he would visit Italy. He would give the fullest development to his powers, by the immediate contact of genius. He would study the great masters, and who could say how far their transatlantic pupil would be ultimately surpassed? The idea shot a fiery exhilaration along his nerves; and under its influence every glimpse of the glorious future brought a subtle and delicious joy. Italy! Italy!- he would see Italy! And he walked the room with an elastic step, his right hand brandishing a brush, his hair and apparel uncared for, and his eye glowing with a preternatural light. In the height of his enthusiasm, the door opened, and the yellow turban was revealed in its full proportions. The good landlady, surprised at the wild expression of her hitherto gentle boarder, at his furious gestures, and at the many faces which now regarded her from the walls around, could do nothing more than stare; for her one han was engaged in slipping her snuff-box under her check apron, while

the thumb and finger of the other were arched together significantly, and arrested half way to her nose. But words soon came.

'Bless me, Mr. Greenleaf, I thought you might be sick! I rapped and rapped: and then, think-says-I, I'll jest look in, for maby you might

be sufferin'.'

The thumb and finger were here elevated to the right position, and relieved of their burden: the check apron followed, and duly removed from the lip whatever failed to be drawn up by the powerful nasal

current.

The painter looked down from the ceiling. Raphael was no longer there, nor Titian; the glorious company had vanished. St. Peter's dome no longer rose in the distance; and instead of the warm tints of an Italian landscape, the clear, bright atmosphere of New-England encircled him. He looked around the room, and his pictures, Sybils, Madonnas, Nymphs, Graces, were all disenchanted; although far excelling in merit any of his previous productions, yet how far were they below his ideal! He had descended from the clouds, and stood once more upon the earth, without being conscious of the agency that had transported him. During this process, which took somewhat longer than the time usually allotted for making a reply to a civil question, the good woman inwardly wondered whether he were not becoming demented. When, at last, he ceived his hostess, scarcely attempting to conceal her astonishment, he blushed, stammered, and was only relieved by her kindly garrulity. 'Would he have a cup of tea, or a glass of wine?' 'Neither he was quite well.'

per

After a period, mutual confidence was restored, and the landlady made a tour of the room, inquiring with a pleased curiosity concerning the pictures, which had been dashed off the last week as rapidly as though they had been so many tavern-signs. Greenleaf attempted to comply; but his explanations drew in so much of heathen mythology on the one hand, and of Catholic tradition on the other, that between them both the good woman was completely confounded. It was the first time these classic stores had been opened to her, and her suspicions of the painter's sanity were by no means lulled as she listened to what seemed his improbable stories. But a bright idea struck her, and with the kindly instincts of her sex, she hastened to impart it.

But if these picters, Mr. Greenleaf, are all for different folks, as you say, why upon airth did you paint 'em all so much alike? That gal now, (whose clothes you are going to paint bime-by, I hope,) is jest for all this world like Alice Lee; jest so pretty and kind o' modest-like. And then that other woman, with the bright ring over her head, jest like the bow to my old c'lash, she looks like her too, only older, and more sort o' stiddy-like. All on 'em look like her. Well, I have my 'spicions. do 'nt need no medicine: you'll tough it out, I dare say.'

You

The turban waved in the door-way a moment, like a yellow holly-hock

in the breeze, and the painter was left alone.

Was the painter's mystery solved? Truly, there is more than one secret which is beyond the power of man to conceal effectually, at least from woman. The world has neither nook nor corner where a man may bestow his thought, and say it is safe. The winds will whisper it; the

trees will refuse to be silent; echo will catch the name that fills his heart, while it yet struggles for utterance. But most of all, if he be an artist, the works of his hand will betray him. He must follow the inner sense, for he cannot paint mechanically: every touch will be eloquent, so that those who run may read.

But Greenleaf had been occupied by influences, effects, and had not stopped to look back for their cause. He was rejoiced to be able to portray the fair shapes that once came only to mock him; and not being in the habit of any rigid introspection, he had not fathomed the obvious cause of his unwonted energy and enthusiasm. The truth was now brought to him through a homely medium, but it struck a responsive chord. So true is it, that a guess at a venture is often surer than the subtlest speculations of the metaphysician.

The next day Mr. Greenleaf took his accustomed walk, and, in returning at dusk, called upon his friend the school-master. His heart bounded as Alice arose to greet him; for his regard for her had gradually strengthened, until now it seemed to control every impulse of his being. Still he maintained a firm self-possession, and conversed with her father as usual, though it must be confessed that his eyes wandered occasionally. Their conversation turned upon the causes of failure and success in life. The painter listened to the acute reasoning and nice distinctions in which Mr. Lee's mind was so much at home, and as he heard, wondered why an intellect at once so subtle and so comprehensive, developed by the most intense study, and joined to a fair personal appearance, had remained in obscurity, to leave no impress of its power on the age. With as much art as his frank and ingenuous nature could command, the painter led the way to learn something of his friend's history. Mr. Lee seemed communicative, and related a few instances of his life, which we here condense, retaining the form of the first person.

me.

'I have had just what advantages my own labor could procure for How well I have improved them, it matters not now at my time of life-only to remember! During the year or two preceding the outbreak of the colonies, I was a lawyer, and a hearty supporter of the people's cause. My practice was respectable, and increasing. To satisfy my restless temperament, I wrote frequently-habitually, I might say-and acquired, perhaps, some point and vigor in style. While in my chamber, committing to paper the thoughts that burned within me for utterance, it seemed to me that in the forum I might give at least as free an expression to my aspirations for freedom, and my hopes for the regeneration of the world. I felt an ardor that promised to overcome all difficulties. This inward glow I thought was the only thing requisite. It was a great mistake. Demosthenes had as fiery a soul, conceptions as glowing, and a chain of logic as perfect, in his own mind, when he was hissed from the Athenian stage, as when afterward he shook the throne of Macedon by his denunciations. Nothing but laborious practice enabled him to grasp, clothe and present his images, and to follow without interruption the course of his argument. I failed, as you might suppose. Men whose reasoning faculties I did not particularly envy, spoke almost nightly in Faneuil Hall, and the applause of the multitude shook the walls at every period. My personal friends raised a feeble complimentary cheer