STUDIES. THE TRAGEDY OF CORREGGIO. January 21-22. WHILE ranging my German books this morning, I fell upon the "Correggio" of Oehlenschläger, and "Die Schuld" of Müllner; and I read both through carefully. The former pleased me more, the latter struck me less, than when I read them both for the first time a year ago. One despairs of nothing since the success of “Ion;” but would it be possible, think you, that the tragedy of "Correggio" could be exhibited in England with any thing like the success it met with in Germany? Here-in England I mean— it might indeed "fit audience find, though few,” but would it meet with the same sympathy?— would it even be endured with common patience by a mixed audience-such as hailed its appearance in Germany? Here is a tragedy, of which the pervading interest is not low ambition and the pride of kings; nor Fragments of a Journal addressed to a Friend, written dur ing the author's residence in Canada, and first published in 1888 His love, nor terror, nor murder, nor the rivalship of princes, nor the fall of dynasties, nor any of the usual forms of tragic incident, but ART, high art -its power as developed within the individua' soul,—its influence on the minds of others. This idea is embodied in the character of Correggio yet he is no abstraction, but perfectly individual ized. All those traits of his life and peculiar hab its and disposition, handed down by tradition, are most carefully preserved, and the result is a most admirable portrait of the artist and the man. gentleness, his tenderness, his sensitive modesty, his sweet, loving, retiring disposition, are all touched with exquisite delicacy. The outbreak of noble self-confidence, when he exclaimed, after gazing on Raffaelle's St. Cecilia, "Anch' io sono Pittore!" is beautifully introduced. The sight of the same picture sent La Francia home to his bed to die, so at least it is said; but Correggio was not a man to die of another's excellence, though too often doubting his own. The anecdote of the man who was saved from the rapacity and vengeance of a robber, by an appeal to one of his pictures, and the story of his paying his apothecary with one of his finest works,* are also real incidents of the painter's life, introduced with the most picturesque effect. Those who have travelled through the forests of Catholic Germany and Italy, must often have seen The Christ on the Mount of Olives, now, if I remember rightly, in possession of the Duke of Wellington. a Madonna, or a Magdalen, in a rude frame, shrined against the knotted trunk of an old oak overshadowing the path; the green grass waving round, a votive wreath of wild flowers hung upon the rude shrine, and in front a little space worn bare by the knees of travellers who have turned aside from their journey to rest in the cool shade, and put up an Ave Maria, or an Ora pro nobis. I well remember once coming on such a Madonna in a wild woodland path near Vollbrücken, in Upper Austria. Two little, half-naked children, and a gaunt, black-bearded wood-cutter, were kneeling before it, and from afar the songs of some peasants gathering in the harvest were borne on the air. The Magdalen of Correggio, the same which is now in the Dresden gallery, and multiplied in prints and copies through the known world, is represented without any violent stretch of probability as occupying such a situation; nor are we left in doubt as to the identity of the picture; it is described in three or four exquisite lines. It is beautiful,—is it not ?-where Correggio comments on his work, as he is presenting it to the old her. mit: "Ein sündhaft Mädchen, das mit Reu' und Angst Es gibt sehr wen'ge Männer, die das können." ✶ * An erring maiden, that in fear and penitence And the reply of Silvestro places the lovely form before us, painted in words. Welch schön Gemählde' Der dunkle Schattenwald, die blonden Haare, The manner in which Correggio betrays his regret on parting with his picture, is also natural and most exquisite. "Die Dichter haben's gut; sie können immer Die Kinder alle in der Nähe haben. Der Mahler ist ein armer Vater, der Seeking t' escape the snares around her laid,— This dark o'erhanging shade, the long fair hair, Well for the poet! he can ever have The children of his soul beside him here; The painter is a needy father; he Sends his poor children out in the wide world Grouped around Correggio in every possible degree of harmony and contrast, we have a variety of figures all sufficiently marked, each in itself complete, and all aiding in carrying out the main effect, the apotheosis of the artist hero. Nor has Oehlenschläger made his tragedy the vehicle for mere declamation, nor for inculcating any particular system of art or set of principles. In Michael Angelo and in Giulio Romano we have exhibited two artist-minds as different from each other and from Antonio Correggio as can be imag ined. The haughty, stern, arrogant, but magnanimous and magnificent Michael Angelo, can with difficulty be brought to appreciate, or even look upon, a style so different from his own, and thunders out his rules of art like Olympian Jove. The gay, confident, generous, courteous Giulio Romano is less exclusive, if less severely grand, in his taste. The luxuriant grace of Correggio, the blending of the purely natural with the purely ideal, in his conceptions of beauty, are again distinct from both these great masters. Again the influence of art over minds variously constituted is exhibited in the tender wife of Correggio, the favorite model for his Madonnas; the old hermit Silvestro; the high-born, beautiful enthusiast, Celestina, who places the laurel wreath on the brow of the sleeping painter; and the peasant girl, Lauretta, who gives him drink when fainting with thirst; and the penitent robber; and the careless young noble, with whom art is subservient to his vanity and his passions; and the |