'I'VE known a god on clouds of gauze With patience hear a people's prayer, And bending to the pit's applause, Wait while the priest repeats the air.
I've seen a black-wig'd Jove hurl down A thunder-bolt along a wire, To burn some distant canvass town, Which--how vexatious!--won't catch fire.
I've known a tyrant doom a maid (With trills and _roulades_ many a score) To instant death! She, sore afraid, Sings: and the audience cries 'Encore!'
I've seen two warriors in a rage Draw glist'ning swords and, awful sight! Meet face to face upon the stage To sing a song, but not to fight!
I've heard a king exclaim 'To arms!' Some twenty times, yet still remain; I've known his army 'midst alarms, Help by a bass their monarch's strain.
I've known a hero wounded sore, With well-tuned voice his foes defy; And warbling stoutly on the floor, With the last flourish fall and die.
I've seen a mermaid dress'd in blue; I've seen a cupid burn a wing; I've known a Neptune lose a shoe; I've heard a guilty spectre sing.
I've seen, spectators of a dance, Two Brahmins, Mahomet, the Cid, Four Pagan kings, four knights of France, Jove and the Muses--scene Madrid!'
The leading paper in the present number will not escape the attention nor fail to win the admiration of the reader. The description of the _Ascent of Mount Ætna_ by our eminent artist, is forcible and graphic in the extreme. It will derive additional interest at this moment from the recent eruption of this renowned volcano, which still continued at the last advices, and by which already seventy persons had lost their lives. If our metropolitan readers would desire a _due_ impression of the magnificent scene which our correspondent has described, let them drop in at the rooms of the National Academy of Design, where they will find the Burning Mountain, as seen from Taormina, depicted in all its vastness and grandeur; and not only this, but the noble series of allegorical pictures, heretofore noticed at large in this Magazine, called '_The Voyage of Life_,' representing Childhood, Youth, Manhood, and Old Age; '_Angels ministering to Christ in the Wilderness_,' a picture that has an horizon, and an aërial gradation toward the zenith, which alone, to say nothing of the figures, and the composition itself as a study, would richly repay a visit; '_The Past and the Present_,' two most effective scenes, especially the second, which is overflowing with the mingled graces of poetry and art; a glorious composition, '_An Italian Scene_,' of which we shall speak hereafter; as well as of the view of '_Ruined Aqueducts in the Campagna di Roma_,' fading into dimness toward the imperial city, and of '_The Notch in the White Mountains_' of New-Hampshire. _Apropos_: we perceive by a letter from an American at Rome, in one of the public journals, that THORWALDSEN, the great sculptor, was an enthusiastic admirer of Mr. COLE'S pictures, particularly of his 'Voyage of Life,' which he pronounced 'original, and new in art.' 'He could talk of nothing else,' says the writer, 'for a long time; and every time he speaks of him, he adds: '_Ma che artista, che grand' artista, quel vostro compatriota! Che fantasia! quanto studio della natura!_' 'But what an artist, what a great artist, is this countryman of yours! What fancy, what study of nature!' · · · WE are aware of a pair of 'bonny blue een' swimming in light, that will 'come the married woman's eye' over a kind but most antiquarian husband, when the following is read, some two weeks from now, in their 'little parlor' in a town of the far west. It reaches us in the MS. of a Boston friend: 'Old Colonel W----, formerly a well-known character in one of our eastern cities, was remarkable for but one passion out of the ordinary range of humanity, and that was for buying at auction any little lot of trumpery which came under the head of 'miscellaneous,' for the reason that it couldn't be classified. Though close-fisted in general, he was continually throwing away his money by fives and tens upon such trash. In this way he had filled all the odd corners in his dwelling and out-houses with a collection of nondescript articles, that would have puzzled a philosopher to tell what they were made for, or to what use they could ever be put. This however, was but a secondary consideration with the Colonel; for he seldom troubled his head about such articles after they were once fairly housed. Not so with his wife however, who was continually remonstrating against these purchases, which served only to clutter up the house, and as food for the mirth of the domestics.