the Shah of Persia with one worth sixty
thousand. As to Cleopatra's eighty thousand
pounds pearl, an ingenious experimenter has
calculated that the quantity of vinegar necessary
to dissolve a pearl of that size would have
infallibly choked the voluptuous empress.

THE LATE MR. STANFIELD.

EVERY Artist, be he writer, painter, musician,
or actor, must bear his private sorrows as he
best can, and must separate them from the
exercise of his public pursuit. But it sometimes
happens, in compensation, that his private
loss of a dear friend represents a loss on the
part of the whole community. Then he may,
without obtrusion of his individuality, step
forth to lay his little wreath upon that dear
friend's grave.

On Saturday, the eighteenth of this present
month, CLARKSON STANFIELD died. On the
afternoon of that day, England lost the great
marine painter of whom she will be boastful
ages hence; the National Historian of her
speciality, the Sea; the man famous in all
countries for his marvellous rendering of the waves
that break upon her shores, of her ships and
seamen, of her coasts and skies, of her storms
and sunshine, of the many marvels of the deep.
He who holds the oceans in the hollow of His
hand had given, associated with them, wonderful
gifts into his keeping; he had used them well
through threescore and fourteen years; and, on
the afternoon of that spring day, relinquished
them for ever.

It is superfluous to record that the painter of
"The Battle of Trafalgar," of the "Victory
being towed into Gibraltar with the body of
Nelson on Board," of " The Morning after the
Wreck," of " The Abandoned," of fifty more
such works, died in his seventy-fourth year,
"Mr." Stanfield.—He was an Englishman.

Those grand pictures will proclaim his
powers while paint and canvas last. But the
writer of these words had been his friend for
thirty years; and when, a short week or two
before his death, he laid that once so skilful
hand upon the writer's breast and told him
they would meet again, " but not here," the
thoughts of the latter turned, for the time, so
little to his noble genius, and so much to his
noble nature!

He was the soul of frankness, generosity, and
simplicity. The most genial, the most
affectionate, the most loving, and the most lovable
of men. Success had never for an instant
spoiled him. His interest in the Theatre as an
Institution—the best picturesqueness of which
may be said to be wholly due to him—was faithful
to the last. His belief in a Play, his delight in one,
the ease with which it moved him to tears or to
laughter, were most remarkable evidences of the
heart he must have put into his old theatrical
work, and of the thorough purpose and sincerity
with which it must have been done. The
writer was very intimately associated with him
in some amateur plays; and day after day,
and night after night, there were the same
unquenchable freshness, enthusiasm, and
impressibility in him, though broken in health, even
then.

No Artist can ever have stood by his art with
a quieter dignity than he always did. Nothing
would have induced him to lay it at the feet of
any human creature. To fawn, or to toady, or
to do undeserved homage to any one, was an
absolute impossibility with him. And yet his
character was so nicely balanced that he was
the last man in the world to be suspected of
self-assertion, and his modesty was one of his
most special qualities.

He was a charitable, religious, gentle, truly
good man. A genuine man, incapable of
pretence or of concealment. He had been a sailor
once; and all the best characteristics that are
popularly attributed to sailors, being his, and
being in him refined by the influences of his Art,
formed a whole not likely to be often seen.
There is no smile that the writer can recal, like
his; no manner so naturally confiding and so
cheerfully engaging. When the writer saw him
for the last time on earth, the smile and the
manner shone out once through the weakness,
still; the bright unchanging Soul within the
altered face and form.

No man was ever held in higher respect by his
friends, and yet his intimate friends invariably
addressed him and spoke of him by a pet name.
It may need, perhaps, the writer's memory and
associations to find in this a touching expression
of his winning character, his playful smile, and
pleasant ways. "You know Mrs. Inchbald's
story, Nature and Art?" wrote THOMAS HOOD,
once, in a letter: " What a fine Edition of
Nature and Art is STANFIELD!"

Gone! And many and many a dear old day
gone with him! But their memories remain.
And his memory will not soon fade out, for
he has set his mark upon the restless waters,
and his fame will long be sounded in the roar of
the sea.

OLD STORIES RE-TOLD.

EMMET'S INSURRECTION.

IN 1803, the year after the discovery of
Colonel Despard's conspiracy in England,
Robert Emmet, the son of a Dublin physician,
an impulsive young enthusiast, who had been
for some years in voluntary exile in France,
returned to Ireland with the purpose of initiating
a second insurrection. Robert's elder brother,
Thomas, a barrister, also an exile, and also eager
for Irish independence, had met him at Amsterdam,
and filled him with delusive hopes.

"If I get ten counties to rise," the dreamer
said to a friend, " ought I to go on?"

"You ought if you get five, and you will
succeed," was the answer.

Emmet was a handsome, sanguine, high-spirited,
eloquent young man, of fine talents, great
energy, and chivalrous courage; but led away
by impetuous passions to a belief in a palpable