famous city of Lisbon. Don Fernando sprang joyfully on shore, and hastened to his ancestral mansion. To his surprise, it was inhabited by strangers; and when he asked about his family, no one could give him any information concerning them.

He now sought the mansion of Don Ramiro, for the temporary flame kindled by the bright eyes of the Alcayde's daughter had long since burnt itself out, and his genuine passion for Serafina had revived with all its fervor. He approached the balcony, beneath which he had so often serenaded her. Did his eyes deceive him? No! There was Serafina herself at the balcony. An exclamation of rapture burst from him, as he raised his arms toward her. She cast upon him a look of indignation, and hastily retiring, closed the casement. Could she have heard of his flirtation with the Alcayde's daughter? He would soon dispel every doubt of his constancy. The door was open. He rushed up stairs, and entering the room, threw himself at her feet. She shrank back with affright, and took refuge in the arms of a youthful cavalier.

'What mean you, Sir,' cried the latter, by this intrusion?'

'What right have you,' replied Don Fernando, 'to ask the question?'

The right of an affianced suitor!'

Don Fernando started, and turned pale. Oh Serafina! Serafina!' cried he, in a tone of agony, 'is this thy plighted constancy?'

'Serafina?-what mean you by Serafina? If it be this young lady

you intend, her name is Maria.'

'Is not this Serafina Alvarez, and is not that her portrait ?' cried Don Fernando, pointing to a picture of his mistress.

'Holy Virgin!' cried the young lady; 'he is talking of my great grandmother!'

An explanation ensued, if that could be called an explanation, which plunged the unfortunate Fernando into tenfold perplexity. If he might believe his eyes, he saw before him his beloved Serafina; if he might believe his ears, it was merely her hereditary form and features, perpetuated in the person of her great grand-daughter.

His brain began to spin. He sought the office of the Minister of Marine, and made a report of his expedition, and of the Island of the Seven Cities, which he had so fortunately discovered. No body knew any thing of such an expedition, or such an island. He declared that he had undertaken the enterprise under a formal contract with the crown, and had received a regular commission, constituting him Adalantado. This must be matter of record, and he insisted loudly, that the books of the department should be consulted. The wordy strife at length attracted the attention of an old gray-headed clerk, who sat perched on a high stool, at a high desk, with iron rimmed spectacles on the top of a thin, pinched nose, copying records into an enormous folio. He had wintered and summered in the department for a great part of a century, until he had almost grown to be a piece of the desk at which he sat; his memory was a mere index of official facts and documents, and his brain was little better than red tape and parchment. After peering down for a time from his lofty perch, and ascertaining the matter in controversy, he put his pen behind his ear, and descended. He remembered to have heard

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something from his predecessor about an expedition of the kind in question, but then it had sailed during the reign of Dom loam II., and he had been dead at least a hundred years. To put the matter beyond dispute, however, the archives of the Torve do Tombo, that sepulchre of old Portuguese documents, were diligently searched, and a record was found of a contract between the crown and one Fernando de Ulmo, for the discovery of the Island of the Seven Cities, and of a commission secured to him as Adalantado of the country he might discover

There ! cried Don Fernando, triumphantly, there you have proof, before your own eyes, of what I have said. I am the Fernando de Ulmo specified in that record. I have discovered the Island of the Seven Cities, and am entitled to be Adalantado, according to contract.'

The story of Don Fernando had certainly, what is pronounced the best of historical foundation, documentary evidence; but when a man, in the bloom of youth, talked of events that had taken place above a century previously, as having happened to himself, it is no wonder that he was set down for a mad man.

The old clerk looked at him from above and below his spectacles, shrugged his shoulders, stroked his chin, réascended his lofty stool, took the

pen from behind his ears, and resumed his daily and eternal task, copying records into the fiftieth volume of a series of gigantic folios. The other clerks winked at each other shrewdly, and dispersed to their several places, and poor Don Fernando, thus left to himself, flung out of the office, almost driven wild by these repeated perplexities.

In the confusion of his mind, he instinctively repaired to the mansion of Alvarez, but it was barred against him. To break the delusion under which the youth apparently labored, and to convince him that the Serafina about whom he raved was really dead, he was conducted to her tomb. There she lay, a stately matron, cut out in alabaster; and there lay her husband beside her; a portly cavalier, in armor; and there knelt, on each side, the effigies of a numerous progeny, proving that she had been a fruitful vine. Even the very monument gave proof of the lapse of time, for the hands of her husband, which were folded as if in prayer, had lost their fingers, and the face of the once lovely Serafina was noseless.

Don Fernando felt a transient glow of indignation at beholding this monumental proof of the inconstancy of his mistress; but who could expect a mistress to remain constant during a whole century of absence? And what right had he to rail about constancy, after what bad passed between him and the Alcayde's daughter? The unfortunate cavalier performed one pious act of tender devotion; he had the alabaster nose of Serafina restored by a skilful statuary, and tben tore himself from the tomb.

He could now no longer doubt the fact that, somehow or other, he had skipped over a whole century, during the night he had spent at the Island of the Seven Cities; and he was now as complete a stranger in his native city, as if he had never been there. A thousand times did he wish himself back to that wonderful island, with its antiquated banquet halls, where he had been so courteously received;

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and now that the once young and beautiful Serafina was nothing but a great grandmother in marble, with generations of descendants, a thousand times would he recall the melting black eyes of the Alcayde's daughter, who doubtless, like himself, was still flourishing in fresh juvenility, and breathe a secret wish that he were seated by her side.

He would at once have set on foot another expedition, at his own expense, to cruise in search of the sainted island, but his means were exhausted. He endeavored to rouse others to the enterprise, setting forth the certainty of profitable results, of which his own experience furnished such unquestionable proof. Alas! no one would give faith to his tale; but looked upon it as the feverish dream of a shipwrecked man. He persisted in his efforts ; holding forth in all places and all companies, until he became an object of jest and jeer to the Jight-minded, who mistook his earnest enthusiasm for a proof of insanity; and the very children in the streets bantered him with the title of · The Adalantado of the Seven Cities.'

Finding all his efforts in vain, in his native city of Lisbon, he took shipping for the Canaries, as being nearer the latitude of his former cruise, and inhabited by people given to nautical adventure. Here he found ready listeners to his story; for the old pilots and mariners of those parts were notorious island-hunters and devout believers in all the wonders of the seas. Indeed, one and all treated his adventure as a common occurrence, and turning to each other, with a sagacious nod of the head, observed, 'He has been at the Island of St. Brandan.'

They then went on to inform him of that great marvel and enigma of the ocean; of its repeated appearance to the inhabitants of their islands; and of the many but ineffectual expeditions that had been made in search of it. They took him to a promontory of the island of Palma, from whence the shadowy St. Brandan had oftenest been descried, and they pointed out the very tract in the west where its mountains had been seen.

Don Fernando listened with rapt attention. He had no longer a doubt that this mysterious and fugacious island must be the same with that of the Seven Cities ; and that there must be some supernatural influence connected with it, that had operated upon himself, and made the events of a night occupy the space

of a century. He endeavored, but in vain, to rouse the islanders to another attempt at discovery; they had given up the phantom island as indeed inaccessible. Fernando, however, was not to be discouraged. The idea wore itself deeper and deeper in his mind, until it became the engrossing subject of his thoughts and object of his being. Every morning he would repair to the promontory of Palma, and sit there throughout the live-long day, in hopes of seeing the fairy mountains of St. Brandan peering above the horizon; every evening he returned to his home, a disappointed man, but ready to resume his post on the following morning.

His assiduity was all in vain. He grew gray in his ineffectual attempt; and was at length found dead at his post. His grave is still shown in the island of Palma, and a cross is erected on the spot where he used to sit and look out upon the sea, in hopes of the rëappearance of the enchanted island.

IN THE UNITED STATES, WITH A SKETCH OF THEIR PRESENT AND PAST HISTORY IN EUROPE.

BY THOMAS R. HOFLAND.

THE gradual advancement which the United States have made in every department of the fine arts, must be a source of gratification to every lover of his country, who considers the important influences exercised, by their cultivation, upon society. We have established the falsity of the assertion of the London Quarterly, that a high genius for art is incompatible with a republican form of government.' This, with sundry other profound apothegms, was fulminated by a writer in the 'Review,' under the signature of Titian,' some years since. It would seem,' says he, that a high and refined genius for art is indigenous to monarchies; and under such a form of government alone, can it flourish, either vigorously or securely. The United States of North America can never expect to possess a fine school of art, so long as they retain their present system.' 'Titian,' however, does not attempt to support this declaration, by analogy, or indeed any other species of argument than his mere ipse dixit. It is a little singular, that not many years before this writer issued his decrees of outlawry in art against these States, BENJAMIN WEST, a native of the republic, occupied the presidential chair of the British Royal Academy, with distinguished honor, both to himself and the institution. Titian' evades this fact, in the remark, that though

• West, by birth, might have been an American, he was essentially an English painter ;' an assumption very necessary to his theory of indigenous monarchical genius! But this in passing,

That the United States can yet claim equality with Europe, in the arts, as touching a general diffusion of taste and patronage, it would be ridiculous to assert. The strength and powers of infancy do not vie with the full vigor of manhood; but that the germs of these exist among us, promising as plenteous a harvest as any nation in modern Europe can boast, may fearlessly be maintained. France and Great Britain are indeed now the only nations that can claim fine schools of art. Italy, the idol of the painters' dreams, and poets inspirations, retains but a faint shadow of her pristine splendor. The modern Italian school, despite the advantages its professors enjoy, of immediate access to the immortal works of the old masters, is tame and affected. The works of the Roman artists, particularly, with one or two exceptions, are proverbially bad, all over Europe. Alas for the world's mistress! In arts and arms, she is alike degenerate. Her genius slumbers with her liberties; but it is not an eternal sleep. By the divine relics of her former glories, making her beautiful even in decay; by the undying inspirations that cling around the memories of her illustrious dead; by the holy spirit of grandeur and loveliness which resteth evermore upon her azure skies, her “heaven-kissing hills,' and her flower-clad valleys; and above all, by the regenerating influences which, under Providence, · are spreading over and illuminating the whole earth ; it shall not be eternal! The hand of tyranny and oppression shall not always be upon that lovely land. The accumulating wrongs of many centuries are brooding over Europe, with mutterings of retribution. The storm, fearful but salutary, will one day burst; art will revive, and unborn generations shall marvel how so dark a spot as the history of the last few centuries, could ever have sullied its bright renown But leaving prophecy, let us glance brietly at the past and present state of the arts in Europe.

France has probably, at the present moment, a finer school than she has enjoyed at any former period. In the departments of drawing and design, she has always occupied a prominent position ; but the coloring of the French school, until within the last half century, was of a very ordinary character; and even now, is very inferior to the English schools, or even the American, imperfect though it be. Indeed, it is much to be doubted, when we consider the great advantages enjoyed by the French, in the noble specimens of the old masters, which adorn the Louvre, the Tuilleries, and other public edifices, whether it can be deemed to possess an extraordinary genius for art. After Poussin, Le Brun, Berthè, Vernet, and Lamartine, it would be difficult to mention any other names of remarkable excellence, whose works exhibit their undeniable sublimity of conception, and power of execution. France abounds with artists of respectable merit, with men who have taste and skill to avail themselves of the genius of the old masters; but for the mighty minds which conceive and originate styles and schools, we may, for the most part, look in vain. The works of Dubufe, several of which, within the last few years, have been exhibited in the principal cities of the United States, are good specimens