sman, an admirable colorist, but his imagination was of a
Gothic cast, and he delighted in strange, fantastical, and
supernatural subjects. He had travelled much in Germany, and his mind
was imbued with the superstitions and legends of that storied land.
These he loved to illustrate with his pencil, and his walls were
covered with German scenes and subjects, from the "Witches' Sabbath"
to the "Castled Crag of Drachenfels." Portraits he painted from
necessity, not choice; but he was too true an artist for the million.
The sleek hypocrite wore not on his canvas the deceptive look of
holiness that bore him on through life to wealth and honor, but the
crafty, sensual smile, the libertine eye, and lips that indicated the
secret phases of his character. Imbecile beauty saw her index in the
painted mirror. Folly stood convicted by the pencil. It was frequently
remarked, that you might learn more of a man from a glance at his
portrait than from months' companionship with the original. Malise
Grey was not popular--but he lived for his art, and bread and water
satisfied his earthly cravings.

The meerschaum fairly smoked out, the artist drew from a dusty pile of
canvases one on which he had painted a family group. It was a fancy
piece. An old man lay upon his death bed, over which bent a weeping
wife and a sorrowing and lovely child. The face of the latter was one
of unearthly beauty, and Raphael or Titian might not have disdained
the painting of those glistening blue eyes, and the falling sunbeams
of that golden hair. The painter had poured out his soul upon that
angelic countenance and perfect figure.

"It is my ideal," said the artist, "and, by the mystic whisper of the
heart, by the bright teaching of the star that rules my destiny, by
the forbidden lore of which I have drank deeply, I know that the ideal
of each mind is the reflex of the actual, and with the true artist
fancy is existence!"

The meerschaum was again filled, and Malise Grey contemplated his
picture. The smoke wreaths rolled around it, but it shone out luminous
and starlike. Its harmony was like the silent melody of the spheres,
and its musical radiance dispelled the remembrance of all his
sufferings, and lulled him like the melody of falling waters. When, at
length, he drew his poor couch from its recess, and threw himself upon
it, he left the picture full in sight, and continued to watch it by
the fading firelight till its last luminous point disappeared