garded with superstitious feelings, just as the Pickle is a cognate word. In Devon a Laps and the Gubbins were. As these were fungus (Lycoperdon giganteum) is called "pixytransformed into Gnomes and Goblins the Picts puff," because it was supposed a fairy seat. became Pixies. From their name probably "Pixy-seats," again, are the tangles that get came "Puck," no doubt a mischievous, dwarf-into horses' manes, where fairies were believed ish Pict and an eminent Pixy. The "Picts' to ride. "Pixy-rings" are curious round cirHouses," in which this ancient folk lived under- cles of lichens-like ring-worms on the earth ground, gave rise to the belief that the fairies or stone-which were regarded as circles for lived in the earth. The belief has had a great fairy dances. It is still declared that cattle many ramifications, and has formed a vocabu- will not graze in fields where these are found. lary of its own. In one of his notes I see that Puck may sometimes be surprised within Hawthorne derived the word "asphyxia" from pixy, the idea being that one so stricken was bewitched. It is quite likely that "pox" also refers to the theory that it was the work of Puck. Similarly derived, though this is not certain, may be "pyx," the Roman Catholic shrine for consecrated wafers. The Romanists derive their "pyx" from the Greek Túžos, "a cup;" but there is at least equal authority to believe that it was so called by the British natives from the belief that some kind of magic was in it. Clobery (1650) writes of "The pixie-led in popish piety." An old Devon MS. has the following definition : "PYXIE-LED: to be in a maze; to be bewildered, as if led out of the way by a hobgoblin, or Puck, or one of the fairies. The cure is to turn one of your garments the inside outward, which gives a person time to recollect himself. The way to prevent it, some say, is for a woman to turn her cap inside outward, that the pixies may have no power over her; and for a man to do the same with some of his clothes." "Those rings and roundelayes On many a grassy plaine." The belief in the "Pixies"-otherwise called "Little People"-may yet be frequently found in the rural districts of Devon, Cornwall, and Wales. "They lived there before any human beings came into the country." A Welsh drivthere" used to be a great many, and they could Ier told me, lowering his voice at the time, that be heard under the ground in every field; but they were leaving the country." It was evident that he, for one, did not desire that they should stand on the order of their going. And thus, in the myths of one age and the lowest superstitions of another, the once powerful nation of Roderic disappears from history, to live still, however, in the blood and the language of the race which absorbed the quality and strength of every enemy it conquered. L-HIS EARLIER ARTISTIC LIFE.* nited charcoal into a small bedroom on the N the morning of the twelfth anniversary ground-floor of a plain but comfortable dwellof Moscow, a of the afore-mentioned village, then and since celebrated for its two well-regulated institutions, the State Prison and the Theological Seminary, intended by legislators and pious people to be the balance-wheels of society. When the urchin had safely deposited his furnace on the floor of the apartment he left it in winter day, while the boys were sliding down hill, and the sleigh-bells were merrily ringing through the beautiful village of Auburn (New York), a youngster-who must have been, according to the records of the parish church of Scipio, if said records were properly kept, about ten years old-might have been seen, but probably was not, taking a clay furnace of ig-haste for the kitchen, and soon reappeared with This first portion was written in 1850 (mainly as it now appears), at the suggestion and request of some intimate friends of Elliott, for the purpose of preserving an authentic account of his earlier artistic life. After it had been emended and finished to our satisfaction we had a limited number of copies printed for special circulation. This was nearly twenty years ago. It is hardly possible that a sketch so entirely authentic and sharply minute could be prepared at this period. C. E. L. a broomstick, which, on entering his bedroom once more, he forced through the door-latch, that he might be able to prosecute his undertaking without fear of interruption from any unwelcome visitors. The reader will soon discover that these formidable preparations betokened an enterprise of no little magnitude. He must first be enlightened in regard to several matters which were more or less intimately con nected with the events of that particular day. So leaving the urchin to his solitude, we may briefly glance at his previous history, which will be likely to cast the light of probable conjecture upon his present design. His father was an architect of considerable mechanical genius, and many of "the principal men" of the neighborhood were indebted to his taste and skill for the somewhat imposing mansions which drew the attention of passing travelers. Like all good fathers, when they can, he sent his boy regularly to the district school. He had at a very early period displayed a taste for artistic mechanism, and most of his leisure hours and holidays were spent in his father's work-shop, from which he had sent forth sleds, wagons, wind-mills, and saw - mills, of many different sizes, but of very beautiful workmanship, which gave him a reputation among the young folks of being the most consummate operator of this kind in the village. But a dangerous rival had appeared in the school, who threatened by his skill as a draughtsman of horses-on the slate-to eclipse the fame of the hitherto unrivaled constructor. But this artist's genius seemed to have a somewhat limited range, since he always made the same horse, although, by dint of hard practice, he had succeeded in representing that particular animal in a very respectable state; and since the versatility of his talent was not brought in question by his critics, he was luxuriating in the wealth of his fame. it only as a mechanic; while he himself went to work on his ideal-a horse in motion, in any attitude; for the innocent young soul thought one attitude as easy to draw as another. He had done a great thing, however, in beginning to draw as an artist, little as he knew what he was doing. He had been making the horse his study, and not any particular horse in one particular attitude. The difference was as great between him and his rival as between the dunce who learns by rote to scan the first book of the Eneid glibly and the scholar who reads Tacitus with delight and Horace with enthusiasm. The one was overcoming only the difficulties of imitating a stiff, hard, unyielding form; the other was learning principles of art which would enable him to master all forms. But the dear boy knew not that he had begun as Giotto began: to draw the forms of the sheep he watched on the sunny slopes of the Tuscan hills; to represent life by lines without color. He was "out of patience with himself for his stupidity!" Long afterward he learned that he had lost his patience because he could not do in his tenth year what cost the old masters so much toil. But light began to break in on the path of his studies. Gleam after gleam came out from his pencilings. He could at last draw a horse hitched to a post, or chafing under the spur, with swelling veins, snorting nostrils, and prancing feet. At last it mattered little to him what his horse must do." He could make him do one thing as well as another. He had passed the Rubicon of Art, although he still knew so little what he had done. But judging of himself as he judged his rival, he " thought his horse could pass muster." Having now, as patiently as he could, endured the reproach of defeat for several weeks, the time which he had bided had at last come. One evening he drew a fine, prancing horse, full of mettle, with flowing mane and tail, and laying his slate up carefully on the kitchen mantle-piece he went to bed. All night long squadrons of prancing horses danced on his vision. The architect's son began to feel the stirrings of ambition, and he secretly determined to distance his rival on his own field. He collected all the pictures of horses he could lay his hands on, and began his studies on the slate. A common observer, however, could make little more out of these first attempts than oblong bodies with four uprights, evidently intended to represent horses' legs. But he gradually improved, until, with all his drawings, he began to draw on his rival. Not satisfied, however, with his success, he kept his secret and obstiIn the morning he took down his slate, nately persevered, trying his subject in one po- and hurrying off to school before the usual hour, sition for a while, and then in another; but he showed his drawing to one of his little friends, grew less and less satisfied with his perform- who had taken his part from the beginning, and ances, and thinking he had "gone to work at asked him privately "how he liked it." The the wrong end," he cast aside all his picture- noble little sympathizer's eyes (we have always models and began to study from life. He had a liking for that boy since we heard the watched horses as they passed in the streets, story) grew as large as saucers-tiny ones. He went to the stables to examine their limbs and could hardly trust his senses. He gazed inproportions; but he still found it "no easy tensely on the picture, seized the slate, and matter to draw a good horse." "Why is it," when he could contain himself rushed across he said, "that I can't draw one good horse in a the school-room, and thrusting it triumphantly month, while that fellow can draw fifty in a before the face of the still-horse boy, said, day?" "Now, old feller, make a horse like that-you can't do it." There was no retreat; he was in the lists with his rival. He was to have one The mystery was not completely solved by him for years, for the good reason that its solution opens the whole arcana of art. Long after-day to copy the prancing horse. He tried and ward he discovered that while his rival had, by dint of sheer manipulation, succeeded in copying a horse standing still, without life or action, and succeeded commendably well, he had done failed. "Well," said the hitherto unrivaled draughtsman of still-horses, "now let him try my horse. I can't do his'n, and he can't do mine." This, too, was fair play. His antago nist also was to have a day. He did it during | tion for a boy of his age, who had received no the ten minutes the school were at play. At instruction whatever in art, and who had never noon the still-horse was shown. Even the still- before attempted to paint in oil. Elliott said horse boy acknowledged that " he had done it." of it: "It couldn't, of course, have been any Thus ended the conflict, and after that day great thing as a picture, but it was generally young Elliott had as many horses to draw for acknowledged that it made an excellent firehis comrades as he had hitherto had of sleds, board." wagons, and wind-mills. We have told this story in all its detail because it is a miniature history of the life of every true artist. We find such things in the lives of all great painters. But we must return to the youngster in his bedroom (which occurred some time later than “the horse trial"), for the chances are that before now his enterprise has got under way, nor should we be surprised if the furnace of ignited charcoal had already begun to work. The boy shut up in that bedroom we need hardly say is the one who made so many laborious slate-studies on the horse. He had distanced all competitors in horses, and begun to extend the field of his operations. He abandoned the slate for India ink and crayons. At last he resolved to make an essay in oil-painting. Keeping his own counsels, "that no one might laugh at him," he procured a rather huge canvas, with the requisite utensils, and we now find him shut up in that little bedroom, on that "bitter cold day," attempting to copy a picture in the History of England-"The Conflagration of Moscow." But this expedition to Moscow was likely to become to the young painter even more fatal than it had proved to Napoleon himself. The dinner hour came round, but he did not show himself. Some time passed, and his mother became anxious. A search was made for him every where. Having occasion to visit the bedroom, his mother found the door fastened. She ran to the outside window, through which she saw her son sitting in his chair, his head fallen down on his breast, apparently asleep. She rapped on the window and called, but received no answer. She forced the window open, when a sight of the charcoal furnace explained the mystery to the frightened mother, who "supposed that her Charlie was dead." She sprang through the window, and rushing to his side, shook him violently; but he showed no sign of life. And there on the chair before him stood "Moscow Burning," a rude but bold sketch, in which the idea of the artist was not to be mistaken. By his side on a little stand lay the open History of England, from which he had copied-his pallet and brushes fallen from his hands; and to all appearances the young artist had painted his first and last oil-picture. But the rush of winter air soon revived him, and in a few hours he was as well as ever. This narrow escape was far enough from curing the boy of his passion for painting; but it taught him how much better is charcoal for sketching than for breathing. He afterward finished "The Conflagration," and a good judge who saw it said it was an astonishing produc It is pretty evident that ideas of art were now growing into shape in the mind of the boy, and we are not much surprised that he "made up his mind that, for better or worse, he would be a painter"-a resolution he seems to have adhered to pretty obstinately, until he has won for himself a reputation in the acquisition of which any man may have considered himself fortunate had it cost him a lifetime of unceasing toil. About this time his father had employed two men of doubtful genius in that line "to landscape" the parlor of a house he was finishing, and they had gone on daubing the walls by the yard with all sorts of enormities in the shape of woods, waters, and animals, without much regard to the laws which the Almighty originally intended should control the animal, mineral, or vegetable kingdoms. While these worthies were gone to dinner one day, Charlie, who was sure to know what was going on in the limits of the narrow artistic world around him, entered the room, and seizing up one of the pallets, sketched a bridge with a man walking over. He "worked quick and fled." When the men returned they honestly expressed their amazement and delight, and to their immortal honor "they allowed the bridge to stand, with the walking man." It may have been a no very great thing, and probably was so considered by the next proprietor of the mansion, for he had all the wall embellishments decently covered over with paper, not excepting "the bridge and the man walking over it"-which may be carefully uncovered some day. Stranger things have happened. Charles L. Elliott used to talk with his young friends about art and artists (these associates still remember it all), and "what would be the end of all this" they could not tell. Some of them, in a certain way, entered into his feelings, but many of his hours and days were left without sympathy, and he "was driven to books for comfort and company." He became a great reader, especially of two kinds-those that described battles, and those which spoke about artists. After exhausting his father's library he used to borrow from neighbors. Chance put him in possession of a large Biographical Dictionary, and he hunted all through its thousand pages in his eleventh year, and read a great many times over its accounts of painters and sculptors, engineers and engravers, who had become famous in past ages. The miscarriage of his "charcoal picture" had not cured him of great subjects. He was fond of "battle-pieces, Scripture scenes, and heroic subjects." copied in oil many of the pictures in the old Family Bible. "Ahasuerus and Esther" was He of no little merit; it is still in the artist's pos- of some importance in this narrative is, that this session. picture was what the painter long afterward spoke of as "my first sober attempt at delineation from nature, strictly speaking." Some good instruction in art would now have been a world to him. But Auburn at that period had no artist's studio, and he had to work The academician went home, and found his his way on in the dark, as West, the father of father in a different state of mind. No change painting in this country, did, with only nature had perhaps taken place in his mind about the to help him. In his fifteenth year Elliott's fa- profitableness of painting pictures; but, like ther removed to Syracuse, which was then (1827) other sensible men, he "made the best of it," but a hamlet with a handful of people. Heavy and was prepared to negotiate. Nothing more forest trees were then growing where churches, was said about "dry-goods and groceries" or villas, and groaning warehouses now stand."academies." These offensive subjects were The site of the great railway dépôt was then not even brought up; and therefore something "an irredeemable marsh." But a spirit of civilized bustle was beginning, and Clinton's canal would do the rest. Elliott's father had never troubled himself much about his son's paints and brushes. He considered it "a freak of boyhood that would give way to better things when the time came." But finding the freak likely to last longer than he "calculated" he determined to put a stop to it, or at all events train up the lad to some occupation more likely to keep him out of the poor-house. So "Charles" was put behind the counter of a dry-goods and grocery store, in which his father was a partner. "Now, Charles, you may make up your mind to give up your picture business." But it happened that "of all things in the wide world that was the very thing he had determined never to do-poor-house or palace -come what might." Mr. Elliott père happened to be more proprietor of the dry-goods and groceries than he was of the painter; and customers who wanted to make careful inquiries on "the prices of Bohea tea, starch, cut-nails, New England rum, molasses, and Webster's spellingbooks, and sich like," were left to solve their own problems, while Charlie retired to some garret, or out of the way nook or corner of Syracuse, to copy an engraving of Inman's "Fisher-Boy." Things were now going on badly. In about three months Mr. Elliott informed the young gentleman that he must enter the store of a very worthy Scotchman, where, as the father had no interest, the son "would be obliged to walk Spanish." He entered; but in about another three months the worthy Scotch merchant took Mr. Elliott père aside, and quietly expressed "some, yes, serious doubts about his son's ever making a very great merchant." Mr. Elliott himself finally began to fear that "those paints and brushes" would prove too strong for him, and he sent his son to an academy of some repute in Onondaga Hollow. Here he had to go through "a routine not much more to his taste than dry-goods and groceries," particularly when he had some "great picture" on hand—and once more a three months' trial had turned out a failure. His father became "satisfied that even academies were not the thing." "Charles had studied very little, and painted a great deal; but he had painted a landscape, embracing the academy, which pleased us all.' This clause in the report of Charlie's term had its effect. A point was likely to be done, since both "the high The Young Elliott's best and fairest test was now coming. His father had large contracts for building. Architectural drawing was an important branch of the business, and when he made known to his son his desire to have his best assistance, it was faithfully pledged. compact was fairly entered into, and honorably fulfilled on both sides. Partly as a necessary facility to his progress, and partly to gratify his taste, he was sent to a select school for two years, where he was contented, because he could follow congenial studies, and when his father wanted any help, artistic and well-executed drawings were always furnished by the willing artist. Discerning the irremediable bent of his genius, and wishing to divert it exclusively to architecture, he procured for him elaborate and costly works in that range of art, and so accurate and beautiful was every design and combination the builder called for executed he became proud of his son's talent, and was happy in the fact that he could turn these gifts to advantage. "Art seemed now not to be squinting quite so straight to the poor-house." During this period Elliott made a profound study of architecture and drawing in their application to practical use in common edifices— in chastening the proportions of dwellings, elaborating, and refining, and embellishments of |