The cynic, having cast aside his spectacles, wandered about the world a miserable object, and was punished with an agonizing desire of light for the wilful blindness of his former life.  The whole night long he would lift his splendor-blasted orbs to the moon and stars; he turned his face eastward at sunrise as duly as a Persian idolater; he made a pilgrimage to Rome to witness the magnificent illumination of Saint Peter’s church, and finally perished in the Great Fire of London, into the midst of which he had thrust himself with the desperate idea of catching one feeble ray from the blaze that was kindling earth and heaven.

Matthew and his bride spent many peaceful years and were fond of telling the legend of the Great Carbuncle.  The tale, however, toward the close of their lengthened lives, did not meet with the full credence that had been accorded to it by those who remembered the ancient lustre of the gem.  For it is affirmed that from the hour when two mortals had shown themselves so simply wise as to reject a jewel which would have dimmed all earthly things its splendor waned.  When our pilgrims reached the cliff, they found only an opaque stone with particles of mica glittering on its surface.  There is also a tradition that as the youthful pair departed the gem was loosened from the forehead of the cliff and fell into the enchanted lake, and that at noontide the Seeker’s form may still be seen to bend over its quenchless gleam.

Some few believe that this inestimable stone is blazing as of old, and say that they have caught its radiance, like a flash of summer lightning, far down the valley of the Saco.  And be it owned that many a mile from the Crystal Hills I saw a wondrous light around their summits, and was lured by the faith of poesy to be the latest pilgrim of the Great Carbuncle.

THE PROPHETIC PICTURES.[1]

“But this painter!” cried Walter Ludlow, with animation.  “He not only excels in his peculiar art, but possesses vast acquirements in all other learning and science.  He talks Hebrew with Dr. Mather and gives lectures in anatomy to Dr. Boylston.  In a word, he will meet the best-instructed man among us on his own ground.  Moreover, he is a polished gentleman, a citizen of the world—­yes, a true cosmopolite; for he will speak like a native of each clime and country on the globe, except our own forests, whither he is now going.  Nor is all this what I most admire in him.”

[Footnote 1:  This story was suggested by an anecdote of Stuart related in Dunlap’s History of the Arts of Designs—­a most entertaining book to the general reader, and a deeply-interesting one, we should think, to the artist.]

“Indeed!” said Elinor, who had listened with a women’s interest to the description of such a man.  “Yet this is admirable enough.”

“Surely it is,” replied her lover, “but far less so than his natural gift of adapting himself to every variety of character, insomuch that all men—­and all women too, Elinor—­shall find a mirror of themselves in this wonderful painter.  But the greatest wonder is yet to be told.”