the bold and enthusiastic painter, at first entertained many doubts and misgivings in regard to the propriety of the course of Luther, a person who dared to make opposition to the Pope and the received tenets of religious belief. But this hesitancy and these doubts once overcome, no friend was ever truer than Cranach was to Luther and the cause of the Reformation; this friendship ripened into great and lasting intimacy. Cranach became Luther's ambassador, it is said, when he wished to marry Catharine of Bora; and on the day when Luther's engagement and wedding were both celebrated at the same time, 13th June, 1525, this very memorable act in church-history was witnessed but by Lucas Cranach, Bugenhagen, and the Doctor Juris Appelles. Cranach painted Luther several times, likewise his wife, whom Luther used to call his "herzliebe Käthe," and sometimes in jest his "gnädige Frau von Zulsdorf," from a domain which the Elector had presented Luther. Once when Cranach showed him a new picture of his wife, he said: "Now I shall paint a man upon this canvas, and send both pictures to the Concilium, with the request that the assembled holy fathers tell me which they prefer, the decent state of matrimony or the indecent unmarried state of the ecclesiastics. Ah, how drear and deserted the world would be without this gracious ordinance of God!" When Cranach, in 1536, received the distressing news of the death of his eldest son, John Lucas, which occurred at Bologna on the evening of the 9th October, and when the stricken parents overwhelmed themselves with self-accusations that they had sent their son to Italy, where he was to have completed his artistic studies, Luther, upon hearing the news, went to Cranach's house to console him. "Dear Master Luka," he said, "be gentle; God means to break your headstrong will; for He loves to test us where pain smites keenest, to kill the old Adam within us."

When Luther went on his celebrated trip to Worms, it was Lucas who was commissioned by the town-council of Wittenberg to supply him with what he might need for the journey. On his return he wrote to Cranach, which letter we gave in a former article of this Magazine. It seems, too, that at Wartburg Castle, Cranach's counsel was frequently requested in the translation of the Bible. Thus Luther writes on one occasion to Spalatin: "When I translated the Bible, Master Lukas aided me by counsel and kind offices; he sent to me from the Saxon court many a precious stone to look at, that I might find the true meanings of biblical expressions, by closely studying the ever-varying play of light and color of these stones; particularly when I translated the 21st chapter of the Revelation." With Melanchthon, Master Cranach lived likewise in intimate relations. A letter of Melanchthon is extant in which he requests of the Prince of Anhalt some favor for Cranach's son-in-law, George Dasche, or Tassius.

But the chief interest of Cranach's life is his touching devotion and adherence to the fate of the unfortunate son of Elector Frederick the Wise, John Frederick the Magnanimous, a man whose history would well deserve more extended notice. It is known that Duke Maurice of Saxony, the head of the younger or Albertine branch of the Saxon house, eager for the possessions of the elder, the Ernestine branch,

had brought about serious dissensions between the two; and to obtain possession of his cousin's lands, he even concluded a treaty with the arch-enemy of his house, the Emperor Charles V., which looked to the accomplishment of his purposes. The Emperor had promised to him, in case they should be successful in killing off the Protestant hydra, the Electorate of Saxony. After some ephemeral successes on the part of the assailed prince, John Frederick was totally defeated in the battle of Mühlberg (April 24, 1547) on the Elbe river, and himself taken prisoner. Luther did not live to behold this terrible blow to his magnanimous benefactor; he had died a few months before. A court-martial of which the bloody Duke Alba was president, condemned the Elector to death. It is said that when the sentence was announced to him in his prison-cell, he was playing chess with the Duke of Brunswick, likewise a prisoner. They stopped their game to hear it; when it had been read,-" Pergamus · let us go on with the game," said the unmoved Elector. It must, however, be stated that the Emperor seems never to have intended to carry this sentence into execution. A more tangible fruit was within his grasp; and aided by the frightened spouse of the Elector, John Frederick was finally prevailed upon to sign the humiliating treaty by which he renounced the Electorate in favor of Maurice. At this sad time Cranach hastened to the side of his master at Augsburg, and while pursuing his calling of painter, never left him until his captivity was ended by the sudden and unexpected defection of the new Eector Maurice. This came to pass in September, 1552. In the following year Cranach died in the house of his daughter at Weimar, 16th of October, 1553. His sorely tried friend and benefactor, Elector John Frederick the Magnanimous, followed him the year after, 3d of March, 1554. Cranach lies buried in the churchyard of the garrison church at Weimar, nearly opposite the grave of the gallant Lieut. General von Schmettau, who fell at Jena in 18c6; and we believe that the ashes of John Frederick the Magnanimous rest in the same classic city.

F. S.

I saw him one day

With his shovel and spade

And his pipe, march away

To his ditch in the glade,

While out of that socket

That men call a pocket

His bottle's neck shone like the smile of a maid.

His coarse overshirt

Was tattered and torn,

His pants full of dirt,

And his shoes they were worn;

But his shovel was gleaming,

And his broad features beaming

As bright as the broad open beam of the morn.

Ah! rough thou wert, Pat,

O'er thy mission of toil:

But ah! what is that

To the man who must moil?

No heart has beat ever

More gentle and clever

Than beats in thy bosom, thou son of the soil!

As he passed to his ditch

Down in the wet moor,

A man proud and rich

Called Pat by his door,

And bid o'er his neighbor

For honest Pat's labor

"When I've finished my ditch," answered Pat; "not before.

"My promise I gave,

And my honor is bound;
I am not, Sir, a knave

Tho' I delve in the ground.
My word, when I speak it,

I would scorn, Sir, to break it;

Truth's penny is better than Error's best pound!

The nabob drove down

On the way that Pat trode,

And passed with a frown

By a wretch on the road;

A wretch with want dying,

An infant was crying

In her arms, and she seemed broken down with her load.

Pat drew anon near;

He heard the babe cry,

And a big Irish tear

Rolled down from his eye.

He tried to conceal it,

But his heart would reveal it

As the tale of the fallen was told with a sigh.

He gave her advice;

But this was not all,

For his tools in a trice

From his grasp he let fall,

And deep from that socket

That men call a pocket

He drew forth his bottle, his purse, and his all.

And he shook the seed dime

From his old "seedy" purse,

That he'd kept since the time

That he play'd with his nurse;

'Twas his last and his only,

And Pat loved it fondly,

For he'd kept it through hunger, through tatters, and worse.

Through many a bout,

Through pain and through gloom,

Through dirt, darkness, doubt,

Dikes, ditches and doom,

In life's every station,

From nation to nation

He had cherished that seed of a fortune to bloom.

"Here, take it," he said,
"Last night I had more,
But the ground was my bed,

And this morn I was poor.

I delve for my living,

But wasting and giving

Soon hurries me back to my ditch in the moor."

He turned him apart

When he'd told her all that;

His big Irish heart

Felt as large as his hat,

As it throbb'd and it fluttered

With delight never uttered

Save when it was told in the bosom of Pat.

He delved the week thro'

And he made the dirt fly,

And his ditch longer grew

As his bottle grew dry;

The task was diminished
Till at last it was finished,

And his pay was in hand and his holiday nigh.

O Saturday eve!

It is Patrick's delight,

For it comes to relieve

His fatigue with a fight,

For buffets and bruising

And whiskey's ill-using

Is the cream that Pat skims from his day of respite.

Hark! a fight; but not his,

Yet he enters with zest,

And bears his broad phiz

For the weak and oppress'd.

The fight is all over,

And night with its cover

Hides penniless Pat as he grounds him to rest.

And thus with his spade

And his bottle he goes
Through the light and the shade,

'Mid his friends and his foes,

Making and spending,

Breaking and mending,

Now healing a heart, and now bruising a nose.