of tragic incident-but ART, high art-its power as developed within the individual soul-its influence on the minds of others. This idea is embodied in the character of Correggio: yet he is no abstraction, but perfectly individualised. All those traits of his life and peculiar habits and disposition, handed down by tradition, are most carefully preserved, and the result is a most admirable portrait of the artist and the man. His 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 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 hermit: 'An erring maiden, that in fear and penitence That has once fallen redeem herself;-in truth, There be few men methinks could do as much,' "And the reply of Silvestro places the lovely form before us, painted in words. What a fair picture! This dark o'erhanging shade, the long fair hair, "The manner in which Correggio betrays his regret on parting with his picture, is also natural and most exquisite. 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 To seek their fortune.' The Christ on the Mount of Olives, now, if I remember rightly, in possession of the Duke of Wellington." "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 Ochlenschläger 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 imagined. 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 favourite 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 vulgar villain of the piece, Battista, who alone is absolutely insensible to its influence; all these form as beautiful a group, and as perfect in keeping, as we can meet in dramatic literature. Then there are such charming touches of feeling, such splendid passages of description and aphorisms on art, which seize on the fancy and cling to the memory! while the allusions to certain well-known pictures, bringing them before the mind's eye in a few expressive and characteristic words, are delicious to the amateur. * "The received account of the cause of Correggio's death rests on a tradition, which later researches render very problematical; but it remains uncontradicted that he lived and died poor--that his health was feeble and delicate his life retired and blameless; and the catastrophe has been so long current and credited, that the poet has done well to adhere to the common tradition. In the very moment that Correggio sinks into death, a messenger arrives from the Duke of Mantua with splendid offers of patronage. He comes too late. Art and the world are the heirs of the great man's genius; his poor family follow him heart-broken to the grave.' This is beautiful writing-the thought of one poet upon another. A little further on in the same volume we come to the touching sketch of the life of an applauded actress, Madame Arneth, once Antoinette Adamberger, and the beloved of the poet Körner, whose glorious death on the field of battle will not soon be forgotten-whose song to the "Sword" will be sung whenever the honest Germans are called upon to defend the independence of their country. Mrs. Jameson, flying with winged thoughts and affections from Lake Ontario and the young capital of Toronto to the banks of the Danube and the antique Vienna, thus discourses of her friend. "That of Vasari, who states that he died in extreme poverty; that, having received at Parma a payment of sixty crowns, which was churlishly made to him in copper, he walked to the city of Correggio with this load on his back from anxiety to relieve his family, and died in consequence of the effort. Lanzi and other of his biographers distrust this story, and have pointed out its improbability. Whatever the cause of his death, the expressions of Annibal Carracci are conclusive as to the neglect and poverty in which he lived." "It was not till we had been for some time intimate that I ever heard her allude to Körner. One evening as we were sitting alone, she gave me, with much feeling and graphic power, and even more simplicity, some particulars of her first interview with him, and the circumstanees which led to their encouragement. I should tell you that she was at the time a favourite actress of the Court Theatre, and excelled particularly in all characters that required more of delicacy, and grace, and dignity, than of power and passion; those of Thekla in the Wallenstein,' and Jerta in the Schuld,' being considered as her masterpieces." * "At the period of Körner's arrival, Antoinette was ill in consequence of the extreme severity of the winter of that year, and the rehearsal of the "Grüne Domino' was put off from day to day, from week to week, till Körner became absolutely impatient. At this time he had not been introduced to Antoinette, and it was suspected that the beauty of Anna Krüger had captivated him. At length, the convalescence of the principal actress was announced, the day for the long-deferred rehearsal arrived, and the performers had assembled in the green-room. Now, it happened that in the time of the late empress,* * the representation of Schiller's Marie Stuart' had been forbidden, because her imperial majesty had been greatly scandalised by the indecorous quarrel scene between Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary, and particularly by the catastrophe of the latter, regarding the whole play as extremely dangerous and derogatory to all crowned heads, more especially female ones. On her death it was hoped that this prohibition would be repealed, and the performers presented a petition to that effect. The emperor, however, steadily refused, on the plea that he had promised the empress never to permit the representation of the tragedy. The refusal had just been received, and the whole corps dramatique were in a state of commotion, and divided on the merits of the case. Körner, in particular, was in a perfect fever of indignation, and exclaimed, in no measured terms, against the edict which deprived the public of one of Schiller's masterpieces, in tenderness to the caprices of an old woman now in her grave, et cetera. The greater number of those present sympathised with him. The dispute was at its height when Antoinette entered the room, still weak from recent illness, and wrapped up in cloaks and furs. Her comrades crowded around her with congratulations and expressions of affection, and insisted that the matter in dispute should be referred to Toni;' Körner, meanwhile, standing by in proud silence; he had not yet been introduced. When the affair was stated, and the opinions of the majority vehemently pressed on her, she replied in her gentle manner, 'I do not pretend to judge about the injury done to the public, or the expediency or inexpediency of the matter; it is a simple question between right and wrong-between truth and falsehood. For myself, I can only say, that if I had made a promise to a person I loved, or to any one, I would keep it as long as I had life myself, and the death of that person would render such a promise not less, but more binding, more sacred, if possible.' "This simple appeal to principle and truth silenced all. Körner said no more, but his attention was fixed, and from that moment, as he told her afterwards, he loved her; his feelings were interested before he had even looked into her eyes; and it is no wonder that those eyes, when revealed, completed her conquest. “Within a few weeks they were betrothed lovers, and within a few months afterwards the patriotic war (die Freiheits-Kriege) broke out, Maria-Theresa-Caroline of Naples, who died in 1807. +I do not know whether the emperor was ever induced to break this promise. It was after his death that I saw the Marie Stuart performed at Vienna, where Madame Schroeder and Madlle. Fournier appeared as Queen Elizabeth and Mary Stuart." and Körner joined Lützow's volunteers. His fate is well known. Young and handsome, a poet and a hero, loving, and in the full assurance of being loved, with all life's fairest visions and purest affections fresh about his head and heart, he perished—the miniature of Toni' being found within his bosom next to the little pocket-book in which he had written the Song of the Sword-the first shattered by the bullet which had found his heart, the latter stained with his blood; I have seen it,-held it in my hand! Now, will you believe, that within three or four months afterwards, when Antoinette was under the obligation to resume her professional duties, the first character she was ordered to play was that of Thekla ? In vain she entreated to be spared this outrage to every feeling of a heart yet bleeding from her loss; the greater her reluctance, the greater the effect which would be produced on the curiosity and sympathy of the public;-this, I suppose, was the cold calculation of the directory! She was not excused; and after going through the scene in which the Swedish captain relates to Thekla the death of her lover,* the poor Antoinette was carried from the stage by her aunt almost lifeless, and revived only to give way to such agonies of grief and indignation as threatened her reason. "Madame Arneth is remarkably calm and simple in her manner, and more than twenty years had elapsed since she had been thus insulted and tortured; but when she alluded to this part of her history, she became gradually convulsed with emotion, trembled in every limb, and pressed her hands upon her eyes, from which the tears would gush in spite of an effort to restrain them." "Antoinette had suffered what a woman of a quiet but proud temper never forgets or forgives. She had made up her mind to quit the stage, and there was only one way of doing so with honour. Four years after the death of Körner she married Mr. Arneth, one of the directors of the Imperial Museum, a learned and amiable man, considerably older than herself, and with whom she has lived happily. Before I left Vienna she presented me with a book which Körner had given her, containing his autograph and the dramas he had written for her- Die Toni,' der Grüne Domino,' and others. I exclaimed thoughtlessly, 'O how can you part with it?' and she replied, with a sweet seriousness, 'When I married a worthy man who loved me and trusted me, I thought there should be no wavering of the heart between past recollections and present duties I put this and all other objeets connected with that first period of my life entirely away, and I have never looked at it since. Take it! and believe me, even now, it is better in your hands than in mine.' And mine it shall never leave." : When we get Mrs. Jameson on her German recollections and studies, we would never leave her. We have done with midnight lamps as things prejudicial to health and eyesight; but we could read her on these subjects, from dawn to sunset, without weariness. * "It will be remembered that the death of Theodore Körner was similar to that of Max Piccodomini." + " Madame Arneth is now Vorleserin (Reader) to the Empress Dowager, and entrusted with the direction of a school, founded by the Empress for the children of soldiers. In Austria only two soldiers in each company are allowed to marry, and the female children of such marriages are, in a manner, predestined to want and infamy. In the school under Madame Arneth's direction I found (in 1835) fortyfive children, well managed and healthy. The benevolence which suggested such an institution is, without doubt, praiseworthy; but what shall we say of the system which makes such an institution necessary?" "Ce qui est moins que moi, m'éteint et m'assomme: ce qui est à côté de moi m'ennuie et me fatigue: il n'y a que ce qui est au-dessus de moi qui me soutienne et m'arrache à moi-même.' * This is true-how true, I feel, and far more prettily said than I could say it; and thus it is that during these last few days of illness and solitary confinement, I took refuge in another and a higher world, and bring you my ideas thereupon. "I have been reading over again the Iphigenia, the Tasso, and the Egmont of Goëthe. "Iphigenia is all repose; Tasso all emotion; Egmont all action and passion. Iphigenia rests upon the grace and grandeur of form-it is statuesque throughout. Tasso is the strife between the poetic and prosaic nature. Egmont is the working of the real; all here is palpable, practical-even love itself. "I laid down the Tasso with a depth of emotion which I have never felt but after reading Hamlet, to which alone I could compare it; but this is a tragedy profound and complete in effect, without the intervention of any evil principle, without a dagger, without a death, without a tyrant, without a traitor! The truth of Leonora d'Este's character struck me forcibly; it is true to itself, as a character,-true to all we know of her history. The shadow which a hidden love has thrown over the otherwise transparent and crystalline simplicity of her mind is very charming-more charming from the contrast with her friend Leonora Santivale, who reconciles herself to the project of removing Tasso with exquisite feminine subtlety and sentimental cunning." * "Iphigenia is an heroic tragedy-Tasso a poetical tragedy-Egmont an historical tragedy. Clavigo is what the Germans call a bürgerliche, or domestic tragedy (tragédie bourgeoise.) I did not read this play as I read the Tasso, borne aloft in the ideal, floating on the wings of enthusiasm between the earth and stars; but I laid it down with a terrible and profound pain-yes, pain! for it was worse and deeper than mere emotion. Yet it is difficult to speak of Clavigo as a work of art. The matter-of-fact simplicity of the plot, the every-day nature of the characters, the prosaic sentiments, the deep homely pathos of the situations, are almost too real,-they are brought home to our own bosoms, our own experience, they are just what, in feeling most, we can least dare to express. The scene between Carlos and Clavigo, in which Carlos dissuades his friend from marrying the woman to whom he was engaged, is absolutely wonderful. If Clavigo yielded to any mere persuasion or common-place arguments, he would be a despicable wretch,-we should feel no interest about him, and it would also belie the intellect with which he is endowed. It is to that intellect Carlos addresses himself. His arguments, under one point of view-that of common sense--are unanswerable. His reasoning, springing from conviction, is reason itself. What can be more practically wise than his calculations-more undeniably true than his assertions? His rhetoric, dictated as it is by real friendship, and full of fire and animation, is even more overwhelming from its sincerity than its eloquence; and his sarcastic observations on poor Marie Beaumarchais, on her want of personal attractions, her ill health, her foreign manners; on the effect she will produce on society as his wife, and the clog she must prove to his freedom and ambitious career, are so well aimed, so well meant, so well founded, that far from hating Carlos and despising Clavigo, we are impressed with a terror, a sympathy, a sort of fearful fascination. Every, one who reads this play must acknowledge, and with an inward shuddering, that it is possible he might have yielded to this conventional common sense, this worldly logic, even for want of arguments to disprove it. The only things left out in the admirable reasonings and calculations of Carlos are nature and conscience, * Mademoiselle de l'Espinasse. |