denotes a distinct natural variety. Another rarer kind has smaller flowers, and bears a scantier crop of smaller berries perfectly white. But there are negroes as well as albinoes of this ordinarily red race; and an evergreen sort brought from the Straits of Magellan has round, sweet, black berries the size of a black currant, which are used in America, whether green or ripe, for baking in pies, and pronounced to be very good for the purpose. Yet another species, which flourishes specially at Nepal, displays large violet-coloured berries, with proportionately large seeds, which in India are dried like raisins in the sun, and then eaten at dessert. The Mahonias, or spiny-leaved barberries, which bear quite valueless fruit, were at one time assigned to a distinct genus, but are now included under the general term Berberis. The most esteemed of these is the aquifolium, or holly-leaved, whose glossy evergreen foliage, very similar in shape to that of holly, but glowing in autumn with the richest hues of crimson and purple, presents an appearance so attractive that for some years after its first introduction (from N.-W. America) in 1823, plants of it were readily bought at the price of ten guineas each. It is now a common ornament of our shrubberies.
Though so different a plant in many respects, an examination of the flower and fruit shows the barberry to be nearly akin to the vine, which is therefore classed in the Natural System as one of the Berberidæ, and the one perhaps most closely allied to the shrub which gives a name to that family. Whence its own name is derived seems to be rather uncertain. It is called by the Arabs Berberys, and Du Hamel says the term is derived from an Indian word signifying mother-of-pearl; while others, again, seek its etymology in the Greek berberi, or the Phœnician barar—the former meaning a shell, the latter the lustre of shells, the allusion being supposed to be either to the hollow shape or to the glossiness of the leaves, though the last named quality is certainly more apparent in the berries, which, at least in the case of the white-fruited sort, may be compared to some kinds of little shells. The Old-English name for the plant (still retained, it is said, in Cambridgeshire) is the pipperidge or piprage-bush.
STUDIOS IN FLORENCE.
No. I.
I have always maintained, in spite of Gray’s hackneyed verses, that merit, like murder, will betray itself, especially in these days, when avalanches of words, cataracts of ink, and pyramids of books, fall on us from every quarter of the globe, in praise or dispraise, explanation or entanglement, support or attack, of every conceivable subject. This is essentially the age when, by one party, at least, every goose has, sooner or later, the chance of being taken for a swan; though, alas! it is also true, that by the other party some really noble swans are looked upon as geese. But aspirants to fame now, at all events, are known. Their good or ill is discussed. Most of them are sure to obtain the excitement of encouragement or opposition. The deadly upas of obscurity does not poison them. There are, however, exceptions. A man who earns his bread in one of the learned professions, and can only indulge or cultivate his taste for art at intervals, is often debarred from just appreciation by the conventional limitations which the world places on excellence. His profession is a disadvantage to his art, his art is a disadvantage to his profession; when the public ear is absorbed in listening to the echoes of one kind of glory, it is for a time utterly deaf to every other; and when, in the sudden new birth of a country, a spirit of political ardour and commercial enterprise awakens, it temporarily effaces the impression made by other manifestations of the public spirit. It is, I suppose, owing to one or other of those reasons that the works of art which I lately visited are less known than they should be. There are a number of sculptors’ studios in and about the Via de Serragh, Florence. Many are congregated in a large old building about midway between the Carraja Bridge and the Roman Gate.
In a studio in this house are the St. Stephen and the Wounded Gladiator, which were the objects of my first visit.
The St. Stephen is a bust hewn out of granite. It is a noble head. A Christian Laocoon, sublime in its expression of suffering, sublimer still in its expression of faith. There is admirable art in the way the whole figure is suggested, from the pose of the head and shoulders. We see that the martyr has fallen on one knee, beaten down by his relentless foes. His head is thrown back, as he awaits his death pang. He is an old man, with a face ploughed with lines of care and thought; the temples are slightly hollowed, and the sunken, upturned eyes are calm, trusting, and invincible. Only on the lips, which are parted, can we read the plain signs of the intense physical suffering; but as legible is the indomitable resolution of the face. No victim, but a self-devoted sacrifice. In this lies the subtle difference between this head and that of the old Greek marvel. St. Stephen triumphs over death—Laocoon endures it. With the one, death is the man’s imperious choice—with the other, death is the man’s inflicted doom. St. Stephen seems to say, “The truth which I attest may slay me, but it is my will to give my witness to it; come shame, come torture, come death, I accept them—truth and I are stronger than they.” We could almost expect that the next moment the visible glory of the victory will hallow him, and that we shall see his face shine as the face of an angel.
The grey colour of the granite out of which it has been cut suits the severe grandeur of the head, and harmonises with the whole expression. Chiselled out from the block at once, without passing through the intermediate stages of clay and plaster, there is a spontaneity, if we may so term it, about this work which would appear to realise the old legend, that the sculptor did not create his bust or statue out of his materials, but only liberated an already existent figure from its shroud of stone.[1]
The other figure is an entirely realistic portraiture of an athlete. He has raised his arm to strike, but at the very moment has received his- ↑ There are witnesses who can prove this remarkable fact.
