of copying the stark dead face. Lastly, the blank astonish- , tinued, “is my history ; bow I came to know this dead man, ment and dismay that the lady's final explanations caused me what we were to each other. There is that in the dead face. -all these conflicting emotions struck me dumb and helpless. You must be told it."

“It is impossible," I said, at last. “You ask what neither I cannot disclose the details of her story. There were no I nor any one else can do."

names mentioned. I never learned her name. The story was “It is not impossible," she cried, with another emphasis of a sad, not an uncommon one—a young girl sold to an old man the slender foot. “ This dead man has more life for me than you for money—a guilty love. The paramour bad gone to India have. I can see him now more plainly than I can see you. All with his regiment, and had died there, shot through the heart the world is full of him to me. I see portions of him in other in battle, about a year before. That was all. people. I hear echoes of his voice in other voices. I distin- “There is that in the dead face," she said, and, as I write it, guish a footfall like bis among all the thousand footfalls of I recall Tennyson's description of Lancelot : the streets. Patterns on carpets and on walls take for me the outline of his features. His face starts out of the darkness;

The great and guilty love he bare the queen,

In battle wi:h the love he bare his loril, his figure haunts me in long avenues of dreary country places.

Had marred his face, and marked it ere his tim. In crowded rooms I see his reflection in the glasses. What do

Another siuning on such heigh's with one, you talk of life and death? For me this man alone lives, and

The flower of all the west and all the world, all others are ghosts."

Had bean the sleeker for it ; but, in him, " You can draw ?" I asked. " If ever so little, you can

His mood was often like a fiend, aud rose

And drove him int) wastes and solitudes draw?"

For agony, who was yet a living soul. “Not a stroke. I have tried to learn. Should I come to you if I could do for myself what I demand of you?''

The lady, after her first burst of passion, went on with a “You must learn to draw," I said. “I will teach you." wonderful calmness. Her strange determination had evidently

"I cannot learn,” she cried, vehemently. "That is denied been formed for a long time, and she had thought out all the me by the curse of God. Do you think I have not tried all details with a morbid acuteness. The story told, she drew from means before I sought out you? I have had better masters her bosom a locket, in which was a curl of light brown hair. than you can be. You are not to be my tutor, sir, but my She confided to me, in the next place, the Christian name of slavė. I will have you do this thing for me?"

the dead man. He could have had no other name save that, it The lady was in the right. It was more impossible for me to seemed to her ; this was another link in the chain of circumdisobey her commands than to attempt the impossibility she stantial evidence. commanded. After vainly re-asserting the impracticability, I She described to me accurately his person, his manner, his came to the helpless inquiry, how the thing was to be done. tastes. She had the talent of describing. The picture that she

“ Are there any relations of this dead man whom I can see ?” had in her mind she could present to another. How she did I asked. Any one with any faintest resemblance to him ?" this I cannot tell. I have said that the thought came through “None."

her language so vividly, that one took no note of the words. “Any chance likeness of him in another person ? Chance Her description was like a sketch. But not only by voice, but likenesses are very common.”

by action of undulating hands, of emphatic foot, of all the light “None ; at least none that can serve your purpose."

and shadow of her expressive face, she gave life to the image “Impossible !” I said again.

she sought to impress. “You artists, whether you write or whether you paint," she A shadow gathered itself together before me, dim, vague ; broke out bitterly, “you artists pretend to a magical insight. its features shrouded, its figure wrapped in gloom-an indisYou conjure up an Othello; and you say this is the man whom tinct form, but still a form. As by long study of a poet's writShakspeare saw—this, and no other. This creature of a poet's ing one feels his creation gradually coming forth-such and no brain, which never had an existence, which comes to you other, having a personality entirely its own; so a new image,

a through a few antiquated words, half of which you cannot un- distinct from all others, began to rise in my imagination as she derstand, this shadow of a shadow you fashion forth. Look spoke. How true or how false I cannot say. What two men at your own pictures : Miranda you call this one, Marguerite read the same poet precisely alike? What poet has ever said that, and you say they are the veritable creatures which to the artist, "You have made my creature visible to others as Shakspeare and Goëthe thought into being. I tell you to paint I see it." a man who really lived on this earth. I am here to be ques- On this first day she was careful, I think, to give me only a tioned-I am here to describe—to tear out of my heart every general idea of the man I was to paint—the history, the name, word he ever spoke to me—to tell you what he was to me. the light brown hair, the description of him as a whole. Just Perhaps I saw him untruly. That is nothing ; I tell you to as a lover, seeing his future mistress for the first time, carries paint him as I knew and know him. Look into my eyes ; your away with him a vague impression of her as separated off from insight will find something of him there. Look at my hand; all the other girls, and yet scarcely knows the color of her it has clung to his until some form and seal of his must be left eyes or the contour of her cheek ; so I gained at this time but indelibly behind ; look at my smile ; I learned the trick of

a general impression of the person she described. The lover his in days gone by. Listen to my voice, transpose the treble learns afterwards his mistress by heart, trait by trait, line by into bass ; mine is as some weak echo of bis. Take me as I am. line; and thus I learned this terrible figure, until at length I I am not my own, but his; I am a part of him. I am your could see nothing, but the one face. book ; study me. I will describe : I will answer ten thousand The lady's carriage returned for her. She shook hands questions. I will sing to you the songs that he loved ; I will frankly with me, saying, “I trust you. Remember you put read to you the readings that he approved ; I will tell you of hand to no work till I come to you to-morrow morning. Think our talk ; I will show you his letters ; you shall see the one of my portrait; dream of it ; let it never leave your mind for a lock of hair. I say that it is not impossible; and you shall , moment !" do it."

When the sound of her carriage had died away I turned from I can give but a faint impression of the torrent of her words the window, and took down my Medusa from the easel. What here. I have put into her mouth but stilted common-places. a change had come over me in the short time since I sobbed I cannot help it. Her rapid utterance was not so much language over my success in her beautiful horror! That picture was as vocal thought. As one saw in her neither drapery nor flesh, turned towards the wall. I sat down before my blank easel, but life; so one read thought and passion, not speech, in what thinking-thinking. The lady had had no need to say, “Let she uttered.

it never leave your mind for a moment." “Now, you will paint me this portrait,” she said, with re- “ A spirit paseed before my face. It stood still, but I could covered calmness, after a long silence.

not discern the form thereof." So it is written in the book of "I will try," I said.

Job; and such a terror of the formless presence as came upon “I will not ask you to be secret.

I will trust you.

I am the seer there came upon me. more certain that you will not betray me than if you had sworn All day, whether in the streets or at home, I was haunted by the most solemn oaths. The first thing to tell you," she con- this shape, “if shape it might be called, that shape had none."

I was eager to grasp it ; to force it to give up to me its hidden virtue that is vice ; the love that is hate ; the pride that is lineaments ; to assume some definite form, false or true. I shame-such subjects came out of our morning's lesson. could not and dare not. I longed to take my pencil, and com- Then we passed on from the fleeting expressions of passion, pel out of this shadow some visible presentment. The com- which pass over the countenance like shadows over hills, to mands laid upon me by the lady prevented this. I had entered that settled influence which any one passion long obeyed will upon the work. I felt that this was a first stage that must be stamp upon the features. Child-Cleopatra, in her quasi.innogone through. I had laid aside the notion of impossibility, and cence, was contrasted with the brazen harlot in whose lap felt the artist's all-mastering and patient desire of success. To | Antony lounged away his life. think-that was all I could do as yet ; the time for working Upon the chosen type of face, these fleeting expressions of had not yet come. All night I dreamed of it; never for a mo- passion, these settled influences of passion, were tried. Somement did it gain definiteness. There it lay, an embryo-to thing came out of this. "So he looked at such a time”-and grow into form only through painful and weary time.

the incident was told. “Not like that-change, soften. Now I say that I had given up the notion of the impossibility of it is better."

All this ; and the dead face seemed to stir withthe thing. To a reader of this story, laying the case plainly in its grave. before him, this will seem absurd. To humor and deceive a crazed woman at the price of so many guineas would be under- I cannot write the history of day by day. The ingenuity of standable ; but that, after consenting to undertake this work, I my patroness in gathering together every smallest detail which should persuade myself into belief of the remotest hope of any might help to bring home to me the character and the person success, must seem incomprehensible. The reader argues from of her dead lover, is the most marvellous matter that I have a different stand-point to that which I occupied. The project ever known. once entertained, the previous notion of its impossibility was One day she brought a collection of engravings--some old shut out. What best means to employ was the consideration and shabby, some new and tawdry, some scarce and fine, evihenceforth, not the uselessness of employing any means at all. dently a collection made through years, gathered together I was, as it were, in a dream, which, though logical in its own month by month, from all places, and with always the same boundaries, could be fitted on to no premises of the daylight object. In some figure in each of these there was a certain world—not an uncommon state of mind with the artist. likeness to him-here the position, there the turn of the head,

At the same hour on the following morning the lady came there the eyes, there the smile. And these scraps of likeness again. We met as old friends, and she entered at once upon she had the rare power of making me sec, showing me in what the business in hand.

the likeness consisted, where it began and where it ended. “You have obeyed me ?" she asked, with one of her sad, These ecraps she would make me copy again and again. winning smiles. “You have not been painting?"

Another day she brought a packet of his letters. She showed “I have obeyed you ; and will obey you to the very letter in me the writing and the differences in it, according to the emoall you command me."

tiops influencing him while he wrote. Here was a letter blot“You artists,” she said, “ as I have read and know, have ted with tears ; another full of the wildest gaiety ; another your early simple lessons in the drawing of the human face. acrid with jealousy and distrust. She read these letters to me, There are different types of face, markedly distinct from each changing her intonations. “Thus he would have spoken this. other, to one or other of which, or to some recognizable blend- So he would have flung his arms about. This is something like ing of which, all human faces may be assigned. These types his laugh.” you represent by mere simple lines, which of course you have

She read to me books that he had liked, and told me the by heart. Now, draw these for me."

observations he had made upon certain passages. This I did, and from the hasty sketches thus made, one was

to me songs that she had sung to him-told me how this had selected and put aside as the primary type (without indivi- made him solemn, this brilliant and gay-how this had always duality, without expression) of the face wanted.

filled his eyes with tears. One song in particular was his Again: she spoke of the “temperaments.” Of these she favorite ; and this she was constantly crooning. To me, now, had read in some old book, and said she believed in them as

that strange episode in my life comes back set to the music guides in the matter in hand. In colored crayons I made of this song. another series of sketches, and from these again one was chosen

Day after day passed by. Almost every day, never sufferand put side.

ing more than one day to intervene, she came to me. Whether The day was far spent by this time. While I had been sketch- true or false, I gradually created in my imagination a distinct ing she had been impressing on me prominent points of the history told in brief the day before. Of the family of the dead picture of the dead man. Every story she told of him fitted

itself to this image. man, of the manner of his bringing up, of the scenes in which lations of him. The creation of my brain was complete. More

In my dreams I seemed to have reve. he had lived, of the changes which he had gone through, she distinct than of any ideal character, was the image now imspoke, giving me, according to her talent, not words but her pressed upon my mind. Not with the passion of one especial own thoughts.

moment upon him--the crimson blush of Virginia, the transWhen she left, she again laid her commands on me that I forming agony of Medusa, the wretchedness of Leontes eyeing must on no account attempt to draw the face--to draw at allas yet. One day intervened before her next visit. During that be portrayed, when the time came, under influence of any

the "paddling palms"--but as a veritable human being, to space I had in some sort assimilated, as I remember, my first dim formless impression with the sketches selected on the passion, or at case from all. second visit.

Hitherto I had been commanded to abstain from attempt

For Again, at the next sitting, I drew sketches.

ing the portrait. At last the converse fiat was issued.

The passions ; we artists, she had heard, had definite expression for each pas

one week the lady was to remain absent; at the end of that sion-coarse and general hints, no doubt, but still having in week, she was to see the portrait. them some truth ; such a downward curve of the lip for such a

I painted my picture, and the lady came. A burst of tears ; passion ; such a contraction of the eyelid for another ; such a

an agony of wringing hands and bowed head and writhing wrinkling of the forehead or puckering of the cheeks for body ; not a grieving woman, but grief itself. The portrait another.

was a failure. Utterly unlike. All the labor and the pain I sketched off the old rude formulæ -a mapping out of the thrown away. No hope left. emotions into hyperbolical figures, not unlike the mapping out of the stars on a celestial globe. Then I softened down these Yet it came to be acknowledged, after the first shock of disexaggerated signs. I illustrated by my own old sketches. I appointment, that my unfortunate picture was not totally unshowed the difference between love in the face of a Miranda like. It was impossible, after all my study, that it should be and of a Juliet. I contrasted the base jealousy of a Leontes so. There were portions of it in which some echo, some far-off with the demoniac possession of an Othello. I put side by side shadow, of the reality was to be discovered. child-Cleopatra blushing under the first gaze of Anthony, and We set to work with renewed hope. Virginia. Degrees of passion broadening into contrasts ; the I thought it strange then, I think it strange still, *'

She sang

failure in the first attempt was so great. I knew very much | upon my casel. I thought of the reason we were both there ; more of this man whom I had never seen, than of any person and I mistrusted and misjudged her. whose portrait I have since taken. I knew from a thousand Suddenly she turned upon me her eyes. She rose from her sources of chance likeness, of imitation, of description, of garden seat and crossed over to the blonde sister. My lady exshrewd conjecture; of flashing intuition, what this person was tended her hand, and smiled a winning smile, and spoke soft like. What do portrait painters usually paint but the best words. On the face of the other there came the look I was to clothes of their sitters ? The glossy coat and spotless shirt-watch for—a lifting of the eyebrows, a compression of the lips, front are not more merc dress than the sunny smile and the a steady glance of the cruel eyes. She put aside the extended prim mouth and the dull wateriness of the set eye. I knew hand, swept the ground with a low bow, and passed op. My this dead man, his strengths and his weaknesses, his loves and lady turned to me with a crimson face, waving dismissal. his hates, his great sorrows and his great sins. Of no other

That was enough. The one look completed for me the picpeople whom I have painted have I known more than that they ture studied for so long. had such a facial angle, such features, such a blemish to be toned down, such a half-beauty to be petted into completeness. And now to end my story. The portrait was finished. My

However, we set to work anew. I painted now with the lady money was paid me. On the next morning the lady was to take by my side? Why should I dwell on the details of this time? | away the picture. I can give no idea of how the portrait was painted. It is suffi- The lady never came—why I cannot tell. On that morning cient to say that I did at length succeed in achieving some faint a lady in high life died suddenly ; whether my lady or not I do and distant likeness, having more of death than of life in it-a not know, for I had never heard her name. galvanized ghastliness of expression, a cruel rigidity of outline, a sickly pallor of color-yet being, as some distorted reflection of the reality, recognizable by my monitress.

TEAL (CRFCCA). When this was achieved, I learned for the first time that a sister of the dead man was alive, and in London, and to be seen The teal is the smallest of our ducks. It frequently breeds in by me. Why had this not been told me before, I asked. Be- England, mostly choosing the northern lakes for that purpose. cause the sister was unlike the brother, I was told, and would It is a most difficult bird to shoot, its flight being so exceedingly have been of no service to me until this time. One look only of rapid as to carry it very speedily out of gunshot. It is also this sister claimed any kinship with the brother's countenance. very wary, choosing the night for its feeding time, concealing

itself during the day under the herbs that fringe the banks of the water, wbere it has chosen its habitation. It places its nest carefully among dense herbage. It generally lays from eight to twelve eggs of a yellowy white color before it commences the ceremony of setting.

It is one of the most delicate of birds, and is considered quite a bonnebouche by our gourmands.

THE BLIND BEGGAR'S DAUGHTER OF BETHNAL GREEN.

PART I.
It was a blind beggar had long lost his sight,
He had a fair danghter most pleasant and bright;
And many a gallant brave suitor had she,
For none was so comely as pretty Bessie.

TEAL.

And though slfs was of favor most fair,
Yet, seeing she was but a poor beggar heir,
of ancient housekeepers despised was she,
Whose sons came as spitors to pretty Bessie.

Wherefore in great sorrow fair Bessie Jid say,
“ Good father and mother, let me go away
To seek out my fortune wherever it be ;"
The suit then they granted to pretty Bessie.

a

Then Bessie that was of beauty so bright,
All clad in gray russet, and late in the night,
From father and mother alone started ehe ;
Who sobbed and sighed for pretty Bessie.

Under sudden surprise there was a lifting of the eyebrows, a compression of the lips, a steady glance of the eyes, which I shculd now be able to seize upon and appreciate.

How I was to see the sister was in this fashion : There was a dejeûner about to be given at some grand house on the river side. For this the lady obtained a voucher for me. Here, she undertook to show me the sister, and to call up in her face the expression upon which I was to seize.

I went to this dejeûner. The lady pointed out to me by a silent gesture and a momentary glance of the eye the woman whom I was to observe. This sister was a blonde, handsome, haughty, impassive. A crowd of young men surrounded her wheresoever she turned.

I never lost sight of this woman. My lady too hovered in her neighborhood. My lady, as the other, had a crowd of worshippers about her. They seemed to me two rival queens.

I had no enjoyment in the scene. The incongruity of seeking in the midst of this frivolous gaiety for the expression of a dead man's face was constantly present with me.

The afternoon wore away wearily. I was conscious of my shabby clothes and my haggard face, so different from those of the men around me. I felt on an equality with my lady as we labored at our terrible work in my little studio ; here I felt how far we were separated. She trifled with the men, she smiled upon them, she talked and laughed and listened. Her eyes were brilliant, her color went and came. She whispered, she bed, she coquetted.

s dissatisfied. I thought of the painted death-in-life