NOTES.

Page 2, line 6.

As on that Sabbath-ere when He arrived,

'J'arrive essoufflé, tout en nage; le cœur me bat; je vois de loin les soldats à leur poste ; j'accours, je crie d'une voix étouffée. Il étoit trop tard.'-Les Confessions, 1. i.

P. 2. 1. 14.

'Tis not a tale that every hour brings with it.

"Lines of eleven syllables occur almost in every page of Milton; but though they are not unpleasing, they ought not to be admitted into heroic poetry; since the narrow limits of our language allow us no other distinction of epic and tragic measures."-JOHNSON.

It is remarkable that He used them most at last. In the Paradise Regained they occur oftener than in the Paradise Lost in the proportion of ten to one; and let it be remembered that they supply us with another close, another cadence; that they add, as it were, a string to the instrument; and, by enabling the Poet to relax at pleasure, to rise and fall with his subject, contribute what is most wanted, compass, variety.

Shakspeare seems to have delighted in them, and in some of his soliloquies has used them four and five times in succession; an example I have not followed in mine. As in the following instance, where the subject is solemn beyond

all others.

To be, or not to be, &c.

They come nearest to the flow of an unstudied eloquence, and should therefore be used in the drama; but why exclusively? Horace, as we learn from himself, admitted the Musa Pedestris in his happiest hours, in those when he was most at his ease; and we cannot regret her visits. To her we are indebted for more than half he has left us; nor was she ever at his elbow in greater dishabille, than when he wrote the celebrated Journey to Brundusium.

P. 3. 1. 25.

like him of old

To admire or despise St. Bernard as he ought,' says Gibbon, the reader, like myself, should have before the windows of his library that incomparable landskip.'

P. 4, L. 1.

That winds beside the mirror of all beauty,

There is no describing in words; but the following lines were written on the spot, and may serve perhaps to recall to some of my readers what they have seen in this enchanting country.

I love to watch in silence till the Sun

Sets; and MONT BLANC, arrayed in crimson and gold,
Flings his broad shadow half across the Lake;
That shadow, though it comes through pathless tracts
Of Ether, and o'er Alp and desert drear,

Only less bright, less glorious than himself.

But, while we gaze, 'tis gone! And now he shines
Like burnished silver; all, below, the Night's.

Such moments are most precious. Yet there are
Others, that follow fast, more precious still;
When once again he changes, once again
Clothing himself in grandeur all his own ;
When, like a Ghost, shadowless, colourless,
He melts away into the Heaven of Heavens;
Himself alone revealed, all lesser things
As though they were not!

P. 4, 1. 17.

That dungeon-fortress

The Castle of Joux in Franche-Comté.

P. 4, 1. 17.

never to be named,

See the Odyssey, lib. xix. v. 597, and lib. xxiii. v. 19.

P. 5, 1. 14.

As now thy once-luxurious bowers, RIPAILLE ;

The retreat of AMADEUS, the first Duke of Savoy. Voltaire thus addresses it from his windows:

'Ripaille, je te vois. O bizarre Amédée,' &c.

The seven towers are no longer a land-mark to the voyager.

P. 5, 1. 19.

Nightly called up the Shade of ancient ROME;

He has given us a very natural account of his feelings at the conclusion of his long labour there: "It was on the night of the 27th of June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page in a

KK

summer-house in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a berceau or covered walk of acacias, which commands the lake and the mountains; and I will not dissemble my joy. But, when I reflected that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion," &c.

There must always be something melancholy in the moment of separation, as all have more or less experienced ; none more perhaps than Cowper :-" And now," says he, "I have only to regret that my pleasant work is ended. To the illustrious Greek I owe the smooth and easy flight of many thousand hours. He has been my companion at home and abroad, in the study, in the garden, and in the field; and no measure of success, let my labours succeed as they may, will ever compensate to me the loss of the innocent luxury that I have enjoyed, as a Translator of Homer."

P. 12, 1. 13.

A temple, sacred to Humanity!

In the course of the year they entertain from thirty to thirty-five thousand travellers.-Le Père BISELX, Prieur.

P. 14, 1. 23.

Whose can it be, but his who never erred?

Alluding to Barri, a dog of great renown in his day. His skin is stuffed, and preserved in the Museum of Berne.

P. 15, 1. 4.

ST. BRUNO's once

The Grande Chartreuse. It was indebted for its foundation to a miracle; as every guest may learn there from a little book that lies on the table in his cell, the cell allotted to him by the fathers.

"In this year the Canon died, and, as all believed, in the odour of sanctity: for who in his life had been so holy, in his death so happy? But false are the judgments of men, as the event sheweth. For when the hour of his funeral had arrived, when the mourners had entered the church, the bearers set down the bier, and every voice was lifted up in the Miserere, suddenly, and as none knew how, the lights were extinguished, the anthem stopt! A darkness succeeded, a silence as of the grave; and these words came in sorrowful accents from the lips of the dead. I am summoned before a Just God! A Just God judgeth me! --- I am condemned by a Just God !'”

"In the church," says the legend, "there stood a young man with his hands clasped in prayer, who from that time resolved to withdraw into the desert. It was he whom we now invoke as St. Bruno.

P. 15, 1. 11.

Glided along those aisles interminable,

Ils ont la même longueur que l'eglise de Saint-Pierre de Rome, et ils renferment quatre cents cellules.