"She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps, made, to render the version more agreeable to the Suddenly a wild melody arose; it was the beautioriginal psalm; and also verbal alterations, to in- ful maniac's voice, rich, full, and inimitable. Her troduce properly, or to connect, the selected por-waved her body as she sung with touching pathos, hands were crossed on her heaving bosom, and she tions. The principle of selection has been, to retain every psalm and verse which appeared serviceable, and to omit the rest. This report was presented to the General Convention held in October, 1832; and, in pursuance of its recommendations, one hundred and twenty-four selections of entire psalms or of portions of psalms were adopted," and are now in use in all the churches of the Protestant Episcopal communion in the United States. From the Charleston Courier. THE BEAUTIFUL MANIAC. "The fire that on my bosom preys In the morning train from Petersburgh, there was a lady closely veiled, in the same car with ourselves. She was dressed in the purest white, wore gold bracelets, and evidently belonged to the higher ircles of society. Her figure was delicate, though well developed, and exquisitely symmetrical; and when she occasionally drew aside her richly embroidered veil, the glimpse of her features, which the beholder obtained, satisfied him of her extreme loveliness. Beside her sat a gentleman in deep mourning, who watched over her with unusual solicitude, and several times when she attempted to rise, he excited the curiosity of the passengers by detaining her in her seat. Outside the, cars all was confusion; passengers looking to their baggage, porters running, cabmen cursing, and all the usual hurry and bustle attending the departure of a railroad train. One shrill warning whistle from the engine, and we moved slowly away. At the first motion of the car, the lady in white started to her feet with one heart-piercing scream, and her bonnet falling off, disclosed the most lovely features we ever contemplated. Her raven tresses fell over her shoulders in graceful disorder, and clasping her hands in prayer, she turned her dark eyes to heaven! What agony was in that look !— What beauty, too, what heavenly beauty, had not so much of misery been stamped upon it. Alas! that one glance told a melancholy tale. she was changed As by the sickness of the soul; her mind Had wandered from its dwelling, and her eyes They had not their own lustre, but the look Which is not of the earth; she was become The queen of a fantastic realm; her thoughts Were combinations of disjointed things And forms, impalpable and unperceived Of others' sight, familiar were to hers." Her brother, the gentleman in black, was unremitting in his efforts to soothe her spirit. He led her back to her seat; but her hair was still unbound, and her beauty unveiled. The cars rattled on, and the passengers in groups resumed their conversation. *Report of the Committee on the Psalms in metre, p. 3. New York, 1831. And lovers are around her sighing, She sings the wild songs of her dear native plains, "Has sorrow thy young days shaded Each feeling that once was dear; She then sung a fragment of the beautiful hymn, "Jesus, lover of my soul, Let me to thy bosom fly." she threw herself on her knees beside her brother, Another attempt to rise up was prevented, and and gave him such a mournful, entreating look, with ter!" that scarcely a passenger could refrain from a plaintive "Save me, my brother! save your sis(was he a man?) who called on the conductor to weeping. We say scarcely, for there was one man scorn of the company. His insensibility to such a put her out of the car." He received the open scene of distress almost defies belief; and yet this is, in every particular, an "ow'er true tale."* heart be softened by the recollection of his brutalShould he ever read these lines, may his marble ity! bewitching voice to one of the most solemn sacred Again the poor benighted beauty raised her airs; "Oh where shall rest be found, Rest for the weary soul?" And continued her melancholy chant until we reached the steamer Mount Vernon, on board of which we descended the magnificent James river, the unhappy brother and sister occupying the "ladies' cabin." His was a sorrow too profound for ordinary consolation; and no one dared intrude so far upon his grief as to satisfy his curiosity. We were standing on the promenade deck, admiring the beautiful scenery of the river, when at one of the landings, the small boat pulled away for the shore with the unhappy pair, en route for the asylum at She was standing erect in the stern of the boat, her head still uncovered, and her white dress and raven tresses fluttering in the breeze. The boat returned, and the steamer moved on for Norfolk.-They were gone! that brother with his broken heart, that sister with her melancholy union of beauty and madness. GLENDARLOCH. *Me ipso teste. From Blackwood's Magazine. THE PORTRAIT. chasers? That Russian mujiks should gaze delightedly upon the Yeruslán Lazarévitches, on pictures of Phomá and Yerema, of the heroes of A TALE: ABRIDGED FROM THE RUSSIAN OF GOGOL. their tales and legends, was quite natural; the BY THOMAS B. SHAW. CHAPTER I. By none of the numerous objects of interest in the busy city of St. Petersburg are the steps of the sauntering pedestrian more frequently arrested than by the picture-shop in the Stchúkin Dvor.* True it is that the specimens of art there displayed are distinguished rather by eccentricity of design, and rudeness of execution, than by striking evidences of genius. The paintings are for the most part in oil, coated with green varnish, and fitted into frames of dark yellow tinsel. A winter-piece with white trees, a ferociously red sunset, like the glow of a conflagration, a Flemish boor with pipe and dislocated-looking arm-resembling a turkey-cock in ruffles, rather than a human being -such are the ordinary subjects. Beside them hang a few engravings: portraits of Khosrev-Mirza in his sheepskin bonnet, and of truculent gen a objects represented were adapted to popular taste and comprehension; but who would buy those tawdry oil-paintings, those Flemish boors, those crimson and azure landscapes, which, whilst pretending to a higher grade of art, served but to prove its deep degradation? Not one redeeming touch could be traced in the senseless caricatures, to whose authors' clumsy hands the mason's trowel would assuredly have been better adapted than the painter's pencil. It was the very dotage of incapacity. The coloring, the treatment, the coarse obtrusive mechanical touch, seemed those of a clumsily constructed automaton, rather than of a human painter. Thus musing, our artist stood for some time before the vile daubs that ex cited his disgust, gazing at them long after the train of his reflections had led him far from them; whilst the master of the shop, a little, gray, illshaven fellow in a frieze cloak, chattered and chaffered and bargained as indefatigably as if the young man had announced himself a purchaser. "Well, now," said he, "for these mujíks and the There's landscape, I'll take a white note.* painting! It hurts your eye, it's so bright; just received from the Exchange; varnish hardly dry. Take the winter-piece. Fifteen rubles! Frame worth the money. There's a winter, there's snow you!" for Here the eager trader gave a slight fillip to the canvass, as if he expected the snow to fall off. erals with cocked hats and crooked noses. Bundies of coarse prints, on large paper broadsides, are suspended on either side the door. Here we have the Princess Miliktris Kirbitierna ;† yonder the city of Jerusalem, its houses and churches smeared with vermilion, which gaudy color has also invaded a part of the ground and a brace of Russian pilgrims in huge fur gloves. If these works of art find few purchasers, they at least attract a throng of starers; drunken ragamuffin lacqueys on their way from the cook's shop, bearing piles of plates with their masters' dinners, which grow cold whilst they gape at the pictures; great-coated Russian soldiers with penknives for sale; Okhta pedlar-women with boxes of shoes. "Not so fast, my friend,” cried the artist, startator expresses his admiration in his own peculiar tled from his reverie, and perceiving the brisk dealer way peasants point with their fingers; soldiers about to tie up the three daubs. His first impulse gaze with stolid gravity; dirty foot-boys and black-was to walk away, but he felt ashamed to purchase guard apprentices laugh and apply the caricatures nothing after standing so long before the shop, and to each other; old serving-men in frieze cloaks causing the hungry-looking old salesman so large "Wait a little," he stand listless and agape, indulging their propensity an expenditure of breath. to utter idleness. Each spec A number of persons answering to the above description were assembled before the picture-shop, when they were joined by a young man in a thread-bare cloak and shabby garments. He was a painter, named Tchartkoff, as enthusiastic in his art as he was needy in his circumstances and careless in his dress. Pausing before the booth, he smiled as he glanced at the wretched pictures there displayed. The next moment the expression of mirthful contempt faded from his thin, ardent features, and he fell a-thinking. The question had occurred to him, amongst what class of people could those tawdry, worthless productions find pur *A kind of bazaar or perpetual market, where secondhand furniture, old books and pictures, earthenware, and other cheap commodities, are exposed for sale in small open booths. A personage who figures, like two or three others afterwards alluded to, in the popular legends and fairy tales of Russia. "Take the three. I'll send them home at Where does your honor live? Boy, a once. cord!" said. "I will see if you have anything to suit me." And, stooping down, he turned over a number of battered dusty old pictures heaped like lumber upon the ground. They were chiefly oldfashioned family portraits, likenesses of unknown and insignificant faces, with torn canvass, and frames that had lost their gilding. Nevertheless Tchartkóff carefully examined them, thinking it possible he might pick up something good. He had more than once heard stories of pictures of the great masters being met with amongst the dust and trash of such shops as this. The dealer, perceiving he had probably nailed a customer, ceased his bustling importunity, resumed his station at the door, and recommenced his appeals to the passengers. He shouted, chattered, and pointed to his wares, but without success; then he had a long chat with an old-clothesman, whose establishment was on the opposite side of the alley; and at last, recollecting *Twenty-five rubles. that all this time there was a customer in his shop, | Vasilievskü Ostrow, in which he occupied a modest he turned his back upon the public and walked in. "Have you chosen anything, sir?" lodging, ascended the uncleanly staircase, 'and knocked impatiently at the door of his apartment. The artist stood immovable before a large por- It was opened by a slatternly lad in a blue shirt—his trait, whose frame had once been richly gilt, al- cook, model, color-grinder and floor-sweeper, who though it now scarcely retained a few tarnished had to thank his godfathers for the harmonious vestiges of its former splendor. The subject was name of Nikíta, and who united in his person the an old man, his face swarthy and bronzed, with dirt incidental to three out of his four occupations. furrowed brow and hollow temples, and sharp high Tchartkóff entered his ante-room, which felt very cheek-bones; a physiognomy on which the ravages chilly, as artists' ante-rooms usually are, and, withof time, and climate, and suffering were plainly out taking off his cloak, walked on into his studio, legible. The figure was draped in a flowing Asi-a square apartment, tolerably spacious, but low in atic costume. Defaced and injured and grimed the ceiling, and with windows dimmed by the frost. with dirt though the portrait was, yet, when Tchartkóff had wiped the dust from the countenance, he perceived evident traces of the touch of a great artist. The picture seemed to have been scarcely finished, but the force of treatment was immense. Its most extraordinary part was the eyes; in them the artist had concentrated all the power of his pencil. There was vitality in those dark and lustrous orbs; they looked out of the portrait, and in some measure destroyed its harmony by their strange and life-like expression. When Tchartkóff took the picture to the door, he fancied the pupils dilated. The peculiarity of the painting at once attracted the attention of the idlers without. Some uttered exclamations of surprise, others fell back a pace as if in terror. A pale, sicklylooking woman of the lower classes, who suddenly found herself face to face with this singular portrait, screamed with alarm. "It's looking at me!" she cried, and hurried away, casting nervous the night before, and that his credit with the talglances over her shoulder. Tchartkóff himself | low-chandler was not such as to render it probable experienced he could not tell why-a sort of disagreeable sensation, and he put the portrait on the ground. "D'ye buy?" said the picture-dealer. "How much?" said the artist. "At a word-three tchetvertáks.”* Tchartkóff shook his head. "Too much. I will give you a dougrívennoi," he added, moving towards the door. "A dougrívennoi for that picture! You are pleased to joke, sir. The frame is worth twice the money. Bid me something more, if it be only another grivennik. Come back, sir," he shouted, running after the painter, and detaining him by his cloak-skirt; 66 come back, sir. You are my first customer to-day, and I will take your offer, for luck's sake. But the picture is given away." This room was littered with all kinds of artistical rubbish: fragments of plaster of Paris, casts of hands, frames, stretched canvasses, sketches begun and thrown aside, and drapery cast carelessly over the chairs. Completely knocked up, Tchartkóff let his cloak fall, placed his new purchase against the wall, and threw himself on a narrow, meagre little sofa, whose leathern cover, torn upon one side from the row of brass nails that had formerly confined it, afforded Nikíta a convenient receptacle for dishcloths, old clothes, dirty linen, and any other miscellaneous matters he thought fit to cram under. The sun had set, and the night grew each moment darker. Our artist ordered Nikita to bring a candle. "There are no candles," was Nikita's reply. "How!-no candles?" "There were none yesterday," said Nikíta. Tchartkóff remembered that there had been none a supply had been sent in that morning. So he held his tongue, allowed Nikíta to take off his coat, waistcoat, and cravat, and wrapped himself up as warmly as he could in a dressing gown with tattered elbows. "I forgot to tell you," said Nikita," the landlord has been here." "For money I suppose," said the artist, shrugging his shoulders. "He had somebody with him. A Kvartalnü, I think. He said something about the rent not being paid." "Well, what can they do?" "Don't know," replied the imperturbable Nikíta. "He said you must leave the lodgings or pay. Will come again to-morrow." "Let them come," said Tchartkóff gloomily. On finding his offer thus unexpectedly accepted, And he turned himself upon the comfortless sofa Tchartkóff heartily repented his temerity in mak-with a feeling akin to desperation. ing it. The dougrívennoi he paid the dealer was Tchartkóff was a young artist of considerable his last in the world, and he was encumbered with a lumbering old portrait for which he had no earthly use. Cursing his own imprudence, he took up his purchase, and trudged away with it. Its weight and size caused it to slip perpetually from under his arm, and rendered it a most troublesome burthen. At last, tired to death and bathed in perspiration, he reached the house, in the fifteenth line of the A silver coin, about the size of a shilling, the quarter of a silver ruble (unde nomen) worth ninepence. promise, and whose pencil was at times remarked for its accuracy, and near approach to the truthfulness of nature. But he had faults which procured him frequent admonitions from the professor under whom he studied. "You have talent," he would say to him; "it will be a sin to ruin it by carelessness and by pursuing erroneous ideas and principles. You are too impatient; too apt to be fascinated by novelty, and to neglect rules hal*The officer commanding the police of the quarter. lowed by time and experience, laws immutable as "Yes, wait! wait!" he exclaimed passionately; those of the Medes. Beware, lest you become a "but patience and waiting must have an end. mere fashionable painter. Your colors, I observe, Wait, indeed! and where am I to seek to-morrow's are not unfrequently selected in defiance of good dinner? Borrowing is out of the question; and taste; your drawing is often feeble, sometimes if I sell my pictures and drawings, they will give positively incorrect; your outlines want clearness.me, perhaps, a dougrivennoi for the whole lot. You run after a flashy kind of chiaro-scuro, the They are useful to me; not one of them but was lighting up of your picture is meant only to strike undertaken with an object—from each I have the eye at the first glance. And you have a pas-learned something. But what could be their sion for the introduction of finery; a taste for value to anybody else? They are studies-exerdandified costume. All this is dangerous, and cises; and studies and exercises they will remain may lead you into the fatal habit of painting mere to the end of the chapter. And, besides, who fashionable pictures, pretty portraits and the like, would buy them? I am unknown as an artist, which yield money, but can never give fame. Do and who wants studies from the antique and that, and your talent is lost and thrown away. Be sketches from the living model, or my unfinished patient, wait, reflect, chasten your taste by study, Love and Psyche, or the perspective sketch of my and wean yourself from that hankering after pret-room, or my portrait of Nikíta, though it is really tiness and dandyism. Leave such tricks to those better than the portraits painted by any of your who care but for gold, and propose yourself a fashionable fellows? And, after all, what do I higher aim, the never-dying laurels of a Titian or gain by this? Why should I work myself to death, an Angelo." and keep plodding like a schoolboy over his A, B, C, The professor meant well, and was right in the when I might be as famous as any of them, and main. Tchartkóff was apt to indulge in the flashy have as much money in my pockets?" As he and the superficial. But he had sufficient strength pronounced these words, the artist involuntarily of mind to control this dangerous tendency, and a shuddered and turned pale. He saw, looking purer taste was gradually but perceptibly develop- fixedly at him, peeping out from the shadow of a ing itself in him. As yet he could not quite ap- tall canvass that stood against the wall, a face preciate all the depth of Raphael, but he was seemingly torn by some convulsive agony. Two strongly fascinated by the broad and rapid touch dreadful eyes glared upon the young man, with a of Guido; he would stand enchanted before Titian's strange, inexplicable expression; the lips were portraits, and had a high appreciation of the Flem-curled with mingled scorn and suffering; the feaish school. Yet the darkened and sober tone tures were haggard and distorted. Startled, almost characterizing old pictures did not quite please terrified, Tchartkóff was on the point of calling or satisfy him; nor did he, in his innermost mind, Nikíta, who by this time sent forth from his antealtogether agree with the professor, when the lat-room a Titanic snore, when he checked himself ter expatiated to him on that mysterious power and burst into a laugh. The object of alarm was which places the old masters at such immeasurable the portrait he had bought, and which he had distance above the moderns. In some respects completely forgotten. The bright moon-beams, he almost fancied them surpassed by the nineteenth streaming into the room, partially illuminated the century; that the imitation of nature had somehow picture, and gave it a strange air of reality. become, in modern times, more vivid, and lively, the clear cold light Tchartkóff set to work to exand faithful in a word, his mind was in that amine and clean his purchase. When the coat fluctuating, unsettled state in which the minds of of dust and filth that incrusted it was removed, he young people are apt to be when they have reached hung the picture upon the wall, and, retiring to a particular point of proficiency in their art, and look at it, was more than ever astounded at its feel a proud internal conviction of talent. Often extraordinary character and power. The countewas he filled with rage when he saw some travel-nance seemed lighted up by the fierce and glitterling French or German painter, by the mere effect ing eyes, which looked out of the picture so of trick and habit, by readiness of pencil and flashy wonderfully, and assumed, as it seemed to him, coloring, catching the multitude, and making a fortune. These impressions made their way into his mind, not in moments when he was buried, body and soul, in his work, and forgot food and drink and all outward things; but when, as was often the case, necessity stared him in the face, and he found himself without the means of buying brushes and colors, or even bread, whilst the greedy and implacable landlord came ten times a day to dun him for his rent. Then his hungersharpened imagination would revert to the different lot of the rich and fashionable painter; then darted through his brain the thought that so often flits through the Russian head, the idea of sending his art and all to the devil, and going to the devil himself By such strange and varied and terrible expression, art the eyes absolutely destroyed the harmony -the old man had moved, and stood with both of the portrait. They were living, they were hu- hands leaning on the frame. In a few seconds he man eyes! They seemed to have been cut out rose upon his arms, put forth both legs and leaped of a living man's face and stuck in the picture. out of the frame, which was now seen empty Instead of admiration, the portrait inspired a pain- through the crevice in the screen. A heavy footful feeling of oppression; the beholder was seized step was heard in the room. The poor artist's with a sort of waking nightmare, weighing upon heart beat hard and fast. Swallowing his breath and overwhelming him like a moral and mysteri- for very fear, he awaited the sight of the old man, ous incubus. who evidently approached his bed. And in another Shaking off this feeling, Tchartkóff again ap-moment there he was, peeping round the screen, proached the portrait, and forced himself to gaze with the same bronze-like countenance and fixed, steadily upon its eyes. They were still fixed upon | glittering eyes. Tchartkóff made a violent effort him. He changed his place; the eyes followed to cry out, but his voice was gone. He strove to him. To whatever part of the room he removed, stir his limbs-they refused to obey him. With he met their deep, malignant glance. They seemed open mouth and arrested breath he gazed upon the animated with the unnatural sort of life one might apparition. It was that of a tall man in a wide expect to find in the eyes of a corpse, newly re- Asiatic robe. The painter watched its movements. called to existence by the spell of some potent Presently it sat down almost at his very feet, and Sorcerer. In spite of his better reason, which re- drew something from between the folds of its flowproached him for his weakness, Tchartkóff felt an ing dress. This was a bag. The old man untied inexplicable impression, which made him unwilling it, and, seizing it by the two ends, shook it: with to remain alone in the room. He retired softly a dull, heavy sound there fell on the floor a number from the portrait, turned his eyes in a different di- of heavy packets, of a long cylindrical shape. rection, and endeavored to forget its presence; Their envelop was of dark blue paper, and on yet, in spite of all his efforts, his eye, as though each was inscribed, 1000 ducaTS. Extending his of its own accord, kept glancing sideways at it. long lean hands from his wide sleeves, the old man At last he became even fearful to walk about; his began unrolling the packets. There was a gleam excited imagination made him fancy that as soon of gold. Great as Tchartkóff's terror was, he as he moved somebody was walking behind him- could not help staring covetously at the coin, and at each step he glanced timidly over his shoulder. looked on with profound attention as it streamed He was naturally no coward; but his nerves and rapidly through the spectre's bony hands, glittering imagination were painfully on the stretch, and he and clinking with a dull metallic sound, and was could not control his absurd and involuntary fears. then rolled up anew. Suddenly he remarked one He sat down in the corner; somebody, he thought, packet which had rolled a little further than the peeped stealthily over his shoulder into his face. rest, and stopped at the leg of the bedstead, near Even the loud snoring of Nikíta, which resounded the head. By a rapid and furtive motion he seized from the ante-room, could not dispel his uneasiness this packet, gazing the while at the old man to see and chase away the unreal visions haunting him. whether he remarked it. But he was too busy. At last he rose from his seat, timidly, without lift- | He collected the remaining packets, replaced them ing his eyes, went behind the screen and lay down on his bed. Through the crevices in the screen he saw his room brightly illuminated by the moon, and he beheld the portrait hanging on the wall. The eyes were fixed upon him even more horribly and meaningly than before, and seemed as if they would not look at anything but him. Making a strong effort, he got out of bed, took a sheet and hung it over the portrait. This done, he again lay down, feeling more tranquil, and began to muse upon his melancholy lot-upon the thorns and difficulties that beset the path of the friendless and aspiring artist. At intervals he involuntarily glanced through the crevices of the screen at the shrouded portrait. The bright moon-light increased the whiteness of the sheet, and he at last fancied that he saw the horrible eyes shining through the linen. He strained his sight to convince himself he was mistaken. The contrary effect was produced. The old man's face became more and more distinct; there could no longer be any doubt: the sheet had disappeared-the grim portrait was completely uncovered, and the infernal eyes stared straight at him, peering into his very soul. icy chill came over his heart. He looked again; An in the bag, and, without looking at the artist, retired behind the screen. Tchartkóff's heart beat vehemently when he heard his departing footsteps echoing through the room. Congratulating himself on impunity, he joyfully grasped the packet, and had almost ceased to tremble for its safety, when suddenly the footsteps again approached the screen; the old man had evidently discovered that one of his packets was wanting. Nearer he came, and nearer, until once more his grim visage was seen peeping round the screen. In an agony of terror the young man dropped the rouleau, made a desperate effort to stir his limbs, uttered a great cry-and awoke. A cold sweat streamed from every pore; his heart beat so violently that it seemed about to burst; his breast felt as tight as if the last breath were in the act of leaving it. Was it a dream? he said, pressing his head between both hands; the vividness of the apparition made him doubt it. Now, at any rate, he was unquestionably awake, yet he thought he saw the old man moving as he settled himself in his frame, his hand sinking by his side, and the border of his wide robe waving. His own hand retained the sensation of having, but a moment before, hold a |