other motive, had been induced to betray its existence to the brigands. These had then forced his uncle to expose the entrance, and, as a precaution, to lead the way; how the woman came to enter with them is not so easy to imagine, but probably female curiosity would be a sufficiently powerful motive. Once in the cellar, some devilish impulse must have prompted José to throw back the grate to its ordinary position, with the view of getting possession of the property it contained at some future time. The back of the grate being red hot, those imprisoned in the cellar were unable to touch it with their hands, and as not more than two could approach it at one time, and then only in a stooping position, they could not use their swords with any effect to force it open. As to the charred bodies, horrible as the supposition is, they must have been the remains of the old man and his servant, who had been forced against the red-hot plate and held there, with the view of compelling them to reveal the secret of opening it; a thing impossible on that side, which would also account for the dreadful shrieks. As to the confused noises, clashing of swords, &c., he supposed these were made in the hope of attracting attention; and the poor wretches had ample cause for weeping and groaning who were caught in such a trap. As to the way in which José’s body came among them, he conceived that he must have been in the act of going down to secure his plunder, and that the instant he stepped off the platform he was most righteously punished by being suffocated by the gases generated by the decomposing bodies. Thus, though dead, his victims were the instruments of his punishment.
SOMETHING WORTH HAVING.
To have the sure esteem
Of those whose worth we know,
The heart will oft redeem
From many a doubtful throe;
The anxious soul declares
Some good must be in us,
Or, by such souls as theirs
We were not valued thus.
When brimming cups go round,
When friendly faces meet,
Where jest and smile abound,
Oh, if we there may meet
Such long-tried friend of years
To share with us the wine—
’Tis nectar then—and cheers
With influence divine!
Or, if oppress’d with care
Or sickness, low we lie,
What med’cine can compare
With friendship’s love-lit eye?
One fond plain English word
More cheers our suffering man
Than all the pomp absurd
Of doctor’s Latin can.
Oh, bliss how bright, how rare,
Where friend like this appears,
With smiles our joy to share,
Or share our grief with tears:
To have this, is to win
From out our earthly strife
The brightest jewel in
That crown of thorns—called life!
PHOTOGRAPHIC PORTRAITURE.
Ten years ago, when the miniature room of the Royal Academy used to be mobbed by fair women, bent either upon criticising their friends or furtively admiring their own portraits, who could have foreseen that Sol was about to wrest the pencil from the hand of the cunning limner, and annihilate one of the oldest callings connected with the Fine Arts? The income of a Thorburn or a Ross seemed as assured as that of an archbishop against change or curtailment, and no high-born lady’s boudoir was complete without a portrait of herself paid for at a princely price. The introduction of the daguerreotype process, some five-and-twenty years ago, seemed only to fix more firmly the claims of the brush against the art of the photographer. Tompkins or Hopkins may submit to go down to posterity as livid corpse-like personages; but the Lady Blanche or the fair Geraldine forbid it. Oh Heavens! Presently, however, Fox Talbot appeared upon the scene, and the dull metal, which only enabled you to see your friend glaring at you at an almost impossible angle, gave way to photography, in which the image was fixed upon paper. The collodion process followed, and from this moment the occupation of the miniature-painter was gone. A truer draughtsman than either Thorburn, Ross, or Cooper of old, had appeared on the scene, and year by year we looked with a diminished interest for England’s beauties in the miniature room of the Royal Academy screen.
Our International Exhibitions, in these days of rapid progress, serve the purpose of estimating our progress since the last decade; and in no department of science or industrial art has such an advance been made, between the years 1851 and 1862, as in that of photography. In the former year, a few portraits exhibited by Messrs. Henneman of Regent Street, who at that time held the exclusive patent to produce photographs by Mr. Fox Talbot’s process, represented the art as it then existed. In 1862, the splendid collection of sun-pictures in the glass-room of the International, excited the admiration of visitors to such a degree, that exclamations were heard on all hands against the Council for placing them in such an out-of-the-way place in the building.
Photography has now become an institution; its professors are counted by the thousand in the Metropolis alone, and portraits once obtainable only by the rich, now hang on the walls of the meanest cottage. Take a walk down the New Cut, Seven Dials, or any other unsavoury locality, and there you will see how Sally the cook, and Billy the potman, or the wooden visage of Policeman X, are exhibited to an admiring New Cut circle; and who shall say that, if not quite so fine, yet that they do not look far more natural than “portraits in this style, 10s. 6d.,” of a dozen years ago?
