XXXII.

AN ARTIST'S STUDIO.

FORTNIGHT went by ere I claimed the fulfilment of Mr. Cambur's promise; but it was not a fortnight fruitless in results, as regards the growth of our acquaintance. During its progress, the elfish force, or fate, called Circumstance, seemed to delight in throwing us together at every turn. I called

upon Mrs. Danforth, and found the artist tenanting her porch, placidly awaiting her return from a visit to a neighbor. I met him twice or thrice at Essie's; for he had early won the freedom of the Volger premises, and appeared equally at home in the field discussing soils and crops with the farmer, and in the parlor listening to his daughter's piano. A thorough liking, which promised to blossom out into warm and lasting friendship, sprang up between him and Mr. Taylor, and I seldom went to the Gwynne Place, without encountering him in sittingroom or study, tossing the crowing, gurgling baby up to the ceiling, or dissertating earnestly upon Italy and Art to the clergyman. Lastly, by way of climax, I came suddenly upon him, one morning, seated at his ease beside Aunt Vin's cheese-press, regaling himself with choice morsels of the curd, and listening, with an extremely diverted face, to the maker's conversation. I could not but marvel to see how quickly all Shiloh had opened its doors to him, how easily he had won a place in its friendly re

gard, and how readily he adapted himself to an unaccus tomed manner of life and a strange people.

In many of these encounters, Ruth had been with me. It was rather on the assured footing of acquaintance, therefore, than as mere art-visitors, that we finally knocked at the door of Mr. Cambur's studio. It was opened by the artist in person, palette in hand.

A painter's studio is a spot which, to our preconceptions, at least, seems always situated a little way above the dust and sordidness of the actual world, in a region of dream, vision, and enchantment, enriched with beauties of scenery and of being far beyond anything to be met with in the domain of reality. It is a sort of half-way station between earth and heaven, we think, from whence the artist paints both, with pencils dipped alternately in remembrance and in prophecy. And though the present example did not fully realize this ideal (as in truth, no studio ever did),but, rather, served to show that the steps by which Art climbs to her grandest heights must all be taken toilsomely upon the earth,-yet indications were not wanting that it was a room marked out from the uses and pleasures of ordinary life by a purpose and a character of its own.

The windows were carefully darkened, save one, whose upper half showed a small square of sunless sky, and admitted that partial light which, with its concomitant of strongly-defined shadow, best develops the pictorial character in objects, or imparts it to them. Near the middle of the room stood an easel, with a picture just "sketched in " upon it; one or two others, awaiting but the final touch, hung where the light visited them most kindly; unframed canvases leaned against the wall, turning their backs churlishly on the visitor; and pencil-sketches were pinned up here and there, or made an artistic confusion on the table, assisted by many curious little shreds from the skirts of Antiquity, gems, seals, coins, ivory-carvings, etc.,-found in and about the soil of Rome.

"At last!" exclaimed the artist, with a genial smile, "Your welcome has been waiting for you long."

"I hope it has not cooled by the delay."

"Certainly not: it is too genuine for that. Sit here, Miss Winnot."

He placed chairs for us, and, after a little talk, brought forward such of his works as he cared to show.

The first was the picture of which Mrs. Danforth had spoken,-"Dreams." A beautiful girl, lost in a sunset reverie that was all the detail to be put into words. But, as you looked, you saw that not only the girl, but the drapery, the sky, the atmosphere, dreamed, too. Gazing upon it long, you also dreamed; your ideas became vague and visionary, your imagination spread its wings and floated off unawares in the immaterialized gold of the sunset air. For the atmosphere was the really wonder ful thing about the picture. Soft, rich, luminous, serene; neither mist, nor haze, nor sunshine, but with something of the brightness, the softness, and the vagueness of each; it might have been the very ether wherein a poet dreams and paints his ideal pictures.

Mr. Cambur next uncovered one half of a large canvas, leaving the other still veiled.

"The curtain conceals what was once a failure, and is now an unsightly daub, which I spare you the discomfort of looking at," said he, as he stood before the picture, arranging the folds. "It was my design to paint a Wise and a Foolish Virgin, believing that the aim and significance of the parable might as clearly be brought out by two typical figures as by ten. I succeeded tolerably well with the representative of folly, but the other was wholly unsatisfactory: I have rubbed it out, and am waiting until a better mood, better influences, a whiter inspiration, shall enable me to take it up again with a clearer probability of success."

He stepped aside, and the Daughter of Folly was revealed to view;-fast locked in sleep. her graceful limbs all

unstrung, a marvelous languor diffused throughout her frame, and her empty lamp slow sliding from her uncon scious hand. Fair and foolish-not wicked, that would have made her unbeautiful;-merely a lover of pleasure, of ease, of brightness: over whose soul no tides of living waters had flowed, to quicken the spiritual life, or had flowed in vain. A type of mere physical beauty, warm with life and health, rich in color and grace, not devoid of many soft and womanly attributes; yet so manifestly of the earth, earthy, that you sighed as you gazed, to feel how utterly useless it would be to awaken her. She would but half open upon you beautiful, soft, vague eyes, murmur faintly, "A little more slumber!" and close them again in a deeper sleep than before.

We looked at the picture long and in silence. The artist gazed upon it also, with a thoughtful face.

"I suppose you know the story of Andrea del Castagno," said he, at length.

"I do not," replied Ruth, quickly. "Tell it to me, please."

"Andrea del Castagno was a painter of Florence, who lived and wrought in days when Art's power and progress were greatly limited by the poverty of her means; when she was obliged to content herself with the comparatively meagre and feeble effects produced by painting in distemper, as it is called; that is, with colors mixed with gums, size, whites of eggs, etc. Dissatisfied with the limited resources of his palette, and ambitious of distinction, Andrea was constantly dreaming of some new method which should more perfectly reproduce the subtile refinements of Nature's coloring, the exquisite quality of her tints, the transparency of her lights, the soft clearness of her shadows, the far inward shining of gems and of human eyes; and her wonderful blending of them all,-light beneath shade, color gleaming through color:-he dreamed and he despaired.

'About this time, came a rumor that a new and efficient

method of preparing colors, by which all these effects might be faithfully represented, had really been discovered at the north; and, shortly after, there appeared in Florence a young Venetian, Domenico by name, who was acquainted with the process of painting in oil. Andrea quickly won his friendship, his confidence, and his secret. Then he foully assassinated him, that he might remain sole possessor of the new art, in Florence. He returned to his studio and his easel, unsuspected; and innocent persons suffered for his crime. But, from that moment, all his work revealed, with terrible power and distinctness, the fearful fact of a guilty, remorseful soul hidden in the bosom of the worker. Day by day, his pencil recorded that soul's history on canvas, for the reading of future ages,-its temptation, its fall, its growing burden of horror and remorse,-till, on his deathbed, he confessed the special crime which had first stained it, and henceforth colored all its conceptions."

"How strange!" said Ruth, drawing a long breath; and then giving the Foolish Virgin a look that seemed to ask what possible connection could exist between that heedless damsel and this story of crime.

The artist answered it as if it had been articulate. "My story, Miss Winnot," said he, "was intended to point the moral that a painter's canvas reflects the character of his life as perfectly as a mirror reflects his features. My Foolish Virgin points it, also. When I began that picture, I was in Florence; dissolved and lost in its inexpressibly beautiful life, with its endless gratifications for the senses of sight and hearing; overcome by the Lotus-breath of its stealing south wind, the heavy scents of its flowers, the whisperings of its leaves and fountains, the lulling song of its bells, the rich languor of its sunshine. In short, I was leading a dreamy, sensuous, self-indulgent life; all whose influences were favorable to the conception of the Foolish Virgin-and to that only. For it, I needed little more than a rich profusion of color, a beautiful model, a south