heaven, and was absorbed in devotion.  At that moment, a face of unutterable beauty presented itself in the bright moonlight before him.  With a single glance, he discovered it was that of Lucifer, but softened to angelic loveliness.  Uttering a wild and piercing shriek, he started from it towards the edge of the precipice.  Beatrice for it was she—­instantly caught him by the hand to drag him back; and pronounced his name.  The words and the touch dissipated his illusion; and with the rapidity of lightning revealed to his mind the fatal secret of his misery.  He now saw that, having been occupied with thoughts of her when he painted his picture, he had lent a portion of her beauty to the fallen archangel; and hence the pain her looks had occasionally inflicted on him.  While this conviction darted into his mind, he was already falling over the precipice; but he still grappled at the rock, and made desperate efforts to recover himself.  Beatrice, also, finding that he was going and drawing her after him, for she still held him by the hand, caught hold of a tuft of grass which grew on the edge of the cliff and grasped it convulsively.  In this situation they hung for an instant, suspended over the abyss; but the grass-tuft by which she clung gradually gave way; and in another instant a sullen plunge in the deep waters below told that the loves and miseries of Spinello and Beatrice were ended.

Note.—­The passage of Lanzi, to which I referred at the commencement, is as follows:—­

“The ‘Fall of the Angels,’ still remains in St. Angelo, at Arezzo, in which Lucifer is represented so terrible, that it afterwards haunted the dreams of the artist, and, deranging both his mind and body, hastened his death.  Bernardo Daddi was his scholar.”—­History of Painting in, Italy, vol. i. p. 65. Roscoe’s Translation.

* * * * *

First in the poetry is the Bechuana Boy, an affecting narrative, by Mr. Pringle, as may be implied from one verse: 

  He came with open aspect bland,
    And modestly before me stood,
  Caressing with a kindly hand
    That fawn of gentle brood;
  Then meekly gazing in my face
    Said in the language of his race,
  With smiling look yet pensive tone—­
    “Stranger—­I’m in the world alone.”

The Irish Mother to her Child, a Song, by Mr. Banim, has great force and feeling, with the date 1828, significantly appended to this stanza: 

  Alas! my boy, so beautiful! alas! my love, so brave! 
  And must your manly Irish limbs still drag it to the grave? 
  And thou, my son, yet have a son, foredoomed a slave to be? 
  Whose mother, too, must weep o’er him the tears I weep o’er thee.

Here, too is an exquisite snatch—­on Memory: 

  Fond Memory, like a mockingbird,
  Within the widow’d heart is heard,
  Repeating every touching tone
  Of voices that from earth hath gone.