6 ently caught the suspicion that this is no in his view: Why do the heathen so furicommon culprit. It is a hard-featured sol-ously rage together; and why do the people dier near him, who is wrapt in thought. imagine a vain thing?' Yet the master has But the group before Pilate is the prominent exquisitely contrived the full effect of a scene and master stroke. Rembrandt must have of violence, without shocking the most rewitnessed incidents which had told him that fined spectator. Not a sign of it approaches there is no earnestness like that of fanaticism. our Lord's person, who, as long as he is in These are not the mere brutes who bawl from the custody of the Roman soldiers, is guarded infection, and who can be blown about with by a form of law; while the furious crowd every wind, such as we see in former repre- below is so wrapt in Rembrandt gloom as to sentations; these are the real Jews, and this suggest every horror to the imagination, and is the real Pilate-vacillating, bending in in- give none to the eye. But the vain thing' decision, with his expressive, outstretched, is seen without disguise in that urgent group self-excusing hands and false, temporizing before the wavering Roman, embodying the face-who has no chance before them. It is strength of an evil principle against which not so much the clutch on his robe by one, nothing can prevail but that 'Truth' which or the glaring eye and furious open mouth of Pilate knows not." another, or the old Jew, hoary in wickedness, who threatens him with the fury of the multitude; but it is the dreadful earnest face, upturned and riveted on his, of the figure kneeling before him, it is the tightly compressed lips of that man who could not entreat more persistently for his own life than he is pleading for the death of the Prisoner. Rembrandt has given to this figure the dignity, because the power, of a malignant delusion horribly fine. This is a truly realistic conception of such a scene, which has a grandeur of its own, in contradistinction to those improperly so called; for the reality of mere brutality is not a subject for art at all. Rembrandt, in executing this etching, may be conceived to have had the second Psalm These quotations will give the reader an impression of the fervor and eloquence which Lady Eastlake has thrown into her undertaking; but the varied research, the copious information, the careful comparison of the different ages and schools of art, which mark these volumes, will best be judged of hy those who make them companions and guides. They form, in conjunction with Mrs. Jameson's previous publications, a series of great interest and utility; and Lady Eastlake has very ably contributed to extend the knowl edge and enjoyment of one of the noblest branches of art. SEA-DUST.-To those who are unacquainted, the fall is so heavy as to cover the sails and decks with the sea and the marvels which belong to it, of vessels, and to give the sea an appearance simit may sound like one of Baron Munchausen's ilar to that presented by a pond adjacent to a tales, but it is nevertheless true, that ships at a dusty road. The powder is exceedingly finedistance of many hundreds of miles from any land almost impalpable. Its color is brick-red or bright have been met by heavy showers of fine dry dust; yellow, and becomes of a lighter shade after being and by thick yellow fogs, not unlike London No-kept for some years. In the Mediterranean, the vember fogs, except that they are free from suffo- dust is known as Sirocco or African dust, becating smell, which turn out to be nothing more cause it was supposed to come from some of the than this finely-divided powder suspended in the desert land of the African continent. But it was air and waiting for a favorable opportunity to only supposed so to come; nothing was really descend. The reddish-yellow fogs are commonly known of its history or its home. It was considencountered in the neighborhood of the Cape de ered to be in some way or other connected with Verd Islands, where the dust is also abundant. barren and dry land, most probably African,— They and the dust have also been seen, though and in its wide wanderings over many degrees less frequently, in the Mediterranean, on the of latitude, it was identified with the wind which North African and South European coasts, and bloweth where it listeth," and concerning which even far away in the middle of the Atlantic. The no man knoweth "whence it cometh, or whither dust has been known to strew the shores of south-it goeth." In the absence of knowledge, or of that eastern France and the whole line of the west scientific presumption which is akin to it, specu Italian coast, at the same time that it fell all over lation was rife as to the origin and travelling power the islands of Sardinia and Malta. Sometimes of this dust.-Chambers's Journal. 66 PART XI.-CHAPTER XXXVII. MR. BUTLER FOR DUTY ON "I SUPPOSE M'Gruder's right," muttered Tony, as he sauntered away drearily from the door at Downing Street, one day in the second week after his arrival in London. "A man gets to feel very like a flunkey,' coming up in this fashion each morning for orders.' I am more than half disposed to close with his offer and go into rags' at once.' If he hesitated, he assured himself, very confidently, too, that it was not from the name or nature of the commercial operation. He had no objection to trade in rags any more than in hides, or tallow, or oakum, and some gum which did not "breathe of Araby the blest." He was sure that it could not possibly affect his choice, and that rags were just as legitimate and just as elevating a speculation as sherry from Cadiz, or silk from China. He was ingenious enough in his self-discussions; but, somehow, though he thought he could tell his mother frankly and honestly the new trade he was about to embark in, for the life of him he could not summon courage to make the communication to Alice. He fancied her as she read the avowal repeating the words "rags," and, while her lips trembled with the coming laughter, saying, "What in the name of all absurdity led him to such a choice?" And what a number of vapid and tasteless jokes it would provoke ! "Such snobbery as it all is!" cried he, as he walked the room angrily; "as if there was any poetry in cotton bales, or anything romantic in molasses! and yet I might engage in these without reproach, without ridicule. I think I ought to be above such considerations. I do think my good blood might serve to assure me that in whatever I do honorably, honestly, and avowedly, there is no derogation." But the snobbery was stronger than he wotted of; for, do what he would, he could not frame the sentence in which he should write the tidings to Alice, and yet he felt that there would be a degree of meanness in the non-avowal infinitely more intolerable. While he thus chafed and fretted, he heard a quick step mounting the stair, and at the same instant his door was flung open, and Skeffy Damer rushed toward him and grasped both his hands. ago; but they telegraphed for me to come at once. I'm off for Naples." "And why to Naples?" "I'll tell you, Tony," said he, confiden- tially; "You may trust me," said Tony; and Skeffy went on. "I'm to be attached there," said he, solemnly. "What do you mean by attached? "I'm going there officially. They want me at our Legation. Sir George Home is on leave, and Mecklam is chargé d'affaires; of course, every one knows what that means. "But I don't," said Tony, bluntly. "It means being bullied, being jockeyed, being out-manoeuvred, laughed at by Brennier, and derided by Caraffa. Mecklam's an ass, Tony, that's the fact, and they know it at the Office, and I'm sent out to steer the ship." "But what do you know about Naples? "I know it just as I know the Ecuador question,-just as I know the Mouth of the Danube question,-as I know the slave treaty with Portugal, and the Sound dues with Denmark, and the right of search, and the Mosquito frontier, and everything else that is pending throughout the whole globe. Let me tell you, old fellow, the others--the French, the Italians, and the Austrians,know me as well as they know Palmerston. What do you think Walewski told Lady Pancroft the day Cavour went down to Vichy to see the emperor? They held a long conversation at a table where there were writing materials, and Cavour has an Italian habit of scribbling all the time he talks, and he kept on scratching with a pen on a sheet of blotting-paper; and what do you think he wrote?—the one word, over and over again, Skeff, Skeff-nothing else. Which led us" says Walewski, to add, Who or what was Skeff? when they told us he was a young fellow'—these were his own words—' of splendid abilities in the Foreign Office;' and if there is anything remarkable in Cavour, it is the way he knows and finds out the coming man. "But how could he have heard of you? "These fellows have their spies everywhere, Tony. Gortchakoff has a photograph of me, with two words in Russian underneath, that I got translated, and that mean, infer- vain. So we were, Tony,-so is every man mally dangerous,'—tanski seratcztrakoff, in- that is the depositary of a certain power. fernally dangerous, !—over his stove in his Without this same conscious thought, which study. You're behind the scenes now, Tony, you common folk call vanity, how should we and it will be rare fun for you to watch come to exercise the gift? The little world the newspapers and see how differently taunts us with the very quality that is the things will go on at Naples after I arrive essence of our superiority." there." "Had Bella perfectly recovered? Was she able to be up and about?" "Yes, she was able to take carriage airings, and to be driven about in a small phaeton by the neatest whip in Europe." "Mr. Skeff Damer, eh?" "The same. Ah, these drives, these drives! What delicious memories of woodland and romance! I fell desperately in love with that girl, Tony,-I pledge you my honor I did. I've thought a great deal over it all since I started for Ireland, and I have a plan, a plan for us both." "What is it?" "I suppose you made up to Alice. I thought you would," said Tony, half sulkily. No, old fellow, you do me wrong; that's a thing I never do. As I said to Earnest Palfi about Pauline Esterhazy, I'll take no unfair advantage-I'll take no steps in your absence; and Alice saw this herself." How do you mean? Alice saw it?" fer Alice-I consent. Take her, take her, said Tony, reddening. Tony, and may you be happy with her!" And as he spoke, he laid his hand on the other's head with a reverend solemnity. 66 "Let us marry these girls. Let us be brothers-in-law as well as in love. You pre She saw it; for she said to me one day, Mr. Damer, it seems to me you have very punctilious notions on the score of friendship.' "This is nonsense, and worse than non"I have,' said I; 'you're right there.' sense," said Tony, angrily; but the other's "I thought so,' said she." temper was imperturbable, and he went on. "After all," said Tony, in a half-dogged" You fancy this is all dreamland that I'm tone, I don't see that the speech had any reference to me, or to any peculiar delicacy of yours with respect to me." 66 "Ah, my poor Tony, you have a deal to learn about women and their ways! By good luck fortune has given you a friend, the one man, I declare I believe what I say, the one man in Europe that knows the whole thing; as poor Balzac used to say, Cher Skeffy, what a fellow you would be if you had my pen!' He was a vain creature, Balzac; but what he meant was, if I could add his descriptive power to my own knowledge of life; for you see, Tony, this was the difference between Balzac and me. He knew Paris, and the salons of Paris, and the women who frequent these salons. I knew the human heart. It was woman, as a creature, not a mere conventionality, that she appeared to me." "Well, I take it," grumbled out Tony, "you and your friend had some points of resemblance too." "Ah you would say that we were both promising you; but that is because you, my dear Tony, with many good qualities, are totally wanting in one: you have no imagination, and, like all fellows denied this gift, you never can conceive anything happening to you except what has already happened. You like to live in a circle, and you do live in a circle; you are the turnspits of humanity." "I'm a troublesome dog, though, if you anger me," said Tony, half fiercely. 66 Very possibly; but there are certain men dogs never attack." And as Skeffy said this he threw forward his chest, held his head back, and looked with an air of such proud defiance that Tony lay back in a chair and laughed heartily. "I appreciate you, as the French say. You want to hear that I am not your rival; you want to know that I have not taken any ungenerous advantage of your absence. Tonino mio, be of good comfort; I preferred the sister; shall I tell you why?" 66 "I don't think I clearly understand you," said Tony, passing his hand over his brow. "Am I to believe that you and Bella are engaged?" 66 I know what's passing in your mind, old fellow; I read you like large print. I don't want to hear anything about You wont, you can't, credit the fact that I it." would marry out of the peerage. Say it frankly, out with it." 66 Nothing of the kind; but I cannot believe that Bella " 66 "Trust a woman Ay, but she did," said Skeffy, filling up his pause, while he smoothed and caressed his very young mustaches. to find out the coming man! Trust a woman to detect the qualities that insure supremacy! I wasn't there quite three weeks in all, and see if she did not discover me. What's this? Here comes an order for you, Tony," said he, as he looked into the street and recognized one of the porters of the Foreign Office. "This is the place, Trumins!" cried he, opening the window and calling to the man. "You're looking for Mr. Butler; aren't you?" "Mr. Butler on duty, Friday 21,” was all that the slip of paper contained. 66 There," cried Skeffy, "who knows if we shall rot cross the Channel together to-night? Put on your hat, and we'll walk down to the Office." CHAPTER XXXVIII. "What a jealous dog it is, even after I have declared, on the word of a Damer, that he has nothing to apprehend from me! It was a lucky day led me down there, Tony. Don't you remember the old woman's note to me, mentioning a hundred pounds, or something like it, she had forgotten to enclose? She found the bank-note afterwards on her table, and after much puzzling with herself, ascertained it was the sum she had meant to remit to me. Trifling as the incident was, she thought it delicate, or high-minded, or something or other on my part. She said it was so nice of me;' and she wrote to my uncle to ask if he ever heard such a pretty trait, and my uncle said he knew scores of spendthrifts would have done much the same; whereupon the old lady of Tilney, regarding me as ill-used by my relatives, declared she would do something for me; but as her good intentions were double-barrelled, and she wanted to do something also for Bella, she suggested that we might, as the Oberland peasants say, put our eggs in the same basket.' A day was named, too, in which we were all to have gone over to Lyle Abbey, and open negotiations with Sir Arthur, when came this confounded despatch ordering me off to Naples! At first I determined not to go-to resign-to give up public life forever. 'What's Hecuba to him?' said I; that is, What signifies it to me how Europe fares? Shall I not think of Skeff Damer and his fortunes?' Bowling down dynasties and setting up nine-pin princes may amuse a man; but, after all, is it not to the tranquil enjoyments of home he looks for happiness? I consulted Bella: but she would not agree with me. Women, my dear Tony, are more ambitious than men,-I had almost said, more worldly. She would not, she said, have me When Tony presented himself at the Legaleave a career wherein I had given such tion, he found that nobody knew anything great promise. You might be an ambas-about him. They had, some seven or eight sador one day,' said she. Must be in- months previous, requested to have an additerposed I, must be!' My unfortunate tional messenger appointed, as there were admission decided the question, and I started cases occurring which required frequent that night." reference to home; but the emergency had THIRD SERIES. LIVING AGE. VOL. XXVI. 1228 TONY WAITING FOR ORDERS. TONY BUTLER was ordered to Brussels to place himself at the disposal of the minister as an ex-messenger. He crossed over to Calais with Skeffy in the mail-boat; and after a long night's talking, for neither attempted to sleep, they parted with the most fervent assurances of friendship. "I'd go across Europe to thrash the fellow would say a hard word of him," muttered Tony; while Skeffy, with an emotion that made his lip tremble, said, "If the world goes hard with you, I'll turn my back on it, and we'll start for New Zealand or Madagascar, Tony, remember that; I give it to you as a pledge." passed over, and Brussels was once again as undisturbed by diplomatic relations as any of the Channel Islands.. "Take a lodging and make yourself comfortable; marry, and subscribe to a club if you like it," said a gray-headed attaché, with a cynical face; for in all likelihood they'll never remember you're here." The speaker had some experiences of this sort of official forgetfulness, with the added misfortune that, when he once had summoned courage to remonstrate against it, they did remember him, but it was to change him from a first to a second class mission-in Irish phrase, promoting him backwards-for his temerity. Tony installed himself in a snug little quarter outside the town, and set himself vigorously to study French. In Knickerbocker's History of New York," we read that the sittings of the council were always measured and recorded by the number of pipes smoked by the Cabinet. In the same way might it be said, that Tony Butler's progress in Ollendorf was only to be computed by the quantity of tobacco consumed over it. The pronouns had cost two boxes of cigars; the genders, a large packet of assorted cavendish and bird's-eye; and he stood fast on the frontier of the irregular verbs, waiting for a large bag of Turkish that Skeffy wrote to say he had forwarded to him through the Office. Why have we no statistics of the influence of tobacco on education? Why will no one direct his attention to the inquiry as to how far the Tony Butlers-a large class in the British Islands-are more moved to exertion, or hopelessly muddled in intellect, by the soothing influences of smoke? Tony smoked on, and on. He wrote home occasionally, and made three attempts to write to Alice, who, despite his silence, had sent him a very pleasant letter about home matters. It was not a neighborhood to afford much news; and, indeed, as she said," they had been unusually dull of late; scarcely any visitors, and few of the neighbors. We miss your friend Skeff greatly; for with all his oddities and eccentricities, he had won upon us immensely by real traits of generosity and high-mindedness. There is another friend of yours here I would gladly know well; but she -Miss Stewart-retreats from all my advances, and has so positively declined all our in vitations to the Abbey, that it would seem to imply, if such a thing were possible, a special determination.to avoid us. I know you well enough, Master Tony, to be aware that you will ascribe all my ardor in this pursuit to the fact of there being an obstacle. As you once told me about a certain short cut from Portrush, the only real advantage it had was a stiff four-foot wall, which must be jumped; but you are wrong, and you are unjust,-two things not at all new to you. My intentions here were really good. I had heard from your dear mother that Miss Stewart was in bad health,-that fears were felt lest her chest was affected. Now, as the doctors concurred in declaring that Bella must pass one winter, at least, in a warm climate; so I imagined how easy it would be to extend the benefit of genial air and sunshine to this really interesting girl, by offering to take her as a companion. Bella was charmed with my project, and we walked over to the Burnside on Tuesday to propose it in all form. "To the shame of our diplomacy we failed completely. The old minister, indeed, was not averse to the plan, and professed to think it a most thoughtful attention on our part; but Dolly, I call her Dolly; for it is by that name, so often recurring in the discussion, I associate her best with the incident,-Dolly was peremptory in her refusal. I wanted,— perhaps a little unfairly,-I wanted to hear her reasons. I asked if there might not pos sibly be something in her objections to which we could reply. I pressed her to reconsider the matter,—to take a week, two if she liked, to think over it; but no, she would not listen to my compromise; she was steady and resolute, and yet at the same time much moved. She said No! but she said it as if there was a reason she should say so, while it was in direct violence to all her wishes. Mind this is mere surmise on my part. I am speaking of one of whose nature and temperament I know nothing. I may just as easily be wrong as right. She is indeed a puzzle to me; and one little trait of her has completely routed all my conceit in my own power of reading character. In my eagerness to overcome her objections, I was picturing the life of enjoyment and interest Italy would open to her,— the charm of a land that realizes in daily life what poets and painters can only shadow forth; and in my ardor I so far forgot myself as to call her Doily,-dear Doly, I said. The |