Rosa Bonheur is an indefatigable worker. She rises at six o'clock and paints until dusk, when she lays aside her blouse, puts on a bonnet and shawl of most unfashionable appearance, and takes a turn through the neighbouring streets alone, or accompanied only by a favorite dog. Absorbed in her own thoughts, and unconscious of everything around her, the first conception of a picture is frequently struck out by her in these rapid, solitary walks in the twilight.

Living solely for her art, she has gladly resigned the cares of her outward existence to an old and devoted friend, Madame Micas, a widow lady, who with her daughter-an artist, whose exquisite groups of birds are well known in England, and who has been for many years Rosa's most intimate companion-resides with her, relieving her of every material responsibility, and leaving her free to devote herself exclusively to her favorite pursuit. Every summer the two lady artists repair to some mountain-district to sketch. Arrived at the regions inhabited only by the Chamois, the ladies exchange their feminine habiliments for masculine attire, and spend a couple of months in exploring the wildest recesses of the hills, courting the acquaintance of their shy and swift-footed truants, and harvesting "effects" of storm, rain, and vapour, as assiduously as those of sunshine. Though Rosa is fully alive to the beauties of wood and meadow -as we know from the loveliness she has transferred from them to her canvass-mountain scenery is her especial delight. Hitherto her explorations had been confined to the French chains, and the Pyrenees, but in the autumn of fifty-six she visited Scotland and made numerous sketches, in the neighbourhood of Glenfallock, Glencoe, and Ballaculish; and struck by the beauty of the Highland cattle, selected some choice specimens of these, which she had sent down to Wexham Rectory, near Windsor, where she resided, and spent two months in making numerous studies, from which she has already produced two pictures,-"The Denizens of the Mountains," and "Morning in the Highlands." The Alps she has not yet visited, though constantly intending to do so. Her preference being for the stern, the abrupt, and the majestic, instead of the soft, the smiling, and the fair, Italy, with all its glories, has hitherto attracted her less powerfully than the ruder magnificence of the Pyrenees and the north.

Among mountains, the great artist is completely in her element; out of doors from morning till night, lodging in the humblest and remotest of roadside hotels, or in the huts of wood-cutters, charcoalburners, and chamois-hunters, and living contentedly on whatever fare can be obtained. Two years ago, being furnished by families of distinction in the Béarnais and the Basque provinces, with introductions to the rare inhabitants of the region, the party pushed their adventurous wanderings to the little station of Peyronère, the last inhabited point within the French frontier, and thence up the romantic defiles of the Vallée d'Urdos, across the summit of the

Pyrenees. Thanks to the letters they carried, the travellers were hospitably received at each halting-place, and furnished with a trusty guide for the next march. In this way they crossed the mountains, and gained the lonely posada of Canfan, the first on the Spanish side of the ridge, where, for six weeks, they saw no living souls but the bourriquairos (muleteers) with their strings of mules, who would halt for the night at the little inn, setting out at the earliest ray of morning for their descent on the opposite side of the mountains.

The people of the posada lived entirely on curdled sheep's milk; the sole article of food the party could obtain on their arrival. At one time, by an early fall of snow, they were shut out of all communication with the valley. Their threatened starvation was averted by the exertions of Mademosielle Micas, who managed to procure a quantity of frogs, the hind legs of which she enveloped in leaves, and toasted on sticks over a fire on the hearth. On these frogs they lived for two days, when the hostess was induced to attempt the making of butter from the milk of her sheep, and even to allow the conversion of one of these animals into mutton for their benefit. Their larder thus supplied, and black bread being brought for them by the bourriquairos, from some village a very long way off, the party gave themselves up to the pleasure of their wild life, and the business of sketching. The arrival of the muleteers, with their embroidered shirts, their pointed hats, velvet jackets, and leathern breeches and sandals, was always a welcome event. Rosa paid for wine for them, and they, in return, performed their national dances for her after which they would throw themselves down for the night upon sheepskins before the fire furnishing subjects for many picturesque croquis. As the posada was a police station, established there as a terror to smugglers, the little party felt perfectly safe, notwithstanding its loneliness.

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With her Scotch tour, Rosa was so much pleased, that she will probably revisit a district from which she has brought away many agreeable associations, and a wonderful little Skye terrier, named Wasp," of the purest breed, and remarkably intelligent, which she holds in great affection, and for whose benefit she has learned several English phrases, to which "Wasp" responds with appreciative and grateful waggings of the tail.

In the prime of her talent, constantly in communication with the works of nature which occupy her pencil, and determined not to marry, but to devote her life exclusively to her favorite art, Rosa Bonheur may be confidently expected to produce a long line of noble works that will worthily maintain, if they may not heighten, the reputation she has already acquired; while the virtues and excellencies of her private character, will assuredly win for their possessor an ever-widening circle of admiration and respect.

Paris, May 15, 1858.

A. B.

XXXIII.-LINES SUGGESTED BY MORE THAN ONE RECENT DOMESTIC HISTORY.

FULL many a sorrowful and tragic tale
Enfolded lies beneath the semblance frail
Of wedded harmony and calm content!
How oft a heart in aching bosom pent,

And careworn thoughts, are borne abroad unseen,
Veiled in the aspect of a cheerful mien,
By the sad mourner of a home unblest,
A faith unhonored, and a life opprest!

Nor man nor woman may escape

the pain

Which lurks in undiscerning Passion's train.
To short-lived joys, a long regret succeeds;
But whilst a lesson's taught, the learner bleeds.
Haply a pure and justly kindled flame

At Hymen's shrine a happier lot may claim,

For those who, blest with beauty, health, and grace,
Seek on those gifts a crowning charm to place,
And crave a sanction on their promised bliss.
E'en here will steal-in destiny like this,
That "bitter drop," which, mortal cup without
May never mixed be, and turn to nought
Their glorious inheritance-thence cursed
With inward canker-of all ills the worst.
No hand can minister to griefs like these,
Nor holy science bring the sufferer ease.
A lengthened martyrdom without rewards,
Is all that hope permits, or life affords.
Man marvels over-pitying as he goes—
Th' immense diversity of human woes;
Yet, with short-sighted folly, fails to see,
How large a share of this vast misery
Is due to man's own impious agency.
So taught the eloquent recluse, Rousseau,
In days not quite a century ago;
Whilst, in our own, there liveth not a few,
Whom woman's wrongs incline to think it true.
Ask-may the victim of a hasty vow
Ne'er seek release nor remedy? Ah no!
A maiden once enclosed in nuptial ties
Must wear her fetters till she sins or dies;
And suffer as she may, within these bounds,
No cure for sorrows and no balm for wounds.
No shield for her 'gainst contumely or harm;
Law, that "deaf adder," hearkens to no 66
If suppliant in a female form presume
To claim its aid against unequal doom.
Yet, surely, she may fly an unloved mate,
And find relief in undisturbed retreat ?
Not so the law its powerless victim cites
To forced communion and unwilling rites,

charm,"

Which sting with insult; whilst the loathed caress
But desecrates the couch it may not bless.

Such finished torture England's code can boast;
A formal framework, which, at woman's cost,
Flings a disguise o'er ruthless tyranny,
And drugs man's conscience with a specious lie.
Not the Red Indian on Missouri's shore
His strength abuses by one fraction more
Than he who, aided by judicial might,
Counts as a feather in the balance, right,

And justice, sighs, tears, prayers,-nay all beside,
When weighed against his lusts, his will, or pride.
Whilst with a whine, the felon is set free,
And Justice shrinks from her own stern decree,
This, our belauded humanizing age,

Leaves woman prisoned in her "legal" cage:
Withholds her heritage, and ties her hand,
And bids her live a cypher in the land-
A serf in all but mind, yet mocked with show
Of gilded chains--poor solace to her woe.
Say not "Opinion's" force protection sheds
Around the weaker forms, and weaker heads
Of women-doth not "Law" itself proclaim
Their nullity? Compelling them to frame
A fiction and contrivance, would they hold
A portion only of their rightful gold.
Nay, even this resource no more avails,
If, after marriage, Fortune's favoring gales
Should waft them riches; for behold! the man
Seizes the treasure, as "Law" says he can.
Nor may a woman's industry obtain

Its honorable guerdon-for again,

Her husband claims the product as his own:

And we look on, and ask "Can nought be done ?"

Thus, since the State directs that woman's fate
Should hang upon the "fiat" of her mate,
Slight hope that private feeling will assume
A juster tone or mitigate her doom.

Bereft of rights, she learns to wear her chain;
And seeks, by art, the mastery to gain.
Unworthy study, which a juster code
Might turn aside, or prompt to nobler good.
The want of will in man-not want of power,
Defers redemption to a distant hour.

Far distant! for what eye hath seen the strong
Relieve the weak because he did them wrong?
And, sad to say, the sex itself ne'er yet,
Its degradation cared to terminate :

Else had they, long since, risen in the scale

Of social honor and domestic weal.

With urgent pleadings, couched in modest words,
Would wives besiege the conscience of their lords,
Nor "bate one jot" till these revised the laws,
A sure success might follow for their cause.
And, once on fairer ground, be theirs to prove
How well a generous confidence can move
Their souls to virtue, and their hearts to love!

November 1855.

H. G.

XXXIV.-A WOMAN'S PEN.

BY SILVERPEN.

THE Chester and Hereford railway passes through a tract of country, that for its larger portion is one of extreme beauty. Between Shrewsbury and Hereford it crosses the great Silurian region, and there are ranges of hills, rocky escarpments, low-lying valleys, nestling vernal in the sterile wilderness, and brooks and lesser rivers in abundance. It is a classic region to the geologist. Here nature has wrought on the mightiest scale, here written her incontrovertible signs, and here man himself, increasing in knowledge and so in humility, gathers a higher view of the sublimity of Creative Wisdom, and of the worth, on his own part, of duty and patient endeavor in the course he has to run.

It is afternoon, and an early autumn day. A train which speeds swift to Hereford sets down some gentlemen at one of the loveliest of the country stations. Green hills surround it; more sterile ones give darker background; brooks and pools, cottages and cottage gardens, orchards and sun-lit fields, lie peaceful in the hush of afternoon. The laborers are away, the village children yet in school, the women busy in doors, the railway whistle has, as it seems, aroused no one but the solitary station master, who paces his platform up and down. Yet it is far from an unknown, or desolate, or poverty-stricken place, as may be plainly seen. Here, as elsewhere, eternal advance has set her blessed feet. Here is material progress of many kinds, the spiritual will surely follow. New-built cottages and villas nestle in the hollows of the hills, new farms contrast their ruddy brickwork with the intense viridity of hedge and field, a new bridge is being built over the exquisitely picturesque little river, and new roads wind their way about and up the hills. All this newness and vitality is the result of the railway, for the old cottages and farms, and bridge and roads, are all very old indeed, and tell what the old days were when the place was all but unknown, except on the county map, and to the incumbent, the landlords, the farmers, and the untaught drudges who tilled the land.

The eldest of the gentlemen is tall, stout, iron-framed, past middle age. His hair is tinged with grey, yet his face has lost none of its expression of great original force of will, and power of intellect. He has the marked physiognomy of those foremost Englishmen who build bridges, dig mines, construct canals and railways, improve steam engines, invent machinery. If it lacks somewhat a spiritual expression, the force indicated is an equivalent. It is a fine manly earnest English face. The five other gentlemen are clearly his sons. They range from the school lad of fourteen,