wards to Dulwich, a distance of about two miles, breaking the tenth commandment at almost every villa which rose along the winding road. There was a peacefulness in the scenery most delicious to Londoners; upland and woodland breaking the view, so that almost every house stood as it were alone in its seclusion; the air was filled with butterflies, the trees with birds, the grass with flowers. We at length turned down a broad road, belted with fine old trees and bordered with the greenest turf; it looked like the approach to some aristocratic park, but it was only the public road, for soon the environs of a village began to present themselves, the houses began to draw nearer to each other; there was a shining pond with a merry flotilla of quacking ducks; a bright-coloured sign swung in the middle of the road, and a rural inn offered its hospitable shade from the noon-day heat, while before we had prepared ourselves for them, the old fashioned, venerable walls of Dulwich College reared themselves on our left hand. How Dulwich may look in a drizzling fog or a biting north-easter, I know not; but this I know, that as we stood at its entrance on that bright day of June, we thought it a picture of an old English village.

that we had come all this way to see the pictures
of the Dulwich gallery, we therefore gathered
together our somewhat scattered wits, and pro-
ceeded up the trim shrubbery that leads to the
picture rooms. A sedate, elderly man stood
sentinel over those rare treasures. He seemed
worthy of his guardianship, for the door of
his little antechamber stood open to the gallery
as if he liked to run his eye frequently over
its beauties, and he took our parasols and
sticks from us with much of that cautionary
air wherewith you would divest a playful child
of a knife of whose mischief-dealing properties
he was not aware.
The sudden transition from
the rural brightness without to the refulgence of
borrowed nature within struck us all forcibly.
Around us shone many atmospheres, and smiled
on us many faces. We knew not where to
turn, or whose enchanted bidding to obey.
Cuyp showed us mellow sunsets, clear air, and
most living cows; Teniers irresistibly attracted
us with a dear, ugly old woman, the very
epitome of all the ugly old women we had
known from our youth up; Rembrandt called
to us, from a window, in the most speaking eyes
and expressive mouth we ever saw in a young
girl's face; and Murillo's grinning organ_boys
seemed mocking our inresolute and wandering
gaze.

I had heard so much of these boys of Murillo's, that I fancied they were the gems of all I had to see, and for a long time I devoted my attention to them and to a familiar flower-girl, upon whose graceful turban and arch smile my own pencil in the days of my juvenility had done murderous execution. It amused me beyond description to recognise the plaid-like scarf, whose eastern arabesque pattern had puzzled me so frequently-to recall my dreadful botching of those vivid and natural-looking flowers, and to admire the gorgeous colouring and arch sauciness of the chef d'œuvre which I had only known from most villanous copies or rather travesties.

The houses had not a modern air; the sign flapping in the path, and the formal quaint lines of trees that bordered and divided the road, carried the thoughts back to the past. The calm was profound; for the distant voices of children picking sweet-briar in an adjoining lane, the rapid yet not ungraceful movements of the cricketers in the field behind the modest inn before mentioned, and the lazy progress of some cows dawdling downwards to drink at the pond-these rather added to, than detracted from the repose and harmony of the scene. It was just the spot for a first-rate mail coach to dash along, with its four fine steeds that bounded under the affectionate hand of a proud coachman of the olden time, whose glory it was to be up to the mark, and never turn a hair of the four. Such an apparition would have suited At last I was attracted by a fine frantic figure the character of that quaint old place; but lo! at the end of the last room, which I learned while we stood, we heard the creaking and from the catalogue to be Mrs. Siddons, as the groaning of that detestable monstrosity of the Tragic Muse, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. nineteenth century, an omnibus; and presently Sir Joshua, honest man (thank heaven he is it staggered heavily into sight, its roof covered not now president of the academy, to frown my with human legs and bodies, and its windows profanities into disgrace), had little idea of the crowded with close-packed heads; the over- truly great; his tastes were too conventional; loaded, wretched scarecrows of horses, whose he went raving after Michael Angelo, and dabfour pair of legs were licensed to carry twenty-bling in new mysterious shades, and forgot to two lazy bipeds, sweltered miserably beneath the look at nature; and the great goddess, incensed sunshine which to us was so full of enjoyment, at his neglect, absented herself so completely but to them was like molten fire, burning away from his more ambitious works, that they are inch by inch the little remaining flesh from only sublime affectations. their emaciated carcases.

We could not help sighing, for the horrid conveyance rattled away all our reverie, yet it passed, and again the shadows dropped across the road, the ducks dabbled and plashed the water, the trees moved in the winds like infants stirring softly in their sleep, and we sank back into our musings and our memories.

A gentle touch recalled us to the recollection

Mrs. Siddons under his hands looked to me only an actress, and an actress moreover not under the influence of the highest inspiration, for besides the ultra extacies of the expression, the colour in her cheeks is beginning to prove that Sir Joshua's rash experiments were more amusing to himself than profitable to posterity.

Somewhat displeased with this tonséed and frizzled lady, I turned sharply round, and stood

Murillo has been said, and justly, to have less spiritual conceptions in his art than the great Italian painters displayed. His strong nationality tinctures even his sacred compositions. His Virgin has generally a swarthy cheek. His monks are iron-bound to earth by the weight of their tyrannic chains, not soaring into the ether of sublime contemplation, like a St. Peter or St. John of Raphael. His St. John in the National Gallery is a lovely dark-eyed boy, hugging a sheep with an air of the most natural fondness; but where is the serene dignity, the ineffable gentleness and tenderness, which Raphael or Linder threw into the head of the disciple whom Jesus loved?

women, "to watch what the end might be." All these foreboding shadows fall over her dark, soft eyes; but the child over whom she bends so mournfully, though wonderfully like her in feature, and also in tender sadness of expression, has a very different meaning in his look. He wears truly our nature-he looks the man of sorrows, even in that early infancy. But his sorrow is not for himself nor for his mother. Those deep, searching eyes, that gaze out vividly from the canvas, meet the passenger's glance with a sweet, childlike earnestness, as if they said, "Ye will not come unto me, that ye might have rest." He has the true expression of the friend who wept for the dead Lazarus. He is not here so divine, as human; and intense feeling for the sufferings of our lost race seems to have swallowed up, for the instant, his own unchangeable happiness as a Deity. We are penetrated, as we stand, with the greatness of

Murillo's merry boys are essentially material, full of glee, mischief, and health; and his Spanish flower-girl is an arrant gipsy, and her arch eye seems calculating how far you are fool" His love, who died for sinners." enough to be taken in by her skill in palmistry. As I went on indulging in these perhaps The adoration of the Holy Child which adorns fanciful speculations, I heard a deep sigh beside our National Gallery, by the same master, is any- me; I turned, and saw Mrs. Douglas, the young thing but sublime. The boy perched up, with mother I have mentioned as one of our party, a parent bowing obsequiously on either side, looking fixedly at the picture on which my own raises no train of thought more sacred than the attention had been riveted. The moisture on image of a small boy at a school examination, her lids showed some deep feeling had been at set up on a platform to deliver himself in work, while at the same time a slight blush and one of the orations from Cato, "My name hesitation in her manner betrayed a consciousis Norval," or any other approved specimen ness of ultra-maternal partiality, when she said, of the declamatory style. But this pic- "Don't you think that my little Lily has someture at Dulwich, this before which we then times an expression in her face like that exqui stood, excited no such ludicrous associations. site child's?" The little Lily Douglas! I It might be that the spirit of the beautiful was looked again at the picture. Lily had always strong on me that day-that the soul was in one seemed to me more like one of Raphael's of those mysterious moods when the higher sen- holy children; her golden clusters of curls, her sations of the spirit are tremblingly alive to the round, fair limbs, and etherially transparent slightest impressions, when the eye of the heart skin, and most of all, the serene sweetness of is open, and the ear more cognisant of the still, her clear, azure eyes, that were so rarely ruffled sad music of humanity. Certain it is, that in by infantile caprice, had made me call her "our this picture Murillo seemed to me, without at- little Raphael." She was not unlike in distempting, like Raphael, to soar into the cloud-position to the descriptions of that rare being less calm of divinity, to have achieved a composition that comes home to every suffering as well as rejoicing human heart. Raphael's divine heads have much of "that peace that passeth understanding :" they seem to have no consciousness of earthly restlessness and sorrow. But Murillo has here imbued two faces with such a marvellous sympathy for human woe and love for human frailty, that the involuntary tears blind us as we gaze. The mother's eyes are sad, as if she, by her elevation over all woman-kind, had learned that melancholy knowledge which accompanies all greatness-she is the Mary who "pondered these things in her heart." She seems as if her supernaturally-gifted spirit saw afar off all the agonies and trials which awaited that miraculously born infant now seated in her lap; as if she saw him reviled, evil-entreated, spit upon; yea, as if even that dreadful day rose up before her, when her son was to stand crowned with thorns and doomed to death among the savage multitude, and while they dragged him to the fatal tree, she was to follow afar off with the

as a baby, for our little Lily was scarcely beyond first babyhood. Like young Raphael, she was loving, tender, tranquil, and placid, and easily made happy; yet, at the same time, fearfully thoughtful and sensitive for one of her years, or rather, her months. I say fearfully thoughtfulGod knows childhood is not the time for reflection or earnest meditation, and the early thoughtful are too often the early summoned. As I looked again at the picture, and recalled Lily's calm, happy smile, and low, sweet laugh (she never shouted out like common children), ! began to fancy Mrs. Douglas had seen through the misty glasses of dejection; for certainly, the resemblance had taken a strong hold on her imagination, and affected her spirits very much. I tried to find a likeness to her little Lily in some lovely children painted in another roomstudies by either Guido or Raphael, I forget which-trusting that their rosy, healthful glee, as they clung around the maternal knee, might rouse her smiles; but she always recurred again to the depth of love and sadness in the earnest eyes of the Murillo.

THE DRUNK ARD'S

DAUGHTER.

BY MRS. CAROLINE LEE HENTZ.

Kate Franklin sat at the window, watching the lightning that streamed through the sky, till her eyes were almost blinded by the glare. She was naturally timid, and had an unusual dread of a thunder-storm; yet, though the lightning ran down in rills of fire, and the thunder rolled till the earth shook with its reverberations, she kept her post of danger, repeating, as she gazed abroad, "Oh that I were a boy, that I might venture abroad in search of my father! It is almost midnight, yet he is not returned. He will perish in a storm like this. Oh that I were a boy!" she again passionately exclaimed, while the rain began to drive against the casement, and the wind swept the branches of the trees roughly by the panes. She held a young baby in her arms, which she had just lulled to sleep; and her mother lay sleeping in a bed, in the same apartment. All slumbered but Kate, who for hours had watched from the window for her father's return. At length her resolution was taken. She laid the babe by her mother's side, drew down the curtain to exclude the lightning's glare, and, throwing a shawl around her, softly opened the door, and soon found herself in the street, in the midst of the thunder, the lightning, and the rain. How strong must have been the impulse, how intense the anxiety, which could have induced a timid young girl to

ning flashed with a paler radiance, and at intervals the wan moon might be seen wading through the grey, watery clouds. She felt her strength exhausted; and, clasping her hands together, lifted her eyes, streaming with tears, almost wishing a bolt would fall, and strike them both simultaneously.

"My father is lost," said she; "and why should I wish him to live? Why should I wish to survive him?"

The sound of horses' feet approaching startled her. The horseman checked his speed as he over her father; and as the lightning played came opposite the tree, where Kate still knelt over her white garments, which, being wet by the rain, clung closely round her, she might well be mistaken for an apparition. Her shawl had fallen on the ground, her hair streamed in dripping masses over her face, and her uplifted arms were defined on the dark back-ground of and the rider, dismounting, came as near to the an angry sky. The horse reared and plunged; spot as the impetuous animal would allow.

Kate. "Then my father will not be left here to "Oh! Harry Blake, is it you?" exclaimed

die."

"Die!" repeated Harry. "What can have happened? Why are you abroad such a night

as this?"

"Alas!" said Kate, "I could not leave my father to perish. I sought him through the storm; and I find him thus."

come out at that lone, silent hour, on such a night, without a protector or a guide! She flew along at first; but the rain and the wind beat in her face, and the lightning bewildered her with its lurid coruscations. Then, pausing for While she was speaking, Harry had fastened breath, she shaded her eyes, and looking fear- the bridle of his horse to the tree, and stooped fully round, gazed on every object till her imagi- down on the other side of Mr. Franklin. Kate's nation clothed it with its own wild imagery. first feeling on his approach was a transport of At length, her eye fell on a dark body ex-gratitude: now she was overwhelmed with shame; tended beneath a tree by the wayside. She approached it tremblingly, and, kneeling down, bent over it, till she felt a hot breath pass burningly over her cheek; and just then, a sheet of flame rolling round it, she recognised but too plainly her father's features. She took his hand, but it fell impassive from her hold. She called upon his name; she put her arms round his neck, and tried to raise him from the earth; but his head fell back like lead, and a hoarse breathing sound alone indicated his existence.

"Father, dear father, wake, and come home," she cried in a louder tone; but the thunder's roar did not rouse him, how much less her soft though earnest voice! Again she called; but she heard only the echoes of night repeating her own mournful adjuration, "Father, dear father,

come home."

How long she thus remained she knew not; but the wind and the rain subsided, the light

for she knew, as Harry inhaled the burning exhalation of his breath, his disgraceful secret would be revealed-that secret which her mother and herself had so long in anguish concealed.

"Poor Kate!" involuntarily burst from his lips, as he gazed on the prostrate and immovable form of the man he had so much loved and respected. Had he seen him blasted by the lightning's stroke, he could not have felt more shocked or grieved. He comprehended in a moment the full extent of his degradation; and it seemed as if an awful chasm, yawning beneath his feet, now separated him, and would for ever separate him from his instructor and friend.

"Kate," said he, and his voice quivered from emotion, "this is no place for you; you are chilled by the rain; you will be chilled to death if you remain in your wet garments. Let me see you safe at home; and I will return to your

father, nor leave him till he is in a place of security."

"No, no," cried Kate; "I think not of myself. Only assist me to raise him and lead him home. I care not what happens to me. I knew it would come to this at last. Oh, my poor father."

wants. This morning he took his accustomed seat, but his coffee and toast remained untasted. He sat with his head leaning upon his hand, his eyes fixed vacantly on the wall, and his hair matted and hanging in neglected masses over his temples. Kate looked upon his face, and remembered when she thought her father one of the handsomest men she had ever seen-when dignity was enthroned upon his brow, and the from his eye. He lifted his head, and encountered her fixed gaze-probably followed the current of her thoughts, for his countenance darkened, and pushing his cup far from him, he asked her in a surly tone why she stared so rudely upon him?

Kate tried to answer, but there was suffocation in her throat, and she could not speak.

Mr. Franklin looked upon her for a moment with a stern, yet wavering glance; then rising, and thrusting back his chair against the wall, he left the house, muttering, as he went, not loud, but deep."

curses

Harry felt that there was no consolation to be offered for such grief; and he attempted not to offer any. He put a strong arm round the un-purity as well as the majesty of genius beamed happy man, and raised him from the ground, still supporting his reeling body, and calling his name in a loud, commanding tone. Mr. Franklin opened his eyes with a stupid stare, and uttered some indistinct, idiotic sounds; then, letting his head fall on his bosom, he suffered himself to be led homeward, reeling, tottering, and stumbling at every step. And this man, so helpless and degraded, so embruted and disgusting, that his very daughter, who had just perilled her life in the night-storm to secure him from danger, had turned away from him, even while she supported him, with unconquerable loathing, was a member of Congress, a distinguished lawyer, eloquent at the bar and sagacious in council, a citizen respected and beloved, a friend generous and sincere, a husband once idolized, a father once adored. The young man who walked by his side had been for more than a year a student in his office, and sat under his instructions, as Paul sat at the feet of Gamaliel. Now, in the expressive language of Scripture, he could have exclaimed, "Oh, Lucifer, thou son of the morning, how low art thou fallen!" but he moved on in silence, interrupted occasionally by the ill-repressed sobs of Kate. He had been that day to an adjoining town, to transact some business for Mr. Franklin; and, being detained to an unusually late hour, was overtaken by the storm, when the agonized voice of Kate met his ear.

Harry lingered a moment at Mr. Franklin's door before he departed. He wanted to say something expressive of comfort and sympathy to Kate; but he knew not what to say.

66

"You will never mention the circumstances of this night, Harry," said Kate, in a low, hesitating voice. "I cannot ask you to respect my father as you have done; but save him, if it may be, from the contempt of the world."

"If he were my own father, Kate," cried Harry, "I would not guard his reputation with more jealous care. Look upon me henceforth as a brother; and call upon me as such when you want counsel, sympathy, or aid. God bless you, Kate."

Alas! there is no blessing for a drunkard's daughter," sighed Kate, as she turned from the door, and listened to her father's deep sonorous breathing from the sofa on which he had staggered, and where he lay stretched at full length till long after the dawning of morn, notwithstanding her efforts to induce him to change his drenched garments.

Mrs. Franklin was an invalid, and consequently a late riser. Kate usually presided at the breakfast table, and attended to her father's

Kate had become gradually accustomed to the lowering cloud of sullenness which the lethargy of inebriation leaves behind it. She had heard, by almost imperceptible degrees, the voice of manly tenderness assume the accents of querulousness and discontent; but she had never met such a glance of defiance or witnessed such an ebullition of passion before. Her heart rose in rebellion against him, and she trembled at the thought that she might learn to hate him, as he thus went on, plunging deeper, and deeper, and deeper, in the gulf of sensuality.

"No, no, no!" repeated she to herself, "let me never be such a monster. Let me pity, pray for him, love him if I can--but never let me forget that he is my father still."

Young as Kate was, she had learned that endurance, not happiness, was her allotted portion. Naturally high spirited and impetuous, with impassioned feelings and headlong impulses, in prosperity she might have become haughty and ungovernable; but subjected in early youth to a discipline of all others the most galling to her pride, her spirit became subdued and her passions restrained by the same process by which her principles were strengthened and the powers of her mind precociously developed. Her brothers and sisters had all died in infancy, except one, now an infant in the cradle-a feeble, delicate child, for whom every one prophesied an early grave was appointed.

Mrs. Franklin herself was constitutionally feeble, and yielding to the depression of spirits caused by her domestic misfortunes, indulged in constant and ineffectual complainings, which added to the gloom of the household without producing amendment or reformation in its degraded master. She was a very proud, and had been a very beautiful woman, who had felt for her husband an attachment romantically strong, for it was fed by the two strongest passions of her heart-pride, which exulted in the homage paid to his talents and his graces, and vanity, which delighted in the influence her