these charred sticks were substituted for the missal, and the heedless scapegrace proceeded to ornament some portion of the walls of the great church of the Certosa with designs like those he had traced upon the loggia of his own home. A severe flagellation was inflicted upon him in consequence, and the parents of the impetuous and irreverent boy, in order to place him beyond the reach of similar temptations for the time to come, procured his admission into the college of the Congregazione Somasca, a brotherhood conspicuous for their rigid discipline.

STOTHARD, before he was eight years of age, felt the love of art stirred within him by seeing some of the heads of Houbraken, and an engraving of the blind Belisarius, by Strange; and the first employment of his pencil, was in copying these prints. (B) Placed, for the benefit of his health, under the care of an ancient widow, it was the delight of the artist's childhood to obtain admission to a store-room of the farm-house in which his guardian dwelt, and to sit for hours upon a low stool, feasting his eyes upon a painting which hung otherwise neglected there.

VANDYCK'S predilection for art was shown at a very early age. His imitative faculties were called into play by his observation of the designs which his mother was accustomed to execute in embroidery, and his early efforts with the pencil were encouraged and assisted by the same judicious parent.

PRONTI, RUYSDAEL, MICHAEL ANGELO.

11

CESARE PRONTI, of Rimini, owed his first passion for painting to contemplating, when a boy, a collection of fine pictures in a shop at the fair of Sinigaglia. He remained riveted to the spot for hours, unmindful of his meals, or of his parents who were searching through the city for the young runagate, who, when found, could scarcely be torn from the object of his regards. The impression was indelible, and he soon after put in force his fixed determination to become a painter.

JACOB RUYSDAEL, at the early age of twelve years, produced specimens of painting in oil that would have been no discredit to artists of double that age. It was at about the same age that CLAUDE, designing grotesques and arabesques for his brother, who was a carver in wood, manifested the first indications of that taste for art, which was shortly afterwards stimulated and developed by a residence in Rome.

MICHAEL ANGELO, while yet a school-boy, gave up all his leisure hours to drawing, to the neglect of his studies. Borrowing the necessary materials from Francesco Granacci, a pupil of Domenico Ghirlandajo, he copied in oils, upon a panel, a print representing the story of St. Anthony beaten by devils, and in depicting some of the subordinate monsters of the composition, he went to the fish market to observe the form and colour of fins and of the eyes of fish, that the whole might be true to nature. Before he was fourteen, a head had been given him

"other artists talked meat and drink, he talked landscape," commenced making drawings at six years old and COPLEY, at almost as early an age, was accustomed to withdraw from the family circle for hours at a time, and, shutting himself up in a lonely room, cover the bare walls with charcoal drawings of martial figures, engaged in such adventures as might occur to his childish fancy. COSWAY, at the age of seven, provoked the anger of the master of the Tiverton School, by the neglect of his lessons, from which the "idle pursuit of drawing" allured the future Royal Academician. And JACKSON, the son of a village tailor, in the rude portraits for which his school companions were indebted to his pencil, gave prophetic intimations of the genius which afterwards perpetuated the features of so many of his brethren in the Royal Academy.

The first efforts of DAVID ALLAN were uncouthly traced with chalk upon the floor of his father's house, in which an accident confined him as a prisoner; and his biographer has left us a pleasant narrative of the incident by which a sagacious friend was enabled to divine the latent genius of the boy. Little David's schoolmaster was something old, near-sighted and vain. It was his practice to pace along the floor, among his scholars, dressed in a long tartan gown, with a tartan night-cap on his head, and a rod of correction in his hand, which e applied, in times of irritation, with much severity.

David, now eleven years old, was so struck with the ludicrous figure which the teacher made, while punishing with difficulty some stout refractory boys, that he sketched the group on his slate and exhibited it to his companions: the startling laugh which this occasioned drew the attention of the Dominie, who, though sand-blind, detected the resemblance; and, incensed at being caricatured among his scholars, bestowed a smart chastisement on the culprit, and then complained to his father. Old Allan, when he heard of the talents and the petulance of his boy, knew not whether to rejoice or mourn. It was necessary, however, to withdraw him from the school, which he did, admonishing him at the same time, for insulting one whom he should rather have honoured. 'I could nae help it,' said little David; he looked sae queer: I made it like him, and a' for fun.””

SALVATOR ROSA, the son of an indigent architect, predestined by his parents to the church," was born," says Pascoli, "no less a poet than a painter;" and amidst the magnificent scenery of Pausilippo and Vesuvius, his genius received its earliest inspirations. While yet a child, he was frequently shut up, by way of punishment for his truant propensities, in some disused rooms of the old cassaccia, inhabited by his father, where, by the aid of some burned sticks, he sketched upon the walls the most striking features of the scenery with which his erring footsteps had rendered him familiar. Once, too, in going to worship,

these charred sticks were substituted for the missal, and the heedless scapegrace proceeded to ornament some portion of the walls of the great church of the Certosa with designs like those he had traced upon the loggia of his own home. A severe flagellation was inflicted upon him in consequence, and the parents of the impetuous and irreverent boy, in order to place him beyond the reach of similar temptations for the time to come, procured his admission into the college of the Congregazione Somasca, a brotherhood conspicuous for their rigid discipline.

STOTHARD, before he was eight years of age, felt the love of art stirred within him by seeing some of the heads of Houbraken, and an engraving of the blind Belisarius, by Strange; and the first employment of his pencil, was in copying these prints. (B) Placed, for the benefit of his health, under the care of an ancient widow, it was the delight of the artist's childhood to obtain admission to a store-room of the farm-house in which his guardian dwelt, and to sit for hours upon a low stool, feasting his eyes upon a painting which hung otherwise neglected there.

VANDYCK'S predilection for art was shown at a very early age. His imitative faculties were called into play by his observation of the designs which his mother was accustomed to execute in embroidery, and his early efforts with the pencil were encouraged and assisted by the same judicious parent.