him, and with another for advising him to submit to public opinion and paint of a saleable size; borrowed from all quarters, and commenced a grand picture of the Judgment of Solomon. His father died while this picture was on the easel, and Haydon's only sister, now left to his protection, found a home with Wilkie's mother. At last the Judgment of Solomon was finished, and exhibited at the Water Colour Society's rooms-Haydon believing he would have no justice in either the Academy or National Gallery. Many connoisseurs reckon it his best work; but the picture's great size rendered it inconvenient for purchasers, and it was finally sold for 6007., the artist's liabilities being just eleven hundred. As the peace of 1814 had opened the continental ports, he took the opportunity of visiting Paris with his friend David, whose prudence, though he often quarrelled with, he still got somehow reconciled to. There the mingling of all nations brought by the allied army, delighted the young painter, no less than the great works of art gathered from so many conquered capitals; but, unsnared by the vices or the gaieties of Paris, he returned and commenced his picture of our Lord's Triumphal Entrance into Jerusalem. It cost him six years' labour, during which all his former embarrassments were repeated. The story of these years is nevertheless brightened with social meetings, friendly converse, and curious remarks on some of Haydon's most celebrated contemporaries. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Charles Lamb, Keats, and Shelley, pass in the current of his journal. With the latter Haydon had many an argument on the subject of religion, and he acutely observes, concerning another eager disputant of the same school, that it was to keep his own mind in countenance that he was so anxious to shake the belief of others. The same observation will apply to many a bold professor of infidelity. The Entrance to Jerusalem was one of Haydon's most successful works in a pecuniary point of view. By its exhibition at the Egyptian Hall he realized a sum which would have been of service to any wiser man; but, sunk in liabilities of all sorts, and determined to exhibit in Edinburgh, because certain critics in Blackwood's Magazine"-then a great authority-had attacked his "principles of art," he satisfied some claimants, and expended most of his profits on the said attempt, which of course did not pay. Here he found sir Walter Scott seated on the steps of the building one morning, waiting till the exhibition should open; and his journal abounds with many a page of gossip on that genial genius, with a whole phalanx of Edinburgh reviewers and Blackwood's men. Haydon's next picture was the Resurrection of Lazarus, which he painted under his usual embarrassments, utterly disdaining portraits or any other work which might have brought him the means of living independent. Connoisseurs are much divided regarding the other figures in this picture; but the head of Lazarus, from which the windingsheet is seen to fall, has been universally acknowledged to be Haydon's grandest production. He tells us that the idea was suggested to him when looking over an old print of the same subject in the British Museum, in which a blank space had been, either by design or accident, left where the face of Lazarus should be. In the progress of his work, Haydon was arrested for a debt due to an upholsterer; and on the bailiff being shown into the painting-room, he was so struck with the picture, even in its unfinished state, that he half refused to arrest the painter, and assisted him in getting the matter staved off for some time. Still in debt, and desperate after historical painting, Haydon married, in the year 1821, Mrs. Mary Hayman, the widow of a respectable merchant, who had left her in straitened circumstances with two orphan sons. To these boys he became a father, treating them in all respects as his own children; and through all his improvidence, vanity, and even meanness, there henceforth runs one golden thread in Haydon's history. His wife is still mentioned as "his dear love" and "dearest Mary." The worldliness of his prayers, if one may use the expression, is softened by blessings on her and his children; for a large family gradually added to the artist's cares, and his journal goes on with the household record of births, educations, and deaths-as many of his children died young. Haydon felt these bereavements deeply; and with reference to one of them, he says: "My sweet Fanny died this month. There is now such an intimate connection with me and the grave, that I shall never break the chain. At breakfast, at dinner, and at tea I see her. I look forward to my own death with placid resignation. I should like to finish my life, clear up my own character, and leave my name free from the spots misfortune has implanted there." He still continued, however, to act with great imprudence. Though the persuasions of friends and his own necessities made him condescend to portrait-painting for some time, and it promised to be remunerative, his pride disdained the work. The academicians, whom he had provoked, criticised his portraits severely, and he returned to another great picture, the Last Plague of Egypt in Pharaoh's Palace. "When a great canvass is up," says his journal, "I feel sheltered, though I have not one farthing in my pocket. There is nothing like a great canvass. Let me be penniless, hungry, thirsty, my heart expands, and I stride my room like a Hercules." In the midst of this picture, Haydon was once more arrested for debt, and thrown into the King's Bench prison. The exhibitions of vice, misfortune, and degradation which here surrounded him, are sadly commented on in his journal; and one scene suggested his popular picture of the Mock Election, which, after taking the benefit of the insolvent act, he painted in a poor lodging, and to his great joy it was purchased by king George the Fourth. Haydon describes himself as seeing from his window a procession of prisoners, representing a mayor and corporation, with a grotesque and ludicrous mockery of civic dignity, proceeding to elect two members to represent the King's Bench and watch over its rights in parliament. Some of the assistants had sat in the House of Commons, some had been colonels in the army, and the artist's pencil caught not only the humour, but the sad moral of the scene. Haydon produced some other pic. tures of this order, amongst which his Waiting for the Times is the most celebrated. All were more or less successful; but the gulf of old debts, gene ral improvidence, and his zeal for high art, how- | tried to get reconciled to the Academy, and how ever unprofitable, left him still an unfortunate dependent on friends. The habit of application for assistance seems to have grown with his family necessities, and his journal is one continuous record of, "This day threatened with an execution. Wrote to the duke of Devonshire;" "arrested on a writ; wrote to lord Egremont "-till the only thing that amazes the reader is that his demands should have been so liberally answered. All this time he was presenting petitions to parliament, and writing letters to every successive ministry, on the subject of public patronage for art. The duke of Wellington was a special recipient of these appeals, and his answer to one, regarding the Nelson column then in contemplation, is characteristic. "May 21, 1839. The duke of Wellington presents his compliments to Mr. Haydon. The duke is a member of the committee for the execution of the plan for the erecting a monument of the late lord Nelson. He is not the committee, nor the secretary to the committee, and above all is not the corresponding secretary." Many such rebuffs did the troublesome artist incur; but he wrote and petitioned on; revisited the King's Bench three times; painted his famous picture of Napoleon Musing on the Shore of St. Helena for sir Robert Peel, stipulated that the price should be one hundred guineas, wanted two hundred when it was finished, annoyed his patron, got thirty guineas additional, and said, as he acknowledges, many bitter things which the generous statesman did not remember when asked to provide for his son and assist himself. Soon after this Haydon commenced his lectures on art, which were delivered in all the great towns of the kingdom, and subsequently published. Most critics agree that in this department he was a master spirit; and it was owing to his lectures in Liverpool that he received a commission from a body of gentlemen for a picture of the duke of Wellington surveying the field of Waterloo. He had contemplated the subject years before, and wrote to the duke for sittings, for old regimentals, and for sights of his horse, till his grace requested to be troubled no more about pictures. Now, however, there having been a cessation of letters for some time, the artist was courteously permitted to visit Walmer Castle, where he was hospitably entertained, and allowed to fill his journal with memoranda about the great man, whom Haydon sincerely admired. He tells us that the duke would not sit to him on Sunday, of his reverent demeanour in the country church, and how, when he sat at breakfast, six healthy, noisy grandchildren were brought to the windows. "Let them in,' said his grace. In they came, and rushed on him. How do you do, duke? how do you do, duke?' Toast and tea were then in demand. Three got on one side, three on the other, and he hugged them its members declined such a troublesome associate. From this date the artist's days grow darker; necessities press upon him; patrons become weary; and notwithstanding his acknowledged service to historical painting, in bringing its claims before the public, he was passed by in the decoration of the new houses of parliament. This had been his cherished hope, and, as his editor says, the disappointment broke poor Haydon's heart, though it is probable there was artistic justice in the arrangement; for continual embarrassment is not friendly to art, and Haydon's latter works had given evidences of haste and decline, which the painter himself did not perceive. He tried frescoes; he painted Napoleon Musing, of every size and finish; tired friends, and wore out the patience of even his landlord, who had helped him in all his difficulties, and began with "Dear Haydon," in reply to offensive letters when the painter thought himself insulted. Yet it should not be forgotten that Haydon was in his way charitable and helpful to others. We find him praising the young sculp tor Lough, relieving an officer's widow with his last five shillings, and applying to a former pupil, who had deserted his craft and become owner of three butter shops: "Webb,' said I, when you were a poor youth I gave you my time for nothing; I want ten pounds. You shall have it, Mr. Haydon.' Something like a true perception of his own doings seems also to cross him at times. "I had injured friends," he writes, "by not paying their loans. I had been four times in prison. I had been swallowed up by ambition. All these things were crimes; and I repented." The last recorded benefaction came from sir Robert Peel, in the midst of his own political difficulties in 1846, and one week after, on the 22nd of June, Haydon's journal abruptly closes. The last entries were written at ten in the morning, together with a sort of will, setting forth his liabilities, mentioning where his unsold pictures, and the six great designs he never finished, were to be found in the hands of brokers, in old warehouses and lumber rooms; with grateful acknowledgments to all who had befriended him, and an earnest petition for pardon addressed to his poor wife and children, whom he recommended to sir Robert Peel as his last hope. Before eleven, the man had passed from this world to the invisible, rashly dismissed by his own hand. He committed suicide in the absence of his wife and daughter, who had gone to visit a friend at his special request. Such was the end of dependence may be placed, and which, to me, and to all one who commenced life with high hopes. In life to whom I have hitherto communicated the fact, is and death, he was a melancholy example of the quite new, and appears unrecorded. The social dispofact that great talents avail not without sound sition of fish, although admitted as regards the carp principles. Some that knew him intimately have and some few other species, does not seem to hav been indeed supposed that in his ill-balanced mind acknowledged in relation to other and larger fish and there might have been a tinge of incipient in-not lead one to expect much development of that the cerebral organization of this class of animals would sanity, which bitter disappointment and the pressure of necessity developed. This is certainly a charitable construction; let us hope it is also a true one. But as Haydon's greatest faults, pride, self-will, and imprudence, may be found in characters unendowed with his talents, the moral of his sad story is a warning to all mortals never to sacrifice present duty to the hope of future greatness, "nor think of themselves more highly than they ought to think," knowing that "God resisteth the prond, but giveth grace to the humble." character. At Logan, N.B., the seat of colonel M'Dowall, there is a pond cut out of the natural rock, which is accessible by steps; and in this pond, to which the tide has regular entrance, various fish, among others cod and ling, of considerable size, are kept and fed for the table. They are submitted to the care of an old woman, whose voice seems to be familiar to the fishes, and to whose call they readily pay attention. No sooner is her voice heard than the heads of numerous fish may be seen projected from the surface of the water, and they eagerly proceed to the side of the pond, there to receive from the hands of their keeper sustenance in the form of limpets, which are most eagerly seized and rapidly swallowed. This docility in the obtaining of food is, however, not the most remarkable circumstance connected with their habitation here, for so thoroughly domesticated are they by this attention to their wants, that they readily permit themselves to be taken out of the water, fondled and shook about, apparantly to the great satisfaction of the animal. I am not aware of any instance of such or similar docility being upon record, and as an interesting fact in the natural history of this class of nature I beg to make it known to your readers." REMOVING A RING FROM A YOUNG LADY'S FINGER. -Dr. Castle communicates to the "Boston Medical and Surgical Journal" the following ingenious method, devised by him, for extricating a young lady's finger from a ring, which was too small for her. We give his story in his own language:-"An interesting young lady about seventeen years of age had presented to her a gold ring, which she forced over the joints of her middle finger. After a few minutes, the finger commenced swelling, and the ring could not be removed. The family physician, Dr. - was sent for, but could do nothing. The family, and the young lady especially, were now in the greatest consternation. A jeweller SATISFACTION. A truly good man is a satisfied was sent for. After many futile attempts to cut the man. He is contented in his station, and eats his ring with cutting-nippers, and to saw it apart with a bread with a thankful heart. He is satisfied also with fine saw, and after bruising and lacerating the flesh, his spiritual portion. He has bread to cat which the warm fomentations and leeches were applied; but all world knoweth not of; waters to drink which the without affording the slightest benefit. Dr. -re. world do not taste; a light to guide him which the quested my presence, with the compliment, that per- world do not see; an employment to engage him, even haps my mechanical ingenuity might suggest somethe working out of his own salvation, in which the thing I at once proceeded to the house of the patient, world feel no interest; and an object before him, a and found the young lady in a most deplorable state of crown of glory, which the world do not contemplate. mental agony, the doctor embarrassed, and the family What do I say? The love of God is in his heart, and in a high state of excitement. I procured some pre-Christ is in him the hope of glory: how, then, can he pared chalk, and applied it between the ridges of be otherwise than satisfied? swollen flesh, and all around the finger, and succeeded in drying the oozing and abraded flesh; then, with a narrow piece of soft linen I succeeded in polishing the THE HEART IN THE FAMILY.-We sometimes ring, by drawing it gently round the ring between the meet with men who seem to think that any indulgence swollen parts. I then applied quicksilver to the whole in an affectionate feeling is a weakness. They will resurface of the ring. In less than three minutes the turn from a journey, and greet their families with a ring was broken (by pressing it together) in four pieces, the cold and lofty splendour of an iceberg, surrounded distant dignity, and move among their children with to the great relief of all parties. In a similar manner (without the chalk) I some time since extracted a by its broken fragments. There is hardly a more unsmall brass ring from the ear of a child, who, childlike, natural sight on earth than one of these families withhad inserted it into the cavity of its ear. The operation out a heart. A father had better extinguish a boy's was more painful and tedious, but was equally success- eyes than take away his heart. Who that has expeful. The modus operandi is as follows:-The quick-rienced the joys of friendship, and values sympathy silver at once permeates the metals, if clean, (with the exception of iron, steel, platina, and one or two others,) and amalgamates with them. It immediately crystal lizes, and renders the metals as hard and as brittle as glass. Hence the ease with which metals amalgamated with quicksilver can be broken. INTELLIGENCE OF FISH.-"I will avail myself," says a correspondent of the "Literary Gazette," "of this opportunity to draw the attention of your numerous readers among naturalists to a fact lately witnessed by my daughter, lady Dillon, on whose veracity every and affection, would not rather ise all that is beautiful in nature's scenery, than be robbed of the hidden treasure of his heart? Cherish, then, your heart's best affections. Indulge in the warm and gushing emotions of filial, parental, and fraternal love. Think it not a weakness. God is love. Love God, everybody, and everything that is lovely. Teach your children to love; to love the rose; to love the robin; to love their parents; higher still-to love their God. Let it be the studied object of their domestic culture to give them warm hearts, ardent affections. Bind your whole family together by these strong cords. You cannot make them too strong. Religion is love-love to God, love to man. Varieties. PERMANENCY OF INDIAN INK.-A correspondent of "The Builder says:-" Until a better substitute can be found, I strongly recommend the universal use of Indian ink in preparing all manuscripts intended to convey information to future ages. It is well known that all the inks in common use are far inferior to those used by the ancients. 'Doomsday Book,' after the lapse of nearly eighteen centuries, is in a much better state of preservation than the state papers of the period of our last two kings. The inks used by our forefathers, I believe, contained carbon; and as that substance is the base of Indian ink, all documents prepared with it must, from the indestructible property of the carbon, remain unchanged so long as they can be preserved from damp and other destroying influences; and I am not aware of any plan so likely to secure their preservation as that I have adopted." HORSES IN PARIS.-According to the last account taken, the number of horses in Paris had increased by 20,000 since the 2nd of December, 1851; the number being at the last census 94,000. ALLEGED PRESERVATION FROM CHOLERA.-A French physician, Dr. Burn by name, alleges that copper and some other metals is a preservative against the cholera; and in proof of it he declares, no doubt on good authority, that in the different visitations of the cholera in France, the men employed in copper and iron works, and especially in the former, entirely escaped any attack of the disease, though it caused devastation around them. The same fact, he adds, was observed in Russia, in Germany, and in other countries. He recommends, we understand, the wearing of a sheet of copper round the breast; and we hear that he will shortly arrive at Newcastle, by direction of the French government, to try the system. The Academy of Medicine in Paris is now engaged in examining the communications he has made to it on the subject.-Literary Gazette. PAGANINI UNBURIED.-It appears that the great violinist, who died so many years back, has not yet been buried. The Roman Catholic clergy of Nice refused him Christian sepulture, because he refused to receive the sacrament in his last moments. His nephew and heir ap plied to the ecclesiastical court for an order for them to proceed to the burial. After immense delay, his application was rejected. He therefore appealed to the archiepiscopal court of Genoa. After more delay, a judgment was given, quite recently, to the effect that the interment should take place in the ordinary cemetery. But against this decision the ecclesiastical party has presented an appeal to a superior jurisdiction. In the meantime the remains of the great violinist are left in a garden. SAVING TO AGRICULTURE BY STEAM PLOUGHING.— The result of a substitution of the steam plough for our present systems of ploughing would be highly economical. In England, taking Caird's estimate, there are 14,000,000 acres in tillage; these are ploughed certainly once every year. The cost of the operation averages at least ten shillings per acre-thus giving a total of 7,000,000l. per annum. A machine just constructed by Usher of Edinburgh, does the work better than by the plough for 2s. 6d. per acre, or at 75 per cent less cost. The saving would consequently be about 5,250,000l. per annum. The labour of 50,000 men and 100,000 horses required for this one operation would be replaced, and a saving in the consumption of corn effected to the extent at least of 1,500,000 quarters, which would be thus rendered available for the more direct wants of the community. This calculation was recently given by J. Wilson, esq., at a meeting of the Royal Institution. THE LATE PARLIAMENTARY SESSION.-The House of Commons sat 160 days in the late session. The number of hours was 1193 and 14 minutes. It sat 1333 hours after midnight. The numbers of entries in the votes were 11,378. The average sitting was 7 hours 27 minutes and 37 seconds. CLOTHING IN INDIA.-It is a fact, says the "Bombay Gazette," that the entire population of India do not spend 6d. per head a year for clothing. SINGULAR APPLICATION OF THE STEREOSCOPE.The Emperor of Russia is building a large bridge over the river Volga, and in his impatience to have it completed, has been accustomed to make frequent long expeditions to the works, to see what progress has been made and to hurry on the workmen. Now, however, the architect saves all trouble to his imperial master, and maintains his own credit, by having a couple of true and undeniable copies of the works taken once a fortnight by the sun, and sent to St. Petersburg. There they are put into a stereoscope, with which the Emperor may sit in his own room, and in which he may count every dam and post, and see every ripple of the distant tide. A DAINTY MORSEL.-A strange scene took place lately in the Jardin des Plantes. Close to the inclosure of the hippopotamus was an elegantly-dressed lady, having a king Charles's dog. The little animal having gone inside the rails, was seized by the hippopotamus, and swallowed almost in an instant. THE NEW GIGANTIC STEAM-SHIP.-The largest vessel ever heard of is now in course of construction by Messrs. Scott Russell, and Co., for the Eastern Steam Navigation Company, and which is intended to carry sufficient fuel for the entire voyage to and from India or Australia. Her length is to be 680 feet, breadth 83 ft., depth 58 ft., with screw and paddle engines of aggregate nominal horse. power of 2600. In addition to taking from 4000 to 6000 tons of coals, she will be able to carry 5000 tons measure. ment of merchandise, and will have 500 cabins for passengers of the highest class, with ample space for poops and lower class passengers. The whole of her bottom, and up to six feet above the water line, will be double and of a cellular construction, so that any external injury will not affect the tightness or safety of the ship. The vessel will be divided into ten water-tight compartments. It is through the water at the velocity of fifteen knots an hour; computed that her great length will enable her to pass and by the great speed, combined with the absence of stoppages for coaling, the voyage between England and India, vid the Cape, may be accomplished in 30 or 33 days and between England and Australia in 33 or 36 days.— Journal of the Society of Arts. A ROMANCE OF THE TROWEL AND MALLET.—A trowel and mallet used by H. R. H. the Prince Consort, on the 11th of June, 1844, in laying the foundation-stone of the Hospital for Consumption, at Brompton, have just realized, it may be said, for the hospital, the handsome sum of nearly 15,000l., in a way so singular as to be well worthy of record. When the stone was laid, a gilt trowel was made use of by the prince. At a bazaar then held, in aid of the institution, this trowel was exhibited, and a gentleman who saw it, Mr. J. M'Cullom, of Bedford-place, purchased it for thirty guineas. A few days afterwards it became first known to the committee that it was usual to request the layer of the stone to accept the trowel, and regaining possession of the implement, that it might be all concerned were desirous of repairing the error, and offered to the prince. A representation was made to Mr. M'Cullom, and, though very reluctant to part with it, he at length consented, but refused to take back the thirty guineas. The trowel, being sent to the prince, was aecepted. Mr. M'Cullom was presented with the handsomely-carved walnut-wood mallet, also used by his royal highness. These circumstances, trifling in themselves, seem to have made a lasting impression on Mr. M'Cullom's mind. So far from feeling aggrieved at the loss of the trowel, the transaction appears to have strengthened his became acquainted with. On his death, a short time since, interest in the charity, which he thus, for the first time, he left his property to his sister, his only surviving relative; but a memorandum in his desk conveyed his desire that, at her death, she would bequeath it to the Hospital for Con sumption. This wish the lady held sacred; and by her will, just proved, she leaves it to the hospital. Her estate is being realized, and will leave a net surplus not far short of 15,000l.-Builder. |