etching is conceded to him, and a method of printing from woodcuts in two colours.

He was skilled in optics and geometry, was a mechanician and an engineer, and, as a sculptor, there is a work of his in hone stone in the British Museum, bequeathed by Mr. Payne Knight, who bought it at Brussels, about fifty years ago, for 500l. The subject is the birth of St. John.

In the Manchester Exhibition there were many striking engravings of his, some of large size. They made a deep impression upon the writer, and caused him to look more into the artist's works than he might otherwise have done, and, perhaps, to trouble the gentle reader with these jottings.

He was the first in Germany who taught the rules of perspective, and the proportions of the human body according to mathematical and anatomical principles.

He had many pupils; and Mr. Ottley, in his work "On Engraving," says: "The numerous and flourishing school of wood-engravers, which we find spreading in Germany, and thence to Italy, in the sixteenth century, owes its excellence to Albrecht Dürer."

His prints and woodcuts, on account of their artistic principles, were Iurchased by the Italian painters for their improvement. So much were they sought after, that they were extensively counterfeited both at home and abroad.

A Venetian, Marc Antonio Franci, or Raimondi, who afterwards became a celebrated engraver, was so much struck with them, that Mr. Ottley says: "The example of Dürer, no doubt, contributed to render Raimondi competent, in after time, to the task of engraving the exquisite designs of Raffaelle."

This being so, we may excuse Raimondi for taking exact copies (he made fac-similes with paper soaked in olive-oil), but we can't pardon his having afterwards transferred them to plates, together with a stamp, which was taken for Dürer's well-known monogram.

Dürer, some say, went to Venice to stop this traffic; but this journey is not authenticated. He probably exercised the court influence he possessed in Germany to induce the senate of Venice to interfere in the matter, which they did, though Dürer, it is said, interceded to prevent any imprisonment being inflicted.

While this was going on abroad, there were Flemish and other artists at Nuremberg who openly sold counterfeit copies of his engravings, and a magistrate's order to prohibit this trade is preserved among the archives of Nuremberg, dated 1508.

In spite of all this, it was from his engravings that he chiefly profited. The prices obtained for his pictures were hardly remunerative, so much labour was bestowed upon them.

Engravers in general are the translators of other men's ideas, but Dürer designed and engraved his own compositions. Upon this Mr. Jackson, in his work "On Engraving," edited by Chatto, in 1838, says: "Setting aside his merits as a painter, I am of opinion that no artist of the present day has produced from his own designs three such engravings as Dürer's Adam and Eve,' 'St. Jerome,' and the subject called 'Melancolia.''

To our eyes there may appear a singularity, and perhaps an awkwardness about his figures, and a stiffness in the costumes. There is, certainly, no crinoline. The stiffness was owing to the practice then prevalent in Germany of putting wetted, paper upon the lay figure instead of cloth. When dry, the folds or creases of the paper acquired a stiff appearance, which was communicated to the picture.

No doubt he lacked the grace and tenderness which Raffaelle at that time was the means of diffusing in Italy; but even Raffaelle's pictures are hardly in accordance with our ideas or taste.

Dürer had not the advantage of Italian culture, and the climate of Germany might not be so inspiring as cloudless Italy.

Mr. Ruskin thinks there is a tone of domesticity in his works, and that scenes of daily life were more in his way than the sublime and grand. All art critics, however, concede to him a great fertility of invention, wonderful manipulation, and decided excellence in colouring.

Considering what art was at the time he lived, and that he was really a self-made man, we may not be surprised that he should have created the epoch which is ascribed to him, and that he should have been considered almost as an originator of the art of engraving.

His friend Melancthon said "his least merit was that of his art."

His chief characteristic, we believe, was reverence to the Creator and admiration of all His works.

This deep religious feeling, and his warm espousal of the principles of the Reformation, caused him to place quotations from the Gospels and Epistles under many of his pictures, with warnings not to swerve from the written word, or listen to false prophets or perverters of the truth. When some of these pictures so inscribed were presented by the city of Nuremberg to the Roman Catholic Elector, Maximilian of Bavaria, in 1627, a singular course was adopted for preserving the pictures from the fanaticism of after times. This was to cut off these inscriptions, and to affix them to copies they had made for the city by Vischer, and which are now in the Landenaer Gallery at Nuremberg.

With such a testimony as Melancthon's, and knowing the enlightening influence which Dürer exercised in which he lived, we may upon the age well regard him as one of the pioneers of civilisation, to whose memoirs and works we may profitably recur, and about whom and his native city we cannot be surprised that the poet Longfellow should have penned the following lines:

In the valley of the Peguitz, where, amid broad meadow lands
Rise the blue Franconian Mountains, Nuremberg the ancient stands.
Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art and song,
Memories haunt thy pointed gables like the rooks that round them throng.
Memories of the Middle Ages, when the emperors, rough and bold,
Had their dwelling in thy castle, time defying, centuries old;
And thy grave and thrifty burghers boasted in their uncouth rhyme,
That their great imperial city stretched its hand to ev'ry clime.
In the court-yard of thy castle, girt with many an iron band,
Stands the mighty linden planted by Queen Cunigunde's hand;
On the square the oriel window, where in old heroic days,
Sat the poet Melchior, singing Kaiser Maximilian's praise.

Everywhere I see around me rise the wondrous world of art,

Fountains wrought with choicest sculpture standing in the common mart ;
And above cathedral doorways saints and bishops carved in stone,
By a former age commissioned as apostles to our own.

In the church of sainted Sabald sleeps enshrined his holy dust,
And in bronze the twelve apostles guard from age to age their trust.*

In the church of sainted Lawrence stands a Pix† of sculpture rare,
Like a foamy sheet of fountains, rising thro' the painted air.
Here, where art was still religion, with a simple reverent heart,
Lived and laboured Albrecht Dürer, the Evangelist of Art;
Hence in silence and in sorrow, toiling still with busy hand,
Like an emigrant he wandered, seeking for the Better Land.
"Emigravit" is the inscription on the tombstone where he lies,
Dead he is not-but departed-for the artist never dies.

Fairer seems the ancient city, and the sunshine seems more fair,
That he once has trod its pavement, that he once has breathed its air!
J. R.

THE HORSE AND THE ASS.

FROM A POSTHUMOUS POEM BY HEINE.

BY EDGAR A. BOWRING, C.B.

A TRAIN was rushing along one day
With carriages, engine, and tender;
The chimney vomited forth its smoke,
Like a dashing old offender.

The train pass'd a farm-yard, and over the hedge
A grey horse, at the sound of the whistle,
Stretch'd out his head; an ass stood by
Demurely chewing a thistle.

With wondering gaze the horse long stared
At the train; then strangely quivering

In every limb, he sigh'd and said:

"The sight has set me a-shivering!

"I'm sure that if I by nature had been
A chesnut, or black, or bay horse,
My skin would with fright its colour change,
And make me (as now) a grey horse!

Peter Vischer's work.

† Adam Krafft, which we referred to ante.

"The equine race is doom'd, beyond doubt,
To be swept away in fate's eddy;
Although I'm a grey horse, I cannot but see
A black future before me already.
"The competition of these machines
Will certainly kill us poor horses;
For riding and driving will man prefer
Iron steeds, if so great their force is.
"And if man can get on without our help
Alike for riding and driving,

Good-by to our oats, good-by to our hay!-
What chance have we of surviving?

"The heart of man is hard as a stone,
He gives away nothing gratis;
They'll drive us out of our stables, and we
Shall starve-what a cruel fate 'tis !

"We cannot borrow, and cannot steal,
Like mortals whose natures are blacker;

We cannot fawn like men and dogs,
But shall fall a prey to the knacker."

Thus grumbled the horse, and deeply sigh'd.
Meanwhile the ass hard by him

Had quietly chew'd two thistle-tops,
As if nothing could terrify him."

He presently answer'd in dainty tones,
With his tongue first licking his muzzle:-

"With what the future may have in store,
My brains I shall not puzzle.

"You horses proud are threatened, no doubt,

By a future that's far from pleasant,

But we modest asses are not afraid

Of dangers future or present.

"That grey horses, and chesnut, and piebald, and black, May be done without, true, alas is;

But Mister Steam, with his chimney long,
Can never replace us asses.

"However clever may be the machines
Made by man with his senses besotted,

The ass as his portion will always have
Sure means of existence allotted.

"Its asses will Heaven, I'm sure, ne'er desert,
Who, moved by a calm sense of duty,

Turn the mill ev'ry day as their fathers have done

(A sight not deficient in beauty).

"The mill-wheel clatters, the miller works hard,
The meal in the sack well shaking,

And people eat their bread and their rolls,
As soon as they've finish'd the baking.

"In Nature's old-fashion'd and jog-trot way
The world will keep spinning for ever;
And as changeless even as Nature herself
The ass will alter never."

DAWN OF THE GOSPEL IN GENEVA.

THE hour of the temporal princes-of the worldly bishops of Geneva, whose only ambition it was to live in wealth, luxury, pomp, and power, without a care or a thought for their ignoble flocks-had not yet struck, even with the fearful dissolution of John-the Bastard of Savoy-and the most malignant of its prince-bishops. Peter de la Baume, the successor to John, was received with ostentation, if not with gladness, and this grandiose reception was soon followed by a notification to the effect that Charles III. wished to present his spouse, Beatrice of Portugal, to "his good friends of Geneva." He, indeed, planned that her accouchement should take place in that city. The citizens allowed themselves to be seduced by the chains which were brought to them by so renowned a beauty and so noble an alliance, for Portugal was at that time at the zenith of prosperity and renown. The reception was got up with a marvellous amount of sumptuousness. The priestly party wished especially to impress upon royalty that the good Genevese were more taken with relics and miracles than with the Gospel and independence; but Beatrice spoilt everything by her haughty and disdainful manners. "We had better have spent our money in fortifying the city," muttered the despised Huguenots. Royalty persevered, however, in its attempt to seduce the Genevese by a constant succession of balls, banquets, plays, and other pastimes and indulgences.

Another power had come into Geneva at the same epoch, but with no pomp or display of any kind. This was the Gospel. Lefevre had published a French translation of this New Testament in the preceding year (1522), and it had reached Vienna and Grenoble from Lyons. Thence it came to Geneva, where the colporteurs of the Holy Word were received with open arms by De la Maison Neuve, Vandel, and other liberals. The Gospel realised their ideas of a religious as well as a political independence. They found no masses, no indulgences, no pope, no worship of relics, no temporal priesthood in those books; but they found in them a power superior to pontiffs, prelates, and even councils. New life, new doctrine, new authority. It was as if the vivifying breath of spring had been breathed over the city, after a long, dark, and rigorous winter. The Huguenots could not, however, dispense at once with the old system of "mysteries." That of the discovery of the cross by the Empress Helena, had been played by the priests before the duke and duchess; the independents got up the less gorgeous, but more enduring, spectacle of "the discovery of the Bible by the Reformation." The duke and duchess

naturally declined being present, but the spectacle was enacted, and it was another step taken towards that Reformation which has been generally supposed to have commenced at a much later epoch in the city of Calvin. The party of Savoy resented these demonstrations. Their creatures took every occasion for insulting and even beating those whom they happened to have business relations with. The sturdy burgesses resisted those acts of tyranny, and returned the blows with interest. The duke was alarmed, and sent for six thousand men to assist at the accouchement. "Six thousand godfathers," said the Huguenots, "armed cap-à-pie."