power of resistance and escape? Till I fixed my eyes on the graces of Ajut, while I had not yet called her to the banquet, I was careless as the sleeping morse, I was merry as the singers in the stars. Why, Ajut, did I gaze upon thy graces? why, my fair, did I call thee to the banquet? Yet, be faithful, my love, remember Anningait, and meet my return with the smile of virgin love. I will chase the deer, I will subdue the whale, resistless as the frost or darkness, and unwearied as the summer-sun. In a few weeks I shall return prosperous and wealthy! Then shall the roefish and the porpoise feast thy kindred; the fox and hare shall cover thy couch; the tough hide of the seal shall shelter thee from cold; and the fat of the whale illuminate thy dwelling."

Anningait, having with these sentiments consoled his grief, and animated his industry, found that they had now coasted the headland, and saw the whales spouting at a distance. He therefore placed himself in his fishing-boat, called his associates to their several employments, plied his oar and harpoon with incredible courage and dexterity; and, by dividing his time between the chase and fishery, suspended the miseries of absence and suspicion.

Ajut, in the mean time, notwithstanding her neglected dress, happened, as she was drying some skins in the sun, to catch the eye of Norngsuk, on his return from hunting. Norngsuk was of birth truly illustrious. His mother had died very early; and his father, the most expert fisher of Greenland, had perished by too close pursuit of the whale. His dignity was equalled by his riches. He was master of four men's and two women's boats, had ninety tubs of oil in his winter habitation, and five and twenty seals buried in the snow, against the season of darkness. When he saw the beauty of Ajut, he immediately threw over her the skin of a deer that he had taken, and soon after presented her with a branch of coral. Ajut refused his gifts, and determined to admit no lover in the place of Anningait.

Norngsuk, thus rejected, had recourse to stratagem. He knew that Ajut would consult a diviner, concerning the fate of her lover, and the felicity of her future life. He therefore applied himself to the most celebrated in that part of the country; and, by a present of two seals and a marble kettle, obtained a promise, that, when Ajut should consult him, he would declare that her lover was in the land of

souls. Ajut, in a short time, brought him a coat made by herself, and inquired what events were to befall her, with assurances of a much larger reward at the return of Anningait, if the prediction should flatter her desires. The diviner knew the way to riches, and foretold that Anningait, having already caught two whales, would soon return home, with a large boat laden with provisions.

This prognostication she was ordered to keep secret; and Norngsuk, depending upon his artifice, renewed his addresses with greater confidence; but, finding his suit still unsuccessful, applied himself to her parents with gifts and promises. The wealth of Greenland is too powerful for the virtue of a Greenlander: they forgot the merit and the presents of Anningait, and decreed Ajut to be married to Norngsuk. She entreated; she remonstrated; she wept, and raved; but, finding riches irresistible, fled away into the uplands, and lived in a cave upon such berries as she could gather, and the birds or hares which she had the fortune to ensnare; taking care, at an hour when she was not likely to be found, to view the sea every day, that her lover might not miss her at his return.

At last she saw the great boat in which Anningait had departed, stealing slow and heavy laden along the coast. She ran, with all the impatience of affection, to catch her lover in her arms, and relate her constancy and sufferings. -When the company reached the land, they informed her, that Anningait, after the fishery was ended, being unable to support the slow passage of the vessel of carriage, had set out before them in his fishing-boat; and they expected, at their arrival, to have found him on shore.

Ajut, distracted at this intelligence, was about to fly into the hills, without knowing why, though she was now in the hands of her parents, who forced her back to their own hut, and endeavoured to comfort her: but, when at last they retired to rest, Ajut went down to the beach, where, finding a fishing-boat, she entered it without hesitation; and, telling those who wondered at her rashness, that she was going in search of Anningait, rowed away with great swiftness, and was seen no more.

The fate of these lovers gave occasion to various fictions and conjectures. Some are of opinion, that they were changed into stars; others imagine, that Anningait was seized in his passage by the genius of the rocks, and that

Ajut was transformed into a mermaid, and still continues to seek her lover in the deserts of the sea. But the gen

eral persuasion is, that they are both in that part of the land of souls, where the sun never sets, where oil is always fresh, and provisions always warm. The virgins sometimes throw a thimble and a needle into the bay, from which the hapless maid departed; and, when a Greenlander would praise any couple for virtuous affection, he declares that they love like Anningait and Ajut. Johnson.

On the Pleasure of Painting.

To give one instance more, and then I will have done with this rambling discourse. One of my first attempts was a picture of my father, who was then in a green old age, with strong-marked features, and scarred with the small-pox. I drew it with a broad light crossing the face, looking down, with spectacles on, reading. The book was Shaftesbury's Characteristics, in a fine old binding, with Gribelin's etchings. My father would as lieve it had been any other book; but for him to read was to be content-was "riches fineless." The sketch promised well; and I set to work to finish it, determined to spare no time nor pains. My father was willing to sit as long as I pleased; for there is a natural desire in the mind of man to sit for one's picture, to be the object of continued attention, to have one's likeness multiplied: and, besides his satisfaction in the picture, he had some pride in the artist -though he would rather I should have written a sermon, than painted like Rembrandt or like Raphael. Those winter days, with the gleams of sunshine coming through the chapel windows, and cheered by the notes of the robinredbreast in our garden-that "ever in the haunch of winter sings"-as my afternoon's work drew to a close, were among the happiest of my life. When I gave the effect I intended to any part of the picture for which I had prepared my colours, when I imitated the roughness of the skin by a lucky stroke of the pencil, when I hit the clear pearly tone of a vein, when I gave the ruddy complexion of health-the blood circulating under the broad shadows of one side of the face-I thought my fortune made; or rather, it was already more than made, in my fancying that I might one day be able to say with Corregio, "I also

am a painter!" It was an idle thought, a boy's conceit; but it did not make me less happy at the time. I used regularly to set my work in the chair, to look at it through the long evenings; and many a time did I return to take leave of it, before I could go to bed at night. I remember sending it with a throbbing heart to the exhibition, and seeing it hung up there by the side of one of the Honourable Mr. Skeffington (now Sir George). There was nothing in common between them, but that they were the portraits of two very good-natured men. I think, but am not sure, that I finished this portrait (or another afterwards) on the same day that the news of the battle of Austerlitz came. I walked out in the afternoon, and, as I returned, saw the evening-star set over a poor man's cottage, with other thoughts and feelings than I shall ever have again. Oh, for the revolution of the great Platonic year, that those times might come over again! I could sleep out the three hundred and sixty-five thousand intervening years very contentedly!-The picture is left; the table, the chair, the window where I learned to construe Livy, the chapel where my father preached, remain where they were; but he himself is gone to rest, full of years, of faith, of hope, and charity! Hazlitt.

Damon and Pythias.

WHEN Damon was sentenced by Dionysius of Syracuse to die on a certain day, he begged permission, in the interim, to retire to his own country, to set the affairs of his disconsolate family in order. This the king intended peremptorily to refuse, by granting it, as he conceived, on the impossible condition of his procuring some one to remain as hostage for his return, under equal forfeiture of life. Pythias heard the conditions, and did not wait for an application upon the part of Damon. He instantly offered himself as security for his friend; which being accepted, Damon was immediately set at liberty. The king and all the courtiers were astonished at this action; and, therefore, when the day of execution drew near, his majesty had the curiosity to visit Pythias, in his confinement. After some conversation on the subject of friendship, in which the king delivered it as his opinion, that self-interest was the sole mover of human actions; as ior virtue, friendship, benevolence, love of one's country, and the like, he looked

upon them as terms invented by the wise, to keep in awe and impose upon the weak-" My lord," said Pythias, with a firm voice and noble aspect, I would it were possible that I might suffer a thousand deaths, rather than my friend should fail in any article of his honour. He cannot fail therein, my lord. I am as confident of his virtue, as I am of my own existence. But I pray, I beseech the gods, to preserve the life and integrity of my Damon together. Oppose him, ye winds! prevent the eagerness and impatience of his honourable endeavours, and suffer him not to arrive, till, by my death, I shall have redeemed a life a thousand times of more consequence, of more value, than my own; more estimable to his lovely wife, to his precious little innocents, to his friends, to his country. O leave me not to die the worst of deaths in my Damon!" Dionysius was awed and confounded by the dignity of these sentiments, and by the manner in which they were uttered: he felt his heart struck by a slight sense of invading truth; but it served rather to perplex than undeceive him.

and

The fatal day arrived. Pythias was brought forth, and walked amidst the guards with a serious, but satisfied air, to the place of execution. Dionysius was already there; he was exalted on a moving throne, that was drawn by six white horses, and sat pensive, and attentive to the prisoner. Pythias came; he vaulted lightly on the scaffold, and, beholding for some time the apparatus of death, he turned with a placid countenance, and addressed the spectators: "My prayers are heard," he cried, "the gods are propitious! You know, my friends, that the winds have been contrary till yesterday. Damon could not come; he could not conquer impossibilities; he will be here to-morrow, the blood which is shed to-day shall have ransomed the life of my friend. O could I erase from your bosom every doubt, every mean suspicion, of the honour of the man for whom I am about to suffer, I should go to my death, even as I would to my bridal. Be it sufficient, in the mean time, that my friend will be found noble; that his truth is unimpeachable; that he will speedily prove it; that he is now on his way, hurrying on, accusing himself, the adverse elements, and the gods: but I hasten to prevent his speed. Executioner, do your office." As he pronounced the last words, a buzz began to rise among the remotest of the people-a distant voice was heard the crowd caught the words, and, "stop, stop the execution," was repeated by the

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