world interesting, environed them with more or less of romance, by
such revelations of their latent beauty and meaning; so that, thus
instructed, the sunset and the pastoral landscape, the moss-grown arch
and the craggy seaside, the twilight grove and the swaying cornfield, an
old mill, a peasant, light and shade, form and feature, perspective
and anatomy, a smile, a gesture, a cloud, a waterfall, weather-stains,
leaves, deer,--every object in Nature, and every impress of the
elements, speaks more distinctly to the eye and more effectively to the
imagination.

The vicissitudes which sometimes attend a picture or statue furnish no
inadequate materials for narrative interest. Amateur collectors can
unfold a tale in reference to their best acquisitions which outvies
fiction. Beckford's table-talk abounded in such reminiscences. An
American artist, who had resided long in Italy and made a study of old
pictures, caught sight at a shop-window in New Orleans of an "Ecce
Homo" so pathetic in expression as to arrest his steps and engross his
attention. Upon inquiry, he learned that it had been purchased of a
soldier fresh from Mexico, after the late war between that country and
the United States; he bought it for a trifle, carried it to Europe, and
soon authenticated it as an original Guercino, painted for the royal
chapel in Madrid, and sent thence by the government to a church in
Mexico, whence, after centuries, it had found its way, through the
accidents of war, to a pawnbroker's shop in Louisiana. A lady in one
of our eastern cities, wishing to possess, as a memorial, some article
which had belonged to a deceased neighbor, and not having the means,
at the public sale of her effects, to bid for an expensive piece of
furniture, contented herself with buying for a few shillings a familiar
chimney-screen. One day she discovered a glistening surface under the
flowered paper which covered it, and when this was torn away, there