But expediency was the god of his idolatry. Error was to be countenanced, and even preferred to truth, when, by so doing, a purpose was to be answered. He sees that all his Irish measures in favour of Romanism, (by which sound principle has been so grievously outraged,) instead of winning over, have only strengthened and encouraged an anti-British party in their daring resolves. He sees that they regard them but as the pledges of ultimate success, in a project that is big with the ruin of the empire. And yet he goes on;-the moral cowardice which prompted the concessions, forbidding the acknowledgment that they have been made in vain. Alas! what can be said of this, but that "a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot consider, and say, is there not a lie in my right hand?"

But let not the friends of order be disheartened. Prospects at present are, no doubt, perplexed and gloomy. But it is not for them to despair. The premier has deserted and deceived them. But they have not as yet been deceived and deserted by the people of England. To them their cause has not as yet been fully made known. To them, therefore, their appeal should be promptly made, and every organ of influence should be employed for the purpose of representing to them the heartless baseness of their betrayal, and all the consequences which must inevitably result from the abandonment of the Protestant interest in Ireland. They cannot be too earnest in making it distinctly understood, that in contending for the Protestant interest, they are seeking for no exclusive advantage. They do not question the propriety of promoting Roman Catholics to places of honour and dignity, irrespectively of any differences of creed, and in exact proportion to their personal worth, and their professional qualifications. What they complain of is, that the profession of Romish doctrine should be made a special ground of

recommendation to office, and considered in itself sufficient to cover a multitude of deficiencies, which would otherwise present an effectual bar to the speedy advancement of the profes sor of what must now be called the favoured religion. When the people of England deliberately approve of this, and consider the profession of Protes tantism as disqualifying the loyal, while the profession of Popery qualities the disloyal for high offices under her majesty's government, it will be time enough to feel that the evil is without a remedy, and that the alternative of an "Irish party," or, in other words, of a junction with the repealers, is all that remains. But we do not apprehend any such sad necessity. It was not by any pressure from without that the premier was driven into the measures of which we complain; on the contrary, he has risked power by forcing them upon the country. They are decidedly opposed both to the feelings and the convictions of the British people. We have, therefore, every reason to expect that an appeal to them will not be made in vain. At all events, it is right to make it. We ask but for a fair hearing. Let our case come fully before them, and be decided upon its merits. We feel that it is the cause of truth and justice; of good government and sound policy; and that they are even more interested in it than we ourselves. The day which consigns the Irish Protestants to the domination of a Romish faction, seals the doom of the British empire. We, therefore, confidently tell our too desponding friends that they have no need to despair. There is often found help in time of need to those who are willing to help themselves, by which the most formidable difficulties have been overcome; and when all that is right has been done upon their part, they may leave the result in higher hands, and need not too curiously count the number of their enemies.

sun, though it was December, oppressed him as he stood there without shade, under the high, white gable; and his walk from the farthest end of Rome had not tired him the less, that he had had to ask his way from street to street. He would have concluded that the old master was gone out, and have turned away, disappointed, to retrace the wearisome route which had brought him thither, had not a certain indefinite sound of life, a stir, a suspiration, the low tone of a voice, that now and then made itself perceptible, assured him that the studio was not empty. With a hesitating hand, at length, he raised the latch-he opened the door-and stood like one spellstruck on the threshoid, as a spectacle met his eyes, which for an instant made him feel as if the days of Grecian fable were come back. Nearly in the centre of the wide room, wondrously irradiated by the golden light that flooded in through its single, high-placed window, wondrously contrasted with the dead white casts of many a group of ancient sculpture that lifted themselves on either side, appeared to hover a being, such as young goddesses must have been, if ever young goddesses were, who, with bared arms and bosom, an uplifted antique ewer in one hand, and in the other a broad and shallow goblet, seemed on the point of pouring out VOL. XXVII.-No. 159.

to a gray-haired man, who sat with rapt countenance looking up to her, the drink of the immortals. Had the stranger been a Greek of the olden time, he would have believed that he saw Hebe, sent down with the cup of eternal youth to some favourite of the gods; being a Venetian of the eighteenth century, he knew that he had before him nothing more than a young girl serving as a model to a painter. But how beautiful was that young girl! How faultless the outline of that classical head, of that low, antique brow, that sculptural profile, that undulating and symmetrical form, so perfect, so harmonious, so flowing, from the small and rounded neck down to the finely moulded ancle, and the firm, elastic foot, which her scanty statuesque drapery, looped up to the knee, suffered to appear! Motionless as if of marble she stood; but this immobility was the only attribute of the lifeless stone that she possessed; the warm blood coursed beneath that pure, transparent skin; the dark eye of Italy flashed beneath that chiselled brow; dewy breath came and went softly between those half-opened lips. You were not reminded of the statue of Hebe, but of the living goddess of youth herself.

The stranger stood, motionless as the object that rivetted his attention his entrance seemed unobserved; neither the painter nor the divine subject took any notice of him. he, too, forgot that he was forgotten, remarked not that he was unremarked;

T

But

he had neither eye nor thought, but for the picture before him. He lost all recollection of his errand-all recollection that he had an errand-all recollection of where he was, and who he was; as if grown to the threshold, he stood, his breath held back, his heart beating, not fast, but with a force that shook all his frame, till, some five or six minutes after his appearance, the old man threw down his pencil, and, nodding to the young goddess, said with a father's smile

"There! thou art released for this turn. Go, dress thee like a Christian maiden, and then see if Raphael be in the garden. I want him."

Hebe sprang lightly from her pedestal, and set down her pitcher and cup; then, throwing her arms round the old man's neck, she contemplated her picture for a few moments with sparkling looks.

"But the hair," said she, "is not done."

The old man now rose, and approached the stranger.

"Pardon, signore," said he, "that I have treated you with so little ceremony. I was within a few minutes of finishing my work, and feared the effect of an interruption. May I now ask in what way I can serve you?"

"I wish," began the stranger, "to take lessons in drawing. I have, doubtless, the honour of speaking to the renowned Maestro Giovanni Volpato?"

The painter bowed.

"I am also an artist," continued the young man. "I have already done some trifling things in sculpture, which have been praised above their worth. I shall be a sculptor one day, but I feel that I must learn to draw first."

sent, I feel that I am like a mariner without his compass. In short, Signor Maestro, you see in me a swimmer that cannot do without his corks; take away my model, and I am not sure of a line."

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"My instructions," said Volpato, are very much at your service, young sir. May I crave to know by what name I am to address my pupil.* "I am called," said the stranger, "Antonio Canova."

A flush of pleasure lighted up the face of the old man; and seizing the hands of the young sculptor with both his own, he kissed him, more Romano, first on one cheek, and then on the other.

"You may well say that you will one day be a sculptor," cried he. "I know your works, and I will not allow that they have been praised above their merit. In praise, Signor Antonio, quantity and quality are two things; and your works may have had more praise, but not better praise than they deserve. Your cotemporaries have commended you much. You have to teach them to commend you well. You have to teach your age to think of the works it now praises as you think of them, by giving it works which you can join with it in praising. That is your mission, and-you will accomplish it."

"Ah, maestro!" said Canova, "as I stood for the first time-it was but ere yesterday before the sun-god of the Vatican, I doubted whether I had a mission at all. I had not courage to say, And I, too, am a sculptor.'

The young artist was but a few days arrived in the Eternal City, under auspices which opened to his ambition prospects the most intoxicating. Already the cities of Italy rang with the fame of his juvenile efforts, of which others formed a higher, and, as we may now safely say, a less just estimate than himself. Yet not until, with a pilgrim's ardour, he had, immediately on his arrival, flown to the Vatican, and looked on the transcendant creations of the Grecian chisel, and of the pencil of Raphael, had he felt the deep dissatisfaction with himself and his works which now wrought so painfully in his bosom.

Revelations of a beauty and a majesty which his soul had till then but dimly dreamed of, had that day em