"Ha! ha! ha!-ha! ha! ha!" laughed the proprietor, motioning me to a seat, and throwing himself back at full length upon an ottoman. "I see," said he, perceiving that I could not immediately reconcile myself to the bienseance of so singular a welcome, — “I see you are astonished at my apartment—at my statues-my picturesmy originality of conception in architecture and upholstery-absolutely drunk, eh? with my magnificence. But pardon me, my dear sir,"-(here his tone of voice dropped to the very spirit of cordiality,) "pardon me, my dear sir, for my uncharitable laughter. You appeared so utterly astonished. Besides, some things are so completely ludicrous, that a man must laugh or die. To die laughing must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths! Sir Thomas More -a very fine man was Sir Thomas More - Sir Thomas More died laughing, you remember. Also there is a long list of characters who came to the same magnificent end, in the Absurdities of Ravisius Textor. Do you, know, however," continued he, musingly, "that at Sparta (which is now Palæochori), at Sparta, I say, to the west of the citadel, among a chaos of scarcely visible ruins, is a kind of socle upon which are still legible the letters AAEM. They are undoubtedly part of TEAAZMA. Now, at Sparta were a thousand temples and shrines to a thousand different divinities. How exceedingly strange that the altar of Laughter should have survived all the others! But in the present instance" he resumed, with a singular alteration of voice and manner-" in the present instance I have no right to be merry at your expense. You might well have been amazed. Europe cannot produce anything so fine as this, my little regal cabinet. My other apartments are by no means of the same order-mere ultras of fashionable insipidity. This is better than fashion-is it not? Yet this has but to be seen to become the rage, that is with those who could afford it at the cost of their entire patrimony. I have guarded, however, against any such profanation. With one exception, you are the only human being besides myself who has been admitted within the mysteries of these imperial precincts."

-

I bowed in acknowledgment; for the overpowering sense of splendour, and perfume, and music, together with the unexpected eccentricity of his address and manner, prevented me from expressing in words my appreciation of what I might have construed into a compliment.

"Here," he resumed, arising and leaning on my arm as he sauntered around the apartment," here are paintings from the Greeks to Cimabué, and from Cimabue to the present hour. Many are chosen, as you see, with little deference to the opinions of virtû. They are all, however, fitting tapestry for a chamber such as this. Here, too, are some chefs d'œuvres of the unknown great — and here unfinished designs by men, celebrated in their day, whose very names the perspicacity of the academies has left to silence and to me. What think you," said he, turning abruptly as he spoke,— "what think you of this Madonna della Pietà ?”

"It is Guido's own!" I said, with all the enthusiasm of my nature, for I had been poring intently over its surpassing loveliness. "It is Guido's own! How could you have obtained it? She is undoubtedly in painting what the Venus is in sculpture."

"Ha!" said he, thoughtfully, "the Venus?-the beautiful Venus?

-the Venus of the Medici? - she of the gilded hair? Part of the left arm" (here his voice dropped so as to be heard with difficulty) "and all the right are restorations; and in the coquetry of that right arm lies, I think, the quintessence of all affectation. The Apollo, too!-is a copy-there can be no doubt of it. Blind fool that I am, who cannot behold the boasted inspiration of the Apollo! I cannot help-pity me!-I cannot help preferring the Antinous. Was it not Socrates who said that the statuary found his statue in the block of marble? Then Michael Angelo was by no means original in his couplet !—

'Non ha l'ottimo artista alcun concetto

Chè un marmo solo in se non circonscriva.'"

It has been, or should be remarked, that in the manner of the true gentleman we are always aware of a difference from the bearing of the vulgar, without being at once precisely able to determine in what such difference consists. Allowing the remark to have applied in its full force to the outward demeanour of my acquaintance, I felt it, on that eventful morning, still more fully applicable to his moral temperament and character. Nor can I better define that peculiarity of spirit which seemed to place him so essentially apart from all other human beings, than by calling it a habit of intense and continual thought, pervading even his most trivial actions, intruding upon his moments of dalliance, and interweaving itself with his very flashes of merriment, like adders which writhe from out the eyes of the grinning masks in the cornices around the temples of Persepolis.

I could not help, however, repeatedly observing, through the mingled tone of levity and solemnity with which he rapidly descanted upon matters of little importance, a certain air of trepidation -a degree of nervous unction in action and in speech - an unquiet excitability of manner, which appeared to me at all times unaccountable, and upon some occasions even filled me with alarm. Frequently, too, pausing in the middle of a sentence, whose commencement he had apparently forgotten, he seemed to be listening in the deepest attention, as if either in momentary expectation of a visitor, or to sounds which must have had existence in his imagination alone.

It was during one of these reveries or pauses of apparent abstraction that, in turning over a page of the poet and scholar Politian's beautiful tragedy, "The Orfeo," (the first native Italian tragedy,) which lay near me upon an ottoman, I discovered a passage underlined in pencil. It was a passage towards the end of the third act a passage of the most heart-stirring excitement a passage which, although tainted with impurity, no man shall read without a thrill of novel emotion, no woman without a sigh. The whole page was blotted with fresh tears, and upon the opposite interleaf were the following lines, written in a hand so very different from the peculiar characters of my acquaintance, that I had some difficulty in recognising it as his own.

Thou wast that all to me, love,
For which my soul did pine-

A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,

"No more—no more no more,"
(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
Or the stricken eagle soar!

And all my hours are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy dark eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams,
In what ethereal dances,

By what Italian streams.

Alas! for that accursed time

They bore thee o'er the billow,

From Love to titled age and crime,

And an unholy pillow

From me, and from our misty clime,

Where weeps the silver willow.

That these lines were written in English—a language with which I had not believed their author acquainted-afforded me little matter for surprise. I was too well aware of the extent of his acquirements, and of the singular pleasure he took in concealing them from observation, to be astonished at any similar discovery; but the place of date, I must confess, occasioned me no little amazement. It had been originally written London, and afterwards carefully overscored; but not, however, so effectually as to conceal the word from a scrutinizing eye. I say this occasioned me no little amazement; for I well remember that, in a former conversation with my friend, I particularly inquired if he had at any time met in London the Marchesa di Mentoni (who for some years previous to her marriage had resided in that city), when his answer, if I mistake not, gave me to understand that he had never visited the metropolis of Great Britain. I might as well here mention, that I have more than once heard (without, of course, giving credit to a report involving so many improbabilities) that the person of whom I speak was not only by birth, but in education, an Englishman.

*

"There is one painting," said he, without being aware of my notice of the tragedy," there is still one painting which you have not And throwing aside a drapery, he discovered a full-length portrait of the Marchesa Aphrodite.

Human art could have done no more in the delineation of her superhuman beauty. The same ethereal figure which stood before

me the preceding night upon the steps of the Ducal Palace stood before me once again; but in the expression of the countenance, which was beaming all over with smiles, there still lurked (incomprehensible anomaly !) that fitful stain of melancholy, which will ever be found inseparable from the perfection of the beautiful. Her right arm lay folded over her bosom; with her left she pointed downwards to a curiously fashioned vase; one small fairy foot alone visible, barely touched the earth; and, scarcely discernible in the brilliant atmosphere which seemed to encircle and enshrine her loveliness, floated a pair of the most delicately imagined wings. My glance fell from the painting to the figure of my friend, and the vigorous words of Chapman's Bussy D'Ambois quivered instinctively upon my lips :"He is up

There like a Roman statue! He will stand

Till Death hath made him marble!"

"Come," he said at length, turning towards a table of richly enamelled and massive silver, upon which were a few goblets fantastically stained, together with two large Etruscan vases, fashioned in the same extraordinary model as that in the fore-ground of the portrait, and filled with what I supposed to be Johannisberger-"Come," he said abruptly, "let us drink! It is early; but let us drink! It is indeed early," he continued thoughtfully, as a cherub with a heavy golden hammer, made the apartment ring with the first hour after sunrise" It is indeed early; but what matters it? Let us drink! Let us pour out an offering to the solemn sun, which these gaudy lamps and censers are so eager to subdue!" And, having made me pledge him in a bumper, he swallowed in rapid succession several goblets of the wine.

"To dream," he continued, resuming the tone of his desultory conversation, as he held up to the rich light of a censer one of the magnificent vases" to dream has been the business of my life. I have therefore framed for myself, as you see, a bower of dreams. In the heart of Venice could I have erected a better? You behold around you, it is true, a medley of architectural embellishments. The chastity of Iona is offended by antediluvian devices, and the sphynxes of Egypt are stretching upon carpets of gold. Yet the effect is incongruous to the timid alone. Proprieties of place, and especially of time, are the bugbears which terrify mankind from the contemplation of the magnificent. Once I was myself a decorist; but that sublimation of folly has palled upon my soul. All this is now the fitter for my purpose. Like these arabesque censers, my spirit is writhing in fire, and the delirium of this scene is fashioning me for the wilder visions of that land of real dreams, whither I am now rapidly departing."

Thus saying, he confessed the power of the wine, and threw himself at full length upon an ottoman.

A quick step was now heard upon the staircase, and a loud knock at the door rapidly succeeded. I was hastening to anticipate a second disturbance, when a page of Mentoni's household burst into the room, and faltered out, in a voice choking with emotion, the incoherent words, "My mistress!-my mistress! - poisoned!-poisoned! Oh! beautiful-oh! beautiful Aphrodite !"

Bewildered, I flew to the ottoman, and endeavoured to arouse the sleeper to a sense of the startling intelligence; but his limbs were rigid his lips were livid-his lately beaming eyes were riveted in death. I staggered back towards the table,. my hand fell upon a cracked and blackened goblet, — and a consciousness of the entire and terrible truth flashed suddenly over my soul.

A FRAGMENT FROM THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF A DUCK.

BY HAL. WILLIS.

SOME men are said to make "ducks and drakes" of their fortune; my provident master, on the contrary, made his fortune of ducks and drakes.

A large weedy pond on the borders of his little patrimony was the scene of my youthful pleasures. The place was surrounded by sedgy banks, agreeably shaded by willows which they call "weeping," although I can assert from personal observation that they never added a single tear-drop to our aquatic demesne. People may "cry them up,” but they never cry themselves.

In a snug nest, on the borders of this secluded place, I first "saw the light," with eight brothers and sisters. Led by our dear mother, we might be seen on our birthday rushing instinctively towards the cooling element, as bright and yellow as a new issue of gold from the Bank!

My mother was congratulated upon the appearance of her family by all except an old duck, who was dabbling solitarily in the distance. "That old duck in the weeds yonder," observed my mother, " is a widow, she has lately lost her drake, and feels no sympathy in my pleasure." We rapidly gained strength, and were soon able to provide for ourselves; in fact no family ever went on more swimmingly. We were very gay, and sported about, with all the heedlessness of youth, during the day; and in the evening, harboured by her downy breast, we lay as snug as a little fleet in Brest harbour!

One day, in the midst of our pastime, the whole community was thrown into the utmost confusion by the bark of a dog, and the next minute the monster leaped into the water.

My mother, with her usual presence of mind, dived, and we, following her example, reached the opposite bank in safety. I do not know what might have been the consequences of this intrusion if our master and a friend had not arrived immediately, and expelled the dog; who went howling away to his owner, a shabby-genteel fellow, who appeared on the opposite bank to our asylum; and so the affair ended with our master beating the dog, and our beating a retreat. "Do you know that fellow?" inquired our master.

6

"O! very well," replied his friend. "Tis Tim Consol, the stockbroker. I suppose he wanted a pair of white ducks,' for he is very much out of 'feather.' What a 'dabbler' he has been! You know that he is a lame duck, I suppose? Yes; he lately waddled; but, though a lame duck, he is a great bettor, and still lays!"

"Do you hear that, my ducklings? said my mother; "that fellow is a bad character. There is no doubt, from what our master's