"Childe Harold'S Pilgrimage."

This greatest of Byron's works contains four hundred and ninety-five stanzas, divided into four Cantos. In Canto I. the "childe" visits Portugal and Spain (1809); in Canto II. Turkey in Europe (1810); in Canto III. Belgium and Switzerland (1816); and in Canto IV. Venice, Rome and Florence (1817). The stanzas are Spenserian (eight lines each of ten syllables and one of twelve). "Childe" is a title similar to "lord," and Childe Harold, the hero, has always been considered to be Lord Byron himself, though from the first Byron maintained that the character was fictitious. In his preface he says: "It has been suggested to me by friends, on whose opinions I set high value, that in this fictitious character, 'Childe Harold,' I may incur the suspicion of having intended some real personage: this I beg leave once for all to disclaim. Harold is the child of imagination. In some very trivial particulars, and those merely local, there might be grounds for such a notion; but in the main points, I should hope, none whatever." This denial seems, in the view of the public, to have carried very little weight, especially as the preface opens: "The following poem was written, for the most part, amidst the scenes which it attempts to describe." Of his hero he says: "He never was intended as an example, further than to show that early perversion of mind and morals leads to satiety of past pleasures and disappointment in new ones, and that even the beauties of nature, and the stimulus of travel (except ambition, the most powerful of all excitements), are lost on a soul so constituted, or rather misdirected."

This seems to stamp Byron as the hero. Canto IV. is perhaps the most interesting, as it is the longest and fullest and the last. Byron was but twenty-two years of age when he began his "Pilgrimage;" it was completed seven years later. The first portion was published in England in 1812. It was at once a success; the author, in writing of it to a friend, says: "I awoke one morning to find myself famous," and had he never written anything else, his fame would have endured in this work alone.

III. "THE MARRIAGE OF ST. CATHARINE."

CORREGGIO, 1494-1534. THE LOUVRE.

This picture is sometimes mistaken for a Madonna, but it relates to an entirely different subject.

St. Catharine of Alexandria was a near descendant of Constantine through her father, and of the King of Egypt through her mother,--but from her earliest years she showed contempt for earthly pomp and royal splendor, and devoted her time to the study of philosophy.

When she was of a suitable age and had come into her inheritance, her courtiers desired her to marry, that she might have an assistant in the government, and that they might have some one to lead them in battle. One night, after feeling very much perplexed, she dreamed that the Virgin Mother presented her to her divine Son, who smiled upon her, put out His hand, and plighted His troth to her by putting a ring upon her finger.

When she awoke, remembering her dream, she renounced all earthly sovereignty, declaring herself to be the betrothed of Christ.

She suffered martyrdom for the Christian faith, being broken on a wheel by the order of the Emperor Maxi-min. Hence, a wheel became her pictorial attribute.

The "Marriage of St. Catharine" is one of the most celebrated of Correggio's paintings. The youthful saint is betrothed to the divine Infant in the presence of his mother and St. Sebastian. The Virgin holds the child Jesus on her lap, and carefully superintends the ceremony, by supporting the hand of St. Catharine, who receives with a reverent yet blissful expression the proffered ring. St. Sebastian, distinguished by the arrows in his hand, looks on with delight.

In the landscape, in the distant background, the martyrdom of two saints is represented.

The effect of the whole composition is heightened by the most wonderful harmony of color.

This picture, now in the Louvre, originally belonged to Cardinal Barberini, and afterward to Cardinal Mazarin; from him it was purchased by Louis XIV., and added to the Louvre collection.