mination, for you look with the eyes of sense; but to discern baseness or value, which are hid within, we must look with the eyes of the mind.' He then ordered the golden chests to be opened, which exhaled an intolerable stench, and filled the beholders with horror. The story next appeared in the 109th chapter of the continental Gesta Romanorum. There, an inn-keeper found a chest, which he discovered to be full of money. It was claimed by the owner, and the inn-keeper, in order to ascertain if it were the will of Provi

majesty, and asked why he had compared him to the mule. Because,' replied Ruggieri, the mule would not stop where it ought, but stood still, when it should have gone on; in like manner you give where it is not suitable, and withhold when you ought to bestow.' On hearing this, the King carries him into a hall, and shows him two stout coffers, one filled with earth, the other containing the crown and sceptre, and a variety of precious stones. Alphonso desires him to take which one he pleases; and Ruggieri having accidentally fixed on the one with earth, the kingdence he should restore it, ordered three pastries affirms that it is bad fortune that has all along prevented him from being a partaker of the royal benefits. Then having presented him with the valuable chest, he allows him to return to Italy.

to be made. One he filled with earth, the second, with bones of dead men, and the third with money; he gave his choice of these three to the rightful proprietor, who fixed successively on the two with earth and bones, whence the innkeeper drew an inference in his own favor. This

"The rudiments of this story may be traced as far back as the romance of Josaphat and Bar-story came to Boccaccio, with the further modilaam. A king commanded four chests to be fications it had received in the Cento Novelle made, two of which were covered with gold, and Antiche. It is related conformably to the cirsecured by golden locks, but were filled with cumstances in the Decameron, both in the Specurotten bones of human carcasses. The other two lum Historiale, and in the Confessio Amantis of were overlaid with pitch and bound with ragged Gower, who cites a Cronikil' as his authority, cords, but were replenished with precious stones, for the tale. Thence it passed into the English and ointments of most exquisite odor. Having Gesta Romanorum, where three vessels are excalled his nobles together, the king placed these hibited to a lady for her choice, the first of gold, chests before them, and asked which they deemed but filled with dead bones, the second of silver, most valuable. They pronounced those with the containing earth and worms, and the last of lead, golden coverings to be the most precious, and but replenished with precious stones. It was surveyed the other two with contempt. I fore- probably from this last work, that Shakespear saw,' said the king, what would be your deter-derived the story of the Caskets."

Men

The

wing;

scarcely know if flowers blow through the months of spring;

youngling and the aged, the willow d the oak,

N the good old times of England, In the sadder days of England, these joys have ken the yeoman brave and gay, With heart of grace and laughing face would greet the morn of May; And nut brown Saxon damsels, all garlanded with flowers, Would form a ring and dance and sing through all the shining hours; And then and there the minstrels, trolled many an ancient laySuch was the noble custom of England's merrier day.

From village, town and hamlet; from forest, field and fell;

In pain and care all time must bear the bithen of the yoke,

Aye,

scarcely pause hath haggard Toil telift his hands to pray

Such is the piteous custom of England's sader day.

Now hunger-bound to cities, where even rod's own air,

From sunny glade and copse wood shade, from wold Which once brought health and ruddinss, brings

ving year,

poison and despair;

Where the dear sunshine only comes thrugh mammon's murky clouds,

For jocund mirth, and manly game, and good old Men wear their lives to ghastliness in weaving early English cheer,

shrouds ;

Stout Labor threw his mattock down, and donned his And pale and puny children must wok when they should play

best array

Such was the joyous custom of England's merrier Such is the piteous custom of England's modern day.

day.

F

LIONARDO DA VINCI.

ROM Mrs. Jameson's "Memoirs
of the Early Italian Painters,"
we take the following interesting

sketch of this eminent artist.
Nothing that we can add, by way
of introduction, is necessary to
Imake the article acceptable. The
subject and the writer are suffi-

cient attractions. ED.]

its depths :-the spirit of bold investigation into truths of all kinds, which led to the Reformation; the spirit of daring adventure, which led men in search of new worlds beyond the eastern and the western oceans; and the spirit of art, through which men soared even to the seventh heaven of invention."

Lionardo da Vinci seems to present in his own person a résumé of all the characteristics of the age in which he lived. He was the miracle of that age of miracles. Ardent and versatile as youth; patient and persevering as age; a most profound and original thinker; the greatest mathematician and most ingenious mechanic of his time; architect, chemist, engineer, musician, poet, painter!-we are not only astounded by the variety of his natural gifts and acquired knowledge, but by the practical direction of his ama zing powers. The extracts which have been published from MSS. now existing in his own handwriting show him to have anticipated by the force of his own intellect some of the greatest discoveries made since his time. These frag. ments, says Mr. Hallam, "are, according to our common estimate of the age in which he lived, more like revelations of physical truths vouchsafed to a single mind, than the superstructure of its reasoning upon any established basis. The discoveries which made Galileo, Kepler, Castelli, and other names illustrious—the system of Copernicus-the very theories of recent geologists, are anticipated by Da Vinci within the compass of a few pages, not perhaps in the most precise lan

We now approach the period when the art of painting reached its highest perfection, whether considered with reference to poetry of conception, or the mechanical means through which these conceptions were embodied in the noblest forms. Within a short period of about thirty years, i. e. between 1490 and 1520, the greatest painters whom the world has yet seen were living and working together. On looking back we cannot but feel that the excellence they attained was the result of the efforts and aspirations of a preceding age; and yet these men were so great in their vocation, and so individual in their greatness, that, losing sight of the linked chain of progress, hey seemed at first to have had no precursors, as hey have since had no peers. Though living at te same time, and most of them in personal relatn with each other, the direction of each mind W different-was peculiar; though exercising inome sort a reciprocal influence, this influence ner interfered with the most decided originality. These wonderful artists, who would have beeremarkable men in their time, though they had ever touched a pencil, were Lionardo da Vinc Michael Angelo, Raphael, Correggio Gior-guage, or on the most conclusive reasoning, but 'gioneTitian, in Italy; and in Germany, Albert so as to strike us with something like the awe of Dure of these men, we might say, as of preternatural knowledge. In an age of so much Home and Shakespeare, that they belong to no dogmatism, he first laid down the grand principle particuar age or country, but to all time, and to of Bacon, that experiment and observation must the unirse. That they flourished together with-be the guides to just theory in the investigation in one lief and brilliant period, and that each of nature. If any doubt could be harbored, not carried ut to the highest degree of perfection his as to the right of Lionardo da Vinci to stand as own pecliar aims, was no casuality: nor are we the first name of the fifteenth century, which is to seek fr the causes of this surpassing excel- beyond all doubt, but as to his originality in so lence meely in the history of the art as such. many discoveries, which probably no one man, The cause lay far deeper, and must be referred especially in such circumstances, has ever made— to the hisbry of human culture. The ferment-it must be by an hypothesis not very untenable, ing activiy of the fifteenth century found its results in the extraordinary development of human intelligence in the commencement of the six-cord.” teenth century. We often hear in these days of "the spirit of the age;" but in that wonderful age three mighty spirits were stirring society to

that some parts of physical science had already attained a height which mere books do not re

It seems at first sight almost incomprehensible that, thus endowed as a philosopher, mechanic, inventor, discoverer, the fame of Lionardo should

now rest on the works he has left as a painter. It happened about this time that a peasant on We cannot, within these limits, attempt to ex- the estate of Piero da Vinci brought him a circu. plain why and how it is that as the man of science lar piece of wood, cut horizontally from the trunk he has been naturally and necessarily left behind of a very large old fig-tree, which had been lately by the onward march of intellectual progress, felled, and begged to have something painted on it while as the poet-painter he still survives as a as an ornament for his cottage. The man being presence and a power. We must proceed at an especial favorite, Piero desired his son Liononce to give some account of him in the charac-ardo to gratify his request; and Lionardo, inter in which he exists to us and for us-that of spired by that wildness of fancy which was one the great artist.

of his characteristics, took the panel into his own room, and resolved to astonish his father by a most unlooked-for proof of his art. He determined to compose something which should have an effect similar to that of the Medusa on the shield of Perseus, and almost petrify beholders. Aided by his recent studies in natural history, he

and the river-mud all kinds of hideous reptiles, as adders, lizards, toads, serpents; insects, as moths, locusts; and other crawling and flying obscene and obnoxious things; and out of these

Lionardo was born at Vinci, near Florence, in the Lower Val d'Arno, on the borders of the territory of Pistoia. His father, Piero da Vinci, was an advocate of Florence-not rich, but in independent circumstances, and possessed of estates in land. The singular talents of his son induced Piero to give him, from an early age, the advan-collected together from the neighboring swamps tage of the best instructors. As a child, he distinguished himself by his proficiency in arithmetic and mathematics. Music he studied early, as a science as well as an art. He invented a species of lyre for himself, and sung his own poeticalhe compounded a sort of monster or chimera, compositions to his own music-both being frequently extemporaneous. But his favorite pursuit was the art of design in all its branches; he modelled in clay or wax, or attempted to draw every object which struck his fancy. His father sent him to study under Andrea Verrocchio famous as a sculptor, chaser in metal, and painter. Andrea, who was an excellent and correct designer, but a bad and hard colorist, was soon after engaged to paint a picture of the Baptism of our Saviour. He employed Lionardo, then a youth, to execute one of the angels: this he did with so much softness and richness of color, that it far surpassed the rest of the picture; and Verocchio from that time threw away his palette, and confined himself wholly to his works in sculpture and design; " enraged," says Vasari, "that a child should thus excel him."

The youth of Lionardo thus passed away in the pursuit of science and of art: sometimes he was deeply engaged in astronomical calculations and investigations; sometimes ardent in the study of natural history, botany, and anatomy; sometimes intent on new effects of color, light, shadow, or expression, in representing objects animate or inanimate. Versatile, yet persevering, he varied his pursuits, but he never abandoned any. He was quite a young man when he conceived and demonstrated the practicability of two magnificent projects: one was, to lift the whole of the church of San Lorenzo, by means of immense levers, some feet higher than it now stands, and thus supply the deficient elevation; the other project was, to form the Arno into a navigable canal, as far as Pisa, which would have added greatly to the commercial advantages of Florence.

which he represented as about to issue from the shield, with eyes flashing fire, and of an aspect so fearful and abominable that it seemed to infect the very air around. When finished, he led his father into the room in which it was placed, and the terror and horror of Piero proved the success of his attempt. This production, afterwards known as the Rotello del Fico, from the material on which it was painted, was sold by Piero secretly for one hundred ducats, to a merchant, who carried it to Milan, and sold it to the duke for three hundred. To the poor peasant thus cheated of his Rotello, Piero gave a wooden shield, on which was painted a heart transfixed by a dart; a device better suited to his taste and comprehension. In the subsequent troubles of Milan, Lionardo's picture disappeared, and was probably destroyed as an object of horror, by those who did not understand its value as a work of art.

The anomalous monster represented on the Rotello was wholly different from the Medusa, afterwards painted by Lionardo, and now existing in the Florence Gallery. It represents the severed head of Medusa, seen foreshortened, lying on a fragment of rock: the features are beautiful and regular; the hair already metamorphosed into serpents

"which curl and flow,

And their long tangles in each other lock,
And with unending involutions show
Their mailed radiance."

Those who have once seen this terrible and fasci. nating picture can never forget it. The ghastly head seems to expire, and the serpents to crawl into glittering life, as we look upon it.