prepared to admire and extol the productions of high art; and to this simple circumstance alone are foreign artists indebted for the honourable rank they hold as historical painters, and the nations to which they belong regarded as possessing a better and a more refined taste! So true is this, that the death of poor Haydon will be regarded in other nations even with greater horror than in this, whilst it may be fearlessly asserted that no painter of his powers could have fallen under a similar fate in any other country of the civilized world. The sad event which has called forth these and other remarks, has burst upon us, and is calculated, as has been observed, "to startle the giddy and unheeding." Alas! how large a portion of the society in which we live, how great a mass of the intelligent and the kindhearted, may be included in this category! Yet who of those who know what the struggles and disappointments of artists are, that have watched the progress of this devoted man,-neglected, scorned, vilified, misunderstood,-standing almost alone and unpitied in the world, could have anticipated any other end? And in what, after all, does the melancholy career of this victim differ from that of many of his brothers?-what are the two grand calamities of his life,bankruptcy and suicide,-but an embodied illustration in the gross, of what it is the fate of hundreds to prove, experience, and suffer in detail!—to bear in silence, and sink under in obscurity. What if an artist has not been immured within the walls of a prison;-he may have lived within its gloomy and threatening shadow for the whole course of his life. What if his poverty has not been exhibited to the public eye in a schedule of his wants;-the list of his necessities, his privations, and his miseries, is to be found in the cheerless, dark, and silent recesses of his home, and seen in the aspect of all his affairs,-in the careworn looks of his wife, in the dejection of his children, and in the crushed, humbled, and helpless bearing of himself. What if the exertions he makes still preserve his credit, he is rewarded with the privilege of ranking among the respectable, and, as a poor man, is quietly trampled upon, and silently neglected and despised, his talents overlooked, and his acquirements unhonoured! What if his name is not yet included in the bills of mortality, and he escapes being the subject of a coroner's inquest ?-why his life has been one lengthened death;-disappointment and despair have been continually gnawing at his heart, and gradually stopping the current of his existence ;-he has continued to labour and to think when repose would have refreshed him, and to grieve and despair when success would have given him new life, encouraged, and supported him; he has struggled until hope and health have left him, and he has at last yielded himself a victim to the deadly influence of that which, when concentrated in one rash and fatal act, is denominated suicide! Poor Haydon will have turned his death, as he attempted to turn the energies of his life, to noble purposes indeed, if his fate serves as a grand lesson to society,-if it awakens but a suspicion that its condition is not so perfectly sensitive of merit as it might be,—and, above all, as regards art, that the justice due to its merits and its claims would become more apparent by the elevation and refinement of its taste. Let us ope it will be long before another victim is found whom public neg t will drive to seek for consolation in the dread alternative and desperate hope, that should his hand fail to obtain him bread, it "east procure a release from suffering, and a lasting repose! 217 MR. LEDBURY REVISITS PARIS, AND IS IGNOMINIOUSLY EXPELLED FROM HIS LODGINGS. BY ALBERT SMITH. [WITH AN ILLUSTRATION BY J. LEECH.] It was very fortunate for Mr. Ledbury that Jack had some command over him; for his ambition at all times to distinguish himself was so great, more especially in the presence of the fair sex, that there is no telling to what lengths he might have been led in the way of display, had it not been for his friend's firm clutch. His susceptibility was not an interested feeling. So long as he knew that two bright eyes, set in a pretty face, were watching him, whether they belonged to a duchess or a grisette was perfectly immaterial: they were quite sufficient to inspire him to brave the Garde Municipale, or storm the Tuilleries, or do any other madcap freak that he fancied might have been required of him. Of course the authorities were put upon the wrong scent; and whilst they marched off to some part of the gardens towards which they were told the perfidious Englishman had retreated, Jack pulled Ledbury from his hiding-place, and prepared to quit the Chaumière. As he left the arbour, Titus said something about the British lion being at bay in his lair, and appeared desirous of realizing the six positions of the Fighting Gladiator; upon which Jack got the two young artists to accompany them, and these three, performing a wild dance as they went through the gate, in the mazes of which they hustled round Mr. Ledbury whenever he attempted to speak, prevented him from addressing the gate-keeper, who thought it was merely a convivial party returning home. They thus contrived to get him out safely upon the Boulevard, along which they proceeded a little way, and then all sat down to rest on the edge of one of the hollows which are dug between the trees, for no other apparent purpose than to form traps for strangers to tumble into. When they were seated, Mr. Ledbury, who had been performing a forced march, looked round at his companions with a severe aspect, and then he stared up at the moon, which was shining brightly. The sight of the calm planet appeared to soften his feelings, for his face gradually lost its severity; and he next said, in a plaintive tone, as he waved his head backwards and forwards, "I am far from home, and from everything I love on earth; without friends, and a stranger in a foreign land!" "Hear! hear!" cried Jack, convivially. stranger!" "Off, off, said the "I did not expect But no matter-I humble home, on "Jack," said Mr. Ledbury, in reproving accents, this from you, whom I always thought my friend. am used to it. Would I were at home-at my own which that same moon is now shining! How have I misspent my time, and deceived my kind parents!" Here Mr. Ledbury wept: he was evidently labouring under some impression that he had committed a series of unpardonable crimes, and was altogether an outcast from decent society. VOL. XX. S "Why, Leddy,-old brick!-what's the matter?" asked Jack, placing a hand on his shoulder. Nothing-nothing, Jack," replied Titus, putting away his friend. "It is long since I have thus wept; not since I was a child-a guileless, sportive thing of four years old-a little, little, little child!" "Ah!" said Jack, drawing him out, "and you remember, you remember how happy you were when your childhood flitted by, and your little lovers came with lilies and cherries, and all sorts of larks.” "They will never come again," replied Mr. Ledbury. "And where is the little Belgian who polked so well? Has she left me too?” "Oh," thought Jack, "we shall do now." So recollecting, that, in their rapid act of horsemanship, they had forgotten the grisettes in a very ungallant manner, he got Jules and Henri to go back after them. And as soon as they were gone Mr. Ledbury's excitement arrived at the affectionate stage, and he shook Jack warmly by the hand, and said he was a good fellow, and that they were all good fellows, and knew he'd never behaved to Jack, nor showed him such attention as he ought to have done; but that was neither here nor there, nor, as Jack observed, anywhere else that he knew of. However, they got wonderful friends again, and by this time the young artists came back with Clara, and Eulalie, and Heloise; and, making over the former to the protection of Mr. Ledbury, they started seven abreast along the Boulevard on their way home, indulging, as a matter of course, in the right and proper chorus to be sung at such times, which nobody was ever known to go home along the Boulevards from the Chaumière without joining in. This is it. THE STUDENTS' CHAUMIERE SONG. la la la la. Eh! ioup! ioup! ioup! tra la la la la. Eh! ioup! ioup! ioup! tra la la la la. Eh! ioup! ioup! ioup! tra ---- |