The great artist is dead. The passing visions of a beautiful fancy have forever flitted away—“he sleeps the last sleep”—but his works live after him. They live to speak to us of their creator—to tell us of his goodness, of the deep unfathomed spring of human love within his heart. He sleeps, but he has left a name that is cherished by his country, and his genius is a source of national pride. How well is he remembered and loved by those who knew him! And the students in his own glorious art, with what enthusiasm and reverence do they cherish a memory of him! During his widow’s life his studio remained as he had left it—it was a Mecca to which for years pilgrims most devout resorted. To many that artist’s rooms were sacred places; standing in them they breathed the air of inspiration, and held sweet communings with the spirit of the Beautiful. Of the sublime lessons, and they were many, which spoke forth from those walls, there was one that made the gazer shudder and turn pale. No one gazing on the three faces which were separated from all other paintings wrought by the same hand, could have resisted the conviction that the artist had meant, ay, and that he had succeeded in conveying to the mind of the gazer, a deep and awful moral lesson, for the “Night” was with the “Sunrise” and the “Noonday!” It was marvellous, it was dreadful to trace the great resemblance between the likeness of the angelic little child, the incomparably beautiful maiden, and the splendid, but fallen woman! The same bright curling hair, the same deep, sapphire eyes, the fresh bloom on the fair cheek, the graceful form—they were unmistakeable. But oh! there was an expression on those features of the eldest woman, that the innocent child and the guileless maiden could not have interpreted—it was a bold, defiant look, that told it was a sorrowful and an ever-to-be-lamented day that saw her come before the world to wrestle for its honors—a very siren, but ah! how weak to strive against its sinful allurements, its awful temptations. They are one and the same, said every heart that gazed upon them. Reader, _they were_! For the “Night” was also a _portrait_, and the last work of Martin Gray! Alas! alas! sweet Alice! splendid and courted Alice! wretched and ruined Alice! * * * * * THE MISANTHROPE. BY A NEW CONTRIBUTOR.