"It runs thus," said the count, opening the scroll. | thing but that the third step the principality is to be mounted by me, to whom this letter is addressed, and-" ULRIC TO PRINCE ULRIC, greeting: Thrice exalted shall we be, Once in Ulric, once in me; For two are one and one is three. The chevalier could scarcely suppress a triumphant sneer, as the count repeated these lines in a trembling voice. "The plot approaches its development," said he, aside. "And how do you interpret these fantastic rhymes, count?" he added, aloud. 66 Thus," said the count. "Our family legend recites that after the appearance of the third and last goblin, whom I have the honor to see before me this moment-" The chevalier bowed. "After the appearance of the third goblin, the spectre history of the family is to be finished, the vacant space on the escutcheon filled up, the meaning of the motto of the family, 'Nondum,' or 'Noch nicht,' accomplished, and the family elevated to a principality. Thrice exalted shall we be'-once as barons, once as counts, and thirdly as princes-'once in Ulric,' that is to say in Ulrichius,' in whom the family was first ennobled-' once in me,' that is in Ulric XXV, who was first made count, and from whom I presume this mysterious missive to have emanated twice in me,' that is to say, I doubled the dignity of the family, or raised it two steps in nobility; and thrice in thee,' can that mean any Here the count, who had hitherto proceeded very volubly, came to a dead pause. "Well, proceed," said the chevalier. "By what rule of arithmetic do you interpret the fourth line, for two are one and one is three?'" "To say the truth, I am fairly puzzled there-I have no notion how to construe the last enigma,” answered the count. "Well, well, time will show, I dare say," said the chevalier, again ill concealing the serpent sneer which had at first alarmed the count. "But 't is very chilly, upon my honor," said he, with a shudder which convulsed his whole frame; "I must warm myself a little, my jaws rattle like a dice box." So saying, he advanced toward a blazing fire of oak, which some invisible hand had lighted upon a ruined hearth in what was once the hall of the castle, but, as he went, he stumbled over some obstruction which lay concealed in the long weeds which mantled the ruins. "Pon my life, I have dislocated my ankle, I believe," said the chevalier, pettishly; "however, I shall have but little use for my legs after to-night." With this he reached the fire-place, where, planting himself composedly upon the hearth, with his back to the blaze, and a coat skirt draped carelessly around either arm, he began to whistle the fiends' chorus in "Robert le Diable." [To be continued. AMERICAN ARTISTS IN FLORENCE. BY J. T. HEADLY. WE have long been accused of wanting taste and genius, especially in the fine arts, and an Englishman always smiles at any pretension to them on our part. In his criticism, our poetry is from imitation of the great bards of England, our knowledge of music confined to Yankee Doodle and Hail Columbia, and our skill in architecture to the putting up of steeples, school-houses, and liberty poles. It may be so, but we will cheerfully enter the field with him in that department of fine arts, calling for the loftiest efforts of genius, and the purest incarnation of the sentiment of beauty in man-we mean painting and sculpture, especially the latter. Spending some time last year in Florence, we became acquainted with our artists there, and spent some of the pleasantest hours of our life in their society. There are two American artists in Florence by the name of Brown-one a painter, and the other a sculptor. Mr. Brown, the painter, is one of the best copyists of the age. Under his hand the great masters reappear again in undiminished beauty. But his merits do not stop here he is also a fine composer, and when the mood is on him, flings off most spirited designs. In his house we have seen pieces that indicate merit of the highest order, and if he would copy less and compose more, his pocket might suffer but his fame would increase. If a gallery should ever be formed in New York we trust his paintings will be among the first placed in it. He has also a charming wife to cheer his foreign abode, whose kindness and urbanity do credit to the country that gave her birth. And, by the way, we would not forget a remarkable dog, which she has taught to speak very passable English. We first saw Mr. Brown in the Ritti Gallery. Wandering through it one day with a "quondam" attaché to one of the foreign courts, my friend paused before a magnificent picture, and introduced me to the artist at work upon it, as Mr. Brown, of America. It was a copy of one of Salvator Rosa's finest pieces, and had already been bought by a member of the English parliament for three hundred dollars. Walking one day through the gallery, he was struck with the remarkable beauty of the copy, and immediately purchased it, though in an unfinished state. Thus we lose them-and though we possess great artists, our wealthy men refuse to buy their works, and they go to embellish the drawing rooms and The first impression The head and face are too small, and inexpressive. But after a few visits this impression is removed, and that form, wrought with such exquisite grace, and so full of sentiment, grows on one's love, and mingles in his thoughts, and forms forever after the image of beauty in the soul. Our first exclamation on beholding it was one of disappointment, and we unhesitatingly gave Mr. Powers' Eve the preference. But memory is more faithful to the Venus than to the Eve. There is something more than the form of a goddess in that figurethere is an atmosphere of beauty beyond and around it-a something intangible yet real-making the very marble sacred. One may forget other statues, and the particular impression they made grows dim with time, but Venus, once imaged on the heart, remains there forever, in all its distinctness and beauty. of the Venus is unfavorable. galleries of England. Mr. Powers stands undoubt- | rately, are doubtless superior. edly at the head of American sculptors. His two great works are Eve and the Greek Slave. Critics are divided on the merits of these two figures. As the mere embodiment of beauty and loveliness, the Slave undoubtedly has the pre-eminence. The perfect moulding of the limbs, the exquisite proportion and harmony of all the parts, the melancholy, yet surpassingly lovely face, combine to render it more like a beautiful vision assuming the aspect of marble, than a solid form hewn out of a rock. There she stands, leaning on her arm and musing on her inevitable destiny. There is no paroxysm of grief, no overwhelming anguish, depicted on the countenance. It is a calm and hopeless sorrow-the quiet submission of a heart too pure and gentle for any stormy passion. That heart has broken, it is true, but broken in silence-without a murmur or complaint. The first feeling her look and attitude inspire, is not so much a wish yourself to rescue her as a prayer that Heaven would do it. It is beautiful-spiritually beautiful— the very incarnation of sentiment and loveliness. In its mechanical execution, it reminds one of the Ap-sight, and can never be created by any process of polino in the Tribune of the Royal Gallery. In conversing with Mr. Powers on art, and the power of education to make the artist, he contended that education alone could never form a correct taste. "The perception of beauty (said he) is natural in education. Why, my taste is no more correct now, The Eve exhibits less sentiment, but more charac-in designating a work of merit, than it was when I ter. She is not only beautiful, but great-bearing in was a poor western boy. I never saw a bust or her aspect the consciousness she is the mother of a statue, or good painting, till I was seventeen years mighty race. In all the paintings of Eve, she is old. When I was at that age, a Frenchiman in Cinsimply a beautiful woman, and indeed we do not be- cinnati died, who had a fine collection of engravings. lieve that any one but an American or an English- These, among his other effects, were sold at auc man could conceive a proper idea of Eve. Passion|tion, and I saw them bid off. My untaught taste imand beauty a Frenchman and an Italian can paint,mediately selected out those which were beautiful in but moral character, the high purpose of calm thought design and execution, with unerring precision; and and conscious greatness, they have not the most dim its decisions then I never have had cause to reverse conception of. There is a noble Lucretia in the since." The principle is doubtless true. There are gallery of Naples-a fine Portia in Genoa, and Cleo- some things in the world that cannot be made or patras by great painters in abundance everywhere, bought, and among them are the poet, and the true but not one figure that even dimly shadows forth artist. Mr. Powers told me he had thirty different what the mother of mankind ought to be. Stern females as models for his Eve alone. She must be a purpose and invincible daring are often seen in fe- rare being who would combine, in her single person, male heads and figures by the great masters, but the the separate attractions of thirty beautiful women, simple greatness of intellect seldom. and yet the artist finds her still too ugly for the perfect being of his fancy, and turns away dissatisfied to his ideal form. If Jupiter was an artist, and Minerva sprang out of his forehead the living image of his idea of a perfect woman, she would be well worth Powers' Eve is a woman with a soul as well as heart, and as she stands with the apple in her hand, musing on the fate it involves, and striving to look down the dim and silent future it promises to reveal, her countenance indicates the great, yet silent strug-seeing. gle within. Wholly absorbed in her own reflections, her countenance unconsciously brings you into the same state of deep and painful thought. She is a noble woman-too noble to be lost. We wonder this subject has not been more successfully treated before. There is full scope for the imagination in it; and not a permission, but a demand, for all that is beautiful and noble in a created being. It has the advantage also of fact, instead of fiction, while at the same time the fact is greater than any fiction. In composing this work, Mr. Powers evidently threw all the Venuses and goddesses overboard, and fell back on his own creative genius, and the result is a perfect triumph. Some, even good critics, have gone so far as to give this the preference to the Venus di Medici. The head and face, taken sepa Mr. Preston, of South Carolina, is to have this Eve, price, three thousand dollars. The Greek Slave will probably go to England. They are both of Seravegra marble-a new quarry opened but a few years since. Mr. Powers never uses the Carrara marble. In expressing my wish that America should have both his great works, he replied, that he desired it also, but that he had struggled through difficulties, and often worked for a low price to get the means of subsistence, and now, when his works could command a fair sum, he would not throw them away; and those only should have them who were willing to give what they were worth. Poor Clevenger, who is sleeping beneath the sea, was also a true artist. His great work was an Indian Chief. It is a noble figure, and shows conclusively that our Indian wild bloods furnish as good specimens | ger was all hope and mirth. He loved to laugh, and of well knit, graceful and athletic forms as the Greek had an honest faith in man, and man's goodness; wrestlers themselves. He stands leaning on his bow, Mr. Brown, on the contrary, is dreamy and sombrewith his head slightly turned aside, and his breath of a highly poetic nature, but without its ardent imsuspended in the deepest listening attitude, as if he pulses. He is all truth, and entirely destitute of that expected every moment to hear again the stealthy sensitive self-esteem so often connected with artists tread his ear had but partially caught a moment be- of great merit. He asked my unbiased criticism on fore. Clevenger was an open-hearted, full-souled the statue. Feeling that a very slight alteration in man-western in all his tastes and great characteris- one respect would heighten very much the effect of tics and designed to spend his life in our western the whole, I ventured to mention it. It struck him country, to let his fame grow up with its growing favorably, and he clapped his hands with as much people. Cincinnati ought to have bought his statue, pleasure as if his own mind had suggested it, exconsecrated as it was by the last efforts of her gener- claiming, "It shall be done." ous son. We are glad she is willing New York should possess it, but its proper place is Cincinnati. Among Clevenger's minor works was a beautiful bust of Miss, of New York, a perfect gem in its way. I asked him what he thought an Indian would say to meet in the forest his statue, painted, and tricked off in savage costume. He laughed outright at the conception, and replied, "He would probably stand still and look at it a moment in suspense, and then exclaim ugh. That would be the beginning and end of his criticism." Mr. Brown corroborated an impression often forced on me in Italy, that the Italians are almost universally disproportioned in their limbs. The arms of opera singers had always appeared awkwardly proportioned, which Mr. Brown told me was true, and that the same criticism held good of the lower limbs of both sexes, and that often when he thought he had found a perfect form, and one that indeed did answer remarkably to the standard of measurement considered faultless by artists, he was almost universally disappointed in the shortness of the limbs between the knee and ankle. Here is a fact for our ladies, and upsets some of our theories of the beauty of Italian forms. Mr. Brown, who has had models in both countries, declares that the American form harmonizes with the right standard oftener than the Italian. The Italian women have finer busts, which give them an erect and dignified appearance, and a firmer walk. There is a new artist just risen in Florence, who threatens to take the crown off from Powers' head. His name is Dupré-a Frenchman by extraction, though an Italian by birth. Originally a poor wood engraver, he designed and executed last year, unknown to any body, the model of a dead Abel. Without advancing in the usual way from step to Close to Clevenger's studio is that of Brown, the sculptor. He was also engaged on an Indian-not a warrior, or hunter, but a boy and a poet of the woods. Indians, among the gods and goddesses of Florence, were a new thing, and excited not a little wonder; and it was gratifying to see that American genius could not only strike out a new path, but follow it successfully. Crawford may exhibit his great merit in digging some hitherto neglected god from the already thrice ransacked classics, but our genius does not work naturally in that channel. Each age has its characters and tastes, and ours are not fitted for divinities, or half-divinities, but real, living, energetic men. But I forgot my Poetic Indian Boy, though it is not so easy to forget him, for his melancholy, thoughtful face haunts me like a vision, and I often say to my-step, and testing his skill on busts, and inferior subself, "I wonder what has become of that dreamy boy." In it, Mr. Brown has endeavored to body forth his own nature, which is full of "musing and melancholy." The boy has gone into the woods to hunt, but the music of the wind among the tree tops, and the swaying of the great branches above him, and the mysterious influence of the deep forest, with its multitude of low voices, have made him forget his errand; and he is leaning on a broken tree, with his bow resting against his shoulder, while one hand is thrown behind him, listlessly grasping the useless arrow. His head is slightly bent, as if in deep thought, and as you look on the face, you feel that forest boy is beyond his years, and has begun too early to muse on life and on man. The effect of the statue is to interest one deeply in the fate of the being it represents. You feel that his life will not pass like the life of ordinary men. This effect, the very one the artist sought to produce, is of itself the highest praise that could be bestowed on the work. Clevenger and Brown were inseparable friends, and though alike in simplicity of character and frankness of manner, were wholly unlike in their temperaments. Cleven jects, he launched off on his untried powers into the region of highest effort. A year ago this winter, at the annual exhibition of designs and statues in Florence, young Dupré placed his Abel in the gallery. No one had seen it-no one had heard of it. Occupying an unostentatious place, and bearing an unknown name, it was at first passed by with a cursory glance. But somehow or other, those who had seen it once found themselves after awhile returning for a second look, till at length the whole crowd stood grouped around it, in silent admiration—our own artists among the number. It became immediately the talk of the city, and, in a single week, the poor wood engraver vaulted from his humble occupation, into a seat among the first artists of his country. A Russian princess passing through the city saw it, and was so struck with its singular beauty, that she immediately ordered a statue for which the artist is to receive four thousand dollars. Many of the artists became envious of the sudden reputation of Dupré, and declared that no man ever wrought that model, and could not-that it was moulded from a dead body, and the artist was compelled to get the affidavits of his models to protect himself from slander. We were sorry to hear the name of an American artist placed among these backbiters. We regard this figure as equal, if not superior, of its kind, to any statue ever wrought by any sculptor of any age. It is not proper, of course, to compare it with the Venus di Medici, or Apollo Belvidere, for they are of an entirely different character. The Dead Son of Niobe, in the Hall of Niobe in the Royal Gallery, is a stiff wooden figure compared to it. The only criticism I could utter, when I first stood over it, was, “Oh, how dead he lies!" There is no marble there, it is all flesh-flesh flexible as if the tide of life still poured through it, yet bereft of its energy. The beautiful martyr looks as if but just slain, and before the muscles became rigid, and the form stiff, had been thrown on a hillside; and with his face partly turned away, and one arm thrown back despairingly over his head, he lies in death as natural as the human body itself would lie. The same perfection of design and execution is exhibited in all the details, and the whole figure is a noble monument of modern genius. Being a new thing, and hence not down in the guide books, most travelers passed through Florence last year without seeing it. We were indebted for our pleasure to a young attaché who had resided several years in Florence, and was acquainted with all its objects of interest. Dupré is now engaged on a Cain, which is to stand over the Abel. It was with great difficulty we got access to it, being yet in an unfinished state. This also is a noble figure, of magnificent proportions, and wonderful muscular power. He stands gazing down on his dead brother, terror-struck at the new and awful form of death before him, his face working with despair and horror, and his powerful frame wrought into intense action by the terrible energy of the soul within. This is a work of great merit, but falling far below the Abel. The form is too theatrical, and the whole expression overwrought. Dupré is a handsome man, with a large black eye, and melancholy features. THE PIC-NIC. A STORY OF THE WISSAHICKON. BY CHARLES J. PETERSON. CHAPTER I. AT twenty-one Tom Hastings had his fortune yet to make. But he was sanguine and ambitious, and he did not doubt he should die a millionaire. He had been a dreamer from boyhood: one of those careless fellows who write poetry, are fond of sporting, and live as if they were worth a fortune. From eighteen until his majority, his guardian could do no thing with him. He had taken his degree, and he refused to study a profession: so there was nothing left but to idle away his time as he best could. The interval was employed in desultory studies, and in pedestrian excursions through the country, diversified now and then by a speculation in stocks. On the whole, the time was not ill-spent. He acquired considerable insight into character during his half-vagrant travels, made a little money, and picked up a hoard of miscellaneous knowledge. Tom had been the handsomest man in college, and few had such an oily tongue among the girls. He was a bit of a dandy; indeed the only man of sense I ever knew for a fop. He was proud of his curls and whiskers; always promenaded Chesnut street before dinner, and was a perfect man-milliner in the way of fashions. He sang; played on the flute; waltzed, as the ladies said, divinely; and used to vow he had shut himself up for a fortnight to study the language of flowers. He had a delicate way of paying a compliment that few women could withstand; and his conversation possessed that mingled sense and gaiety which pleases old and young alike. Alto gether he was just the man for making love. I often told him, over a cigar, that he must acquire his fortune by matrimony. But Tom was full of romance, and declared he would marry for love or die a bachelor. When he attained his majority his guardian called him in to settle his accounts. Tom found he was worth just ten thousand dollars. The sum appeared small to one dreaming of millions, and, for a day, he hesitated between a trip to the Indies or a runaway match from Saratoga. Tom decided in favor of Canton. In less than a week he had embarked his whole fortune in assorted goods, and was waiting only for a fair wind to sail. On the point of leaving his native country, perhaps forever, he could not avoid some melancholy feelings. To dissipate these he mounted his horse, and cantered by Laurel Hill to Germantown. Late in the afternoon he returned by way of the Wissahickon. It was early summer, when this romantic stream is in all its glory. The sun was just lingering above the tree-tops that were piled up the side of the precipice on the opposite bank, as he wound down the rocky road; and half the stream below lay in shadow, and half seemed molten gold. A profound stillness reigned around, broken only by a leaf rustling lightly or the dropping of water from a neighboring rock. Charmed by the scene, he drew in his rein, in a portion of the road where there is scarcely room for two carriages to pass abreast between the cliffs on one side and the precipice on the other; but he had |