to be the original, although it is certain that one must be entitled to that honour. Raffaelle was an architect, and a sculptor, as well as a painter: many parts of St. Peter's, the Caffarelli Palace, and other fine buildings at Rome, were erected from his designs and under his superintendence, and in one of the churches there is still shown a Jonah said to be the work of his chisel. In person, Raffaelle had a most winning beauty, and his character was consistent with so angelic an exterior. He died in 1520, aged only thirty-seven, and was buried with extraordinary splendour: his life was one scene of incessant triumph, and his death was honoured with imperial obsequies. The subject of painting is a theme that might extend to volumes. Here, however, we must limit ourselves to the meagre allowance of one remark. There is an infinite difference between the merely mechanical art of imitating objects presented to the eye, and the intellectual power of embodying pictures conceived by the mind; between the Chinese accuracy of a good copier, and the vague strength of a great designer: shall we instance Rembrandt, Reynolds, and Bonnington, as opposed to the politus ad unguem' school of many of the Dutch and Flemish masters?-allusions to living names should always be avoided, or it would be possible to give some remarkable illustrations of this distinction: the power of forming grand ideal scenes appears to have been a more common attribute of the ancient schools, than it is (with some splendid exceptions,) of the modern ; and the laborious study of a 66 pattern biscuit,”verbum sapienti,-is certainly not quite so characteristic of prolific and exalted genius, as the original design for the famous Madonna and child, which was sketched by Raffaelle in the public street on the head of a wine-tub. A good marine painter is almost necessarily more a man of mind, than the servile imitator of still life; flowers, fruits, lay figures, and models of interiors can wait till every line has been copied, but a storm at sea must be transferred to canvas from the strong efforts of memory or imagination. In like manner, the well-known rapidity of Raffaelle furnishes an additional proof of his high genius: his habit was, to compose the whole subject in his mind at once, and then to strike off bodily the harmonious design. What an intellect must that have been, which could conceive at a heat such complicated scenes as the Disputa, or the School of Athens: how great the artistic skill that could give tangible being to such powerful conceptions! BAYARD. THE clarion sounds,-the steeds impatient prance While featly spurring to the mimic fray The high-born chivalry of gallant France Poise the stout shield, and break the quivering lance;— The fearless, and the spotless,-nobly hailed, He died in pray'r, though on the battle-field. We are grown too regardless of high honour, delicate courtesy, and the right gallantry of a chivalrous spirit, we have drank too deeply the freezing waters of materialism, seriously to contemplate with rational approbation such a character as Bayard. Napoleon was not far from the truth, when he stigmatized us, as a nation of shopkeepers: for all things, even matters mental, are valued at the auction-estimate of what they will fetch, and Hudibras's notion of oaths and honour has lost the humour of its irony by having grown fashionable. Still, there are among us a noble band, that have not succumbed to the modern Baal, and with these a very brief mention of the virtues that distinguished" le bon chevalier, sans peur et sans reproche," will serve to dispel prejudice against the model of soldiership, and mirror of honour. The Rev. G. Gleig, ever shrewd and tolerant, in vol. ii. p. 42 of his entertaining visit to Germany, observes, "Let us not, even when standing in the dungeon of a baron's hold, come to the conclusion, that what we call the dark ages were ages of unmitigated wrong. They might produce their tyrants and oppressors, whose power, in proportion as it was resistless, would spread misery around; but they produced also their vindicators of the oppressed; their Bayards and Lancelots, of whose spirit of candour, and fair and open and honourable dealing, it might be well if this our intellectual and utilitarian age had inherited even a portion."-Pierre de Bayard is said by his biographers, especially Godefroy and Brantome, to have been "a tender lover, a firm friend; in privacy simple and pious, in public magnanimous, modest, and noble ;”—ever the soul of honour, the heart of humanity; more than Ney, le plus brave des braves, and not less than Sidney, the paragon of knighthood. Though highborn and highbred, in his own time of a fame greater than that of princes, and of an influence more than that of ministers, he never accepted office or dignity beyond that of being a simple chevalier; he was no courtier; so fearlessly honest, as to tell the truth sans peur, so blamelessly bold, as to do the right sans reproche. For military exploits, at thirteen he was an accomplished horseman, at eighteen, won the prize of the tournament against the flower of France's chivalry, at nineteen took a standard on the field of Verona : in the battle of Milan, he pursued the enemy with such desperate bravery that he, a second Coriolanus, was shut in with the fugitives, alone among his foes; and on that occasion, Ludovico Sforza, who took him prisoner, generously dismissed him without ransom, and returned him his arms, and his horse: in the battle of Fornovo he had two horses killed under him; was dangerously wounded at Brescia, where he |