THE SOUL OF ART. 75

His mother, discerning her son's intellectual pro-mise, but disregarding its evident bias, now formedthe' ambitious hope of making him a priest. ButBarry felt he had no call to the service of the altar." His soul was Art," and to Art he must devote hislife, his brain, his mind. His father sternly opposedhim. His mother, afraid that he would injure hishealth by intense application, stole away his candle.He had no money to buy books; the few he couldborrow he transcribed with his own hand. But henever despaired. The brave soul never faltered; heworked, and studied, and mused, and painted; and,in the fulness of time, an abundant reward came-areward which might well compensate for some ofthe sorrows of his later life. At a public exhibitionof pictures in Dublin was hung his first maturedproduction-" St. Patrick's Arrival on the Coast ofCashel." When the exhibition opened, Barry, withbeating, aching heart, penetrated into the crowd.To his infinite delight, it quickly gathered aroundhis picture, and murmurs of approval arose on everyside. Suddenly the throng made way for one whosejudgment none might dispute-the orator, statesman,and philosopher, Edmund Burke. He examined thecomposition closely; while all were hushed, and theblood seemed to stand still in its artist's veins. Hepraised it warmly, ungrudgingly. Who was thepainter ? Where was he ? " Then," says a writer," the youth felt the hot blood rushing to his brow.He, the unknown stranger, the ill-dressed pallid boy,