The

With a heart, the hurried throbbing of which did not help to steady his hand, Canova seated himself before the canvas to which he was to transfer the features of Maria Volpato. The pencil trembled in his unassured grasp: he had made no contemptible progress in drawing under the engraver's guidance, but to-day it seemed as if all he had gained since coming to Rome had suddenly forsaken him. His touch was become hesitating, uncertain; his hand had forgot its cunning. face upon which his eyes were fixed refused to reproduce itself beneath his pencil; no line that he drew satisfied him, the very power of catching a resemblance appeared to have departed from him. Perhaps it was that he did not carry with him the sympa thies of his fair sitter, that she yielded not herself to his endeavour. tainly, no spark of animation lighted up those exquisite features: they were there, it is true, in their faultless, matchless beauty, but it was a beauty without soul. Listlessness, weariness, almost sullenness, was all the expression with which they met his troubled and self-distrusting gaze.

Cer

Then came a change over brow and cheek-an uneasy, restless look: the daughter of Volpato could not stay two minutes in the same position; she mused, she started, she pouted, she sighed,—all tokens of the reluctance with which she sat to our poor Antonio! At times her expression was disdainful, at times malicious, and the artist himself shuddered at the reflection of it on his canvas. He rubbed out the lines, which gave almost the impression of a beautiful fiend: he tried again, and the face that grew beneath his hands was that of an idiot. What wonder if the unhappy scholar of Volpato found himself baffled, if all his attempts to seize the lines of the ever-varying visage before him proved abortive? At first he thought the fault was his own, that his genius had deserted him, and again the old doubts as to his vocation came back upon him in all their bitterness. But it was not long before he perceived that it was Maria's calculated plan to confuse and bewilder him. "She will not be painted by me," thought he; and the thought was bitterer to him than that which it displaced. Nothing could have wrought more favourably for her pur

pose than his divining it, for the suspicion that his failure was the dearest hope of her heart seemed to paralyse his hand, and at length he threw down the pencil in despair, and put an end to the sitting.

En

This scene was repeated more than once, till the very soul of Antonio sickened within him at the hopeless toil. Meanwhile, how different a sitter had Raphael Morghen !—and with how different results did he pursue the labour which all combined to render so easy to him! To say nothing of this artist's undeniable superiority to Canova in drawing, he enjoyed the inestimable advantage of a perfect good understanding with her on whose portrait.he wrought. tering with the instinct of a painter's child into all his views-divining his wishes, and responding to them-animating him with smiles of affection, she helped him in the very same proportion in which she hindered his rival. Raphael's gay-hearted selfassurance, too-a quality in which no Neapolitan is deficient was here of unspeakable service to him. With looks of fiery passion, which the object of them returned with glances no less ardent, he perused the lineaments of his mistress; and it was not long ere his canvas mirrored with vivid faithfulness the face of which his heart had already long been the mirror. Volpato's daughter herself seemed, from the picture as in the reality, to meet his looks of love with responsive looks, to look forth upon him as she looked upon none else.

After all, it was not such a picture of Maria as Antonio would wish to have produced. It was not Hebe; it was the Cyprian goddess. What lover would wish the whole world to see the face of his mistress when it beams on him with those regards which brook no witness? To see her look for one moment so upon him, would have raised the young sculptor to the seventh heaven; but to paint her so to show her so to the whole world, he would have counted a treason. Nor could he have borne that even the "counterfeit presentment" of her whom he worshipped in the sanctuary of his pure heart should look upon every gazer, upon every lounger, and every conoscente, with that melting glance, as if she were

"Well, my son," said Volpato, after some days, to his favourite scholar, "what progress art thou making? Art thou satisfied with thyself?"

"Ah, father," sighed Antonio, "I am in despair; I have done nothing. See!"" and he showed the fruits of his baffled endeavours-lines that had an undeniable resemblance to Maria's, but without character-without style -full of constraint-betraying the mental perturbation and the doubtful hand with which they had been traced. "This will not do, any more than the rest ;" and he tore it down the middle as he spoke.

Volpato looked surprised and chagrined, but endeavoured to encourage the young man, and told him, at all events, to persevere. That night Antonio did not go to bed; he sat and mused upon that first sight he had had of the engraver's daughter, till the scene seemed to live again before him. Seizing the pencil, he drew from the picture in his mind's eye. His success astonished him. He did not go to Volpato's the next day, nor the next. He shut himself up in his own chamber, and painted, from an original that knew no caprices-no mutations of humour-no fitful veerings of mood and expression-from that image of his beloved which he bore enshrined, consecrated within him. It was not the daughter of Volpato-it was the goddess-it was Hebe, under the form of Maria.

In the meantime, the old engraver, as well as his daughter and her favoured suitor, believed that Antonio had given up the contest in despair. Volpato was sorrowful. Raphael and Maria congratulated themselves on a victory so much easier than they had expected. At length, the young Neapolitan announced that his picture was finished. Volpato sighed ; but as he sat in the studio, musing on the overthrow of his hopes, and giving way to all his discontent at his favourite's faint-hearted withdrawal from the field, Canova entered with a glow of happiness in his face such as the old master had never seen there. One would say he had won Maria already.

"Well, boy," said Volpato, somewhat less eordially than usual, “I

thought thou hadst given up. Raphael is ready."

"And so am I, father," replied the young sculptor.

"How! and thou hast taken no sitting these three days?"

"As if Maria were not with me, wherever I am!"

"Well! I see an omen of victory in thy face, my son. I never saw thy eyes shine so.'

The next day was fixed for the exhibition of the pictures. Volpato had summoned all his artist friends, though the judgment was to be left to Maria herself. Side by side the two portraits stood, each covered with a linen cloth; and beside each picture, ready to withdraw this covering at a signal from the old engraver, stood its creator. Raphael, who had expected an uncontested triumph, had not been able to suppress an exclamation of surprise at finding that he had still a competitor. His countenance, nevertheless, expressed undoubting confidence ; and its joyous and radiant looks rendered Antonio's pale and agitated appearance more remarkable. The features of the young sculptor had lost their unwonted glow; his heart sank within him as the decisive moment came near. Volpato gave the word, and the pictures were exposed to view.

And was it possible that these two portraits were designed to represent the same person?-that enamoured Italian girl, with the fire of passion burning in her large, liquid eyes, and the sigh of voluptuous languor on her half-closed lips-and that spiritual creature, with the glad bright aspect of eternal youth-without one taint of earth-one trace of the fall, on its Eden purity? The old artist looked on this picture and on that. Which was the most admirably painted, he could not tell. As little could the assembled crowd of conoscenti decide to which, in point of art, the palm was due. As to likeness, they were on a par-both equally like and equally unlike. Maria stood irresolute.

"Girl!" cried her father, "thou art neither what Raphael nor what Antonio has made thee. Thou art neither a sensual wanton, pining for her paramour; nor art thou a spirit of heaven: but thou mayest become either; and thy choice this day will

She

As her father spoke, a veil seemed to fall from the eyes of the young girl. She saw the difference between the love with which Raphael and that with which Antonio loved her. saw which love was worthier of her; and her judgment was with Antonio, hough her heart was with Raphael. "Choose!" said her father_" "judge! Who has best portrayed thee?"

"It is as thou hast said, father," murmured Maria, in a low and broken voice. "Neither of these portraits is mine; but I know what is thy will, and I obey."

Half an hour after, the young sculptor, as he passed along the trellised gallery leading from the studio to the dwelling-house of Volpato, and which, mantled with all manner of southern garden-plants, formed a screen impenetrable to the eye, heard, from the other side of the green partition, voices broken by sobs and choking sighs, and murmured words interrupted by passionate kisses. Involuntarily, he stopped-he trembled. He heard the accents of Maria Volpato calling on heaven to shorten her lifeto snatch her from this hated marriage -to give her broken heart rest in the grave and such other phrases of a maiden's despair. He heard her protestations of love to Raphael; and he heard Raphael's low, deep tones, now assuring her that he would not survive her loss-that they would soon meet in a world where there were no despotic fathers-no rivals to thrust themselves between loving heartsnow again speaking words of courage and comfort to her, and declaring that he would yet find a way to baffle the enemies of their love-that he would fly with her to France-to Englandhe cared not whither. His art would make them independent, wherever they were; and all her endeavours should now be directed to the delaying of the marriage, until his arrange

ments were made.

Antonio did not stand more than a minute, stupified to stone; suddenly

"You will think me," he proceeded, "ungrateful, capricious, undeserving of the treasure you have been on the point of confiding to me: and undeserving of that treasure I am; capricious, perhaps, I am too; but ungrateful I am not. What I owe you I shall never forget."

"What is all this?" said Volpato, looking bewildered,

"Since the decision which seemed to promise me a life of more than mortal happiness, I have looked, for, the first time, deeply into my own heart; I have asked myself, can I give to this beautiful being the love she merits the undivided heart she has a right to demand?"

"Well?" said the old man.

"Father, the answer which a voice out of the depths of my heart returned, is, No-thou canst not! Thou canst do homage but to one divinity; thou canst yield thy affections in all their fulness and fervour but to one mistress; and that divinity—that mistress"

"Now then," said the engraver, "that mistress?"

"That mistress, said the voice, is—

thy art! Look you, father- Maria's beauty lighted up in my darkness the lamp by which the deeper mysteries of art revealed themselves to me, Maria's beauty flashed into my soul the inspiration of the ideal. From that moment to this, I have confounded the prophetess with the divinity. My eyes are now opened. In the moment in which your hand laid the hand of an earthly bride in mine, and I saw her cheeks-her very lips-whiten with a maidenly fear, the consciousness

broke upon my mind that I was about to renounce the goddess for her servant-the immutable, imperishable ideal, for the woman, with her dower of change and decay. I felt then that my mistress-my divinity-must be one whose brow age cannot deform with wrinkles, whose bloom sickness or care cannot steal away. In short, it is Hebe that I love, and not Maria Volpato."

The old man appeared confounded: he looked at Antonio in silence; his astonishment, his indignation, were too great for prompt utterance. The sculptor continued, after a pause, while his cheek grew more pallid, and his voice, steadied only by an agonizing effort, sounded almost sepulchral

"Give-Maria-to Raphael. They love each other. Raphael will make both her and you happy-I would do neither. I will give myself up to the art I had nearly proved untrue to, and shall be happy-in knowing that they— father!" cried he, his acted composure failing him, and he threw himself on the old man's breast" I love-I love Maria too well-too devotedly, to break her heart!"

And his tears flowed like the blood from a mortal wound.

Volpato saw all, understood all, and appreciated the sacrifice of his young favourite. Pressing him to his heart with deep emotion, he whispered

"There is a divinity, my son, which thou worshippest before art herself, and that divinity is-goodness."

What need to make a short story

long? Raphael Morghen married Maria, and Volpato's prediction was not fulfilled, for the hearts of the two young people were purified and ennobled by sympathy and admiration of Canova's divine self-denial; and the Neapolitan, if he did not lift up his wife to an ethereal being, did not, on the other hand, drag her down to a sensual one. In a few years she was no longer a Hebe, but neither was she a priestess of Paphos; she was a comely Roman wife and mother, happy and giving happiness.

As for Antonio, his subsequent career belongs to the history of his times, and to that of his art, which is for all time. He shut himself up in his studio, returned to sculpture, and it was not long before his Theseus proved to the world that his eyes, his soul, had not in vain been opened to the sense of the heroic. To him the engraver's daughter remained-what she had ceased to be to her husbandever the young goddess of that Trasteverine studio. No other love replaced that which she had awaked in the sculptor's heart; and to the undying influence of this feeling we owe it, that, in later years, when Canova could, with a calm breast, throw himself back into the remembrances of that time, a HEBE, worthy of his genius, made known to all lands, and recorded for all ages, what had been, in the days of her beauty and her girlish joyousness, THE SCULPTOR's FIRST LOVE.

In the year 1815, the king of Prussia promised a constitution to his people, by way of reward for their successful struggles against the power of Napoleon a promise which, as our readers are doubtless aware, he has never thought it necessary to fulfil. He has given them, however, in its stead, a United Evangelical Church, founded upon the basis of a junction between the Lutheran and the other Reformed Churches; and to this circumstanceto the fact of his giving his subjects a church which they did not require, and his not giving them a constitution for which they eagerly pined-much of the popularity which the present great reformer of Germany enjoys is to be attributed. The success of Rongé's movement has, in a great measure, been caused by a species of re-action which was produced by the establishment of a church, created by an exercise of despotic power, and consequently to a universal principle of resistance to all established authority in religion which at present pervades Germany, and which gladly avails itself of any channel by which it can find vent for its aspirations after liberty.

It chanced to the writer to be a resident, during the late summer, in Heidelberg, where this movement was at the time going on, and having acquired some knowledge of the language, his attention was naturally attracted towards the subject as discussed in the current literature of the day. Magazines, pamphlets, and newspapers, all teemed with the one absorbing subject; if you joined a party of grave professors chatting in the street, their topic of conversation was sure to be the great Catholic movement; if you looked in at the Cassino, the subject of discourse was the same; at the lady's tea-table and in the professor's study, in the shop of the artizan and on the promenade of fashion, you heard of nothing else: and this excitement, which had been going on so long, at length reached its acme, when it was announced by placards upon the walls, and in the leading journals, that the great reformer himself was about to

pay the town a visit, and that a new church, upon a certain day, was to be opened by him in person. Having duly provided myself with a ticket, I repaired at an early hour to the cathedral of the "Heiliges Gheist," which had been lent by the Lutheran Church for the occasion; service had, however, already commenced when I arrived. I shall not easily forget the scene which met my eye upon entering the gallery of this cathedral; it was filled to overflowing-the very aisles were crowded, and the eager and devoted looks of the congregation, as they bent forward to gaze upon the simple and unpretending figure of the priest, who, clothed in a black robe, and with his hands meekly folded before him, stood in front of the altar, was most impressive. Wreathed from pillar to pillar, and around the pulpit and altar, were garlands of beautiful flowers, to which the morning sun, struggling through the thick painted windows, imparted a tinge of gold; and when the vast congregation rising, began to chant a hymn, the full and solemn strain of music pealing from the organ, the magnificent chorus swelled by a thousand voices-all were calculated to inspire the casual spectator with feelings not easily described. when the music ceased, when the prayer was over, and when, amid breathless silence, the man whose fame had already filled Europe, in clear and silver tones, and with language full of fervid energy, began to detail, in a short discourse, the principles of his religion, the air of wrapt attention which pervaded the assembly was as remarkable as the scene was impressive.

But

The service was performed in strict accordance with the rules which I have subjoined; and as I remained until its conclusion, I had an opportunity of observing the administration of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, which was performed in a manner almost similar to that in our own church.

In principle Rongé appears to be a rationalist of the lowest school, professing principles widely different from