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divine or human medium, a fact which would appear less startling if we duly perpended the profound and comprehensive lines of Pope

All nature is but Art unknown to thee,

All chance, direction which thou canst not see,

All discord, harmony not understood,

All partial evil, universal good.

Art, in fact, is man's nature; nature is God's art; human nature the noblest specimen of God's art; and the noblest masterpieces made by man are but the works of his Maker at second-hand-humanified emanations of the Divinity receiving ever-changing modifications from the different moulds through which they are transmitted. This is the view which sublimises and hallows while it identifies both Nature and Art. Nature, by converting the whole earth into a laboratory, an atelier, a study, a picture-gallery of the heavenly chymist, sculptor, author, painter; art, by making those earthly artists the operatives, the foremen, the amanuenses, the delegates, the secondaries of the great First Cause.

True it is, and pity 'tis 'tis true, that many of these gifts are perverted from the high and holy purposes of the donor; but there can be no use without the power of abuse; no human free will without the possibility of contravening the divine will: an inherent defect in the nature of man's art, which it is beyond the art of Nature to control, for it would be a contradiction in terms to suppose the coexistence of ability for wrong and impeccability. Happy the artist who has always considered himself the accountable steward of his intellectual or manual gifts who has felt that his talents had their duties as well as their rights who admitting with Dryden that

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'Tis the most painful proof the world's accurs'd,

That the best things abused become the worst,

has made, according to his means and measure, a faithful application of the gifts entrusted to him.

From this line of duty in the higher ranks of art there will be found few deviations, for the enthusiasm of genius is literally a sense of the God within us; and the best-perhaps

the only true evidence of this sense is the purity of the purposes to which we apply it. To give a licentious direction to a heaven-bestowed gift is the worst species of sacrilege: but this, we repeat, is of rare occurrence except among the petty fry of art. The Di majores, the most eminently endowed, will generally be found not only the most irreproachable, but the most modest-rather penetrated with gratitude for what they have received from the Creator, than proud of what they can impart to their fellow-creatures. Thus ministering to the holy purposes of nature, the genuine artist will contemplate the blaze of his reputation but as a moral halo which should sanctify while it irradiates his path.

PERMITTED TO BE PRINTED,

St. Petersburg, July 1st, 1842..

P. KORSAKOFF, CENSOR.

Printed at the Office of the Journal de St. Petersbourg.

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! The failure of her first little culinary experiment reduced her again to despair. If there be not already a Statue of Disappointment, she would have served for its model. It would have melted an Iron Master to have seen her with her eyes fixed intently on the unfortunate cup of paste, as if asking herself, mentally, was it possible that what she had prepared with such pains for the refreshment of a sick parent, was only fit for what? Why, for the false tin stomach' of a healthy bill-sticker!

"Dearly as she rated her professional accomplishments and acquirements, I verily believe that at that cruel moment she would have given up all her consummate skill in Fancy Work, to have known how to make a basin of gruel! Proud as she was of her embroidery, she would have exchanged her cunning in it for that of the plainest cook,-för oh! of what avail her Tent Stitch, Chain Stitch, German Stitch,or Satin Stitch

VOL. III.

13

to relieve or soothe a suffering father, afflicted with back stitch, front stitch, side stitch, and cross stitch into the bargain?

Nay, of what use was her solider knowledge ?—for example, in History, Geography, Botany, Conchology, Geology, and Astronomy? Of what effect was it that she knew the scientific name for coal and slate, or what comfort that she could tell him how many stars there are in Cassiopeia's Chair, whilst he was twisting with agony on a hard wooden one?

It's no use talking!» exclaimed Miss Roth, after a long silence, "we must have medical advice! »

But how to obtain it? To call in even an apothecary, one must call in his own language, and the two sisters between them did not possess German enough, High or Low, to call for a Doctor's boy. The hint, however, was not lost on the Reverend T. C., who, with a perversity not unusual, seemed to think that he could diminish his own sufferings by inflicting pain on those about him. Accordingly he no sooner overheard the wish for a Doctor, than with renewed moanings and contortions, he muttered the name of a drug that he felt sure would relieve him. But the physic was as difficult to procure as the physician. In vain Miss Ruth turned, in succession, to the Host, the Hostess, the Maid, the Waiter, and Hans the Coachman, and to each, separately, repeated the word Ru-bub. The Host, the Hostess, the Maid, the Waiter, and Hans the Coachman, only shook their heads in concert, and uttered in chorus the old forstend nicht. »

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Oh, I do wish, exclaimed Miss Crane, with a tone and a gesture of the keenest self-reproach; how I do wish that I had brought Buchan's Domestic Medicine abroad with me, instead of Thomson's Seasons ! »

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And of what use would that have been without the medicine-chest? asked Miss Ruth; for I don't pretend to write prescriptions in German, ▸

That's very true, said Miss Crane, with a long deep sigh whilst the sick man, from pain or wilfulness, Heaven alone knew which gave a groan, so terrific that it startled even the phlegmatic Germans.

My papa!my poor dear papa! shrieked the agitated governess; and with some confused notions of a fainting-fitfor he had closed his eyes, and still conscious of a cup in her hand, though not of its contents, she chucked the pastethat twice unfortunate paste into the face of her beloved parent!

CHAPTER XV.

And serve him right too!» cries the little smart bantamlike woman already introduced to the Courteous Reader. An old good-for-nothing! to sham worse than he was, and play on the tender feelings of two affectionate daughters! I'd have pasted him myself if he had been fifty fathers! Not that I think a bit the better of that Miss Crane, who after all, did not do it on purpose. She's as great a gawky as ever. To think with all her schooling she couldn't get a doctor fetched for the old gentleman! »

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But, my dear madam, she was ignorant of the language.

Ignorant of fiddlesticks! How do the deaf and dumb people do? If she couldn't talk to the Germans she might have made signs. »

Impossible! Pray remember that Miss Crane was a schoolmistress, and of the ancien régime, in whose code all facemaking, posturing, and gesticulations, were high crimes and misdemeanors. Many a little Miss Gubbins or Miss Wiggins she had punished with an extra task, if not with the rod itself, for nodding, winking, or talking with their fingers; and is it likely that she would personally have had recourse to signs and signals for which she had punished her pupils with such severity? Do you think that with her rigid notions of propriety, and her figure, she would ever have stooped to what she would have called buffoonery?

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Why to be sure, if you haven't high-coloured her picture: she is starched and frumpish enough, and only fit for a placé among the wax work!»

And besides, supposing physiognomical expression as well as gesticulation to be included in sign-making, this Silent Art requires study and practice, and a peculiar talent! Pray did you ever see Grimaldi ?

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