"I am here, colonel," she gasped with an effort.

"Graham," said the colonel, in a voice of emotion, our good queen has sent me the Victoria Cross. It's a very great honor -no man could desire a greater. I want you to give it me, because your great care and devotion have, by Heaven's blessing, enabled me to live long enough to receive it; and I assure you I am very glad, and I esteem it an honor also, to receive it from your true, honest hands!"

"Hear, hear!" exclaimed Sholto. "Well spoken, by Jove!" and he placed the cross in Graham's hand.

"God support me!" she murmured. "I cannot speak to him," she whispered to Shol"This is too much for me."

to.

"I wonder whether the account of my receiving the Victoria Cross will get into the French papers?"

"It will be very generally known, no doubt."

"Of course, in England," he answered; "but the French papers-Galignani, for instance?"

"Very probably--but why, colonel ? " "That woman is in Paris, Graham. I should like her to read it. I think perhaps she would feel some sorrow, some remorse. Pshaw! that whirl of gayety and vile dissi

"Good-by, Sholto," replied the colonel, warmly. "Thank you for all you've done and said. Good-by, true friend." With a hearty shake of the hands the friends parted.

"Take care of Graham," Sholto whispered earnestly to the Sister; "she wants every care." With a cheery good-night he left the terrace, and returned to his noble work at Pera.

"Does us all good, I declare!" exclaimed the Sister, "his bright, pleasant manner, and noble, honest face! How well the cross looks on the white, doesn't it, Graham ?-Ah, colonel, be proud-the whole wealth of the world couldn't buy that little bit of bronze! It's a happiness to think there are things in this world worth more than gold!"

"By Heaven, madam!" exclaimed the colonel, "I am proud and happy, too, and I thank you all for your goodness and attention to me!"

"Then we are happy also," replied the Sister. 66 Well, I must be off on my rounds. Graham will stay with you till Simpson is able to relieve her."

Husband and wife were again alone. The thought of leaving him was very terrible, but still more terrible the thought that

"You are so far right, colonel - that woman who was once your wife is in Paris." "What do you know about her?" he asked, in an excited tone.

"I will tell you," she replied, with desperate effort to conceal her agitation. "That woman is in Paris!-Dr. Sholto said in my hearing, and I was utterly overcome when I heard him say so-leading an abandoned life. That woman is in Paris, dying in a hospital!"

"How do you know this?"

The lie which, in her despair, she had resolved to tell him, if the opportunity ever arose-and in a lie lay her last hope of pardon-came readily to her lips.

"I passed an apprenticeship in nursing at the Hôtel-Dieu. I formed a deep friendship with one of the chief nurses-we correspond -she knows my work; I know hers-that woman is dying!"

"Not leading a wicked life, you say?" "Not leading a wicked life!" she answered, with feverish emphasis.

"Thank God for that!" he exclaimed, with evident relief. "Is she very, very ill?" he asked, after a pause.

"Dying!" she answered.

And it was a true answer: death was, indeed, at work among the fine tissues of her heart.

"What does that nurse say?" he inquired.

"She asks, is there any hope that that woman can be forgiven by the man she has so deeply wronged-any hope that her miserable death-bed can be soothed by the knowledge of his forgiveness?

Graham, I can't forgive her-I can't!" "I will write that to my friend," she answered; and she crouched down at the side of his couch in hopeless despair.

"Why should I forgive her?" he asked, with irritation. "Look at the misery she has caused!"

"She has bitterly repented-the nurse says that."

"Repentance is not reparation! Why haven't you mentioned all this before?"

"I did not dare; your state of health forbade it. You are stronger now."

Once more a ray of hope-one last effort to win his pardon. She nerved herself as best she might: she drew together her shattered power for the supreme effort.

You

"You say you owe your life to me. wished to give me some acknowledgment of your gratitude. I ask you something very, very precious: I ask you, for my sake, to forgive her. O Colonel Murray! think well of it: dying unforgiven! I tell you there is no anodyne for that pain; it gnaws through all the opiates; it begins its torture when bodily anguish is lulled. Have mercy on this woman, for my sake! Remember, for your sake, I, a woman as she is, have passed sleepless nights-watching through your sleep-watching through all your pain and anguish-" Still he made no response; and the awful words rose before her: "Never on earthnever in heaven!"

She fell on her knees, and prayed silently that his heart might be touched.

"Graham," he said, "I could never meet her again; it would be my death."

"You will never meet her again," she answered. "Dying, I say."

Fetch pen and paper."

Her prayer was answered. She fetched the writing-materials from his room, laid the blotting-book on his knees, and held the pen in her hand.

"Tell me what to say, Graham; I feel very exhausted."

"I, Colonel Murray," she answered, in trembling tones, "forgive that woman who was once my wife the wrong she has done me."

"Guide my hand," he murmured, striving painfully to govern the pen.

She held his worn hand in hers, guiding it as he wrote.

He repeated the words which she had dictated: "I, Colonel Murray, forgive that woman who was once my wife the wrong she has done me."

'Sign it," she said, with beating heart; and she guided his signature, "Henry Murray." She took the pen from his hand-she was forgiven! She did not dare to kiss him: forgiven, yet no loving kiss of absolution. But she was forgiven. She knew her sin was loosed. In his voice she had heard the voice of Heaven-through his lips, consecrated by a great wrong, had been pronounced a full and perfect absolution.

"Remove the blotting-book," he said, in a wearied voice. "You will send it to her, Graham?"

แ

"She will have it, be sure of that." She thrust the paper into her bosom, close to her heart.

The regimental band began to play on the promenade below, and " Home, Sweet Home," was wafted on the wind, its tender sweetness swelling on the fitful breeze, or lapsing into plaintive murmur in the calmer air.

"I'm glad I've done it, Graham," said the colonel, after a pause of thought-" glad I have forgiven her. Thank you for speaking as you did."

The Sister Superior hurried on to the terrace, and drew Mrs. Murray aside. "His child has arrived," she whispered. "What?"

"His daughter—most unexpectedly –

some muddle about the letter. A sweet child, poor dear; so anxious to see her father! You break it to him very gently; I'll go back to her.-Colonel," exclaimed the Sister, "Graham has something very particular to say to you, only you must promise to be very calm and composed, or Dr. Bentley will never forgive her!" and the Sister hurried away.

"What is it, Graham?" asked the colonel, eagerly; "what's the Sister been telling you?"

"Your daughter," she answered, with painful effort, "has arrived."

"What-Minnie?" he cried, in a voice

of exultation.

"Your daughter."

"O Graham, this is happiness! the only thing I wanted. Where is she?"

66 With the Sister."

They must bring her to me directly." Directly," she answered; and he would see her the daughter she must never see.

"You'll see her, Graham," he exclaimed, joyfully. "I'm so glad you'll see her; she's such a darling. I know you'll love her. You must be her nurse, Graham; mind, her nurse."

"I shall be very pleased to see her some time or other; I'm too fatigued to stay now," she stammered; and her breath grew thicker and thicker.

"Where's papa ?" cried a little eager voice in the distance..

"That's her voice, Graham; don't you hear? Fetch her, Graham; do fetch her," he exclaimed, impatiently.

"O my God," she cried, in her agony; "last drop of the bitter cup-my child-he will kiss her-be will hold her in his arms!"

"Here, Minnie; here, darling!" cried the colonel; and the child, breaking away from the Sister, flew with eagerness into his

arms.

The Sister turned back, with tears in her eyes. Father and child were locked in a close embrace. The mother gazed at them in an agony of despair, and then turned away. She staggered back; good Dr. Sholto was not at hand to hold her in his arms. But the purpose of her life was consummated; she had freely spent health and strength in a holy cause; she had won her pardon, and the minister of mercy was at her side to save her from all burden of future sorrow. She sank to the ground, and, with the name of "Minnie" whispered on her lips, passed quietly away at the merciful bidding.

Father and child in their happiness did not know that she was dead, or had even fallen to the ground. "Home, Sweet Home!" sounded pleasantly in their ears, and lent sweet harmony to their eager greetings.

Travers from his lurking-place saw her fall. He flew to her side. "Dead or fainted?" He laid his accursed hand on her heart. "Dead!" He was baffled at the moment of victory-and the illusions, they seemed more than ever real. There lay Margaret Murray, but where lay life? His faith in the truth of materialism was greatly modified by his serious pecuniary loss. He rose, with a curse on his lips what use a curse in dead ears?. and left the hos

Dr. Sholto followed the dead woman to her grave, together with Bentley, the Sister, and the commandant. The Union Jack was her pall, and four brave, noble people were her mourners-in-chief; and many tears were shed by the women she had animated by her example and courage.

Dr. Sholto held his peace, intending on some future day, if ever Colonel Murray grew well and strong, to reveal the truth; but Dieu dispose-the truth was never revealed. Long before the invalid grew well and strong, Dr. Sholto, ever faithful, fell a victim in his brave fight against disease and misery; and his daughter became the daughter of Colonel Murray. And so it fell that Colonel Murray never knew that the woman who had saved his life, and restored his lost faith in womanhood, was the wife of early days who had been faithless to her marriage vow.

"Who could Nurse Graham have been?" the child would often ask in after-days, as child and father sat together talking over the sad days at Scutari.

"I can't tell, my darling; we shall never know here on earth. But I do know she was the best and truest woman I ever met; and I believe she sacrificed her life for my sake."

MICHAEL ANGELO.

S seven cities claimed the honor of haying given birth to Homer, so a castle and a city still dispute between them the nativity of MICHAEL ANGELO BUONAROTTI. The Florentines, in whose midst the great artist lies sumptuously entombed, and in whose beautiful city he achieved his fame and found a long and cherished home, stoutly assert that he was born there, and even point out the house in which he first saw the light. But there is a much greater probability that he was born at the Castle of Caprese, near Arezzo, in Tuscany, of which town Michael's father was podestà, or governor. There is a doubt, moreover, of the exact date of Michael Angelo's birth; it was certainly in the year 1475, and the most trustworthy evidence names the day as the 6th of March. That he died on the 17th of February, 1564, just as he was about to complete his eightyninth year, there is no dispute.

The present year is, therefore, the fourhundredth anniversary of Michael Angelo's birth. The people of Florence have resolved to celebrate a career almost unexampled in the annals of the arts in its wonderful achievements, and a character which, whether considered aside from or as illustrated by his works, was truly great, on the 12th, 13th, and 14th of September. The ceremonies will be appropriately imposing. From Tuscan town and village Michael Angelo's countrymen will flock to the fair city which he did so much to adorn. Multitudes will do formal homage at his tomb in the grand old church of the Holy Cross. A monument of him will be uncovered in a spacious square which is henceforth to bear his name. The works of the master, such of them as can be readily collected, will be exhibited in the hall of the

its harmonies to celebrate the genius who wrought so well with chisel, pencil, and compasses. The grave Academicians will assemble in the Senate-House to listen to poems and orations in Michael Angelo's honor. Thus the taste and enthusiasm for art which still linger in otherwise degenerate Italy, and which Michael Angelo himself has through the centuries done so much to keep alive, will render proper tribute to a fame as green and fresh now as when he was tenderly laid in his almost royal tomb.

Michael Angelo was one of the few wellnigh universal men. Taine, the French critic, speaks of him as one of the four men in the world of art and letters who have been "exalted above all others, and to such a degree as to seem to belong to another race"-the other three being Dante, Shakespeare, and Beethoven. Nor is it easy for those who are most learned in the arts to decide whether this man was greatest as a sculptor, as an architect, or as a painter. All concede him mastery in each. Michael Angelo was yet more than these; the preeminence of his productions in art overshadows and dwarfs his notable skill as a chemist, his erudition as a scholar, his grace and elegance as a poet, and his keen wit as a philosopher and an observer of men. Like Dante and like Beethoven, his genius was sombre, tempestuous, tragic, such as Taine compares to the soul of a fallen deity.

The details of his life are full of romantic, sometimes dramatic, and sometimes painful interest. He was of patrician descent, being a scion of the ancient family of the Counts of Canossa, a family nearly connected with the imperial house of Henry II. His father, Ludovico Buonarotti, was one of the proudest men in Tuscany; austere in his pride, severe in the domestic circle, and ambitious that his son should become a power in the Church or in the law.

When his son was born he named him Michael Angelo, as if to imply that he was designed to a lofty career. Nor did the superstitious podestà fail to have the horoscope of the child's nativity cast. The fiat of the horoscope is given in Vasari's life. According to it, the birth occurred when Mercury was in conjunction with Venus; "these," continues the quaint account, "were received into the house of Jupiter with a benign aspect, which fully demonstrates that the boy, by his genius and skill, will produce wonderful and stupendous works of art."

A wayward fate which the father was afterward fain to curse caused the boy to be nursed, in a little village hard by the castle, by the wife of a stone-cutter; so that, as the Italians of his time were wont to say, he was "weaned on marble-dust." As he grew up, his favorite playthings were pencils and colors; he took to chiseling, drawing, painting, as other boys did to balls and fishing. Ludovico intended that he should be a statesman or a cardinal; but Michael Angelo refused to be wrapped in the writings of the Fathers or the droning of the Codes. At thirteen he revolted from the paternal purpose, and declared his aspiration to be a sculptor. It was a cruel blow to the proud family at

the castle; but Michael Angelo already asserted the sort of grim determination which rode him rough-shod over difficulties throughout the journey of his life.

"He was born," says a writer, "to command and to subdue. He was born to trample upon difficulty, and to root out obstacle." So his will overcame and bore down the scruples of his parents, and he became the apprentice of the artist Ghirlandajo at Florence.

Lorenzo de Medici was then reigning and in the zenith of his magnificence. Through his patronage Florence had become the metropolis of art. Sculptors and painters swarmed about his hospitable court. It was not long before Lorenzo, ever on the watch for rising genius, discovered that of Michael Angelo. The progress of young Buonarotti was so rapid, indeed, that from approaching and then equaling the proficiency of his master, be began, to Ghirlandajo's amazement and chagrin, to venture to criticise and correct that master's work. Ghirlandajo was an envious man, and at first sought to conceal the talent and check the progress of his too precocious pupil.

One day Lorenzo de Medici was visiting the artist's studio. He was at once struck with the power of a study upon which Michael Angelo was employed. Turning to the master, he asked that the young artist should be permitted to become one of the chosen band of students who practised their art in the garden of St. Mark. Here Lorenzo had collected many of the best antique sculptures; to be admitted to the garden of St. Mark was a privilege craved by every artist in Florence.

When Michael Angelo entered the garden, he saw a student modeling some figures in clay, and immediately set to work in the same way. Then he aspired to work in marble. Choosing the mutilated statue of a laughing faun, and begging a piece of marble from a mason who was decorating Lorenzo's palace, he chiseled away with intense zeal, making up for the imperfections of his model by inventions of his own.

The prince, walking through the garden as was his daily habit, found Michael Angelo polishing his first sculpture.

Said Lorenzo: "You have restored to the old faun all his teeth; but don't you know that a man of that age has generally some wanting?"

The artist could scarcely wait for the prince's departure. As soon as Lorenzo had disappeared among the groves, he broke a tooth from the upper jaw, and drilled a hole in the gum for the socket of the lost tooth.

It was while Michael Angelo was at work in the garden of St. Mark, that he received that disfigurement of face which is so plainly discernible in his portraits, and which robbed him of whatever comeliness of feature he may have possessed. Among his fellow-pupils was a hot-headed and ambitious young man named Torrigiano. The same task in modeling had been assigned by the master to Torrigiano and Buonarotti. The task completed, Torrigiano proudly exhibited his work to his competitor; then Michael Angelo quietly displayed what he had done. Torrigiano was so much amazed and overwhelmed by

the superior power and genius of his rival's work that, seized with an uncontrollable fit of jealous rage, he caught up a heavy tool and struck Michael Angelo a terrible blow across the face, breaking his nose. Lorenzo de Medici at once expelled Torrigiano from Florence, and received Michael Angelo as a friend and companion in his own house. Here he had ample opportunities to engage in the study of both sculpture and painting; and it was during his residence at the palace that be executed the famous bass-relief of the "Battle of Hercules with the Centaurs," which is still to be seen in Florence, and which was one of the few works of which he always spoke with pride.

His munificent patron died in 1492; Michael Angelo returned grief-stricken to Arez

ZO.

While there he executed the statue of Hercules, which afterward stood in the palace of Francis I. of France. Piero de Medici, Lorenzo's son and successor, invited him back to Florence; he had not been there long, however, before the political troubles which arose, in consequence of Piero's bad government, induced him to retire to Bologna. It was in this ancient home of the arts that Michael Angelo executed the "Sleeping Cupid" which, by a fraud which does more honor to his shrewdness than his honesty, he caused to be passed off upon Cardinal St. Giorgio, at Rome, as an antique. The deception was soon discovered; but, instead of pursuing Michael Angelo, the worthy cardinal overwhelmed him with praises, and urgently invited him to Rome.

We find Michael Angelo, at the age of twenty, busily at work upon Cupids,. Bacchuses, and Virgins, in the Eternal City. He was now one of the most famous sculptors in Italy; and when he had executed the noble "La Pietà," representing the Virgin with the dead Christ in her lap, he was hailed as the first in his art.

Once more he went back to Florence, to which the wisdom and moderation of the Gonfaloniere Sodorini had restored something like tranquillity. A new triumph awaited him at his Tuscan home. An immense block of marble lay in one of the public squares. A Florentine sculptor, Da Fiesole, had been ordered to chisel a colossal statue from it, but had failed. Then Soderini offered the task to Leonardo da Vinci, who declaring that Da Fiesole had spoiled the block, refused to touch it. It was Michael Angelo's turn next. He chiseled at the irregular mass for a year and a half; and the result was the colossal "David," which stands to this day at the door of the Old Palace of Florence. It was not the last time that he was brought into rivalry with Leonardo da Vinci. He had outdone him in sculpture, and now proved his superiority in painting. They were commissioned to paint two pictures for opposite sides of the hall of the ducal palace. It is true that Michael Angelo's picture was never finished; but the cartoon which he executed was pronounced "the most extraordinary work which had appeared since the revival of the arts in Italy."

From the opening of the sixteenth century till his death, far on toward the seventeenth, Michael Angelo's career was one of

unremitting labor and almost uninterrupted triumph. He was as famous at Rome and Bologna as at Florence. Julius II., the artloving pontiff, called him to the Eternal City, and there he executed the colossal statue of Julius, which was afterward made into a cannon and used against the papal troops by the Bolognese. Not content with attaining unrivaled eminence as a sculptor, Michael Angelo now resumed the sister-art of painting, which he had practised fitfully from early youth, in good earnest. The pope persuaded him to share with young Raphael the task of decorating the walls of the Vatican and Sistine Chapel with Scriptural frescoes. His subjects comprised the creation and fall, Scriptural history, and the redemption of man. At the same time the artist worked diligently upon the monument of Pope Julius, including the colossal statue of "Moses," with its horns of light, its serene majesty of posture, and its patriarchal beard.

In the long interval which elapsed between the completion of these frescoes and that of "The Last Judgment," that masterpiece of painting which the visitor still gazes upon with wonder and awe on the wall of the Sistine, above the altar, he was engaged in selecting marbles for and superintending the works upon the church of San Lorenzo at Florence. Leo X., a proud and munificent Medici, had followed the good Julius, and Adrian VI. and Clement VII. had succeeded in turn to the pontifical throne. Michael Angelo's art reign continued seemingly absolute and unimpaired through every change in the papal sovereignty. Popes and cardinals made his will their law. He resented their slights with the haughtiness of an emperor; and more than once defied their spiritual power by disobeying their urgent commands. Finally, he began "The Last Judgment," which it took him, with his other labors, eight years to complete.

It was during this period that Michael Angelo met and became the beloved friend of one of the noblest and most celebrated women whose fame is preserved in the annals of the world. It was often remarked as strange that a man so full of enthusiasm, passion, and love of the beautiful, had never married. When this was said to him, Michael Angelo replied, "Painting is my spouse, and my works are my children." Yet it seems that at one time, some years previous to the period of which we are speaking, his heart was softened and his eyes charmed by the beautiful daughter of Philip Strozzi. She was a scion, on the mother's side, of the De Medici; lovely in person, she was known for the beaming brightness of her smile, her love of the arts, her taste and skill. She visited Michael Angelo's studio, and it was observed that his rugged manner gave place to gentleness when she appeared. But his love, if love he did, was hopeless. The fair Strozzi was betrothed to and soon married a young noble of Florence.

That he loved Vittoria Colonna he himself has left the most ample proofs in sonnets, which would have made him a renowned poet had he never touched chisel or pencil. But it was not a common or physical affection. They first met in 1538. The great

artist was in his sixty-fourth year; Vittoria was forty-eight. Both were fameus. Vittoria Colonna had already, according to a writer of the time, "raised up a name for herself, unrivaled even in the brilliant sixteenth century." She was a poetess, and her sonnets had been for many years repeated in every polite society in Europe. The daughter of that proud medieval Roman house which had so long struggled with the Orsini for the dominion of Rome, she had won the title of "Diva," which was never conferred on any other. When young, she was as beautiful as she was talented. The portraits of her still extant, by Del Piombo and Muziano, betray gentle and lovely as well as intellectual features, illumined by the richest tresses of golden hair. In character she was "lovely, gentle, feminine "-a notable contrast to her rival as a poetess, Veronica Gambara, who was "strong-minded" and masculine. The Dukes of Braganza and Saroja had contended for Vittoria's hand; she had bestowed it upon the gallant Francesco di Pescara, one of Italy's most brilliant soldiers. He was killed, twenty-four years before she met Michael Angelo, at the battle of Ravenna.

Vittoria Colonna sought the master's friendship when he was at work on "The Last Judgment," and from that time until her death their souls were bound together by one of the noblest affections the world has seen. They constantly exchanged letters when apart, and wrote sonnets to each other. Her friendship was a constant solace and inspiration to him; and in the last years of her life she dwelt at Rome so as to be near to comfort and encourage him. When she died he was overwhelmed with grief and despair. He constantly tended her in her last illness. At her funeral he tenderly kissed her hand. "What would I give," he afterward exclaimed, "if, instead of her hand, I had kissed her forehead or her cheek!"

His life thenceforth was a weary, sombre, almost tragic one. He dwelt solitary, apart by himself. Yet it was not in his nature to be driven from his work. He went on learning his arts till he died, and bore with him a strange, touching humility into extreme age. After "The Last Judgment he painted the frescoes in the Capella Paolina. Then he laid aside the brush for

ever.

He was full threescore-and-ten when he appeared in a third phase, that of a great architect. The pope summoned him to undertake the completion of the Basilica of St. Peter's; and there is somewhere a pathetic description of him, sitting alone in his gloomy studio, his aged hands wandering over a human skull, which he took as his model in designing the dome of the vast cathedral. For nineteen years he continued at this task, and death found him, at almost eighty-nine, still sturdily struggling with it. If he did not live to see its completion, he at least did enough to add one more laurel to his already laurel-laden and illustrious brow.

His personal appearance is thus described by one of his biographers: "Michael Angelo was of the middle stature, bony in his make, and rather spare, although broad over the

shoulders. He had a good complexion; his

Titanic strugglings, virtues of tragic heroism,

perhuman effort, a courage more awful than that of Achilles, tragedy profounder than Greek had ever penetrated. The expression of the passions he carried to the minutest

It was with the revival of art as with the Reformation-both reached their culmination by slow, successive steps. The Reformation grew out of a century's scrutiny, criticism, and protestation, in Pisa and Paris, Oxford and Salamanca. Nicholas Cop, Abélard, Wycliffe, and Savonarola, prepared the way for Luther. The revival of art in Italy had a longer growth from Cimabue, its patriarch, to Michael Angelo, who personified its culmination.

Giotto followed Cimabue, and struck upon a wider path. Ghiberti, with his twenty years' labor upon the bronze "Gates of Paradise," carried imitative art to its highest perfection in his sphere. Brunelleschi followed, and piled high the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore, the precursor of Michael Angelo the architect. These two, with Masaccio, were the true revivers of art in Italy. Then came the searching and restless Donatello, vainly struggling to express ideas; those before him were great workmen; he essayed to create, and with what success may be seen in the statue of St. George in San Michel.

Then rose he who combined the genius of all these famous predecessors. Michael Angelo was greater in conception, far more powerful in imagination, than Donatello; he far surpassed Ghiberti and Brunelleschi in masterly execution. It is a very striking and suggestive comparison which Taine makes between him and Beethoven. Some one has eloquently said that "there is a whole symphony of Beethoven in his statue of The Dawn.'" No one can doubt the truth of the assertion that " Michael Angelo conceived of a statue as something complete from the first, but concealed in the marble, and released from its covering by the chisel." Like Beethoven, he was proud and passionate, headstrong and jealous, fitfully dark and stormy in his moods, but of deep and lasting emotions, struggling always to utter the mighty throbbings of his great soul with an enthusiasm wastingly intense, and a mind too tragically powerful to bear patiently the society of common men. Both were solitary, unhappy, and both were pronounced insane. And, if both struggled, both struggled upward. Their fury was a divine fury; their wrath was godlike, and their pathos angelic.

It is well said that, while the Greek sculptors made serene gods, Michael Angelo depicted suffering heroes. Not for such as he was it to portray grace and beauty, delicacy of outline, symmetry of feminine features. He sought to carve out tremendous passions,

muscles, and the locks of his heroes or his heroines, in unison emphasize the passion he is working out of his own turbulent soul. Raphael, happily, was there in the same era, to soften the terrible impression of Michael Angelo's works, by beautiful faces, exquisite drawing, and soft coloring, the exhibition of all the sweeter and gentler virtues. Raphael's angels are truly angelic; Michael Angelo's "angels are athletes, his madonnas are amazons." The one inspired tenderness and love, the other evoked always awe, and sometimes terror.

Yet, for all his imperious, stern, and passionate temper, his unsatisfied strugglings to give expression to the lofty passions of his soul, Michael Angelo had room in his heart for charity and affection. He bewailed the loss of his old servant Urbino as if he had been, as indeed he was, a dear and honored friend. The death of his father, at the age of ninety-two, plunged him into a paroxysm of grief. A great and loving heart beat beneath that rugged and contemptuous exterior. He was generous, gave statues and pictures freely away, and supported more than one needy relation, as Beethoven did.

Michael Angelo lived with austere simplicity. The wealth he gathered in the pursuit of his arts was put aside, or spent in gifts and charity; his house was of the plainest in furniture and decoration, as may still be seen, for it stands in Florence very much as he left it more than three centuries ago. It is said that he often dined off a crust of bread. His dress, too, was quite simple and unostentatious. In his studio he wore a coarse paper cap; in the top of this was a socket, where at night he fixed a candle, which shed light upon the marble he was chiseling. A plain blouse covered his body. It was in such garb that he received alike popes and princes, ladies of Colonna and fair maidens of Strozzi. When he was not at work npon some fresco or statue, he was intently studying the philosophers and the fathers. His temperament was devout but not bigoted; in the midst of voluptuous courts and of an easy-going age he preserved himself chaste and temperate from youth to age. That, in religious opinions, he was in advance of his era, is evident from his reverence and affection for Savonarola, whose teachings led him captive.

Whether he be regarded as greatest as a sculptor, a painter, or an architect, it is certain that sculpture was his best-beloved art. He always dropped the chisel with reluctance, and returned to it with eager enthusiasm. Proud as he was, and well might he be, of "The Last Judgment" and the "Cartoon of Pisa," of the works on San Lorenzo and the building of St. Peter's, he was proudest of all of "La Pietà," the bass-relief "Hercules and the Centaurs," the "David," and the "Moses."

GEORGE M. TOWLE,

THE

"I

FASHION.

WONDER," ," said a handsome young editor to me, one who had just been considerably lionized at a fashionable watering-place "I wonder always at the prominence of certain sets, the power of certain leading women, the tyranny of fashion. What does it mean? Why is not one set as good as another? why are certain leaders elected whose dictum is infallible? why do certain people create an exclusive atmosphere into which certain other people cannot penetrate? and why are you women so afraid of each other? why has Mrs. Brown-Jones's eye a power which Mrs. Jones - Brown's eye has not? I think the one quite as pretty a woman as the other, quite as clever-what does it mean?"

"Well," I answered, after due reflection, "you have asked the most unanswerable of questions. If I answer you at all, it must be only approximative; it cannot be conclusive. For fashion always, from the beginning of the world to the present moment, has been an undefinable term. You may say that it requires wealth, beauty, good position, and tact, to become a fashionable leader, and yet I have known a woman holding all these cards to be not a fashionable leader. Again, I have known a woman to become a fashionable leader who held none of them. It seems to be a sixth sense, a union of certain advantages and certain ambitions. must care to be a leader first."

A woman

"But how many care to be, and work very hard for it, and never succeed!" said he.

"Many, no doubt; you have described a very large class, and hence that 'masquerade of hate,' which goes on in fashionable society, which is full of baffled ambitions and disappointed hopes. A woman often embarks more talent, more work, more heart in her enterprise, than you have invested in your newspaper, and she utterly fails. Society will not see her; society will not fall down and worship; society is neither influenced by her nor afraid of her. It neither loves nor fears her. Do you wonder that she becomes soured, embittered, and scornful, and abuses that which she cannot conquer?"

Yes, I wonder, first, at her ambition; secondly, at her being baffled."

"Ah! That is because you are a man, and cannot read the politics of women. You are a great student of those of men-you have not studied those of women."

"Because, you know," said the editor, "the man does not live who can understand a woman."

erate, where distinction and individuality are obliged to submerge themselves in the common mass, and where a high grade of mediocrity is obtained, but nothing better. Those more choice intelligences which, in older and more aristocratic societies, can stand on their glass pedestals, isolated from the common herd, have no existence here; our institutions forbid them. We are all mixed together-a sort of social blueberry-pudding, no one berry any better than any other berry.

"So, you see, it is left to a woman leader to make this particular pudding in a superior manner. She must know how to discriminate between those who are to be let in, and those who are to be kept out, for exclusiveness is a very necessary part of it-in fact, it is the whole stock-in-trade of one of our most distinguished leaders; and then she must know how, and when, and in what proportions, to mix her ingredients."

"I wish," said the editor, pensively, "that she always knew how to seat her company at dinner. Why, last evening I was put between my most intimate friend and my most intimate enemy, neither of whom did I wish to speak to. My friend and I had talked out, my enemy and I wouldn't speak."

That was ignorance and crass stupidity," said I; "but both those qualities can belong to a leader of fashion."

"Then do draw a line-some line. Give me an imaginary picture of a leader. Do not keep on drawing this impossible monster, whom the world never saw.' Tell me of some one leader, and why she has succeeded."

I saw the editor was getting irritable. He had eaten many good dinners, had been much flattered, was up late at night; his nerves were unstrung. I took pity on him, and described three women:

"One great leader of fashion whom I knew, formerly, succeeded by cruelty alone. She, of course, had talent, some money, some prestige of family name. But she came to a watering-place with a determination to succeed, to marry off her young daughter, and to rule society. She began by being very agreeable, giving some choice parties, and by propitiating those persons who, by reason of their wealth, propriety of conduct, and social position, always constitute what is called the first circle. Then she began to insult and injure those who had delicacy, timidity, and modesty. Thus she made people afraid of her. It became a question whether Mrs. Hightowers was going to speak to you or to throw her fan in your face. Therefore, she began to be a terror to all the weak people, of whom there are many in every society. A want of social courage is a natural defect in a society which has no defined boundaries. Mrs. Hightowers went from bad to worse. She, it was known, could spoil the career of any young lady at a watering-place if she chose. She could also make it a success. This she achieved by impudence, self-confidence, cruelty. Many powerful families in this country have achieved a high position by the exercise of similar qualities. Thackeray says: The way to succeed is to push.

Stamp on your neighbor's foot, and will he not draw it away?' Such people have allies in all the modest, the timorous, and the delicate people who hold themselves too high to contend with such a nature as Mrs. Hightowers's. We are at the mercy of all such people, to a certain extent, because our dig. nity forbids our entering such a field, or fighting such an enemy. So Mrs. Hightowers had a short success."

"I am so glad to hear that it was short," said the editor; "do get to the end of her, and tell me about a more agreeable leader."

"Well, there was Mrs. Clavering. She was a simple, unambitious person, very beautiful and attractive, and with a gift of exclusiveness. She would give a ball, and leave out two or three ambitious aspirants. The ball would be perfect, for Mrs. Clavering knew how to do things. Therefore, when Mrs. Clavering gave another ball, there were heartaches and headaches, lest the card did not come.

People used to say, on seeing her and hearing her talk (for Mrs. Clavering was by no means brilliant), 'How can such a woman be a leader?' But you see she had the negative qualities.

"Other women, far more clever, would be too clever, they would be too good-natured; at the last minute, they would let in the panting aspirant, and thus lose the prestige of refusal. There are only one or two such leaders as this, but they are the most clever of all.

"Then comes a third leader, Mrs. Devonshire we will call her. She has wealth, high position; she is the wife of a dignitary; she has to receive all sorts of people, but she has such tact, such goodness, such delicacy, such discrimination, that her salon never degenerates. She is a duchess always; she works like a hero; no Joan of Arc ever stormed or took a more forlorn hope than that which this lady perpetually conquers: for she conquers vulgarity, social ignorance, stupidity, pretension, and fashion-mixes them all into her pudding, and produces a successful result. She creates a salon to which the most exclusive are glad to be admitted, and in which the most vulgar and pretentious come away improved; but, I am sorry to say, such leaders are not common; I only know one such."

"I fear you do not," said the editor; "if there were many such, society would be a much more fascinating thing than it is. But I now wish to ask you to define the word 'snob.' I have read Thackeray on the subject, and I rise from the perusal still uneducated. Please to define and interpret for me the conduct of certain individuals who, at the fashionable watering-place of Fish's Eddy, court and run after Mrs. Clavering and her set, and will not know Mrs. Fotheringay and her set. Now, I dined with Mrs. Fotheringay, found her house charming, ber guests wellbred and delightful; her sons and daughters seemed to have all the accomplishments; they dressed beautifully; Mrs. Fotheringay herself was a well-bred lady; yet I am told that they are not fashionable, and know nobody.' What does that mean?"

"Well, it means that Mrs. Fotheringay has been in Europe a great deal; she does