In the Roman studio of one of his friends and admirers, Mr. Mason, I had the pleasure, a few days since, to see, among several admirable and very spirited pictures of Campagna life and incidents, a very striking portrait of Beefsteak. He was sitting in a straw-bottomed chair, as we have so often seen him in the Lepre, calm, dignified in his deportment, and somewhat obese. The full brain, the narrow, fastidious nose, the sagacious eye, were so perfectly given, that I seemed to feel the actual presence of my old friend. So admirable a portrait of so distinguished a person should not be lost to the world. It should be engraved, or at least photographed.
Under Mount Etna he lies; It is slumber, it is not death; For he struggles at times to arise, And above him the lurid skies Are hot with his fiery breath.
The crags are piled on his breast, The earth is heaped on his head; But the groans of his wild unrest, Though smothered and half suppressed, Are heard, and he is not dead.
And the nations far away Are watching with eager eyes; They talk together and say, "To-morrow, perhaps to-day, Enceladus will arise!"
And the old gods, the austere Oppressors in their strength, Stand aghast and white with fear, At the ominous sounds they hear, And tremble, and mutter, "At length!"
Ah, me! for the land that is sown With the harvest of despair! Where the burning cinders, blown From the lips of the overthrown Enceladus, fill the air!
Where ashes are heaped in drifts Over vineyard and field and town, Whenever he starts and lifts His head through the blackened rifts Of the crags that keep him down!
See, see! the red light shines! 'Tis the glare of his awful eyes! And the storm-wind shouts through the pines Of Alps and of Apennines, "Enceladus, arise!"
The decree of October 1, 1830, approved by a royal ordinance, March 21, 1831, created two battalions of Zouaves. To perceive the necessity for this body of troops, to understand the nature of the service required of them, and to obtain a just notion of their important position in African affairs, it will be necessary to glance, for a moment, at the previous history of Algeria under the Deys, and especially at the history of that Turkish militia which they were to replace,--a body of irresponsible tyrants, which, since 1516, had exercised the greatest power in Africa, and had rendered their name hated and feared by the most distant tribes.