are traits sufficiently unusual amongst rivals to be worthy of admiration. My mornings were generally passed with one or other of them, and I was deep in the mysteries of half the unfinished pictures and statues of Rome-with their destinations and every thing relating to them.

The great patron, I found, and the one for whom they were all the most proud to labour, was a nobleman of the country, the Marchese di They spoke his name as a word of triumph, and praised him as though he had been one of the fraternity. Some few particulars which I accidentally heard of him awakened a curiosity to hear more, and by degrees I became possessed of his history.

Many years previous to the time of which I am speaking, there laboured, in a small studio on the Monte Cavallo, a young German student in sculpture. Like his fellows, he was seldom aware at the beginning of the month of the source from whence means were to be derived for carrying him to the end of it;-but in talent they allowed him to stand above them. Still his chief employment was to toil upon the works of artists of older standing, and to con

fer fame whilst he received the wages of mere labour. Thus the genius of Frederic was known only to his familiar associates, and the original exercise of it was, of necessity, confined to the hours which others devoted to repose or to festa days, when scarcely another hand was at work in the whole capital.

Yet, with all this resistance of every enjoyment but study, and notwithstanding the obscure prospect of fame beyond the circle in which he already possessed it, Frederic had too much of the energy of genius, and too intense a delight in the search for beauty, to feel depressed. True, his countenance had the pale hue and the knitted brows of reflection, but its handsome character was heightened by an animated feeling for all things of intellectual interest, and his heart was always free enough from selfish care to be acutely sensible to the concerns of others. Whenever the light but manly figure of Frederic made its rare appearance amongst his more jovial friends, it was the signal for increased hilarity and a double forgetfulness of their hardships. There were few of them whose works had not benefited by his

taste, and few who, while he never was seen in more pretending costume than his workman's cap and blouse, had not felt his off-hand, uncalculating generosity.

jo

With such a character, amongst those so capable of duly appreciating him, it was no wonder if he found a ready reception from the few acquaintance whom he chanced to make in society more general. These consisted, for the most part, merely of the indigent, but, in many cases, well-born families established in charge of the palaces of public show, to the absentee or straightened possessors of which they might bear some remote affinity. In one of these temples to the genius of ancient days, Frederic professed to have found matter more conducive to excellence in his art than in any other which was open to him ;-according to him, there were vestibules and galleries which contained the pride of Greece, and, according to his friends, there were more private apartments which contained the pride of Rome.

Both of these statements were correct. The palazzo belonged to the Marchese di

a

nobleman of great wealth but retired habits,

which caused him to spend his time chiefly amongst the peasantry of his estate, leaving the splendid abode in question to a branch of his family which had shared in the general decay of his country. To this branch belonged the blossom alluded to. In the course of his visits to the mutilated statues and basso-relievos, Frederic had discovered a living work of perfection, which was destined to be a subject of more devoted study than all the wonders that marble had yet produced.

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Teresina had just arrived at an age to make her friends sensible of her peculiar situation. She was, unhappily, too highly-born to be disposed of in any of the various ways which were open to the daughters of the simple citizen, and the dependent state of her parents rendered it next to impossible that she would ever be raised beyond it. She had sprung up amidst ruin, and would there, in all probability, fade neglected away. At the same time, the young Roman possessed the ardent feelings of her country in a degree as far above the common order as were her pale and dark-eyed beauty and the proud style of her perfect symmetry.

The knowledge that she was an object of painful concern subdued her spirit to an early habit of sadness, and the absence of youthful pastime left her the leisure and inclination to store her mind in a manner which rendered it still more sensitive. Few were the more fortunate of Rome's maiden beauties who could compare with her in refined acquirements; but her superiority was not a matter of congratulation; it only heightened her unfitness for her lot : Both Teresina and the young German were early in discovering that they had met in each other, for the first time, the capability of mue tual comprehension and mutual feeling. The commencement of their acquaintance had been confined to an inclination of the head, as they occasionally encountered upon the richly-ornamented terraces of the palace garden, the one musing over classic balustrades of inlaid marble, storied pedestals, and statues of whatever was most enchanting in history or fable; the other, retiring with the sweet wild witnesses of a Roman spring, which burst forth spontaneously from the neglected plot the rim of the

sculptured fountain, the ruined wall of ages