This criticism made such an impression on Brown that it decided him to go into more laborious work, and was the foundation of his habit of getting up at daybreak and going out to sketch rocks, trees and cattle, until he stands where he now does as a draughtsman.
The painting which Brullof had first admired, and which had induced him to compare Brown to Claude in atmospheric effects, was a view of the Pontine Marshes, painted for Crawford the sculptor, and now in possession, of his widow, Mrs. Terry, at Rome.
During this entire season the penuriousness exhibited by Brullof is one of the hardest phases of his character to explain. Though he was worth at least half a million of dollars, his meals were generally of the scantiest kind, purchased by the Italian cicerone, and cooked and eaten in his room. Yet a kindness would touch the hidden springs of his generosity as the staff of Moses did the rock of Horeb.
Toward the close of the Roman season, Brullof, growing more and more moody, and becoming still more of a recluse, painted his last picture, which showed how diseased and morbid his mind had become. He called it "The End of All Things," and made it sensational to the verge of that flexible characteristic. It represented popes and emperors tumbling headlong into a terrible abyss, while the world's benefactors were ascending in a sort of theatrical transformation-scene. A representation of Christ holding a cross aloft was given, and winged angels were hovering here and there, much in the same manner as coryphées and lesser auxiliaries of the ballet. A capital portrait of George Washington was painted in the mass of rubbish, perhaps as a compliment to Brown. In contradistinction to the portrait of Washington were seen prominently those of the czar Nicholas and the emperor Napoleon; the former put in on account of the artist's own private wrong, and the latter because at that time, just after the coup d'ètat, he was the execration of the liberty-loving world.
In the spring the Russian artist gave up his studio, and went down to some baths possessing a local reputation situated on the road to Florence, where he died very suddenly. Much mystery overhangs his last days, and absolutely no knowledge exists as to what became of his vast property. His cicerone robbed him of his gold watch and all his personal effects and disappeared. His remains lie buried in the Protestant burying-ground outside the walls of Rome, near the Porto di Sebastiano. His tomb is near that of Shelley and Keats, and the monument erected to his memory is very simple, his head being sculptured upon it in alto relievo, and on the opposite side an artist's palette and brushes.
EARL MARBLE.
A CHRISTMAS HYMN.
The air was still o'er Bethlehem's plain,
As if the great Night held its breath,
When Life Eternal came to reign