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"Who thinks of bringing her to shame ? 'Lord of an ancient house'!" added the cavalier, laughing bitterly,-"a landless beggar, cast out of everything,- titles, estates, all! Am I, then, fallen so low that my wooing would disgrace a peasant-girl?"

"My Lord, you cannot mean to woo a peasant-girl in any other way than one one of the that would disgrace her,House of Sarelli, that goes back to the days of the old Roman Empire!"

"And what of the House of Sarelli that goes back to the days of the old Roman Empire'? It is lying like weeds' roots uppermost in the burning sun. What is left to me but the mountains and my sword? No, I tell you, Paolo, Agostino Sarelli, cavalier of fortune, is not thinking of bringing disgrace on a pious and modest maiden, unless it would disgrace her to be his wife."

"Now may the saints above help us! Why, my Lord, our house in days past has been allied to royal blood. I could tell you how Joachim VI."

"Come, come, my good Paolo, spare me one of your chapters of genealogy. The fact is, my old boy, the world is all topsyturvy, and the bottom is the top, and it isn't much matter what comes next. Here are shoals of noble families uprooted and lying round like those aloes that the gardener used to throw over the wall in spring-time; and there is that great boar of a Cæsar Borgia turned in to batten and riot over our pleasant places."

"Oh, my Lord," said the old servingman, with a distressful movement, "we have fallen on evil times, to be sure, and they say his Holiness has excommunicatAnselmo heard that in Naples

ed us.
yesterday."

"Excommunicated!" said the young man, every feature of his fine face, and every nerve of his graceful form seeming to quiver with the effort to express supreme contempt. "Excommunicated! I should hope so! One would hope through Our Lady's grace to act so that Alexander, and his adulterous, incestuous, filthy, false-swearing, perjured, murderous crew,

would excommunicate us! In these times,
one's only hope of paradise lies in being
excommunicated."

"Oh, my dear master," said the old
man, falling on his knees, "what is to
become of us? That I should live to
hear you talk like an infidel and unbe-
liever!"

66

Why, hear you, poor old fool! Did you never hear in Dante of the Popes that are burning in hell? Wasn't Dante a Christian, I beg to know?"

"Oh, my Lord, my Lord! a religion got out of poetry, books, and romances won't do to die by. We have no business with the affairs of the Head of the Church,it's the Lord's appointment. We have only to shut our eyes and obey. It may all do well enough to talk so when you are young and fresh; but when sickness and death come, then we must have religion, and if we have gone out of the only true Roman Catholic Apostolic Church, what becomes of our souls? Ah, I misdoubted about your taking so much to poetry, though my poor mistress was so proud of it; but these poets are all heretics, my Lord,- that 's my firm belief. But, my Lord, if you do go to hell, I'm going there with you; I'm sure I never could show my face among the saints, and you not there."

"Well, come, then, my poor Paolo," said the cavalier, stretching out his hand to his serving-man, “don't take it to heart so. Many a better man than I has been excommunicated and cursed from toe to crown, and been never a whit the worse for it. There's Jerome Savonarola there in Florence- a most holy man, they say, who has had revelations straight from heaven-has been excommunicated; but he preaches and gives the sacraments all the same, and nobody minds it.”

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'Well, it 's all a maze to me," said the old serving-man, shaking his white head. "I can't see into it. I don't dare to open my eyes for fear I should get to be a heretic; it seems to me that everything is getting mixed up together. But one must hold on to one's religion; because, after we have lost everything in this world, it

would be too bad to burn in hell forever at the end of that."

"Why, Paolo, I am a good Christian. I believe, with all my heart, in the Christian religion, like the fellow in Boccaccio, - because I think it must be from God, or else the Popes and Cardinals would have had it out of the world long ago. Nothing but the Lord Himself could have kept it against them."

"There you are, my dear master, with your romances! Well, well, well! I don't

know how it'll end. I say my prayers,

and try not to inquire into what 's too high for me. But now, dear master, will you stay lingering after this girl till some of our enemies hear where you are and pounce down upon us? Besides, the troop are never so well affected when you are away; there are quarrels and divisions." "Well, well,” said the cavalier, with an impatient movement, - one day longer. I must get a chance to speak with her once more. I must see her."

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SUN-PAINTING AND SUN-SCULPTURE;

WITH A STEREOSCOPIC TRIP ACROSS THE ATLANTIC.

THERE is one old fable which Lord Bacon, in his " Wisdom of the Ancients," has not interpreted. This is the flaying of Marsyas by Apollo. Everybody remembers the accepted version of it, namely, that the young shepherd found Minerva's flute, and was rash enough to enter into a musical contest with the God of Music. He was vanquished, of course, - and the story is, that the victor fastened him to a tree and flayed him alive.

But the God of Song was also the God of Light, and a moment's reflection reveals the true significance of this seemingly barbarous story. Apollo was pleased with his young rival, fixed him in position against an iron rest, (the tree of the fable,) and took a photograph, a sunpicture, of him. This thin film or skin of light and shade was absurdly interpreted as being the cutis, or untanned leather integument of the young shepherd. The human discovery of the art of photography enables us to rectify the error and restore that important article of clothing to the youth, as well as to vindicate the character of Apollo. There is one spot less upon the sun since the theft from heaven of Prometheus Daguerre and his fellow-adventurers has

enabled us to understand the ancient legend.

We are now flaying our friends and submitting to be flayed ourselves, every few years or months or days, by the aid of the trenchant sunbeam which performed the process for Marsyas. All the world' has to submit to it,-kings and queens with the rest. The monuments of Art and the face of Nature herself are treated in the same way. We lift an impalpable scale from the surface of the Pyramids. We slip off from the dome of St. Peter's that other imponderable dome which fitted it so closely that it betrays every scratch on the original. We skim off a thin, dry cuticle from the rapids of Niagara, and lay it on our unmoistened paper without breaking a bubble or losing a speck of foam. We steal a landscape from its lawful owners, and defy the charge of dishonesty. We skin the flints by the wayside, and nobody accuses us of meanness.

These miracles are being worked all around us so easily and so cheaply that most people have ceased to think of them as marvels. There is a photographer established in every considerable village, - nay, one may not unfrequently see

a photographic ambulance standing at the wayside upon some vacant lot where it can squat unchallenged in the midst of burdock and plantain and apple-Peru, or making a long halt in the middle of a common by special permission of the "Selectmen."

We must not forget the inestimable preciousness of the new Promethean gifts because they have become familiar. Think first of the privilege we all possess now of preserving the lineaments and looks of those dear to us.

"Blest be the art which can immortalize,"

said Cowper. But remember how few painted portraits really give their subjects. Recollect those wandering Thugs of Art whose murderous doings with the brush used frequently to involve whole families; who passed from one country tavern to another, eating and painting their way, feeding a week upon the landlord, another week upon the landlady, and two or three days apiece upon the children; as the walls of those hospitable edifices too frequently testify even to the present day. Then see what faithful memorials of those whom we love and would remember are put into our hands by the new art, with the most trifling expenditure of time and money.

This new art is old enough already to have given us the portraits of infants who are now growing into adolescence. Byand-by it will show every aspect of life in the same individual, from the earliest week to the last year of senility. We are beginning to see what it will reveal. Children grow into beauty and out of it. The first line in the forehead, the first streak in the hair are chronicled without malice, but without extenuation. The footprints of thought, of passion, of purpose are all treasured in these fossilized shadows. Family-traits show themselves in early infancy, die out, and reappear. Flitting moods which have escaped one pencil of sunbeams are caught by another. Each new picture gives us a new aspect of our friend; we find he had not one face, but many.

It is hardly too much to say, that those
whom we love no longer leave us in dy-
ing, as they did of old. They remain
with us just as they appeared in life;
they look down upon us from our walls;
they lie upon our tables; they rest upon
our bosoms; nay, if we will, we may wear
their portraits, like signet-rings, upon our
fingers. Our own eyes lose the images
Parents sometimes
pictured on them.

forget the faces of their own children in
a separation of a year or two. But the
unfading artificial retina which has look-
ed upon
them retains their impress, and
a fresh sunbeam lays this on the living
nerve as if it were radiated from the
breathing shape. How these shadows
last, and how their originals fade away!

The

What is true of the faces of our friends is still more true of the places we have seen and loved. No picture produces an impression on the imagination to compare with a photographic transcript of the home of our childhood, or any scene with which we have been long familiar. very point which the artist omits, in his effort to produce general effect, may be exactly the one that individualizes the our memory. place most strongly to There, for instance, is a photographic view of our own birthplace, and with it of a part of our good old neighbor's dwelling. An artist would hardly have noticed a slender, dry, leafless stalk which traces a faint line, as you may see, along the front of our neighbor's house next the That would be nothing to him,

corner.

- but to us it marks the stem of the honeysuckle-vine, which we remember, with its pink and white heavy-scented blossoms, as long as we remember the stars in heaven.

To this charm of fidelity in the minutest details the stereoscope adds its astonishing illusion of solidity, and thus completes the effect which so entrances the imagination. Perhaps there is also some half-magnetic effect in the fixing of the eyes on the twin pictures,-something like Mr. Braid's hypnotism, of which many of our readers have doubtless heard. least the shutting out of surrounding ob

At

jects, and the concentration of the whole attention, which is a consequence of this, produce a dream-like exaltation of the faculties, a kind of clairvoyance, in which we seem to leave the body behind us and sail away into one strange scene after another, like disembodied spirits.

“Ah, yes," some unimaginative read er may say; "but there is no color and no motion in these pictures you think so life-like; and at best they are but petty miniatures of the objects we see in Nature."

But color is, after all, a very secondary quality as compared with form. We like a good crayon portrait better for the most part in black and white than in tints of pink and blue and brown. Mr. Gibson has never succeeded in making the world like his flesh-colored statues. The color of a landscape varies perpetually, with the season, with the hour of the day, with the weather, and as seen by sunlight or moonlight; yet our home stirs us with its old associations, seen in any and every light.

As to motion, though of course it is not present in stereoscopic pictures, except in those toy-contrivances which have been lately introduced, yet it is wonderful to see how nearly the effect of motion is produced by the slight difference of light on the water or on the leaves of trees as seen by the two eyes in the double-pic

ture.

And lastly with respect to size, the illusion is on the part of those who suppose that the eye, unaided, ever sees anything but miniatures of objects. Here is a new experiment to convince those who have not reflected on the subject that the stereoscope shows us objects of their natural size.

We had a stereoscopic view taken by Mr. Soule out of our parlor-window, overlooking the town of Cambridge, with the river and the bridge in the foreground. Now, placing this view in the stereoscope, and looking with the left eye at the right stereographic picture, while the right eye looked at the natural landscape, through the window where the view was taken,

it was not difficult so to adjust the photographic and real views that one overlapped the other, and then it was shown that the two almost exactly coincided in all their dimensions.

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Another point in which the stereograph differs from every other delineation is in the character of its evidence. A simple photographic picture may be tampered with. A lady's portrait has been known to come out of the finishing-artist's room ten years younger than when it left the camera. But try to mend a stereograph and you will soon find the difference. Your marks and patches float above the picture and never identify themselves with it. We had occasion to put a little cross on the pavement of a double photograph of Canterbury Cathedral, — copying another stereoscopic picture where it was thus marked. By careful management the two crosses were made perfectly to coincide in the field of vision, but the image seemed suspended above the pavement, and did not absolutely designate any one stone, as it would have done, if it had been a part of the original picture. The impossibility of the stereograph's perjuring itself is a curious illustration of the law of evidence. "At the mouth of two witnesses, or of three, shall he that is worthy of death be put to death; but at the mouth of one he shall not be put to death." No woman may be declared youthful on the strength of a single photograph; but if the stereoscopic twins say she is young, let her be so acknowledged in the high court of chancery of the God of Love.

Some two or three years since, we called the attention of the readers of this magazine to the subject of the stereoscope and the stereograph. Some of our expressions may have seemed extravagant, as if heated by the interest which a curious novelty might not unnaturally excite. We have not lost any of the enthusiasm and delight which that article must have betrayed. After looking over perhaps a hundred thousand stereographs and making a collection of about a thou

sand, we should feel the same excitement on receiving a new lot to look over and select from as in those early days of our experience. To make sure that this early interest has not cooled, let us put on record one or two convictions of the pres

ent moment.

First, as to the wonderful nature of the invention. If a strange planet should happen to come within hail, and one of its philosophers were to ask us, as it passed, to hand him the most remarkable material product of human skill, we should offer him, without a moment's hesitation, a stereoscope containing an instantaneous double-view of some great thoroughfare, -one of Mr. Anthony's views of Broadway, (No. 203,) for instance.

Secondly, of all artificial contrivances for the gratification of human taste, we seriously question whether any offers so much, on the whole, to the enjoyment of the civilized races as the self-picturing of Art and Nature,— with three exceptions: namely, dress, the most universal, architecture, the most imposing, and music, the most exciting, of factitious sources of pleasure.

No matter whether this be an extravagance or an over-statement; none can dispute that we have a new and wonderful source of pleasure in the sun-picture, and especially in the solid sun-sculpture of the stereograph. Yet there is a strange indifference to it, even up to the present moment, among many persons of cultivation and taste. They do not seem to have waked up to the significance of the miracle which the Lord of Light is working for them. The cream of the visible creation has been skimmed off; and the sights which men risk their lives and spend their money and endure sea-sickness to behold, the views of Nature and Art which make exiles of entire families for the sake of a look at them, and render "bronchitis" and dyspepsia, followed by leave of absence, endurable dispensations to so many worthy shepherds, these sights, gathered from Alps, temples, palaces, pyramids, are offered you for a trifle, to carry home with you, that you may look at

---

them at your leisure, by your fireside, with
perpetual fair weather, when you are in
the mood, without catching cold, without
following a valet-de-place, in any order
of succession,- from a glacier to Vesu-
as long
vius, from Niagara to Memphis,
as you like, and breaking off as sudden-
ly as you like; — and you, native of this
incomparably dull planet, have hardly
troubled yourself to look at this divine
gift, which, if an angel had brought it
from some sphere nearer to the central
throne, would have been thought worthy
of the celestial messenger to whom it was
intrusted!

--

It seemed to us that it might possibly awaken an interest in some of our readers, if we should carry them with us through a brief stereographic trip,-describing, not from places, but from the photographic pictures of them which we have in our own collection. Again, those who have collections may like to compare their own opinions of particular pictures mentioned with those here expressed, and those who are buying stereographs may be glad of some guidance in choosing.

But the reader must remember that this trip gives him only a glimpse of a few scenes selected out of our gallery of a thousand. To visit them all, as tourists visit the realities, and report what we saw, with the usual explanations and historical illustrations, would make a formidable book of travels.

Before we set out, we must know something of the sights of our own country. At least we must see Niagara. The great fall shows infinitely best on glass. Thomson's "Point View, 28," would be a perfect picture of the Falls in summer, if a lady in the foreground had not moved her shawl while the pictures were taking, or in the interval between taking the two. His winter view, "Terrapin Tower, 37," is perfection itself. Both he and Evans have taken fine views of the rapids, instantaneous, catching the spray as it leaped and the clouds overhead. Of Blondin on his rope there are numerous views; standing on one foot, on his head, carry

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