grudge the time. As he walked up the beach, harnessed to the cable, one foot followed the other with a slow and equal motion. It was evident that he was not walking for a wager. It was equally plain that he was swallowing his dinner not much faster than he could comfortably digest it. When his repast was at last brought to a close, that is, when the bread had been eaten to the last crumb, and the bottle emptied to the last drop, he drew out of his pocket a small book, as if to say his prayers. But he did no such thing. It was his smoking-book. Having carefully extracted a leaf, he placed on it a pinch of tobacco, and neatly rolled up a cigarillo, which he smoked apparently with as much relish as any hidalgo could his Havana.

By the time my barbarian had finished his cigarillo, the net had been nearly all dragged to the shore. In a short time, the fish were seen fluttering in the meshes. The march of the men at the rope was now slightly quickened. Another pull-another, still-and the shining, scaly booty was brought to land. Idlers and fishermen all crowded eagerly around to see the day's result. Their curiosity was soon satisfied, for the draught turned out to be a small one, and consisted only of a few bushels of sardines.

But these poor people scemed well satisfied. If they earn ten or twelve cents a day, 'tis all they care for. With three or four, they can buy as much black bread as will suffice for a man a day. With as many more, a big-bellied bottle of wine can be purchased. The rest will pay for the garlic and the tobacco; and any still remaining surplus may go to add another rag to their backs, or their cabins. The whole tribe were foreignborn, having come, a few years before, from the neighboring province of Valencia, in consequence of the higher wages, as they said, of the city of Barcelona.

Happy are they. Every day of the year, they draw their net. The sand of the beach makes them a soft couch at night. The murmuring of the sea soothes their slumbers. Their cabins look towards the terra caliente, the homes from which they have gone out, and whither they are too well off ever to wish to return. Children of the sun, they ask for no higher enjoyment than to lie on the burning beach, and to bathe in the tepid

wave.

And through many a peaceful year may you continue to drag your nets to the shore, ye simple fishers! The summer's sun, I know, will not be too

hot for you; may the winter never be too cold. When the rain descends and the floods come, may your huts not share the fate of the houses of greater sinners than you are. May you, at last, all die in your beds on the sand, and your final sleep be only the sounder for the murmuring waves which will break over your graves on the shore.

Even if admitted into the cementerio, these fishermen will not fail of being buried by their beloved Mediterranean. For this "God's acre" is situated hard by the sea, and near to the place of the drawing of nets. Only in this consecrated retreat, the dead sleep their sleep above ground. They are plastered into niches in the walls; and if they were to be baked, they could not be placed in sepulchres more resembling ovens. But, though in simple holes in the wall, they doubtless sleep well. In rough weather. the sea chants their requiem, and will continue to do so until its voice shall be drowned in the tumult of the final trumpet. At all other times, the gentle ripple which tosses its bubbles on the beach will not disturb so much as the dreams of an infant sleeper. And when, in the general resurrection of humanity, these bodies of the sons of God come forth, they will linger a moment, I am sure, ere taking their leave of this, their fair natal shore. Nor will any souls, which, from the four quarters of the earth, shall then ascend the skies, find any shorter pathway to heaven than that travelled by the simple fishers, who, from this spot, shall climb the Southern Py

renees.

X.

HOLYDAYS AT BARCELONA.

SPANISH life is pretty well filled up with holydays. The country is under the protection of a better-filled calendar of saints than any in Christendom, Italy, perhaps, excepted. But these guardians do not keep watch and ward for naught: they have each their "solid day" annually set apart for them, or, at least, their afternoon, wherein to receive adoration and tribute money. The poor Spaniard is kept nearly half the year on his knees. His prayers cost him his pesetas, too; for, neither the saints will intercede nor the priests will absolve, except for cash. But his time spent in ceremonies, the Spaniard counts as nothing. The fewer days the laborer has to work, the hap pier is he. These are the dull prose of an existence essentially poetic. On holy

days, on the contrary, the life of the lowest classes runs as smoothly as verses. If the poor man's porron only be well filled with wine, he can trust to luck and the saints for a roll of bread and a few onions. Free from care, he likes, three days in the week, to put on his bestmore likely, his only bib-and-tucker-and go to mass, instead of field or wharf duty. He is well pleased at the gorgeous ceremonies of his venerable mother church: at the sight of street processions, with crucifix and sacramental canopy, and priests in cloth of purple and of gold. The spectacle also of the gay promenading, the music, the parade and mimic show of war, the free theatres, the bullfights, the streets hung with tapestry, and the town-hall's front adorned with a flaming full-length of Isabella the Second -these constitute the brilliant passages in the epic of his life. Taking no thought for the morrow after the holyday, he is wiser than a philosopher, and enjoys the golden hours as they fly. Indeed, he can well afford to do so; for, in his sunny land of corn and wine, the common necessaries of life are procured with almost as little toil as in the bread-fruit islands of the Pacific.

All the Spaniard's holydays are religious festivals. There is no Fourth of July in his year. His mirth, accordingly, is not independent and profane, like the Yankee's. Being more accustomed also to playtime, he is less tempted to fill it up with excesses. It is in the order of his holyday to go, first of all, to church; and a certain air of religious decorum is carried along into all the succeeding amusements. Neither is his the restless, capering enjoyment of the Frenchman, who begins and ends his holydays with dancing; nor the chattering hilarity of the Italian, who goes beside himself over a few roasted chesnuts and a monkey. The Spaniard wears a somewhat graver face. His happiness requires less muscular movement. To stand wrapped in his cloak, statue-like, in the public square; to sit on sunny bank, or beneath shady bower, is about as much activity as suits his dignity. Only the sound of castanets can draw him from his propriety; and the steps of the fandango work his brain up to intoxication. Spanish festal-time, accordingly, is like the hazy, dreamy, voluptuous days of the Indian summer, when the air is as full of calm as it is of splendor, and when the pulses of Nature beat full but feverless.

The holyday is easily filled up with pleasures. The peasant has no more to

do than to throw back his head upon the turf, and tantalize his dissolving mouth by holding over it the purple clusters, torn from overhanging branches. The beggar lays down against a wall, and counts into the hand of his companion the pennies they have to spend together during the day: unconscious the while that the sand of half its hours has already run out. The village beauty twines roses in her hair, and looks out of the window, happy to see the gay-jacketed youngsters go smirking and ogling by. The belles of the town lean over their flower balconies, chatting with neighbors, and raining glances on the throng of admirers who promenade below. Town and country wear their holyday attire with graceful, tranquil joy. Only from the cafés of the one, and the ventorillos of the other, may perchance be heard the sounds of revelry; where the guitar is thrummed with a gayety not heard in serenades; where the violin leads youthful feet a round of pleasures, too fast for sureness of footing; and where the claque of the castanets rings out merrily above laugh and song, firing the heart with passions which comport not well with Castilian gravity.

ΧΙ.

THE ANNUAL FAIR.

ALL days, says the proverb, are not feasts in Barcelona-there are some which are fairs. As sure as the twenty-first of December dawns on the city, there will be a grand market held in it. The Rambala, the Paseo Nuevo, and all the broader streets and squares, will be filled with temporary booths. Every thing that can be wanted for a supply of a year's life, excepting daily bread, will there be spread out before the purchaser. From silks to rags, from new platters to rusty nails, from the books of the day to those printed in 1600, from the furniture for rich men's houses to the beggar's spoon and blanket, from every thing at first hand to every thing at third, what is there which cannot here be bought for duros and for reals? Nothing which is made for use is ever cast off in this country as worthless. What is first manufactured for the rich is afterwards sold to the poor. A crooked, rusty nail has here a marketable value. A cracked kettle which will not hold the rich man's water, will cook the stews of a beggar; and be prized as was the barber's basin by Don Quixote.

To all lovers, therefore, of patched-up chinaware, broken-backed chairs, and out-of-joint chests of drawers-to all collectors of uncurrent coins, books in blackletter, swords well hacked upon the skulls of the infidel, and old pictures warranted to be better than new-let me say Spain is your El Dorado. But hasten; for the exchangeable value of all this ancient dust and lumber is rapidly rising in the home market. Already, in fact, if you ask a Spaniard to sell you any old stone of his, three times out of four he takes the alarm, and puts an "asking price" upon it which would go nigh to purchasing the fabled philosopher's. If a foreigner should propose to buy the clouted shoes off his feet, the suspicion would flash across his mind that they were a pair of seven-league boots in disguise; and he would sooner part with his honor as an hidalgo than allow them to go out of his possession. In fact, to drive a bargain with a native for any venerable heirloom, requires as much strategy as to conduct a campaign. You must approach the subject from as great a distance as you would if you were going to besiege a town. The first step to be taken is to make a direct allusion to the greatness of the Spanish nation-as it was in the days of the first Isabella-and promises to be in those of the second. Then, you may dilate at large on the fine climate of the country, the bravery of the army, the beauty of the women, the excellence of vino ordinario, and on all the manifold attractions of the heaven of the Spains. At length, concentrating your forces, you may adroitly address a few rounds of compliments to the individual Spaniard before you; and having first carried all his outworks, you will have every chance of capturing the citadel itself. To do this, perhaps no more will be necessary than simply to intimate that the possession of any relic which bore his name, or had been for the last thousand years in the keeping of his family, would be esteemed by you an honor of which you would be no less proud than of your own birthright. He will now, out of personal regard for so polite a gentleman, be most happy to part with the oldest parchment or porcelain in his family. You shall have it for courtesy's sake-and the good round sum you have offered. So that at last you walk off relieved of the load in your pockets, and the fortunate possessor of some old, worm-eaten volume of ghostly Commentaries-some rusty Roman coin manufactured in the nineteenth century-some antiquated three-legged stool,

which formerly belonged to a duennasome rickety set of drawers, once the property of a dilapidated old bachelor-a big carved stone, a piece of the rock of Gibraltar, or a picture of a very renowned saint in a high state of ecstasy.

But to return to the fair-one of the chief articles exposed for sale is live poultry. The Catalonian peasants, men, women and children. come down from the mountains with stock enough to supply a fowl for every pot in the city. After daybreak, there is no such thing as sleeping in all the town for the chanticleering. You cannot take your stroll through the Rambla for the number of cocks on the walk. However, if a fowl fancier, you push your way through; and have the satisfaction of seeing roosters carried off at a price far more reasonable than that which you had to pay for your Shanghais. While for one of these far-fetched crowers, you have been fondly giving a sum of money large enough to buy even the Gallic cock himself off the very escutcheon of France, here you may pick up any number of Catalans, almost as big and twice as saucy, for less than it would cost in our large towns to supply them with gravel-stones. They are cheaper than dirt. You finally refuse to look at them, therefore, from sheer disgust; and turn all your attention to the peasant girls, who have them in charge.

These hold themselves less cheap. They are, in fact, prouder and more savage than any fighting cocks. You had better catch a Tartar than attempt to cage one of them for any purpose. They are perfect Amazons, and wear daggers in their garters. Beware! However, I will say this of them, that when it comes to fighting, they are no match for their mothers. The quarrels of these dames with each other are far more fierce, as well as amusing, than those of their own roosters, and reveal a peculiar feature of female manners in Catalonia. They do not end in words. They do not consist in pulling each other's hair. These are but the accidents of the combat. The great aim and effort always is to perform upon each other in public, that operation which mothers are sometimes obliged to perform on crying babies in private. If they do not succeed in doing this, there is no victory-but merely a drawn game.

But let us go over to the Paseo Nuevo, and see the turkeys. There you will find a greater number of these birds congregated than you supposed to exist in all Spain. They cover this extensive promenade completely over. The heavens

are filled with gobblings. Never was such an amount of strutting seen on any walk as this. A modest man might be humiliated in the presence of so much pretension, and feel ashamed to hold his head up, lest he should be suspected of attempting to carry it over this immense roost of rivals. However, he is kept in countenance by the haughty dames who in full dress come out from church to make their selections for the spit. These

pass from drove to drove, looking where to choose, and evidently driving close bargains. The peasant, aided by wife and children, all having long reed poles, keeps his brood together, and easily catches his gobblers as fast as they are wanted. The weighing is done by hand. When bought, the bird is carried off by a servant in attendance; and the fine lady, continuing her promenade, joins the company on the Muralla del Mar.

WE

E accustom ourselves to speak of the eccentricities of genius, and ascribe as a reason for the peculiarities of gifted men, either that they are the voluntary bestowment of an incomprehensible Providence, or else attribute them to influences so widely removed from the real cause, that when we come seriously to examine the subject we can hardly help smiling at the far-fetched and readily accredited theories.

Too often the melancholy effects of penury and want, silently endured, mark on the surface of fine and sensitive natures, hard and repulsive lines, even while the soul wells up genially and kindly as before; and smothered griefs and disappointments, borne alone and unshared, have often so completely shut out from the sympathy of their fellow-men, the most generous and beautiful of characters, that they for ever moved among them like frowning clouds along the open sky, or glittering icebergs across a summer sea.

It was my pleasure to have known Vanderlyn in the latter years of his life, and though I fully appreciated the cheerless and unhappy existence he led, and could sympathize with the unsatisfied longings he still cherished, circumstances prevented me from expressing my sympathy, or of adding, as I gladly would have done, an occasional ray of sunlight to his lonely and isolated life. I have regretted it a thousand times since, but console myself with the reflection that, perhaps, any poor effort of mine to win him back in the autumn of his days, to the serene enjoyment of his earlier life, before he took up the burden of his great disappointments, would be both futile and unavailing.

When a child, I heard with interest the

story of the humble boy, who by chance attracted the notice of Aaron Burr, and I had a great desire to see the man, who as the protégé of this child of destiny, had linked himself so intimately with his fortunes, and his checkered history. He was in France then, painting his picture of the "Landing of Columbus" for the Capitol, but returning soon after, when that last great work of his life was accomplished, my youthful desire was gratified, and my father introduced me to Vanderlyn one day when together we were waiting for the steamboat at the landing.

"He has a great reverence for you," said my father," and is something of an artist himself."

The old man smiled, with satisfaction, I thought, that his name and character had made an impression upon even so humble an individual as I, and directly added in a solemn, regretful voice, "There is great uncertainty attending an artist's career in this country, as I can abundantly attest."

Our interview with him was but a brief one, yet, I recognized in the man the lingering sparks of a lofty but crushed ambition, whose great disappointments were silently and uncomplainingly borne, even in the view of the not very distant termination of his long and eventful career. I met him frequently afterwards, at short intervals, until his death,' and can attest to his genial and companionable deportment, while in the society of those he deemed his equals. In the company of those who were really his inferiors, and with whom he necessarily had no sort of sympathy, he was frequently petulant and morose. Alas! a train of unfortunate and untoward circumstances forced upon him the companionship of such as these, in the latter years of his

life, and then he acquired a reputation for churlishness and moroseness, as universal as it was unjust and undeserved.

He was accustomed to speak feelingly upon the subject of the building of the Rotunda, in the Park in New York, which was a darling scheme of his life. Here he hoped to exhibit panoramas and pictures, from the emoluments of which he might be enabled to devote himself to the higher walks of art. In this transaction, whether justly or not, is not for me here to decide, he imagined himself to have been grossly wronged by the authorities, and the disappointments consequent upon the utter and ruinous failure of that scheme, exerted an embittering influence over all his after life.

It was my privilege to have seen among his private papers, after his death, a copy of a letter addressed to upon the receipt of the commission from Congress to paint the Landing of Columbus, in which he most feelingly alludes to his disappointments, and regretfully deplores that Congress had withheld this oft-coveted boon until the freshness and vigor of his years was past; and he seems to have set about the prosecution of the work, not in the spirit of pride and emulation with which, in his earlier career, he would have seized this opportunity of rendering himself immortal, but rather to build up for himself an unsatisfactory monument from the grudged and tardy bequest of an ungrateful country. He felt that he could have done it better years before, when, in the ardor and enthusiasm of his inspiration, he craved the opportunity; but when it did come, he turned sorrowfully to his canvas to fulfil the commission, because he felt that he had left no worthy record of his life behind him.

After his return from Europe, and while he was exhibiting his picture through the Atlantic cities, he used frequently to come to Kingston, his native village, to remain but for a few weeks at a time, allured, I have no doubt, by the tender associations that clung around the place of his birth, and which came up before him with a grateful freshness after the varied events of his life, and the long years of voluntary exile from his native land. His last great work was accomplished, and the most of his early friends, as well as the illustrious companions of his honored manhood, were sleeping their last, quiet sleep; and here, under the shadow of his loved Kaatskills, among their green graves, he found his highest as well as saddest enjoyment, communing alone, amid the scenes of his lost yet

cherished childhood, with the forms of beauty that thronged his soul.

Among the old landmarks of the history of Ulster County, is the house where he was born, standing upon the outskirts of the village, interesting, besides, as being the only house left standing when Kingston was burned by the British in the Revolution.

After he had exercised the privilege accorded him by Congress, of exhibiting his picture through the United States, and it was at last placed in the panel of the Rotunda, designed for its reception, he might fitly have laid down his pencil and his aspirations. He stood alone, with more than seventy varied years behind him. The star of Napoleon, who had encouraged and flattered him, had gone down in obscurity; and Burr, his early friend and patron, had died in ignominy; and of all the illustrious companions of his proud and prosperous days, but here and there a few remained, awaiting serenely their final summons. The Stuarts, the Wests, the Reynoldses, the Copleys, the Adamses, the Jeffersons, the Burrs, all were gone; and looking back upon the days when he enjoyed their companionship and encouragement, and comparing them with the utter loneliness of his declining years, he might well have sighed for the closing scene.

The

But it was otherwise with him. long years that had passed since he received the commission for the National picture, had exhausted the appropriation Congress had made for the artist, and in his old age he was forced to take upon himself the drudgery of portrait painting, as a means of sustenance, the intervals of which were filled up by a new and more gorgeous dream of painting a large picture of the discovery of the Hudson river. He used to discourse earnestly about it in his visits to Kingston, and seemed to be preparing to undertake the work upon the grandest scale. Death came, and buried his dream in oblivion. I remember him, as a hale, intelligentlooking old gentleman of the old school, with erect form, polite bearing, and refined but shadowed countenance, as well it might be, so widely different from the sprightly, hopeful expression of his portrait, painted in his youth, an engraving from.which, and executed while he was in Paris, is preserved among his papers.

One morning in September, 1852, having landed from the steamboat in a feeble condition, he set out to walk to Kingston, two and a half miles distant; but becoming fatigued in a short time, he