The bloody sheet. Look there! Look there!' he cried. 'Blood calls for blood- and from a father's hand!

-Unless thyself will save him that sad office.

What!' he exclaimed, when shuddering at the sight,
The boy breathed out, I stood but on my guard.'
'Dar'st thou then blacken one who never wronged thee,
Who would not set his foot upon a worm?

Yes, thou must die, lest others fall by thee,
And thou shouldst be the slayer of us all.'
Then from GARZIA'S belt he drew the blade,
The fatal one which spilt his brother's blood;

And, kneeling on the ground, Great God!' he cried,
'Grant me the strength to do an act of Justice.
Thou knowest what it costs me; but alas,
How can I spare myself, sparing none else?
Grant me the strength, the will-and oh forgive
The sinful soul of a most wretched son.
'Tis a most wretched father that implores it.'
Long on GARZIA's neck he hung and wept,
Long pressed him to his bosom tenderly;
And then, but while he held him by the arm,
Thrusting him backward, turned away his face,
And stabbed him to the heart.

Well might a Youth,*
Studious of men, anxious to learn and know,
When in the train of some great embassy

He came, a visitant, to Cosmo's court,

Think on the past; and, as he wandered through
The ample spaces of an ancient house,†

* DE THOU.

†The Palazzo Vecchio. Cosmo had left it several years before.

Silent, deserted-stop awhile to dwell
Upon two portraits there, drawn on the wall
Together, as of Two in bonds of love,

Those of the unhappy brothers, and conclude
From the sad looks of him who could have told,
The terrible truth.-Well might he heave a sigh
For poor humanity, when he beheld

That very COSMO shaking o'er his fire,

Drowsy and deaf and inarticulate,

Wrapt in his night-gown, o'er a sick man's mess,
In the last stage-death-struck and deadly pale;
His wife, another, not his ELEANOR,
At once his nurse and his interpreter.

THE CAMPAGNA OF FLORENCE.

'Tis morning. Let us wander through the fields,
Where CIMABUE found a shepherd-boy*
Tracing his idle fancies on the ground;
And let us from the top of FIESOLE,
Whence GALILEO's glass by night observed
The phases of the moon, look round below
On ARNO'S vale, where the dove-coloured steer
Is ploughing up and down among the vines,
While many a careless note is sung aloud,
Filling the air with sweetness—and on thee,
Beautiful FLORENCE, all within thy walls,
Thy groves and gardens, pinnacles and towers,
Drawn to our feet.

* GIOTTO.

From that small spire, just caught By the bright ray, that church among the rest By One of Old distinguished as The Bride,* Let us in thought pursue (what can we better?) Those who assembled there at matin-time;† Who, when Vice revelled and along the street Tables were set, what time the bearer's bell Rang to demand the dead at every door, Came out into the meadows; and, awhile Wandering in idleness, but not in folly, Sat down in the high grass and in the shade Of many a tree sun-proof-day after day, When all was still and nothing to be heard But the cicala's voice among the olives,

Relating in a ring, to banish care,

Their hundred tales. Round the green hill they went, Round underneath-first to a splendid house,

Gherardi, as an old tradition runs,

That on the left, just rising from the vale;
A place for Luxury-the painted rooms,
The open galleries and middle court

Not unprepared, fragrant and gay with flowers.
Then westward to another, nobler yet;

That on the right, now known as the Palmieri,
Where Art with Nature vied-a Paradise
With verdurous walls, and many a trellised walk
All rose and jasmine, many a twilight-glade
Crossed by the deer. Then to the Ladies' Vale;
And the clear lake, that as by magic seemed

Santa Maria Novella. For its grace and beauty it was called by Michael Angelo 'La Sposa.'

In the year of the Great Plague. See the Decameron.