"Your nephew brought you that message from Ludwig?"

"He did—and a still more impertinent message than that: And tell him, moreover,' added this graceless young man; that he may bless his stars that he has not me for a scholar, for I would get up a revolution in the school-room, and by'-I need not repeat his oaths-'we'd flog the flogger."

"Very disrespectful, indeed." "That was not the worst. • And as for my father,' he went on, you may tell him from me that the state showed its judgment in not promoting him, and that it was a fortunate day for the navy when he left it. And tell him he did well when he planted me behind a counter instead of taking me to sea, for by-more oaths- I'd have had the crew in a mutiny in three days, and we'd have hung the old tiger at the yard-arm.' I should like to know, Mr. Assessor, what you think of that?"

"And your nephew delivered that message to Captain Sturmgang?"

"He did, with fear and trembling." "Well, Mr. Sub-rector, I begin to think we have all of us fallen into some errors of judgment. But no more on the subject at present-leave the rest to me. I have now to attend the court, and must pray you to excuse me."

When a culprit has once made a confession of his main offence, it is generally not very difficult to bring him to acknowledge his minor ones. This reflection induced me to examine the housekeeper with respect to the poisoning affair. To my surprise and vexation she stuck to her old story, that she had, from the store-room, seen Ludwig Sturmgang spill something out of a paper bag into the soup-kettle, and at every subsequent examination she repeated this without variation. I had the young man summoned, and asked him (though not on his oath, as it was possible that he might, in the course of the inquiry, have to appear before the tribunal as an accused person) when he had last spoken with Christian Schein. He answered, on the day he left his father's house. I admonished him that it was probable this question might be put to him on his oath within a few days. He replied that he could give no other anVOL. XXVIII-No. 163.

swer to it then than he had now done. In reply to further questions he distinctly denied that he had ever had a conversation with his stepbrother respecting the sub-rector or a reconciliation. I asked him (without mentioning the assertion of the housekeeper) had he gone at all to the soup-kettle on the day of the alleged attempt to poison. He answered most decidedly in the negative; there was nothing to take him to the soup-kettle on that or any other day. The whole business seemed to me a tangled yarn, and I dismissed Ludwig Sturmgang without coming to any conclusion.

"After all," thought I," he may be guilty, and that a jury would pronounce him so is almost certain. Theresa Frohberg's intrigue with Schein, to be sure, throws suspicion on her testimony; and yet her persisting in it now, after the flight of her lover, and when she can have no conceivable interest in blackening young Sturmgang, is, to say the least, very embarrassing. In my heart I'm convinced of his innocence; but-thank heaven I'm not on his jury."

An event occurred the next day which solved the riddle. A letter addressed to the housekeeper, and bearing the Bremen post-mark, was handed to the court; it was from her seducer, and ran thus ::

"DEAREST THERESA,

"Before I leave my country for ever, I cannot resist the impulse which bids me send you a last-an eternal farewell. I am, you will be glad to hear, safely arrived in Bremen, and sail an hour hence for New Orleans. Ere you receive this, the shores of Europe will have disappeared from my view. We shall meet no more. Forget me, Theresa; but be assured that you will never be forgotten by "Your sincerely broken-hearted

"CHRISTIAN SCHEIN."

On reading this letter, the unfortunate creature broke into bitter tears, and cursed the author of her misery. She now confessed that she had been the tool of this miscreant in her inculpation of Ludwig Sturmgang. Schein had promised her marriage, but there were two hindrances to the fulfilment of the promise-the life of Captain Sturmgang, and Ludwig's claims as

C

his heir. The captain was old, and breaking down; they could reckon on his being soon out of the way, but the heir was a more serious obstacle. Schein, however, had long profited by the absence of the younger Sturmgang, to ingratiate himself with the old man, and insure himself, at least, a legacy ; nor had he neglected his many opportunities to blacken Ludwig in his father's eyes. Ludwig's betrothal, and the pecuniary disagreement between him and his father, enlivened the hopes of the abandoned pair to make their harvest at his expense, and the accidental circumstance that his horse fell sick at Dornfeld, and that he got arsenic to wash it, inspired them with the hellish plan, which was as hastily carried out, as it was conceived, of making the old man believe that his son intended to poison him. By the prospect of being now shortly able to marry, Schein induced the housekeeper to aid him in this work. She went in the evening into the town, and bought a sufficient quantity of tartar emetic; this she gave to Schein, who placed in her hands the arsenic, which he had got, by means of a false key, out of his brother's desk. Theresa put the poison into the soup, after she had served her lover with his own portion, and this, having mixed the emetic in it, he immediately took. It was not long down before he was seized with vomiting; he cried out that he was poisoned; the housekeeper pretended to recollect having seen the captain's son put something into the pot; it was examined, and the arsenic was found. This plan succeeded: the father and son were irreconcilably disunited; the latter hardly knowing why, for Theresa's testimony against him had never come to his ears, and he was not aware of his father's grounds either for believ ing that the matter found in the pot was arsenic, or for concluding that he had put it in.

To exasperate both parties the more against each other, and to render any danger of a reconciliation more unlikely, Christian Schein had fabricated the malediction and threat of ignominious treatment, which he announced to Ludwig on the part of his father, and had afterwards brought to the captain and the sub-rector accounts equally mendacious, of his having visited young Sturmgang on errands

of peace, and of the insulting messages, to both the old gentlemen, by which the rebellious son had met these overtures.

Theresa Frohberg had been the faithful ally of Schein in all these measures; and, even when their intrigue came to light, and the seducer absconded, she continued to keep the secret of their alliance, believing that Schein, once beyond the reach of pursuit, would not fail to provide her with the means of rejoining him, or would even, perhaps, return, when the scandal was blown over, and sit as fast as ever in his stepfather's favour; for she had not been informed of the act of theft which had preceded his flight. Now, however, he had cast her off, and all motive for concealment of the truth was at an end. The two rogues had fallen out, and honest men, according to the proverb, came by their

own.

No sooner had I received the above confession, than I despatched the tipstaff to summon the captain and the sub-rector to give evidence before the court. After asking them some questions about Christian Schein's amour with the housekeeper, I said to the captain

"Sir, the tribunal has been compelled to intrude into your domestic secrets, because, as I need not tell you, it is instituted to the end of discovering and punishing criminals. It is known to you that arsenic was brought into your house for a certain alleged purpose, and was there used as the means of an intended crime."

"It is but too well known to me." "You yourself have named your housekeeper to me as a witness; it has become necessary that you should hear her testimony before the court."

"Pray spare me the humiliation of hearing the crime of my son deposed to before a public tribunal."

"I am sorry to say it cannot be." I rang, and directed that Theresa Frohberg should be brought in. She appeared pale and dejected. I bid her repeat her deposition of yesterday.

It was done. The two old men stood as if turned into stone, as the story of the prisoner removed the scales from their eyes.

"Now, gentlemen," said I, "be so good as to walk into the waiting-room

till these depositions are signed and sealed. I will be with you in a few minutes."

They did so, and I shortly followed them.

"Now," said I, "I must request you to accompany me a short distance."

I said this with so official a look, and in so civilly peremptory a tone of voice, that they thought I had authority to take them wherever I pleased, and followed me without a word. Both looked like men suddenly awakened, and not knowing rightly whether they were in the body or out of the body. Need I tell the reader that I led them to Ludwig Sturmgang's?

As we were at the door, and I was going in, the captain grasped my arm, and asked

"Sir, what does this mean?—where are you bringing me?"

"Go with him," said the sub-rector, soothingly. "Let the assessor have his way, he means your good."

With these words, he pressed my hand.

We went in. The shop-boy was behind the counter; the young wife sat in the parlour, rocking the cradle, and sewing. At the sight of the old captain, she sprang up with a cry of terror, and darted out of the room.

"What's the matter?" said Ludwig, coming in; but, as he saw his father and his uncle, his arms fell as if paralyzed at his sides. Father and son stood at the two opposite doors of the room. It was an even chance whether they were to advance towards each other or to draw back.

"Sturmgang," said I to the young man, "it was I that brought your fa ther and your uncle hither; they did not know my purpose, though I dare say they guessed it. The moment is come the quarrel is at an end-all is explained. Sturmgang, throw yourself into your father's arms."

Sturmgang stood as if his shoes were part of the floor.

"Captain, then, embrace your son." He stood like his son's counterpart. "Mr. Sub-rector," appealed I-but he was crying.

"Good folks," said I, "do you mean to put me in a passion? Ludwig Sturmgang, will you be friends with your father?"

"I will," answered he, quickly.
"Captain, has your enmity no end?"

"It is past," was his equally quick reply.

"Well, then, when two people that have fallen out mean to be good friends again, why, either one of them must take the first step, or both must step out together. Come-together be it."

"No," said Ludwig Sturmgang, stepping forward, "I am the son-the first step belongs to me. Father, there is my hand-forgive me!"

"Stop!" shouted the old man, "stand back! Mine must be the first step: it is I that have to say 'Forgive!' I alone am guilty of all this misery. My poor, poor Ludwig, I have done thee bitter, ay, bitter and crying wrong. God forgive me!"

"Hurra!" cried I, and with a spring was in the kitchen. "In with you, Madame Sturmgang," said I to the trembling young wife; "you'll find none but friends in the parlour."

The following Sunday my wife and I, in compliance with a formal invitation, sent two days before, dined at Dornfeld. The company was not large; there were only ourselves, the Sturmgangs, and the sub-rector. After dinner, the captain presented us pipes, and bid Margareta bring a light, which she did, sobbing violently, as she had done, to the great peril of the Captain's equanimity, all dinner time.

"I have got no matches," said the old gentleman; "but here is some paper. Good Mr. Assessor, will you tear it neatly into strips: we can light our pipes with it very well."

The will was in a very few minutes torn up, and helped to light the “calumet of peace."

"I want a purchaser for Dornfeld," said the Captain to me. "I'm going to live with the children in town. It's so dull out here."

*

KUGLER'S Hand-book is admittedly the authority on the subject of the principal schools of painting in Europe. It is, in fact, an indispensable companion to the amateur who visits the great foreign and British galleries of art. The two first parts of this valuable manual are translated from the original German by a fair countrywoman of our own, whose refinement of taste in all matters connected with the liberal arts is only equalled by her accurate scholarship and happy fluency of diction. The first part, containing the Italian school, has already appeared under the able editorship of Mr. Eastlake, and was reviewed in our number for July, 1842. To the present volume is prefixed a short essay by Sir Edmund Head, containing a good deal of sound and sensible criticism, which, as interesting and intelligible to the general reader, we propose to examine so far as it bears on the question before us, in connexion, or rather contrast, with a treatise of a very different stamp, though partially dealing with the same subject. It is just possible that those who value the one may relish the other; but nothing, certainly, can be more perfectly dissimilar than the mode of thinking and talking adopted by Head, and that assumed by the "Graduate of Oxford." The one addresses himself to the common sense and common feeling of all enlightened readers; the other discourses of what we were wont to hear called the "æsthetics"-but what he teaches us to designate the "theoria"-of imitative art, and can scarcely expect to be intelligible to more than the initiated few who draw a religion out of the ordinary objects of taste, and find not only "books in the running brooks," and "sermons in stones," but metaphysics in off-skips, and intricate systems of ethics in Turner's prismatic bizarreries.

Let us endeavour to write for the medium capacity of mankind; and, in dealing with a subject which may be either very plainly handled, or involved in hopeless mystery, seek to bring difficulties to the level of ordinary apprehensions, rather than elevate simple nature to a height at which we may bid defiance to criticism, on the same principle as, according to the sarcastic Rousseau, the Parisian ladies raised the standard of morals to an elevation unapproachable by the most exalted female virtue.

That we shall in this age of affected sentiment draw down upon ourselves a considerable weight of fashionable indignation we fully expect, and are quite prepared for the moral avalanche. Well do we know that the faintest echoes of the plain are enough to disturb certain sensibilities where they sleep in their inaccessible and profitless sublimity above us; and fated though they be to melt when they are exposed long enough to an ordinary temperature, the consequences to us may in the mean time be sufficiently disastrous. Still we cannot for the life of us consent to be silent; at all hazards we must raise our voice for the guidance or warning of our fellow-voyagers, and are determined to check the rash, or encourage the timid, though it be at some personal risk to ourselves.

The scholastic theology of the middle ages forms an example of how any subject may be mystified by those whose design is, not to enlighten. The same mode of dealing with any other topic of human inquiry will lead to the same result:-nothing is so clear, pure, or natural as not to admit of being wrapped in obscurity; and it is possible that the world of taste—nay, even of action-might become the same chaos religion was once resolved into, should the "theoria" of Oxonian

Co. 1846.

graduates be permitted to influence the student of the arts and sciences to any extent.

In painting-indeed in all the imi. tative arts it is the question of the Ideal which has engaged more than any other the controversial energies of theoretic inquirers. It has been agitated since the days of Cicero and Quintilian, and will probably remain for ever to be agitated, unless indeed it be finally swallowed up in the profound depths of the "graduate of Oxford's" metaphysics. It may explain the "ideal" better perhaps than any verbal definition could do, to say that it is the quality which the Dutch and Flemish schools are said to be most without, and which the early sculptures of Greece possessed in the greatest perfection. The doctrine of the ideal, according to the ultra-idealists, is that according to which it is held necessary that the artist should improve and ennoble nature by having recourse to some storehouse of grand forms existing in his own imagination-or, as it is expressed by Meyer and Schulze in their notes to Winkelmann, frei gedichtet, and standing complete before the mental eye. In their theory, not merely is it held that most individual models are imperfect, but that no individual model, however beautiful, can possess that indescribable something essential to the highest works, simply because it is individual. Such is the doctrine of the idealists.

That of the "realists" is shortly stated by Sir Edmund Head as follows:

"It is admitted that most individual models have some defects, but that the correction of these defects must be drawn from the contemplation of other individual forms, and that forms may and do exist which the artist cannot copy too closely-in which the individual character that is, in other words, the life and reality of nature-will be, if he can attain to it, a source of the highest excellence, not a subject for censure. In correcting the defects of the model before him at the moment, his recollection of finer models is better than nothing; but the reality of those finer models would be better than the recollection."

The fact is, the true theory lies between these extremes, and is best expressed by Burke in his letter to

Barry (see Prior's Life of Burke, vol. i. p. 421).

"Without the power of combining and abstracting, the most accurate knowledge of forms and colours will produce only uninteresting trifles; but, without an accurate knowlege of forms and colours, the most happy power of combining and abstracting will be absolutely useless; for there is no faculty of the mind which can bring its energy into effect, unless the memory be stored with ideas for it to work upon. These ideas are the materials of invention, which is only a power of combining and abstracting, and which, without such materials, would be in the same state as a painter without canvas, board, or colours. Experience is the only means of acquiring ideas of any kind; and continual observation and study of one class of objects, the only way of rendering them accurate.

The painter who wishes to make his pictures (what fine pictures must be) nature, elevated and improved, must, first of all, gain a perfect knowledge of nature as it is.

"It is not by copying antique statues, or by giving a loose to the imagination in what are called poetical compositions, that artists will be enabled to produce works of real merit, but by a laborious and accurate investigation of nature upon the principles observed by the Greeks. First, to make themselves thoroughly acquainted with the common forms of nature; and then, by selecting and combining, to form compositions according to their own elevated conceptions. Homer and Shakspeare had probably never seen characters so strongly marked as those of Achilles and Lady Macbethat least, we may safely say that few of their readers have, and yet we all feel that these characters are drawn from nature; and thus, if we have not seen exactly the same, we have seen models and miniatures of them. The limbs and features are those of common nature, but elevated and improved by the taste and skill of the artist. This taste may be the gift of nature, the result of orga-, nization; and the skill may be acquired by habit and study: but the groundwork, the knowledge of the limbs and features, must be acquired by practical attention and accurate observation."

The writer of the essay before us very properly judges, that many of those persons who have been most fluent in their praises of the ideal, have had a very indistinct notion of their own meaning.