(ORIGINAL.)

A SPECIAL PLEADING.

AND so they tell you Mary, love, that I am false and gay,

And that I woo another maid when I am far away, And that I'm seen in merry mood upon the coast of France,

And let another pair of eyes allure me to the dance.

They tell you that I do not care for all the vows I've made,

That love with me is but a game, at which I've often played;

They say that sailors win a heart-then think of it

no more,

And that your Harry soon forgets this bit of English shore.

You knew me as a sturdy boy,-you trusted to my

arm

To pull you through the gale, without a breathing of alarm;

I've grown and strengthened in your sight, and shall it be confessed,

That he who clasped with Childhood's hand betrayed with Manhood's breast!

I kept my good old mother till she gently drooped and died,

I have a little sister still, that's clinging to my side; And could I bear a manly heart to them, my Mary, dear,

Could I be faithful to my home, and yet be traitor here!

Oh! Mary, don't believe the tale,-indeed it is not true;

How could I, even if I would, love any girl but you? Oh! do look up into my face, and see if you can find A trace of any feeling there but what is just and kind.

Tell me who raised the foul report,-who cast upon

THE MIRACLE OF LIFE.

Or all Miracles, the most wonderful is that of Lifethe common, daily life which we carry about with us, and which everywhere surrounds us. The sun and stars, the blue firmament, day and night, the tides and seasons, are as nothing compared with it. Life -the soul of the world, but for which creation were not!

It is our daily familiarity with Life, which obscures its wonders from us. We live, yet remember it not. Other wonders attract our attention, and excite our surprise; but this, the great wonder of the world, which includes all others, is little regarded. We have grown up alongside of Life, with Life within us and about us; and there is never any point in our existence, at which its phenomena arrest our curiosity and attention. The Miracle is hid from us by famili arity, and we see it not.

Fancy the earth without Life!-its skeleton ribs of rock and mountain unclothed by verdure, without soil, without flesh! What a naked, desolate spectacle, -and how unlike the beautiful aspect of external nature in all lands! Nature, ever-varied and everchanging,-coming with the spring, and going to sleep with the winter, in constant rotation. The flower springs up, blooms, withers, and falls, returning to the earth from whence it sprung, leaving behind it the germs of future being. For nothing dies: not even Life, which only gives up one form to assume another. Organization is travelling in an unending circle.

The trees in summer put on their verdure; they blossom; their fruit ripens-falls; what the roots gathered up out of the earth returns to earth again; the leaves drop one by one, and decay, resolving themselves into new forms, to enter into other organizations; the sap flows back to the trunk; and the forest, wood, field, and brake, compose themselves to their annual winter's sleep. In spring and summer the birds sang in the boughs, and tended their young brood; the whole animal kingdom rejoiced in their full bounding life; the sun shone warm, and Nature rejoiced in greenness. Winter lays its cold chill upon this scene; but the same scene comes round again, and another spring recommences the same "never-ending, still beginning" succession of vital changes. We learn to expect all this, and become

[PRICE 1d.

so familiar with it, that it seldom occurs to us to reflect how much harmony and adaptation there is in the arrangement-how much of beauty and glory there is everywhere, above, around, and beneath us.

But were it possible to conceive an intelligent being, abstracted from our humanity, endowed with the full possession of mind and reason, all at once set down on the earth's surface, how many objects of surpassing interest and wonder, would at once force themselves on his attention. The verdant earth, covered with its endless profusion of forms of vegetable life, from the delicate moss to the oak which survives the revolutions of centuries; the insect and animal kingdom, from the gnat which dances in the summer's sunbeam, up to the higher forms of sentient being; birds, beasts of endless diversity of form, instinct, and colour; and, above all, Man-"Lord of the lion heart and eagle eye; these would, to such an intelligence be a source of almost endless interest.

It is Life which is the grand glory of the world; it was the consummation of creative power, at which the morning stars sang together for joy. Is not the sun glorious, because there are living eyes to be gladdened by his beams? is not the fresh air delicious, because there are living creatures to inhale and enjoy it? are not odours fragrant, and sounds sweet, and colours gorgeous, because there is the living sensation to appreciate them? Without Life, what were they all? What were a Creator himself, without Life-intelligence-understanding-to know and adore Him, and to trace his finger in the works that He hath made?

Boundless variety and perpetual change are exhibited in the living beings around us. Take the class of insects alone: of these, not fewer than 100,000 distinct species are already known and described; and every day is adding to the catalogue. Wherever you penetrate, that life can be sustained, you find living beings to exist; in the depths of ocean, in the arid desert, or at the icy polar regions. The air teems with life. The soil which clothes the earth all round, is swarming with life, vegetable and animal. Take a drop of water, and examine it with the microscope: lo! it is swarming with living creatures. Within Life, exists other life, until it recedes before the powers of human vision. The parasitic animalcule, which preys upon or within

the body of a larger animal, is itself preyed upon by parasites peculiar to itself. So minute are living animalcules, that Ehrenberg has computed that not fewer than five hundred millions can subsist in a single drop of water, and each of these monads is endowed with its appropriate organs, possesses spontaneous power of motion, and enjoys an independent vitality.

In the very ocean deeps, insects, by the labour of ages, are enabled to construct islands, and lay the foundations of future continents. The coral insect is the great architect of the southern ocean. First a reef is formed; seeds are wafted to it, vegetation springs up, a verdant island exists; then man takes possession, and a colony is formed.

Dig down into the earth, and from a hundred yards deep, throw up a portion of soil-cover it so that no communication can take place between that earth and the surrounding air. Soon you will observe vegetation springing up-perhaps new plants, altogether unlike anything heretofore grown in that neighbourhood. During how many thousands of years has the vitality of these seeds been preserved deep in the earth's bosom! Not less wonderful is the fact stated by Lord Lindsay, who took from the hand of an Egyptian mummy a tuber, which must have been wrapped up there more than 2,000 years before. It was planted, was rained and dewed upon, the sun shone on it again, and the root grew, bursting forth and blooming into a beauteous Dahlia !

At the north pole, where you would expect life to become extinct, the snow is sometimes found of a bright red colour. Examine it by the microscope, and lo! it is covered with mushrooms, growing on the surface of the snow as their natural abode.

A philosopher distils a portion of pure water, secludes it from the air, and then places it under the influence of a powerful electric current. Living beings are stimulated into existence, the acari crossii appear in numbers! Here we touch on the borders of a great mystery; but it is not at all more mysterious than the fact of Life itself. Philosophers know nothing about it, further than that it is. The attempt to discover its cause, inevitably throws them back upon the Great First Cause. Philosophy takes refuge in religion.

Yet man is never at rest in his speculations as to causes; and he contrives all manner of theories to satisfy his demands for them. A favourite theory now-a-days is what is called the Development theory, which proceeds on the assumption, that one germ of being was originally planted on the earth, and that from this germ, by the wondrous power of Life, all forms of vegetable and animal life have progressively been developed. Unquestionably, all living beings are organized on one grand plan, and the higher forms of living beings, in the process of their growth, successively pass through the lower organized forms. Thus, the human being is successively a monad, an a-vertebrated animal, an osseous fish, a turtle, a bird, a ruminant, a mammal, and lastly an infant Man. Through all these types of organization, Tiedemann has shown that the brain of man passes.

This theory, however, does nothing to explain the causes of life, or the strikingly diversified, and yet determinate characters of living beings;-why some so far transcend others in the stages of development to which they ascend, and how it is that they stop there, how it is that animals succeed each other in right lines, the offspring inheriting the physical struc

ture and the moral disposition of their parents, and never, by any chance, stopping short at any other stage of being-man, for instance, never issuing in a lion, a fish, or a polypus. We can scarcely conceive it possible that, had merely the Germ of Being been planted on the earth, and "set a-going," anything like the beautiful harmony and extraordinary adaptation which is everywhere observable throughout the animated kingdoms of Nature, would have been secured. That there has been a grand plan of organization, on which all living beings have been formed, seems obvious enough; but to account for the diversity of being, by the theory that plants and animals have gradually advanced from lower to higher stages of being by an inherent power of self-development, is at variance with known facts, and is only an attempt to get rid of one difficulty by creating another far greater.

Chemists are equally at fault, in endeavouring to unveil the mysterious processes of Life. Before its power they stand abashed. For Life controls matter, and to a great extent overrules its combinations. An organized being is not held together by ordinary chemical affinity; nor can chemistry do anything towards compounding organized tissues. The principles which enter into the composition of the organized being are few, the chief being charcoal and water, but into what wondrous forms does Life mould these common elements! The chemist can tell you what these elements are, and how they are combined, when dead; but when living, they resist all his power of analysis. Rudolphi confesses that chemistry is able to investigate only the lifeless remains of organized beings.

There are some remarkable facts connected with Animal Chemistry-if we may employ the termwhich show how superior is the principle of Life to all known methods of synthesis and analysis. For example, much more carbon or charcoal is regularly voided from the respiratory organs alone, of all living beings-not to speak of its ejection in many other ways-than can be accounted for, as having in any way entered the system. They also produce and eject much more nitrogen than they inhale. The mushroom and mustard plant, though nourished by pure water containing no nitrogen, give it off abundantly; the same is the case with zoophytes attached to rocks at the bottom of the sea; and reptiles and fishes contain it in abundance, though living and growing in pure water only. Again, plants which grow on sand containing not a particle of lime, are found to contain as much of this mineral as those which grow in a calcareous soil; and the bones of animals in New South Wales, and other districts where not an atom of lime is to be found in the soil, or in the plants from which they gather their food, contain the usual proportion of lime, though it remains an entire mystery to the chemist where they can have obtained it. The same fact is observable in the eggshells of hens, where lime is produced in quantities for which the kind of food taken is altogether inadequate to account; as well as in the enormous deposits of coral-rock, consisting of almost pure lime, without any manifest supply of that ingredient. Chemistry fails to unravel these mysterious facts; nor can it account for the abundant production of soda, by plants growing on a soil containing not an atom of soda in any form; nor of gold in bezoards; nor of copper in some descriptions of shell-fish. These extraordinary facts seem to point to this-that many, if not most, of the elements which chemists have set down as simple, because they have failed to reduce them further, are in reality compound; and that what we regard as Elements, do not signify matters that are undecompoundable, but which are merely

undecompounded by chemical processes. Life, however, which is superior to human powers of analysis, resolves and composes the ultimate atoms of things after methods of its own, but which to chemists will probably ever remain involved in mystery.

The last mystery of Life is Death. Such is the economy of living beings, that the very actions which are subservient to their preservation, tend to exhaust and destroy them. Each being has its definite term of life, and on attaining its acme of perfection, it begins to decay, and at length ceases to exist. This is alike true of the insect which perishes within the hour, and of the octogenarian who falls in a ripe old

age.

Love provides for the perpetuation of the species. "We love," says Virey, "because we do not live for ever: we purchase love at the expense of our life." To die, is as characteristic of organized beings as to live. The one condition is necessary to the other. Death is the last of life's functions. And no sooner has the mysterious principle of vitality departed, than the laws of matter assert their power over the organized frame.

The

Universal experience teaches us," says Liebig, "that all organized beings, after death, suffer a change, in consequence of which their bodies gradually vanish from the surface of the earth. mightiest tree, after it is cut down, disappears, with the exception, perhaps, of the bark, when exposed to the action of the air for thirty or forty years. Leaves, young twigs, the straw which is added to the soil as manure, juicy fruits, &c., disappear much more quickly. In a still shorter time, animal matters lose their cohesion; they are dissipated into the air, leaving only the mineral elements which they had derived from the soil.

'This grand natural process of the dissolution of all compounds formed in living organizations, begins immediately after death, when the manifold causes no longer act, under the influence of which they were produced. The compounds formed in the bodies of animals and of plants, undergo, in the air, and with the aid of moisture, a series of changes, the last of which are, the conversion of their carbon into carbonic acid, of their hydrogen into water, of their nitrogen into ammonia, of their sulphur into sulphuric acid. Thus their elements resume the forms in which they can again serve as food to a new generation of plants and animals. Those elements which had been derived from the atmosphere, take the gaseous form and return to the air; those which the earth had yielded, return to the soil. Death, followed by the dissolution of the dead generation, is the source of life for a new one. The same atom of carbon which, as a constituent of a muscular fibre in the heart of a man, assists to propel the blood through his frame, was perhaps a constituent of the heart of one of his ancestors; and any atom of nitrogen in our brain, has perhaps been a part of the brain of an Egyptian or of a negro. As the intellect of the men of this generation draws the food required for its development and cultivation from the products of the intellectual activity of former times, so may the constituents or elements of the bodies of a former generation pass into, and become parts of, our own frames."

The greatest mystery of all remains. What of the Spirit the Soul? The vital principle which bound the frame together has been dissolved; what of the Man, the being of high aspirations, "looking before and after," and whose " thoughts wandered through eternity?" The material elements have not died, but merely assumed new forms. Does not the spirit of man, which is ever at enmity with nothingness and dissolution, live too? Religion in all ages has dealt with this great mystery, and here we leave it with confidence in the solution which it offers.

STORY OF TITIAN VECELLI. TITIAN Vecelli was born in the year 1477, at Capo del Cadore, in Friuli. At six years old he began to display his wonderful taste for colouring. Almost every child, whether destined to become an artist or not, takes pleasure in scrawling rude designs with chalk or a pencil; but Titian disdained mere outlines, and at the early age we have named, used to search gardens, meadows, and hedge-rows, for the most brilliant and many-hued flowers. As he contemplated the whiteness of the lily, the crimson of the rose, the purple of the violet,-all the thousand varying and blending tints of those vegetable jewels, his infant soul was wrapped in mute and magical ecstasy. Once in possession of nature's palette, the child asked not for artificial colours. He used to express the juice of freshly-gathered flowers on the designs which he traced on a whited wall, and a painting in fresco was the result. The inhabitants of Cadore admired, during many years, a beautiful head of the Virgin, painted in this manner by the young Vecelli, on the capital of a pillar. When his name had become famous, numbers thronged to see this fresco, until some tasteless architect threw down the column, under pretence that it obstructed a public passage.

After having received a few elementary lessons in painting, from Sebastiano Zuccati, Titian was sent by his father to Venice, to prosecute his studies under the direction of Giovanni Bellini. This artist then enjoyed the reputation of being the purest and most classical designer of the Venetian school.

Hitherto oil-painting was unknown in Italy-water colours were exclusively used; when a rumour was spread through the city of St. Mark, that a Sicilian painter, named Antonello, had arrived from Messina, and was possessed of some admirable secret for preparing and mixing colours. The news travelled from studio to studio, and was received with scoffing incredulity by all the artists, except Bellini, who, instead of ridiculing what he did not understand, resolved silently to see and judge for himself.

It must be confessed, that the means he employed to discover Antonello's secret can scarcely be justified; for deceit, whether acted or spoken, must always be abhorred by every honourable mind, and Bellini had recourse to a stratagem, such as a truly upright man would have scorned to employ.

One morning having arranged himself in a splendid satin doublet, with hose to match, and a velvet hat and white feathers, he repaired to the house of Antonello, and had himself announced as a gentleman, who, being about to take a long journey, was desirous of having his portrait painted as speedily as possible. As to the price, he left it to the artist to charge any sum he pleased. Antonello was completely deceived, and hastened to give his wealthy visitor a sitting. At the end of two hours, the head was so far advanced, that Bellini could recognize his own features; and, while looking at the painting, he failed not to praise the rare softness and mellowness of colouring of the flesh-tints. "Ah, ha!" said the Sicilian, with a

knowing look. "The effect which your excellency admires, is produced by a secret invention of my own, which your Venetian painters know nothing about."

[This boast of Antonello's exceeded the truth :he was not the inventor of oil-painting-he had learned the art in Flanders from John of Brayes.]

"May I, without indiscretion, inquire in what this new process consists?" said Bellini, on whom not a movement of his rival had been lost.

66

'Certainly, mio signori. Do you see this flask?" 66 "Yes."

"It contains a most costly elixir, distilled by my own hands from certain herbs that grow near Mount Etna. I pour a few drops of this liquid into a saucer, dip my pencil into it, and then, without trouble, produce on the canvas the tints and tone of living flesh."

Strange!" said his visitor, with a simple air. "I should have thought, judging from its odour and appearance, that your elixir was neither more nor less than linseed oil!"

Antonello reddened, and fixed his eyes on the speaker, but as nothing in the look or voice of the latter betrayed that he attached the slightest importance to his discovery, the Sicilian continued to expatiate volubly on the occult virtues of the liquid, and the marvellous care requisite in its preparation. The Venetian seemed perfectly satisfied, and started some other subject of conversation.

In two days afterwards the portrait was finished : Bellini paid handsomely for it, and took it home. His purpose was fully accomplished.

It was just at this period that Titian was placed under the care of Bellini, and the gay, ardent young man, could scarcely have arrived at a more unlucky

moment.

Moved by a whimsical idea, that by so doing he could expiate his sin, Bellini resolved to employ his ill-gotten secret solely in painting saints, monks, and martyrs, and these of the most sorry and woe-begone description. Fancy poor Titian with his bright bounding spirit, fresh from the sunny meadows and breezy hills, immured in a gloomy studio, whose sole ornaments consisted in a double file of skeleton saints and tortured martyrs !

Determined to place a severe, and, as he believed, a salutary check on the glowing fancy and wayward will of his pupil, Giovanni Bellini strictly interdicted his attempting any beautiful or pleasing subjects. Madonnas and Magdalens were forbidden fruit; while St. Sebastian pierced with arrows-Job on his dunghill St. Anthony in the temptation, formed his daily food. Poor Titian! he the while was dreaming of Venus and Psyche, of gorgeous draperies, of golden sunset tints,-of noble lords and lovely ladies.

There was however no remedy, he must submit ; and ere long the dullness of the school was greatly enlivened by the arrival of a new pupil, named Giorgio Barbarelli.

He was a tall, handsome youth,-clever, brave, witty, and, moreover, endowed with a genuine love of fun, and a most comfortable indifference to the unpleasant consequences of his thoughtless actions. His comrades received him with open arms, and hailed his arrival as a delightful interruption to the cloisteral monotony of the school. Frequently did Bellini repent having opened his doors to this pleasant scapegrace; while in spite of himself he admired the noble qualities and superior talents of his pupil; coming at length to tolerate his faults, and pardon his escapades with very unusual indulgence. master, indeed, exercised the privilege of bestowing on him tedious lectures and severe reprimands, to which Giorgio listened with downcast eyes, and a most edifying air of contrition; until with a side glance he perceived that the storm had spent its force and the sunshine was returning. Then he would shake his rich dark curls, fix his large bright eyes on his reprover with an air of innocent surprise; and finally, with a word, a smile, or a gesture, bring back the vanished gaiety of his class.

The

His com

panions bestowed on him the pet name of GIORGIONE, and by it he is known to posterity. He and young Titian speedily became bosom friends; and the great ambition of the latter was to be able to imitate successfully the masterly outlines and delicate transparent colouring of Giorgione.

It happened one day, that, as the two friends were wandering arm in arm through the streets of Venice, they met three young sculptors of their acquaintance. At first, conversation turned on the artistic topic of the day, a horse in bronze, modelled by Andrea Verrochio. When each had given his opinion of the work, they began to discuss the comparative merits of the two arts, of painting and sculpture.

"Ah!" said the youngest of the sculptors, "there can be no doubt that our art deserves the pre-emi

nence.

"Why so, my master!" asked Giorgione.

"Because," replied the first sculptor, "it is the most difficult. A woman can manage a pencil, but for moulding bronze or chiselling marble, the hand of a man is required."

"Because," said the second, "it is the most durable. Canvas wears out; walls crumble; wood decays; but marble and metal defy the injuries of time, and challenge immortality.'

"Because," added the third, "it is the most complete. Painting can represent but one side of the human figure, whilst our art displays the whole in every possible aspect."

"Then, my masters," rejoined Giorgione, quickly, 'you imply that painting is an easy, vulgar art, within the reach of women and children?"

"Oh, Giorgione!—"

"Allow me to finish," said the painter. "You maintain that your art is superior to ours, because time destroys pictures more quickly than statues. According to this rule, poetry and music must be supremely contemptible; for the sweetest notes die away as they are uttered, and the most glorious verses are confided to a perishable sheet of paper. But you forget that printing has been invented to perpetuate the book, and engraving to re-produce the picture." "But-" 99

"Silence. You assert finally that painting is an incomplete art, because it can display but one side of a figure. Well! my masters, what would you say, if at one glance, and without obliging you to walk round my painting, as you have to do to your statue, I can succeed in showing you the back, the face, and both profiles of a man!"

We would say that you had performed a miracle." "Come, let us lay a wager," cried Giorgione, reassuring his friend Titian with a look.

"Agreed!" replied the sculptors with one voice. "Then, my masters, I wager two hundred sequins that I will paint such a figure as I have described." Who is to judge?"

"Yourselves."