point of view, in the extracts we are about to make, after we have rectified a mistake of Strutt, in his Biographical Dictionary of Engravers. It is there said that Albert Durer's main object in the journey was to escape for a while from his intolerable wife. Had it been so, harsh were the moralist who would have severely blamed him; but this was not the case. His objects were to study more closely the masterpieces of a school more akin to his own than the Italian, when he himself was fitter to appreciate and profit by them than during the wanderschaft of his novice years, and also to make money both as a painter and an engraver. The duration of a journey undertaken for such purposes could not well be calculated, and as Albert Durer seems to have thought that he had taken a wife "for better for worse," he probably did not hold himself free to leave her behind when his absence might be of long continuance. She and a maid-servant, therefore, accompanied him.

The journal thus begins; we must premise that we shall abridge and omit at our own discretion:

"On Thursday after St. Kilian's day, I, Albert Durer, at my own cost and charges, set out with my wife from Nuremberg for the Netherlands, and the same day we passed Erlang, and lay that night at Baiersdorf, and there we spent three batzen less six pfennige. Thence

I drove to Bamberg, and gave the bishop a painted Marienbild (or image of the Virgin), and copperplates to the value of a gulden; he invited me as his guest, and gave me a zoll-brief, and three furder-briefe."

Of the four Briefe, or letters with which the prelate repaid the artist's present, the zoll-briefe, or toll-letter, seems to have been an exemption from tolls and customs, extending even beyond the jurisdiction of the reverend giver; for at almost every town they pass, Albert Durer says, "Then I showed my toll-letter, then they let me go:" and even when it does not so promptly answer the desired purpose, he usually escapes with signing a declaration either that he has no merchandise with him, or that he will bring none back. The fürder-briefe, a sort of letter we never before met with, appear to have been some kind of letters of general recommendation; the only use we observe to be made of them, is that they are shown to Margrave Hans, at Brussels.

"Thence we drove to Antwerp; there I came to the inn of Jobst Planckfeldt, and that same evening the Fugger's factor, by name Bernard Stecher, invited me, and gave us a costly meal. But my wife eat at the inn, and I gave the driver, for bringing us, three persons, three florins in gold. Item, on Saturday my host took me to the bürgermeister of Antwerp's house, beyond measure large, and very well ordered, and with wonderfully

*We believe the batz or batzen was worth about three halfpence, and the pfennig half a farthing; but we have already confessed our monetary ignorance, and hope a general knowledge that these were among the smallest coins current, may satisfy the reader as it does ourselves.

We hope this was a picture of the Virgin, but sadly fear it was a painted wooden image. It is a present more than once mentioned.

beautiful large rooms, and many of them, a costly ornamented tower, an excessively large garden, in short, so magnificent a house, that in all the states of Germany I never saw the like. Item, I gave the

messenger three stivers, two pf. for bread, and two for ink.

"Sunday was St. Oswald's day; then did the painters invite me to their rooms with my wife and maid, and had every thing of silver, and other costly ornaments, and over costly victuals. And their wives were all there. And when I was led to table, then did the people all stand up on both sides, as though a great lord were a-leading. There were also among them very excellent persons of men, who all with deep bows demeaned themselves most reverently towards me; and they said that they would do every thing, as far as might be possible, that they should know would be agreeable to me. And as I sat so, there came the council-messenger of my lords of Antwerp, with two attendants, and bestowed on me, from my lords of Antwerp, four cans of wine; and they sent me word that I should receive it as a present from them, and accept their good will. For this I returned my humble thanks, and offered my humble service. After that came master Peter, the city carpenter, † and bestowed on me two cans of wine, with the offer of his willing service. So, when we had sat long merrily together, and late into the night, then did they attend us home with torches, very honorably, and prayed me to accept their good will, and that I should do whatever I pleased, and they would be helpful to me. So I thanked them, and laid me down to sleep.

"In Brussels, in the golden chamber of the council-house, I have seen the four painted matters, done by the great master Rudiger (Roger van der Weyde.) Also I have seen the things brought to the king from the new gold country (Mexico), a sun, all gold, a whole fathom broad. Also a moon, all silver, equally large; also two roomsfull of the like, weapons, armour, artillery, very strange clothing, bedding, and all gorts of wonderful things for men's use, that are beautiful to look upon. These things are so costly that they are valued at 100,000 gulden. And in all the days of my life I have seen nothing that has rejoiced my heart like these things; for therein have I beheld marvellous works of art, and wondered at the subtle ingenuity of the people in the strange country, and I do not know to speak what I felt.

"Item, Lady Margaret (governess of the Netherlands) she sent for me in Brussels, and promised that she would be my protectress with King Charles, and showed herself especially virtuously towards me. I gave her my engravings of the Passion, also one to her treasurer, by name Jan Marini, and drew him in charcoal. Item, I was in the house of him of Nassau, and saw in the chapel the good picture made by master Hugo (van der Goes.) . . Item, drew Master Bernhardt (von Oelay), the lady Margaret's painter, in charcoal. I have again drawn Erasmus of Rotterdam. I have given to Lorenz Stärck a St. Jerome sitting, and the Melancholy, and I have drawn my landlady's gossip. Item, six persons whom I have drawn at Brussels have given me nothing. I have paid three stivers for two buffalo horns, and one stiver for two Eulenspiegels." [This may either refer to a rare print by Lucas of Leyden, now scarcely to be had for money, or to the book so called; Dr. Campe believes Durer's pur

The guildhall of the painter's company.

tA title of municipal dignity, we presume.

It is to be remembered, that in the sixteenth century artillery was not confined to cannon, but seems to have included all missive weapons.

chase to have been the latter.*] "I presented Lady Margaret, the emperor's sister, with a set of my things, and sketched her two matters on parchment, with all care and great pains, that I value at thirty fl.

"Item, on Friday before Whitsuntide, in the 1521, came the story to Antwerp how Martin Luther had been so treacherously taken prisoner; ‡ for whereas the Emperor Charles's, herald, with an imperial safe-conduct, had been given him, with him he was in trust; but so soon as the herald had brought him to an unfriendly spot near Eisenach, he said he durst stay with him no longer, and rode away. Straight were ten horse there, who treacherously led away the saint, the man enlightened by the Holy Ghost, him who was a follower of the true Christian doctrine. And whether he yet live, or they have murdered him, which I know not, this has he suffered for the sake of Christian truth, and because he chastised the unchristian рарасу. .. And this is especially the heaviest to me, that God will perhaps leave us under their false, blind doctrines, which were invented and set up by men whom they call the Fathers. Oh Lord Jesus Xo, pray for thy people, preserve in us the true Christian faith, call together the widely scattered sheep of thy pasture, of whom a part are still to be found in the Roman church, with the Indians, Moscovites, Russians, Greeks, who, through the false conjurations and avarice of the Popes, through false shows of holiness, have been severed! . . Oh God! if Luther be dead, who shall henceforward so clearly expound the Holy Scriptures to us? Oh God, what might he not have written for us in another ten or twenty years! Oh, all you pious Christians, help me diligently to bewail this God-inspired mortal, and to pray Him that He would send us another enlightened man! Oh, Erasme Roterodame, where wilt thou abide ?

"I have reckoned with Jobst, and I owe him 31 florins, and I have paid him, taking into account and deducting two portraits painted in oil colors, for which he gave me out 5 pfd. (pounds, probably, of something, but of what we know not). In all my painting, boarding, selling, and other dealings, I have had disadvantage in the Netherlands, in all my concerns with high and low; and especially has the Lady Margaret, for all that I have presented her and done for her, given me nothing. And this settling with Jobst was on St. Peter and St. Paul's day. I gave the Rudiger servant 7 stivers to drink.

"Item, on the Sunday before St. Margaret's day, the king of Denmark gave a grand banquet to the Emperor, the Lady Margaret and the Queen of Spain, § and invited me, and I too ate there. I gave 12 stivers for the

*See Foreign Quarterly Review, vol. viii. p. 370, et seq.

Margaret was sister to no emperor. She was daughter to Maximilian, and aunt to his successor, Charles V., then emperor.

The occasion of this alarm was the concerted seizure of Luther by his constant protector, the Elector of Saxony, in order to conceal him from persecution. Its success depended upon deceiving friends and foes alike; and this passage has historical interest as exhibiting the effect produced by the measure.

§ We know not whom our good Nuremberger means by the Queen of Spain. Charles's wife was of course Empress, and the only true Queen of Spain was his mother the insane Joanna, who lived in a kind of confinement, in Castile.

king's Futteral, and I painted the king in oil colors, and he gave me 30 florins."

We would willingly extract more of this journal, but what we have given, as much as we can afford space for, will convey a tolerable idea of its character, and peculiar sort of interest.

Seven years after his return from this, in a pecuniary sense, altogether unsuccessful expedition, on the 6th of April, 1528, Albert Durer, worn out with incessant labor, and the discomforts of his home, died of a decline. Of his character as a man and an artist, we need add nothing to what has been already said, and shall conclude with an extract from a letter upon his death, written by his ever kind friend Pirkheimer to Johann Tscherte of Vienna, imperial architect; which we give for the sake of the picture it presents to us of the artist's domestic persecution, not certainly as a specimen of composition. He says:

"In Albert I have truly lost one of the best friends I had in the whole world, and nothing grieves me deeper than that he should have died so painful a death, which, under God's providence, I can ascribe to nobody but his huswife, who gnawed into his very heart, and so tormented him, that he departed hence the sooner; for he was dried up to a faggot, and might nowhere seek him a jovial humor, or go to his friends. Be

sides she so urged him day and night, and so hardly drove him to work, only that he might earn money and leave it to her when he should die; for she would always, as she does still, squander money privately; and Albert must have left her to the value of 6000 gulden. But nothing could satisfy her, and in brief, she alone is the cause of his death. I myself have often remonstrated with her and warned her as to her mistrustful and culpable ways, and foretold her how it would end; but I thereby gained only ill will. (The German word undank, has a peculiar signification, which neither ill will nor ingratitude express; it is literally the contrary of thanks.) For whoever loved that man, and was much with him, to him she became an enemy, which in truth grieved Albert most highly, and brought him under ground. I have not seen her since his death, or let her come near me, though I have been helpful to her in many things, but there there is no confidence. Whoever opposes her, and does not always allow her to be in the right, him she mistrusts, and forthwith becomes his enemy; therefore I like her better at a distance than about me. She and her sister are not queans; they are, I doubt not, in the number of honest, devout, and altogether God-fearing women; but a man might better have a quean, who was otherwise kindly, than such a gnawing, suspicious, quarrelsome, good woman, with whom he can have no peace or quiet, neither by day nor by night. But however that be, we must commend the thing to God, who will be gracious and merciful to the pious Albert; for, as he lived like a pious honest man, so he died a Christian and most blessed death, therefore there is nothing to fear for his salvation."

*We leave this word untranslated, conceiving it to be an old technical term for the equally technical, and now we believe, obsolete, vails, at a royal table. Literally, it means case, or sheath; and may have been a case containing the spoon, knife, and fork, if such luxuries as forks were then in use, for each guest.

ART. IV.
Series.

[Abridged from "Tait's Edinburgh Magazine," No. 11:]

Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry. Second 3 vols. 8vo. Dublin. 1833.

It will go hard if the Irish do not beguile or flatter their fellowsubjects into some knowledge of Ireland at last. Little was the permanent attention they were able to gain from the people of Great Britain, till the happy device was hit upon of throwing open the castle gates, and the cabin doors, and inviting the Scotch and English to enter, hear stories tragic and mirthful, and be amused. Of the many native writers of ability who have recently assumed this filial office for Ireland, and beneficial service to humanity, there is none who lets us more freely and completely into the heart of the land than the author of the Traits and Stories. The present series of tales makes a huge stride a-head of its predecessor, though it is cumbered by the same heaviness, and liable to the same objections. The writer has tried to hold a tight rein over his inborn antipathy to Catholicism; but still it breaks forth, not ill-naturedly,

-

for his is not the rancorous, virulent hatred of an Orangeman breathing blood and extermination, but in such fixed and steady jealousy of the influence of the priesthood, and rational disapprobation of the genius of the Catholic faith, as in the times when the Roman was the wealthy and powerful State Church might have done honor to an enlightened Protestant Reformer, but is somewhat misdirected now, and carried the length of prejudice, tending to narrow-mindedness and undue alarm. It cannot be said that the descriptions given are either libels or caricatures of the Catholic clergy and devotees; but the pictures the writer delights to present are either those of subjects naturally deformed, or of very ungainly specimens. Another great fault of this work is the extreme length amounting to wire-drawing, of many of the stories. The author is intolerably repetitive.

The three thick volumes of this new series, contain eleven stories, of which there are some deeply serious or tragic. The others exhibit the alternate play of the cloud and sunshine of Irish life, and in general illustrate some trait of national character. The first, the Midnight Mass, paints revenge, implacable and treacherous, as it is too frequently exhibited in Ireland.

We cannot enter into the story, but Darby More, the main agent in the plot, is so exquisite a rogue, that we must show the reader a little of him. We have met with something reminding us of him in sundry heroes,-in Gil Blas' pious friend the hermit, in Edie Ochiltree, and even in Sir John Falstaff; yet is Darby More, every inch an original Irish Gaberlunyie and coteen; somewhat sensual, it must be owned, but more arch than sly; roguish rather than knavish; flattering and friendly, though fond of power obtained by trick, stratagem, and address.