16 But his mind was not formed merely on the events recorded in antiquity: it is no world doubtful of the immortality of the soul which he depicts. He is rather the personification in painting of the soul of Dante. His imagination was evidently fraught with the conceptions of the Inferno. The expression of mind beams forth in all his works. Vehement passion, stern resolve, undaunted valour, sainted devotion, infant innocence, alternately occupied his pencil. It is hard to say in which he was greatest. In all his works we see marks of the genius of antiquity meeting the might of modern times: the imagery of mythology blended with the aspirations of Christianity. We see it in the dome of St Peter's, we see it in the statue of Moses. Grecian sculpture was the realization in form of the conceptions of Homer; Italian painting the representation on canvass of the revelations of the gospel, which Dante clothed in the garb of poetry. Future ages should ever strive to equal, but can never hope to excel them. Never did artist work with more persevering vigour than Michael Angelo. He himself said that he laboured harder for fame, than ever poor artist did for bread. Born of a noble family, the heir to considerable possessions, he took to the arts from his earliest years from enthusiastic passion and conscious power. During a long life of ninety years, he prosecuted them with the ardent zeal of youth. He was consumed by the thirst for fame, the desire of great achievements, the invariable mark of heroic minds; and which, as it is altogether beyond the reach of the great bulk of mankind, so is the feeling of all others which to them is most incomprehensible. Nor was that noble enthusiasm without its reward. It was his extraordinary good fortune to be called to form, at the same time, the Last Judgment on the wall of the Sistine Chapel, the glorious dome of St Peter's, and the group of Notre Dame de Pitié, which now adorns the [Jan. chapel of the Crucifix, under the roof of that august edifice. The Family" in the Palazzo Pitti at Flo66 Holy rence, and the "Three Fates" in the powers in oil-painting: thus he carsame collection, give an idea of his ried to the highest perfection, at the same time, the rival arts of architecture, sculpture, fresco and oil painting.* He may truly be called the founder of Italian painting, as Homer was of the ancient epic, and Dante of the great style in modern poetry. None but a colossal mind could have done such things. him in painting, and professed through Raphael took lessons from life the most unbounded respect for his great preceptor. None have attempted to approach him in architecture; the cupola of St Peter's stands alone in the world. Angelo had some defects. He created But notwithstanding all this, Michael which has made modern Italy as imthe great style in painting, a style mortal as the arms of the legions did the ancient. But the very grandeur drawing, his incomparable command of his conceptions, the vigour of his of bone and muscle, his lofty expression and impassioned mind, made him neglect, and perhaps despise, the lesser details of his art. Ardent in overlooked execution. the pursuit of expression, he often painted the Last Judgment or the Fall When he and walls of the Sistine Chapel, he was of the Titans in fresco, on the ceiling incomparable; but that gigantic style rooms of ordinary proportions. By was unsuitable for lesser pictures or the study of his masterpieces, subseastray; they have aimed at force of quent painters have often been led expression to the neglect of delicacy pecial manner, conspicuous in Sir in execution. This defect is, in an esJoshua Reynolds, who worshipped Michael Angelo with the most devoted fervour; and through him it has descended to Lawrence, and nearly the whole modern school of England. window in Magdalen College, OxWhen we see Sir Joshua's noble glass * The finest design ever conceived by Michael Angelo was a cartoon representing warriors bathing, and some buckling on their armour at the sound of the trumpet, which summoned them to their standards in the war between Pisa and Florence. It perished, however, in the troubles of the latter city; but an engraved copy remains of part, which justifies the eulogiums bestowed upon it. ford, we behold the work of a worthy pupil of Michael Angelo; we see the great style of painting in its proper place, and applied to its appropriate object. But when we compare his portraits, or imaginary pieces in oil, with those of Titian, Velasquez, or Vandyke, the inferiority is manifest. It is not in the design but the finishing; not in the conception but the execution. The colours are frequently raw and harsh; the details or distant parts of the piece ill-finished or neglected. The bold neglect of Michael Angelo is very apparent. Raphael, with less original genius than his immortal master, had more taste and much greater delicacy of pencil; his conceptions, less extensive and varied, are more perfect; his finishing is always exquisite. Unity of emotion was his great object in design; equal delicacy of finishing in execution. Thence he has attained by universal consent the highest place in painting. 66 66 Nothing," says Sir Joshua Reynolds, 66 is denied to well-directed labour; nothing is to be attained without it." "Excellence in any department," says Johnson, can now be attained only by the labour of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price." These words should ever be present to the minds of all who aspire to rival the great of former days; who feel in their bosoms a spark of the spirit which led Homer, Dante, and Michael Angelo to immortality. In a luxurious age, comfort or station is deemed the chief good of life; in a commercial community, money becomes the universal object of ambition. Thence our acknowledged deficiency in the fine arts; thence our growing weakness in the higher branches of literature. Talent looks for its reward too soon. Genius seeks an immediate recompense; long protracted exertions are never attempted; great things are not done, because great efforts are not made. None will work now without the prospect of an immediate return. Very possibly it is so; but then let us not hope or wish for immortality. "Present time and future," says Sir Joshua Reynolds, "are rivals; he who solicits the one must expect to be discountenanced by the other." It is not that we want genius; what we want is the great and heroic spirit which will devote itself, by strenuous efforts, to great things, without seeking any reward but their accomplishment. Nor let it be said that great subjects for the painter's pencil, the poet's muse, are not to be found-that they are exhausted by former efforts, and nothing remains to us but imitation. Nature is inexhaustible; the events of men are unceasing, their variety is endless. Philosophers were mourning the monotony of time, historians were deploring the sameness of events, in the years preceding the French Revolution-on the eve of the Reign of Terror, the flames of Moscow, the retreat from Russia. What was the strife around Troy to the battle of Leipsic?-the contests of Florence and Pisa to the revolutionary war? What ancient naval victory to that of Trafalgar? Rely upon it, subjects for genius are not wanting; genius itself, steadily and perseveringly directed, is the thing required. But genius and energy alone are not sufficient; COURAGE and disinterestedness are needed more than all. Courage to withstand the assaults of envy, to despise the ridicule of mediocrity-disinterestedness to trample under foot the seductions of ease, and disregard the attractions of opulence. An heroic mind is more wanted in the library or the studio, than in the field. It is wealth and cowardice which extinguish the light of genius, and dig the grave of literature as of nations. VOL. LVII. NO. CCCLI. B SETTLED AT LAST; OR, RED RIVER RECOLLECTIONS. CHAP. I. HOMEWARD Bound. I HAD left New Orleans with the full intention of proceeding without stop or delay to my home upon the Red River; but notwithstanding this determination, my wife and myself were unable to resist Richards' pressing invitation to pause for a day or two at his house. Upon our yielding to his solicitations, he proceeded to recruit other guests among our travelling companions, and soon got together a pleasant party. My fatherin-law, Monsieur Menou, went on to my plantation, but Julie remained with us, as did also her aunt, Madame Duras, an agreeable old lady with a slight expression of perfidy in her light blue, French-looking eyes, possessed withal of infinite delicacy and finesse-a fervent admirer of the old court school of Louis the Fifteenth, in the chronique scandaleuse of which she was as well versed as if she had been herself a contemporary of that pleasure-loving monarch. Besides these ladies, there was a young Frenchman named Vergennes, the third son of some Gascon viscount, and a distant cousin of the Menous, who had come to America till the scandal occasioned by certain republican scribblings of his in one of the newspapers of the day should have blown over, and till he could revisit his country without risk of obtaining a lodging gratis in the Conciergerie. He had brought with him a head crammed with schemes for the political regeneration of the whole world, and a trunkful of French fashions, neither of which, as I reckoned, were likely to take much with us. He made me laugh inwardly twenty times a-day by his Utopian theories and fancies. Truth to tell, in matters of politics or of sound common sense, these Frenchmen are for the most part mere children, and reach their dying day without ever becoming men. Take them by their weak points, their unlimited vanity or their love of what they call glory, and you may ride them like a horse to water. Vergennes, however when one could get him off his hobby was a pleasant gentlemanly fellow enough. It was impossible to spare Richards more than three days, and at six o'clock on the morning of the fourth, we went on board the steamer Alexandria. I had prevailed on my friend and his wife, and the whole party, to come and pass a week or two at my house, which was now quite ready for the reception of guests. The three days we had remained with Richards had been one continued fête, and considering the good living, and the heat of the weather-the thermometer ranging from 95° to 100°-there were few things more agreeable or better to be done, than to take a steam up the Red River. The fresh breezes on the water might save some of us a touch of fever. On board we went therefore, all in high glee and goodhumour with each other. We had passed the Atchafalaya, and had crossed over to the Francisville side, in order to avoid the powerful current occasioned by the influx of the Red River into the Mississippi. A strong wind had sprung up, and in the middle of the stream the waves were of a considerable height. The Mississippi was full to overflowing, and the mouth of the Red River, as far as the eye could reach, presented the appearance of an extensive lake, with thousands of tree trunks floating upon it. I had left the cabin, and was standing on deck with Richards and Vergennes, looking out upon the broad sheet of water that lay before us. We were just turning into the Red River when I observed a rowboat pulling across from the direction of Woodville, and which had already arrived within a hundred yards of us without attracting the attention of any one on board the steamer. It was cutting in and out amongst the enormous floating trees, with a boldness that, in that part of the river near the middle of which we were- "It is Ralph Doughby!" exclaimed The mad fellow Doughby it was. was standing bolt upright, and hardly taking the trouble to bend to one side or the other in conformity with the movements of the boat, which was dancing about on the waves and between the tree-trunks, while the six negro rowers were washed over and over by the spray. "Here's your famous Red River!" shouted the harebrained Doughby. "A fine country for wild-ducks and geese, and alligators too. Hurra, boys !" "For God's sake, Mr Doughby!" screamed and implored the ladies, as the Kentuckian dashed his boat slap up to the side of the steamer, without waiting till the speed of the vessel was slackened, and hastily caught a rope which was thrown to him. Just at that moment a wave as high as a man rose between the steamer and the boat and separated them, and Doughby still maintaining his hold on the rope, he was dragged out of his skiff and tossed like a feather against the steamer's side, where he hung half in and half out of the water. แ "Haul in, boys—haul me in, lads -or your d-d paddles will do it!" "Pull him in!" shouted we all, pull him in for God's sake!" "Ay, pull in!" cried Doughby, and giving a spring upwards he caught hold of the railing of the deck, threw himself over it with a bound, and stood in all safety amongst the astonished and grinny-visaged Cyclops who were hastening to his assistance. We hurried down from the quarterdeck, breathless with astonishment at this desperate and unnecessary piece of daring. which the black steward held out to him, made a slight bow to the ladies on the quarterdeck, sprang into the gentlemen's cabin, and thence into the first state-room that stood open. "An entrée en scène quite à la Doughby," said Richards laughing. "Quite so," replied I. Ralph Doughby, Esquire of New Feliciana, La., was an old acquaintance of Richards and myself, and an excellent specimen of a warm-hearted, impetuous, breakneck Kentuckian, with a share of earthquake in his composition that might be deemed large, even in Kentucky. He had come to Louisiana some eight years previously, a voyage of a thousand miles or more down the Cumberland River, the Ohio, and Mississippi, in a flat boat with half a dozen negroes, some casks of flour, hams, and Indian corn, and a few horses, and had settled at Woodville on a couple of thousand acres of good land, bought at five dollars an acre, to be paid in five years. His industry and energy had caused him to thrive, and he was now as well established a planter as any on the Mississippi; his six negroes had amounted to forty, his wilderness had become a respectable plantation, his cotton was sought after, and he had not only paid for his acres but had already a large sum in the Planters' Bank. His frank open character had made him friends on all hands, and there was not a more popular man in Louisiana than Major Ralph Doughby. During the stay I made at Richards' house previously to my marriage, Doughby had passed a day there in company with one Mr Lambton and his daughter, Yankees-the latter a beautiful girl, but cold and formal like most of her countrywomen. An aunt of hers, who possessed large plantations on the Mississippi, had made up a match between Miss Lambton and Doughby, and they were then proceeding to New York, where the marriage was in due time to be solemnized. Richards and myself had observed, however, that the wild headlong manners and character of the Kentuckian, joined though they were to great goodness of heart and many sterling qualities, did not appear very pleasing to the stiff, etiquette-loving fine lady, And so saying, he emptied the glass and it was without any great surprise "Pshaw!" cried Doughby; "steward, a glass of hot; and, captain, see that my portmanteau comes on board, and that my negers get away with whole skins; and a good morning to you, gentlemen-in five minutes we shall meet again." 20 Settled at Last; or, Red River Recollections. that we heard, some time afterwards, of the marriage being broken off, in consequence, it was said, of some wild freak of Doughby's. We were asking one another for the particulars of this rupture, which neither of us had heard, when the Kentuckian made his reappearance in the cabin. He had changed his dress, and, taking him altogether, was by no means an illlooking fellow. His light blue gingham frock and snow-white trousers fitted him well; an elegant straw hat, very fine linen, and a diamond shirtpin that must have cost the best part of a thousand dollars, contributed to give a sort of genteel planter-like air. His first care upon emerging from his state-room was to empty a glass of toddy. He then approached Richards and myself. "And Miss Lambton?" said Richards enquiringly. "Haven't you heard?” said Doughby; "you must have heard! It's all up-she won't hear speak of mepersists in her resolution-won't see me; or give me a chance of making my peace. I'm the most unlucky fellow on the face of the earth," continued he, changing his tone on a sudden to a melancholy sort of whine-"I wish I lay three hundred feet deep in the bed of the Mississippi. I tell you, boys, it's clean up with me, I feel that. I'm a lost man, done for entirely-shall never recover it!" We burst out into a violent fit of laughter, as who would not have done at the sight of a young giant of seven-and-twenty, with cheeks as red as poppies, shoulders that seemed made like those of Atlas to support a world; a pair of dark blue-grey eyes with a laughing devil dancing in them, and a little moist just now from the effects of the toddy, and the man dying of love! He measured five feet thirteen inches in his stockings, with legs that might have belonged to an elephant, and fists calculated to frighten a buffalo. "Be d-d to your laughing! cried Doughby-"Steward, another [Jan. glass-d'ye hear, you cursed neger, where are you hidden? Don't you hear when a gentleman speaks to you? D'ye want me to tattoo your black brainpan? You laugh,” he continued to Richards and myself, relapsing into his whimpering tones; "but if you only knew-none of the women will have me-this is the seventh who has packed me off." "The seventh!" cried I laughing, Pshaw! that's nothing; during my "what, only the seventh, Doughby? bachelor's life I had at least two dozen refusals, and I am only a year older than yourself. dozen! Steward, the toddy is only "You be hanged with your two fit for old women-foo much water in it; you don't know how to make here. I'll have you sent to the devil. toddy. Tell your captain to come it feels as if it would burst. She won't No, I tell you my heart is so full, hear of me. I will tell you all about rupted he, pointing to Vergennes, who it, boys-but who is that?" interin great wonderment. was standing near us, and looking on shur Tonson! happy to see you, Mon"Ah, Monshur Tonson! Parleh vouh English? Prenez un seat, et un glass de Madeira. Nous parlerons hansamble le Franseh. Neger, a bottle of Madeira; and let it be good, or you'll get the bottle across your crooked shins. A bottle of Irish or if you haven't any, Scotch will do. for me, d'ye hear, real Irish whisky, No, boys, I tell you I am a gone off with a flea in my ear, as they say." man. Dismissed, sent away, packed And so saying, he threw himself on crack again; the steward brought the a sofa with a violence that made it Madeira and the whisky, and we drew round the table to condole with the love-stricken Kentuckian. minutes passed in the composition of A few the toddy, which was evidently destined to play the chief part in the way of a consoler; and when Doughby had got a large beer-glass of the comforthis narrative. able mixture before him, he began |