A REMARKABLE PROPHECY.

As West was conversing one evening with Gavin Hamilton in the British Coffee House, at Rome, an old man, with a long and flowing beard and a harp in his hand, entered and offered his services as an improvisatore bard. “Here is an American,” said the wily Scot, “come to study the Fine Arts in Rome; take him for your theme, and, it is a magnificent one.” The minstrel casting a glance at West, who never in his life could perceive what a joke was, commenced his song. “I behold in this youth an instrument chosen by heaven to create in his native country a taste for those arts which have elevated the nature of man—an assurance that his land will be the refuge of science and knowledge, when in the old age of Europe they shall have forsaken her shores. All things of heavenly origin move westward, and Truth, and Art, have their periods of light and darkness. Rejoice, O Rome, for thy spirit immortal and undecayed now spreads towards a new world, where, like the soul of man in Paradise, it will be perfected more and more.” The prediction of Peckover, the fond expressions of his beloved mother, and his solemn dedication to art, rushed upon West’s memory, and he burst into tears; and even in his riper years, he was willing to consider the poor mendicant’s song as another prophecy.