changed, and the change within transforms all without,property, the condition of the poor, the rights of labor, social inequalities, yes, and the very aspect of the earth itself! Welcome the symbol to-day! thrice welcome the reality it prefigures when it shall fill the earth!

IN MEMORY OF J. G. B.

. . . . a death-like sleep,

A gentle wafting to immortal life."

"His words were bonds; his oaths were oracles;
His love sincere; his thoughts immaculate."

THE body from the dust was made, –
The soul descended from the skies;

So, when this mortal 's lowly laid,

The immortal to its home shall rise.

His was the mild yet fearless eye,

From whence the soul of honor shone;

The brow of humble dignity,

Where Justice sat, as on her throne.

O brother! though thine eye be dim,
That light shall shine still on and on,
To lead through darkness up to Him

Who calls us aye where thou art gone.

And though the marble ne'er shall give
That shining forehead's simple grace,

Still in our hearts we bid it live,

And in our lives its record trace.

O, be it ours like him to live,

Like him to die be all our praise,
Whose tranquil death alone could give
Fit ending to harmonious days.

J. W. T.

DAVID SCOTT, THE ARTIST.*

THE biographer of Stothard had the pleasing task to portray a life full of grace, beauty, and success, saddened only by those domestic bereavements common to humanity, which seem to make more tender both the heart of the suffering one and those of all around him. But to depict the life of David Scott is a far different thing; it is to enter into the depths of a human nature full of great and lofty ideas, but darkened and shadowed by doubt and suffering, and stern struggles with Fate and the world. The one found success attending his earliest efforts, and his graceful, pleasing designs won favor everywhere; the other left many of his finest works hanging on the walls of his own studio, and the grandest series of designs with which one great soul has translated into form the words of another, since the time when Michel Angelo illustrated the Divina Commedia of Dante, found no publisher during his lifetime. Profoundly impressed by the grandeur of his genius and the deep meaning of his history, in attempting a brief and condensed sketch of his life and works, we trust that the greatness of the subject cannot fail to make its impression on the minds of our readers, rather than that words of ours can do him any justice.

David Scott was born on the 10th or 12th of October, 1806. He was descended, not from the nobility or gentry, but from the sturdy yeomanry of Scotland; yet he had an inheritance of artistic talent. His father was an engraver of considerable merit, and his mother the niece and ward of Alex Gowan, a sculptor of eccentric character, possessing some talent and more love for the art. His parents were married in 1800, and resided in the Parliament Stairs, Edin

The reader will find fuller accounts of David Scott's life and works in an admirable article in the North British Review, and especially in a memoir of him compiled and published by his brother, Wm. B. Scott of Edinburgh.

burgh. David was the fifth son, but in the course of a year after his birth he was the only surviving child, the others having been swept off by disease, with only an interval of a few days between their deaths. This repeated and terrible bereavement cast a gloom over the parents and the household, from which they seem never to have recovered, even when other children came to replace those who were gone. The new-comers were like a second and less beloved flock, and David, as the only one connected with those who were gone, was especially dear to both father and mother. This sorrow caused the removal of the family from the city. It also deepened that stern religious feeling and strict observance of pious ordinances which forms so prominent a part of the Scottish character. His parents joined the sect of Baptists, and were skilled in all the theological controversy of their sect. It was, then, in the stern and severe climate of Scotland, with its rugged but sublime landscape, in a household deeply shadowed by sorrow, and among religious influences of the severest and most forbidding character, that David Scott passed his boyhood and attained his manhood. These circumstances account for much that is grand and powerful, and perhaps for all that is sad and afflicting in his future life and character. It is related of most men of genius, that they have remarkable mothers, to whom they are specially dear. With him it was otherwise. His strongest attachment was to his father, to whom he had recourse in all his childish difficulties. This may in part account for the excess of the masculine element in himself and his works. He had the capacity of the feminine graces and virtues within him, but they were not developed by his mother; and wife and child, alas! he never knew. Some anecdotes of his boyhood illustrate his early disposition. The child was given to a gardener to be taken to a country lodging, and feared he would never be brought back. The gardener answered him he would himself bring him back, when the child warned him, on the ten commandments, that if he did not, he would be guilty of a lie.

He once made a ghost to frighten the other boys, and succeeded so well, that he frightened himself more than any of them, and the whole house was alarmed by his screams. As his father's health failed, the household was even less cheerful: : no sound of song or whistle must be heard. David was the autocrat of the family, and his younger brother seems to remember with some bitterness that his rule was absolute and severe. He early occupied his evening hours in painting and drawing, and his choice of subjects was the same as in after years. The Murder of Rizzio and a kind of Goblin Combat are among the earliest noted. Paradise Lost, Macbeth, and Scottish and Grecian history, supplied him with topics. When about nineteen years old, the supernatural began to claim a large place in his work. He became involved in a profound mental struggle in settling the grounds of his theological and metaphysical belief. This struggle lasted for many years, and its record may be found in his monograms of man, and his illustrations of Pilgrim's Progress, of which we shall speak more fully hereafter.

Poverty and sickness were now added to the burdens which pressed upon his soul. His own health failed so that he had a constant sense of the near possibility of his death, and his father's pecuniary means were so exhausted. that ruin stared him in the face. With a soul filled with lofty ideas, and burning to express them in art, it was absolutely necessary that he should assist his father in his business, and for a few years he devoted himself to engraving. His brother says of him: "He never forgot or surmounted an affliction or a struggle; he only lived through it by the strength of the inner man, by the passive force of will, and the great idea of the work he should achieve." On such men the ills of life fall with terrible power, but not in vain; they wrench the meaning out of them at last, and conquer, though it be in dying.

We next find him in Edinburgh, making the most of such

helps as he can attain for an artistic education, and in 1828 his first picture was exhibited. Its subject is very characteristic,-"The Hopes of Early Genius dispelled by Death." From this time until he went abroad, in 1832, he seems to have been occupied in painting and designing, with very little public success. His Monograms were unsuccessful as a publication, his illustrations of The Ancient Mariner found no publishe, and his pictures were sometimes rejected from the exhibitions. He however attracted some just and friendly criticism, which was grateful to him. The tone of his mind, as evinced by scraps from his journal, is generally desponding, but it is the despair of a mind filled with great plans and fretted by outward things. It is not despair of great truths and eternal realities. The world had already given him its advice by the mouth of one of its prophets : "Shoot a lower aim; you speak a dead language." What am I to do? he responds. Thank God, he rejected the friendly advice, spoke his own native tongue, and waited for men to be able to understand him.

The years 1832-34 were spent abroad, and we have notes of his travels full of interest both to the artist and the student of human nature. He does not seem to have revelled in that intoxication of delight, even in Florence and Rome, which so often seizes the young artist. He carried everywhere the shadow of his own great, stern, lonely nature. That he had escaped, however, from the religious bigotry which fettered his childhood, is shown by his recognition of the sweet charities of the Catholic Church, although without the acceptance of its errors and peculiarities. His criticisms on the great works of art are original and decided, but sometimes he reconsiders his own judgments and corrects a strongly expressed but hastily formed opinion. While in Rome he painted and exhibited a large picture called “Discord of the Household Gods destroyed." It partakes of the nature of an allegory. It is difficult to judge of such a work by a slight engraving, and yet that reveals to us the