"THE YOUNG NURSE."

JEAN BAPTISTE GREUZE was born in Tournus, Burgundy, in 1725, and died in Paris, March 25, 1805. He commenced his career as a portrait painter, but failing in that department, he devoted himself to pictures of genre. His first works in this class, "A Father Explaining the Scriptures to his Family," and "The Paralytic Father" gained him admission to the French Academy as an Associate. He soon after went to Rome to study the Old Masters, as he had an ambition to become an historical painter; he, however, soon saw that his forte was genre, and so he wisely abandoned the heroic school. His pictures are highly prized by collectors, and command enormous prices. Among the most celebrated are, "La Frileuse," and "La Jeune Nourice," (of the latter we give an exact copy) "The Blind Man Cheated," "The Village Bride," and "The Broken Pitcher," all these have been repeatedly engraved, and enjoy much popularity.

Nothing in the picture of "The Young Nurse" recalls scenes like those of Florian or Berquin, which Greuze reproduced in the later part of his career. The head-dress of ribbons and flowers, the necklace of pearls, the form of the robe, partake more of the beginning than the end of the reign of Louis XV. It represents a French lady to whom her gardener has brought a nest of young birds, one of which the fair nurse is feeding. The whole is very natural, and has been much admired.

THE POLOCHIC RIVER, GUATEMALA.

THE river Polochic, which has enabled our artist to sketch the romantic scene in our beautiful engraving, rises in the plateau in the department of Vera Paz, lying north of the capital of Guatemala. Its course, as well as that of the valley which contains it, is from west to east, between the fifteenth and sixteenth degrees of north latitude.

Cascade and mountain torrents gradually swell its waters as it glides down into the Tierra Caliente, that receives its largest tributary, the Rio Cajaban. Then it becomes a scene of tropical enchantment, the dark and distant mountains heightening the effect of the fairy-like tropical vegetation, rivaling in color and grace of form every family of animated nature.

After passing the Isabal Lagoon, it is more generally known as the Rio Dulce, and empties into the Arnatic Gulf, a part of the bay of Honduras.

An attempt was made in 1839 to found an English colony on the banks of the Polochic; but, like all the attempts made to establish Anglo-Saxon communities amid the mixed Latin and Indian races of the South, it failed, and tropical vegetation, in its wild luxuriance, soon hid the efforts of their industry.

FREDERICK BARBAROSSA.

FREDERICK I., surnamed Barbarossa, Emperor of Germany, the son of Frederick, Duke of Suabia, succeeded to the imperial throne on the demise of his uncle, Conrad III., in 1152. He was an energetic and warlike prince, and in the second year of his reign, settled the disputes between Canute and Sweyn, competitors for the Danish crown, the former of whom he held as his vassal. He next marched into Italy to settle the tumults which distracted that country, and was crowned at Rome by Adrian IV., who, dying in 1160, no less than three antipopes were chosen, who were all opposed by the emperor. The Mi

imperial yoke, on which Frederick again entered Italy, took Milan, and entering Rome, set Calixtus on the papal throne instead of Alexander. The Venetians, however, maintained the cause of the latter with so much vigor, that Frederick was obliged to make his submission to Alexander. He next embarked against the infidels, obtained some victories, took Iconium, and penetrated into Syria, where he was drowned in 1190, aged sixty-nine.

If it be allowable to wind up history with a scrap of romantic legend, there is something more to be told. They say in Germany of their grand old Kaiser Barbarossa, as the Britons said of their Arthur, as they fondly said of their Alfred, and as an imaginative people has often said of a hero whom they could ill spare, "He will come again; he is not dead, but awaiting the hour of need!" They say that a German peasant, once wandering into a long and winding cavern in the Salzburg hills, caught a glimpse of the old monarch in the midst of his trance of ages. He was sitting at a stone table, his white beard flowing on the ground, like the unraveled threads of a silvery cataract—they had passed through the stony table on which he leaned; but slowly raising his head, he asked the man the age of the world and the number of the century. "Noch nicht!" and he settled himself again to his dream, for the hour had not yet struck.

MADAME ROLAND.

AMONG the noble women produced by the first French Revolution, Madame Roland stands conspicuous. It is well to observe how little the present Republic is influenced by female genius or patriotism. The meretricious nature of the Second Empire seems to have destroyed that innate force of character which was once so deep an element in French social and political life. As a biography of Madame Roland would be incomplete without that of her husband, we give a brief sketch of his life.

John Marie Roland de la Platière, a French statesman, was designed for the church; but, relinquishing his studies, became engaged in mercantile pursuits. In time, his commercial abilities being very great, he became Inspector-General of the manufactories of Picardy, and afterward of those of Lyons, of which city he was subsequently nominated deputy to the Constituent Assembly. In 1792 he became Minister of the Interior, but did not long retain the office. When the party of Girondists, to which he belonged, was proscribed, he fled from Paris, leaving his wife, who refused to accompany him, behind. He retired to Rouen, where, on hearing of the execution of his wife, he ran himself through the body, 1793. He wrote some works on the cotton and linen manufactures, "Letters from Switzerland, Italy, Sicily, and Malta," and a Dictionary of Manufactures and Arts." He was born near Lyons, 1732.

Marie Jane Philipon Roland's father was an engraver named Philipon, who was eminent in his profession, and gave her an excellent education. At the age of twenty-five she married Monsieur Roland, though there was a great disparity in their ages. She rendered important services to him in his capacity of Minister of the Interior; and most of the official writings which he published were the productions of her masculine mind. On his flight, she was sent to the prison of Abbaye, and, after an imprisonment of some weeks, was released; but she had scarcely reached her own house before she was again apprehended. In her last confinement she wrote an interesting work, entitled "An Appeal to Posterity," or Historical Notices, Anecdotes, and Memoirs of herself. At length she was dragged before the revolutionary tribunal, and sentenced to the guillotine, which she endured with great fortitude, saying, as she looked on the statue of Liberty, "Oh, Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!" She was born at Paris, 1756, and guillotined, 1793.

MANY have been ruined by their fortunes; many have escaped ruin by the want of fortune. To obtain it, the great have become little, and the little great.

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IN THE FALL.

THE old autumnal stillness holds the wood;
Thin mist of Autumn makes the day a dream;
And country sounds fall faint, half understood
And half unheeded as to sick men seem
The voices of their friends when death is near,
And earth grows vaguer to the tired ear.
As soft gray dawns and softer evening ends
The air is echoless and dull with dews;
And leaves hang loose and whosoever wends

His way through woods is 'ware of altered hues
And alien tints; and oft with hollow sound
The chestnut husk falls rattling to the ground.
A certain sadness claims these Autumn days--
A sadness sweeter to the poet's heart
Than all the full-fed joys of lavish rays

Of riper suns; old woes, old wounds depart. Life calls a truce, and Nature seems to keep Herself a-hush to watch the world asleep.

A SECRET.

BY ETTA W. PIERCE.

IN the middle of the night my man Gilbert knocked at the door.

"Sorry to disturb you," he called; "but the party over there in the cottage, he's going fast, sir; he can't last beyond turn of the tide."

I put down my pipe and papers. I had not been in the house two hours, and this interruption was unwelcome enough. "Anything wanted of me, Gilbert ?''

"Well, yes, Doctor Giles wants you. That fellow's furrin gibberish is a little too much for me, and the doctor he don't understand it either. He sent me to call you."

VOL. XXVII., No. 6-23

I had been living abroad for the last five years, wandering restlessly about the face of the earth, and, clearly, Gilbert considered that by this time all foreign gibberish should be as an open book to me. I struggled into a coat, and followed him

out of the house.

The east wind was blowing in across the savage rocks of Cape Ann, as only the wind can blow on the Massachusetts shore. Salem, facetiously Witchtown, a city famous for past crimes and present less, lay along its charming harbor, sleeping the sleep of the just. The sea-fog was thick enough to cut, as I stumbled after Gilbert through the dark, silent, sodden grounds.

"How long has this poor devil been a tenant of mine?" I grumbled; " and how came you to let the cottage to him, any way? I did not suppose it habitable."

"It's a year ago that he came to me, Master Jack. I suspect he was fresh from some merchantman in the harbor. He wore sailor clothes, and the English he talked was as bad as Choctaw. After awhile I made out that he'd seen the cottage, and wanted to hire it. I informed him that with the drafts, and the damp, and the leaky bay-window 'twas not fit to live in. The answer he made was, that he wanted it to die in. So I let him have it." "He has lived there quite alone, you say?"

"Ay, sir, with not so much as a cat or dog for company. It's my belief his brain is touched."

and sundry other improvements, a new drive was cut, and the deserted place allowed to fall into neglect and ruin. For years before my sojourn abroad, it had been without a tenant. I stood now in the wet dark, and looked at the solitary flickering light in the window, as, broken by the queer, old-fashioned panes, it slipped along the scaly beech-boles in fantastic currents of brightness.

"Come in," whispered Gilbert.

I followed him into a dilapidated hall, which ran bleakly through the centre of the house, and had a square front room opening from it on either side. In my father's time these had been called the east and west parlors. It was in the west parlor that the light burned, and there the man Mendez lay dying.

He was stretched upon an iron camp-bed, and Doctor Giles watched beside him, repairing the candle at intervals with an old-fashioned pair of snuffers. I advanced to the bed, and looked down on my tenant. He was a man of middle age, dark, wiry, and small of stature. There was a mulatto taint in his blood, showing plainly in the crisp hair, the full lip, the whole contour of the wasted face. He lay stretched out, stark and gaunt, upon the bed, his black eyes half closed, a death-sweat gathering, even then, on his high, peaked forehead.

"I'm afraid you are too late, Comyn," said the doctor. "He has been raving here for an hour, poor devil! and I've not understood a word of it. His Spanish is all as Sanscrit to me. Neither Gilbert nor I could induce him to speak a syllable in English."

I looked about the room, lit by the ghastly glare of the candle. It contained but little furniture, and that of the poorest sort. I looked at my tenant, lying stark and still, with his hands knotted convulsively in the bedclothes, and the gray shadow of death creeping over his set face.

"He is past speaking, then?" said I. "Yes. Look here."

Giles opened the man's shirt, and showed me a long horizontal scar stretching across the dark bosom-a frightful scar, that must have reached deep into the breast-bone.

"I have found on him the marks of half a dozen other old cuts," said the doctor. Queerish; he seems to have lived here like a hermit-barely comfortable, and no more. Gilbert says he has paid his rent promptly, and never seemed to lack for money. A Cuban refugee-hum !"

"Hush!" I said, pressing closer to the bed; "he rallies; his eyes are unclosing."

"Pooh! feel his pulse; he can't last ten minutes." Even as Giles spoke, the eyes of the sent flashed wide open. He stared around the room,, or, at Gilbert, at my own unfamiliar face. It was stricken, awful look;

it haunted me for weeks after.

44

Speak to him," whispered the doctor.

I bent down, and called to him in Spanish. At the sound of his native tongue he lifted himself from the pillow with a loud cry. I remember that the camp-bed stood facing the hearth of the room. The wavering candle-light fell redly along the tiles and over the faded chimney-piece. The dying man seized me in a frenzied grasp, and turned me toward it. Then he waved his gaunt arms aloft, and shrieked, wildly: "Dios! Dios !"

"You have not only lost a tenant, my dear Comyn," said Giles, "but it is plain you must bury him at your own expense. Mark me, that man died with a great trouble on his mind. It is a thousand pities Gilbert and I did not send for you sooner." I buried him, accordingly, in a secluded graveyard of old Salem. The cottage was closed again, and I quite forgot the whole matter until, six months after, something happened to call it again to my mind.

This something was a bottle of old port standing on the carved sideboard of Captain Ryall, a retired shipmaster, living on Marblehead Neck. As everybody knows, Salem is the paradise of these jolly fellows-purse-proud, yellow-faced, rich beyond belief.

"Jack, my boy," the old sea-dog was droning to me, "a fine, manly fellow, with plenty of money. You ought to marry-it's time for you to marry; it's respectable, it's honorable, it's the proper thing to do."

"I agree with you," I answered; "but whom shall it be?” He fidgeted uneasily in his great carved chair of some odorous eastern wood.

"That is for you to decide. This place abounds in charming girls, and you have returned heart-free, it seems, from the Old World." And shortly after he said, carelessly, "There's Rose my little Rose-every cent of my fortune will go to her. Do you find her improved, Comyn ?''

"Wonderfully. She is the loveliest blonde I ever saw." He took up the bottle of port that I have mentioned, and was in the very act of filling his glass when he stopped suddenly, an odd look overspreading his weather-beaten face. He held the wine betwixt himself and the light, and looked at it curiously. "Peters!" he roared to the servant in waiting. "The devil! Where did you get this port ?''

"From the wine-cellar, sir."

"From an unbroken case, with a Spanish label upon it, eh?"' "Ay, sir."

"Take it back, you scoundrel!" thundered Ryall; "take it back! If you meddle with that case again I'll break your head! Do you hear? Bring a bottle of pale sherry, and some Latour. What possessed you to go rooting out that wine?" Peters and the port disappeared together; the sherry was brought, the servant dismissed. Then Ryall turned to me with the odd look still on his face.

"I don't mind telling you the story of that case of port," he said, with a shrug; I keep it in the choicest corner of my cellar, and never allow it to be approached. It is the property of a dead man." "Indeed!"

"It was my last trip to Jamaica-well, let us say, a matter of five years ago. My ship was loading with rum and sugar, in that champagne-bottle of a bay called Black River. I had gone on shore in the pinnace, to dine in the town with an English planter named Eyre. His house, airy with lattice-work and piazzas, stood in a grove of mangroves and tamarinds, overlooking the treacherous bay. It was at his table that I first heard of the Cuban, D'Mendez. You start, my boy! What is the matter?''

'Nothing," I answered; "go on."

"It seems that the authorities at Havana had just unearthed

He struggled desperately to answer, but a sudden convulsion seized him, shook him, and struck him dumb. I flung the window up for air, and lifted him against my shoulder. His paroxysm seemed to abate.

"Si senor," he groaned, heavily, then started from my arm. Tearing the shirt away with one hand, he pointed to the scar on his breast; the other he waved frantically toward that placid patch of candle-light there on the tiles and the chimney-piece. "Juan!" he screamed, Dios! Dios !'' and fell back against me, with staring eyes and bloodless lips, stone dead!

We searched the cottage that night from end to end, but found not the slightest clue to the identity of my tenant. Two or three gold doubloons were lying in a delf cup on the mantel, but papers he had none, nor clothing save a tarry suit of common canvas and flannel.

wealth and importance, this D'Mendez. His wife was an Englishwoman, some relative of Eyre. Through her exertions, and those of two faithful slaves, he had escaped to Jamaica, where he was then concealed, waiting for some opportunity to fly to the States. Some Spanish officers had followed him thither, watching his movements like bloodhounds, and bent upon securing him at any price. All this Eyre told me while we sat at dinner. Then, leaning forward, he put a hand on my shoulder. "In fact, Ryall,' said he, the Cuban is this very moment hiding in my house. You sail to-morrow for the States; he must go with you. Name your own terms. He has brought away a good share of his fortune in gold and jewels, and will pay like a prince.'

แ

"Is he alone?' I asked.

"No; he will take with him the two slaves who helped him to escape from Havana-Pedro and Juan. All go dis