With the last flourish fall and die.
I’ve seen a mermaid dress’d in blue;
I’ve seen a cupid burn a wing;
I’ve known a Neptune lose a shoe;
I’ve heard a guilty spectre sing.
I’ve seen, spectators of a dance,
Two Brahmins, Mahomet, the Cid,
Four Pagan kings, four knights of France,
Jove and the Muses—scene Madrid!’
The leading paper in the present number will not escape the attention nor fail to win the admiration of the reader. The description of the Ascent of Mount Ætna by our eminent artist, is forcible and graphic in the extreme. It will derive additional interest at this moment from the recent eruption of this renowned volcano, which still continued at the last advices, and by which already seventy persons had lost their lives. If our metropolitan readers would desire a due impression of the magnificent scene which our correspondent has described, let them drop in at the rooms of the National Academy of Design, where they will find the Burning Mountain, as seen from Taormina, depicted in all its vastness and grandeur; and not only this, but the noble series of allegorical pictures, heretofore noticed at large in this Magazine, called ‘The Voyage of Life,’ representing Childhood, Youth, Manhood, and Old Age; ‘Angels ministering to Christ in the Wilderness,’ a picture that has an horizon, and an aërial gradation toward the zenith, which alone, to say nothing of the figures, and the composition itself as a study, would richly repay a visit; ‘The Past and the Present,’ two most effective scenes, especially the second, which is overflowing with the mingled graces of poetry and art; a glorious composition, ‘An Italian Scene,’ of which we shall speak hereafter; as well as of the view of ‘Ruined Aqueducts in the Campagna di Roma,’ fading into dimness toward the imperial city, and of ‘The Notch in the White Mountains’ of New-Hampshire. Apropos: we perceive by a letter from an American at Rome, in one of the public journals, that Thorwaldsen, the great sculptor, was an enthusiastic admirer of Mr. Cole’s pictures, particularly of his ‘Voyage of Life,’ which he pronounced ‘original, and new in art.’ ‘He could talk of nothing else,’ says the writer, ‘for a long time; and every time he speaks of him, he adds: ‘Ma che artista, che grand’ artista, quel vostro compatriota! Che fantasia! quanto studio della natura!’ ‘But what an artist, what a great artist, is this countryman of yours! What fancy, what study of nature!’ ••• We are aware of a pair of ‘bonny blue een’ swimming in light, that will ‘come the married woman’s eye’ over a kind but most antiquarian husband, when the following is read, some two weeks from now, in their ‘little parlor’ in a town of the far west. It reaches us in the MS. of a Boston friend: ‘Old Colonel W——, formerly a well-known character in one of our eastern cities, was remarkable for but one passion out of the ordinary range of humanity, and that was for buying at auction any little lot of trumpery which came under the head of ‘miscellaneous,’ for the reason that it couldn’t be classified. Though close-fisted in general, he was continually throwing away his money by fives and tens upon such trash. In this way he had filled all the odd corners in his dwelling and out-houses with a collection of nondescript articles, that would have puzzled a philosopher to tell what they were made for, or to what use they could ever be put. This however, was but a secondary consideration with the Colonel; for he seldom troubled his head about such articles after they were once fairly housed. Not so with his wife however, who was continually remonstrating against these purchases, which served only to clutter up the house, and as food for the mirth of the domestics. But the Colonel, though he often submitted to these remonstrances of his better-half, couldn’t resist his passion; and so he went on adding from week to week to his heap of miscellanies. One day while sauntering down the street, he heard the full, rich tones of his friend C——, the well-known auctioneer, and as a matter of course stepped in to see what was being sold. On the floor he observed a collection that looked as if it might have been purloined from the garret of some museum, and around which a motley group was assembled; while on the counter stood the portly auctioneer, in the very height of a mock-indignant remonstrance with his audience. ‘Nine dollars and ninety cents!’ cried the auctioneer. ‘Gentlemen, it is a shame, it is barbarous, to stand by and permit such a sacrifice of property! Nine dol-lars and ninety—— Good morning, Colonel! A magnificent lot of—of—antiques—and all going for nine dollars and ninety cents. Gentlemen, you’ll never see another such lot; and all going—going—for nine dollars and ninety cents. Colonel W——, can you permit such a sacrifice?’ The Colonel glanced his eye over the lot, and then with a nod and a wink assured him he could not. The next instant the hammer came down, and the purchase was the Colonel’s, at ten dollars. As the articles were to be paid for and removed immediately, the Colonel lost no time in getting a cart, and having seen every thing packed up and on their way to his house, he proceeded to his own store, chuckling within himself that now at least he had made a bargain at which even his wife couldn’t grumble. In due time he was seated at the dinner-table, when lifting his eyes, he observed a cloud upon his wife’s brow. ‘Well, my dear?’ said he, inquiringly. ‘Well?’ repeated his wife; ‘it is not well, Mr. W.; I am vexed beyond endurance. You know C——, the auctioneer?’ ‘Certainly,’ replied the Colonel; ‘and a very gentlemanly person he is too.’ ‘You may think so,’ rejoined the wife, ‘but I don’t, and I’ll tell you why. A few days ago I gathered together all the trumpery with which you have been cluttering up the house for the last twelve-month, and sent it to Mr. C——, with orders to sell the lot immediately to the highest bidder for cash. He assured me he would do so in all this week, at farthest, and pay over the proceeds to my order. And here I’ve been congratulating myself on two things: first, on having got rid of a most intolerable nuisance; and secondly, on receiving money enough therefor to purchase that new velvet hat you promised me so long ago. And now what do you think? This morning, about an hour ago, the whole load came back again, without a word of explanation!’ The Colonel looked blank for a moment, and then proceeded to clear up the mystery. But the good vrouw was pacified only by the promise of a ten-dollar note beside that in the hands of the auctioneer; on condition, however, that she should never mention it.’ Of course she kept her word! ••• How seldom it is that one encounters a good sonnet! Most sonnetteers of our day are like feeble-framed men walking in heavy armor; ‘the massy weight on’t galls their laden limbs.’ We remember two or three charming sonnets of Longfellow’s; Park Benjamin has been unwontedly felicitous in some of his examples; and H. T. Tuckerman has excelled in the same poetical rôle. Here is a late specimen of his, from the ‘Democratic Review,’ which we regard as very beautiful: