repeated "yes, it is he-the Judas Iscariot who betrayed his master!"

After the first surprise was over, suppressed laughter was heard. Pale with rage, the Dominican retreated behind the crowd and made his escape to his cell—with the emotions of a demon quelled before the radiant power of an angel's divinity, and the reflection that henceforth he must go down to posterity as a second Judas! The resemblance was perfect.

And where now was Leonardo de Vinci-he who stood conspicuous among the nobles of the land-he whose might of genius had cast high birth and worldly honors into obscurity. Now surely was the hour of his triumph!

Alas, no! he stood humbled and depressed; bitter tears bedewed his cheeks, and when the cry was repeated again and again, “it is the Prior!" he hastily quitted the presence of the Duke, and in the solitude of his own apartment, on his knees, in an agony of repentance, "O Andrea, my master!" he exclaimed, "how have I sinned against thy memory, our art, and my own soul! I have sinned, I have sinned! It was a sacrilege-in the same hour in which thou didst answer my prayer with the blessed inspiration of the vision of the Redeemer! I am unworthy of thy love, of thy divine art, and of my own respect. 'Revenge can have no part in a great mind,' was thy last precept--how much better didst thou know me than I knew myself. Strengthen and guide henceforth my weak and sinful nature."

Such were the emotions of the artist, while all Milan and Italy rang with the fame of the work which he himself so bitterly repented. All flocked to see it, and his renown was at its highest zenith. He shunned the applause which it attracted, and in a humble spirit devoted himself to the pursuit of a nobler triumph than he had already achieved--the triumph over himself.

This is the history of that celebrated painting, the Last Supper of Leonardo de Vinci, which is familiar to all, from the innumerable copies transmitted to posterity, and distributed through every civilized country, by the pencil and the burin. It is still in the refectory of the Dominican convent, at Milan, though, having sustained much injury from ill-usage, especially when the convent was occupied by French troops, at the close of the last century, it gives the traveller now but an indistinct idea of its original glory.

Leonardo de Vinci, in 1520, visited France in consequence of the pressing solicitation of the noble and chivalric Francis I. His health was feeble, and the King often came to see him at Fontainbleau.

One day when he entered, Leonardo rose up in his bed to receive him, but, in the effort, fainted from excess of weakness. Francis hastened to support him, but the eyes of the artist had closed forever; and Leonardo lay encircled in the arms of the monarch. Such was the death of the subject of the foregoing sketch.

NATURE-A PROSE POEM.

Minds of the highest order of genius draw their thoughts most immediately from the Supreme Mind, which is the fountain of all finite natures. And hence they clothe the truths they see and feel, in those forms of nature which are generally intelligible to all ages of the world. With this poetic instinct, they have a natural tendency to withdraw from the conventions of their own day; and strive to forget, as much as possible, the arbitrary associations created by temporary institutions and local peculiarities. Since the higher laws of suggestion operate in proportion as the lower laws are made subordinate, suggestions of thought by mere proximity of time and place must be subtracted from the habits of the mind that would cultivate the principle of analogy; and this principle of suggestion, in its turn, must be made to give place to the higher law of cause and effect; and at times even this must be set aside, and Reason, from the top of the being, look into the higher nature of original truth, by Intuition,-no unreal function of our nature:

But if it is precisely because the most creative minds take the symbols of their thoughts and feelings from the venerable imagery of external nature, or from that condition of society which is most transparent in its simplicity, that, when they utter themselves, they speak to all ages, it is also no less true, that this is the reason why the greatest men, those of the highest order of intellect, often do not appear very great to their contemporaries. Their most precious sayings are naked, if not invisible, to the eyes of the conventional, precisely because they are free of the thousand circumstances and fashions which interest the acting and unthinking many. The greatest minds take no cognizance of the local interests, the party

NATURE.-James Monroe & Co.-1836-Boston.

ORATION delivered before the Phi-Beta-Kappa Society, at Cambridge, August 31, 1837, by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Published by request. Boston-James Monroe & Co., 8vo. pp. 26.

spirit, and the pet subjects of the literary coteries of particular times and places. Their phraseology is pure from the ornament which is the passing fashion of the day. As, however, they do not think and speak for their own order only, as they desire to address and receive a response from the great majority of minds—even from those that doubt their own power of going into the holy of holies of thought for themselves—there is needed the office of an intermediate class of minds, which are the natural critics of the human race. For criticism, in its worthiest meaning, is not, as is too often supposed, fault-finding, but interpretation of the oracles of genius. Critics are the priests of literature. How often, like other priests, they abuse their place and privilege, is but too obvious. They receive into their ranks the self-interested, the partisan, the lover of power, besides the stupid and frivolous; and thus the periodical literature of the day is in the rear, rather than in advance of the public mind.

After this preamble, which we trust has suitably impressed the minds of our readers with the dignity of the critical office, we would call all those together who have feared that the spirit of poetry was dead, to rejoice that such a poem as "Nature" is written. It grows upon us as we reperuse it. It proves to us, that the only true and perfect mind is the poetic. Other minds are not to be despised, indeed; they are germs of humanity; but the poet alone is the man-meaning by the poet, not the versifier, nor the painter of outward nature merely, but the total soul, grasping truth, and expressing it melodiously, equally to the eye and heart.

The want of apprehension with which this poem has been received, speaks ill for the taste of our literary priesthood. Its title seems to have suggested to many persons the notion of some elementary treatise on physics, as physics; and when it has been found that it treats of the metaphysics of nature-in other words, of the highest designs of God, in forming nature and man in relations with each other-it seems to have been laid down with a kind of disgust, as if it were a cheat; and some reviewers have spoken of it with a stupidity that is disgraceful alike to their sense, taste, and feeling.

It has, however, found its readers and lovers, and those not a few; the highest intellectual culture and the simplest instinctive innocence have alike received it, and felt it to be a divine Thought, borne on a stream of English undefiled,' such as we had almost despaired could flow in this our world of grist and saw mills, whose utilitarian din has all but drowned the melodies of nature. The time will come, when it will be more universally seen to be "a gem of purest ray serene," and be dived after, into the dark unfathomed caves of that ocean of frivolity, which the literary productions of the present age spread out to the eyes of despair.

We have said that "Nature" is a poem; but it is written in prose. The author, though "wanting the accomplishment of verse," is a devoted child of the great Mother; and comes forward bravely in the midst of the dust of business and the din of machinery; and naming her venerable name, believes that there is a reverence for it left, in the bottom of every heart, of power to check the innumerable wheels for a short Sabbath, that all may listen to her praises.

In his introduction, he expresses his purpose. He tells us, that we concede too much to the sceptic, when we allow every thing venerable in religion to belong to history. He tells us that were there no past, yet nature would tell us great truths; and, rightly read, would prove the prohecies of revelation to be "a very present God;" and also, that the past itself, involving its prophets, divine lawgivers, and the human life of Him of Nazareth, is comparatively a dead letter to us, if we do not freshen these traditions in our souls, by opening our ears to the living nature which forevermore prepares for, and reechoes, their sublime teachings.

"The foregoing generations," he says, "beheld God face to face: we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the Universe?" Why should we not indeed? for we not only have the Universe, which the foregoing generations had, but themselves also. Why are we less wise than they? Why has our wisdom less of the certainty of intuition than theirs? Is it because we have more channels of truth? It may be so. The garden of Eden, before the fall of man, and when God walked in its midst, was found to be a less effective school of virtue, than the workshop of a carpenter, in a miserable town of Judea, of which 'an Israelite without guile' could ask, "Can any good come out of Nazareth?" And is not this, by the way, a grave warning to the happily circumstanced of all time to tremble-lest they grow morally passive, just in proportion to their means of an effective activity? With the religion of history must always be combined the religion of experience, in order to a true apprehension of God. The poet of "Nature" is a preacher of the latter. Let us "hear him gladly," for such are rare.

The first Canto of this song respects the outward form of Nature. He sketches it in bold strokes. The stars of Heaven above-the landscape below-the breathing atmosphere around-and the living forms and sounds-are brought up to us, by the loving spirit of the singer; who recognizes in this drapery of the world without, the same Disposer that arranged the elements of his own conscious soul. Thus, in his first recognition of Nature's superficies, he brings us to Theism. There is a God. Our Father is the author of Nature. The brotherly "nod" of companionship assures us of it.

But wherefore is Nature? The next Canto of our Poem answers this question in the most obvious relation. It is an answer that

"all men apprehend." Nature's superficies is for the well-being of man's body, and the advantage of his material interests. This part of the book requires no interpretation from the critic. Men are active enough concerning commodity, to understand whatever is addressed to them on this head. At least there is no exception but in the case of the savage of the tropics. His mind has not explored his wants even to the extent of his body. He does not comprehend the necessities of the narrowest civilization. But whoever reads Reviews, whoever can understand our diluted English, can understand still better this concentrated and severely correct expression of what every child of civilization experiences every day. There is but one sentence here, that the veriest materialist can mistake. He may not measure all that the poet means when he says, man is thus conveniently waited upon in order "that he may work." He may possibly think that "work" relates to the physical operations of manufacture or agriculture. But what is really meant is no less than this; "man is fed that he may work" with his mind; add to the treasures of thought; elaborate the substantial life of the spiritual world. This is a beautiful doctrine, and worthy to be sung to the harp, with a song of thanksgiving. Undoubtedly Nature, by working for man with all her elements, is adequate to supply him with so much "commodity" that the time may be anticipated when all men will have leisure to be artists, poets, philosophers,in short, to live through life in the exercise of their proper humanity. God speed to the machinery and application of science to the arts which is to bring this about!

The third Song is of Nature's Beauty, and we only wonder why it was not sung first; for surely the singer found out that Nature was beautiful, before he discovered that it was convenient. Some children, we know, have asked what was the use of flowers, and, like little monkeys, endeavouring to imitate the grown-up, the bearings of whose movements they could not appreciate, have planted their gardens with potatoes and beans, instead of sweet-briar and cupid's-delights. But the poet never made this mistake. In the fullness of his first love for his "beautiful mother," and his "gentle nest," he did not even find out those wants, which the commodity of Nature supplies.

"Give me health and a day," he says, " and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. The dawn is my Assyria; the sunset and moonrise my Paphos and unimaginable realms of faerie; broad noon shall be my England of the senses and understanding; the night shall be my Germany of mystic philosophy and dreams.”

If this subjection of all nature to himself does not prove intimate acquaintance, the following severe truth of fact must do so:

"The shows of day, the dewy morning, the rainbow, mountains, orchards in blossom, stars, moonlight shadows in the still water, and the like, if too eagerly hunted, become shows merely, and mock us with their unreality. Go out of the house to see the moon and 'its mere tinsel," &c.