Death came—­and Poetry was o’er,
    The chords of song had ceas’d to thrill,
  The Minstrel’s name was heard no more,
    But one true heart was heaving still—­
  His Mary’s voice would nightly weave
  Its lone, deep notes around his grave!

* * * * *

CLAUDE LORRAINE.

Lanzi, in his History of Italian Painting, gives the following exquisite encomium on this prince of landscape painters: 

“His landscapes present to the spectator an endless variety; so many views of land and water, so many interesting objects, that, like an astonished traveller, the eye is obliged to pause and measure the extent of the prospect, and his distances of mountain and of sea, are so illusive, that the spectator feels, as it were, fatigued by gazing.  The edifices and temples which so finely round off his compositions, the lakes peopled with aquatic birds, the foliage diversified in conformity to the different kinds of trees, all is nature in him; every object arrests the attention of an amateur, every thing furnishes instruction to a professor.  There is not an effect of light, or a reflection in water which he has not imitated; and the various changes of the day are nowhere better represented than in Claude.  In a word, he is truly the painter who, in depicting the three regions of air, earth, and water, has combined the whole universe.  His atmosphere almost always bears the impress of the sky at Rome, whose horizon is, from its situation, rosy, dewy, and warm.  He did not possess any peculiar merit in his figures, which are insipid, and generally too much attenuated; hence he was accustomed to remark to the purchasers of his pictures, that he sold them the landscape, and presented them with the figures gratis.”

* * * * *

“TINTORETTO,” says his biographer, “produced works in which the most captious of critics could not find a shade of defect.”

* * * * *

KISSING THE FOOT.

Rollo, the celebrated Danish hero, (whose stature is said to have been so gigantic, that no horse could carry him) on becoming a feudatory of the French crown, was required, in conformity with general usage, to kiss the foot of his superior lord; but he refused to stoop to what he considered so great a degradation; yet as the homage could not be dispensed with, he ordered one of his warriors to perform it for him.  The latter, as proud as his chief, instead of stooping to the royal foot, raised it so high, that the poor monarch fell to the ground, amid the laughter of the assembly.

* * * * *

BOHEMIAN BLESSING.

  Now sleep in blessedness—­till morn
    Brings its sweet light;
  And hear the awful voice of God
    Bid ye—­Good Night! 
  Yet ere the hand of slumber close
    The eye of care,
  For the poor huntsman’s soul’s repose
    Pour out one prayer.