teresting item in the paper was the capture of some brigands, and details of their death. Two of them were said to have made a full confession of their crimes. This confession was to be inserted the next day. After a while, I knocked at his door, and asked him to let me in.

There was a pause, and then I heard him unlock it. I went in, and saw he had been writing. His face was yet convulsed with some terrible storm of passion which had passed over it. It looked as it used to look when I first saw him, but in addition there was a wild, eager gleam of hope.

"What is the matter?" I asked him.

His lips quivered as he replied, "Some brigands have been captured, and have died. They are the two men who were the executioners of my sentence." No expletives were needful to enforce those few words. Execrations or curses would have seemed weak when compared to the bitter horror of his tone.

"If," he went on, "that confession, wrenched out of them by the fear of death, be a genuine one, I shall know the truth. I have written for a copy of that confession to be sent to me. I have requested one of my fellow-soldiers who lives in Calabria (he is no friend of mine, but he is a just man,) to obtain it."

"But will there not be a copy printed in the paper to-morrow?

"No; the members of one government rarely expose the infamy of their predecessors. However opposed in policy and superior in legality, there is a certain solidarity between them which induces them to cast a veil over past turpitude and cruelty. It is wisest, as a general rule, to do so, as it saves much heartburning and useless resentment. But in this case I must know the truth."

He was right. The next day there was no allusion to the execution of the brigands.

But, after the lapse of a few days, a packet came for him. He tore it open, and I left him to read it undisturbed.

When I returned, in about an hour, my friend seemed to have suddenly dropped a mask. The features, the expression, the whole bearing of the man were changed and glorified.

"Look," he said, "they have confessed all -the forged list, the forced signature; and more," he said, "it was not from my lips that they heard the name of Joanna's father. When they stripped me of my clothes, they searched them. In the breast of the coat a small packet had been sewn inside the lining. Poor Joanna had thought to charm my life, and ensure my safety, by stitching there a

relic, and had written a few tender lines on the paper in which it was folded, and signed them with her name. She prayed me to return safe to her father and to herself. That was quite enough. They got possession of the name, but wished to force me to utter it. They sought to destroy me, body and soul. When they found I conquered them, they resolved that, at any rate, I should not have the satisfaction of thinking I had done so. I was to die with this bitterness added to my death that I had betrayed my best friend. I did not die then, but I have been dying of that fatal shame ever since. I believed that in the agony of delirium I had done so, and that idea was even harder to bear than the undeserved suspicion of having signed that list. Thank God!"

No hymn of thanksgiving ever bore on its melodious aspirations more fulness of heartgratitude to God. But as he spoke I saw his head, which had been lifted up with a noble dignity I shall never forget, suddenly droop, his figure swayed to and fro, and then he dropped at my feet as if shot. He had broken a blood-vessel. He lingered a few days, long enough, however, to send a copy of the document to Garibaldi, and to know that his chief rejoiced with all his heart at this irrefragable proof of his innocence of even unconscious treachery.

In some occult way the contents of that letter became known. Two of the most distinguished officers of the Sicilian expedition arrived a few hours before Giulio breathed his last, and stood by his death-bed.

He recognised them, and smiled. He gave no other greeting, for his hands were clasping mine, and he held them in a grasp which was only unloosed by death.

He died gently as an infant, murmuring the word "Patria!

Am I wrong in saying that his was a life most bitterly and undeservedly tried?

Amid the insolent felicities which abound in the destinies of many of my friends and acquaintances, an unanswerable "Why?" rises to my lips.

Why do we possess all this flaunting prosperity, this love, friendship, honour, these troops of friends? Why was he bereaved of all, and made to bear, in addition, a load of unjust obloquy?

But the echo of that "Thank God!" returns to me, and I am content to leave the inscrutable mystery unsolved. I am glad, however, that I knew Giulio-glad I was to be of some help to him, and gladdest of all that I loved him with all my heart and soul. For the rest, God's will must be "suffered" as well as "done."

B. I. T.

Passing through the ancient city of Avignon, I resolved to take advantage of the proximity to visit the locality consecrated to the mighty memory of Petrarch. A leisurely ride of some three or four hours would carry me to the spot which five centuries have gilded with their traditions of the poet's history, and that of his unpropitious loves.

Washington Irving has expressed his conviction that an unfavoured passion is necessary to the formation of a true poet, and that, but for this source of eloquent complaint, we should have been deprived of some of the richest veins of poetry which have embellished the mine of literature. For myself, I am by no means disposed to dispute the assertion, and am ready even to admit the possibility of the theory that where a poet has not been blessed (?) with a disappointment of this nature, he has been compelled to feign one, in order to work up his outpourings to the requisite degree of pathos; he will be drowned, nobody shall save him-he refuses to be comforted

Go!-you may call it madness-folly

You shall not drive my gloom away:
There's such a charm in melancholy

I would not, if I could, be gay.

And "moody madness" or "morbid folly" it certainly would be in men of the common stamp; but a poet is an eccentric being, he is ruled by other laws, and judged by a different code; he is altogether out of the orbit of ordinary mortals, or he would not be a poet; he is not only excused for this caprice of fancy-he is admired for possessing a fertile power of creation.

In some cases, so vivid is his imagination, and so flexible his conviction, that the fiction becomes, even to himself, a fact, and he really suffers all he describes, and all that he ought to undergo were the situation actual: this,

indeed, is part of his business, or his readers would not share his sorrows:

Si vis me flere, dolendum est

Primum ipsi tibi; tunc tua me infortunia lædent.

We are unwilling to fathom too accurately the details of Petrarch's story; there is much grace and elegance in it as it stands, and we prefer viewing it through the halo of a romantic interest, to reducing it to a dry record of facts. We have every reason, however, for giving credence to the more, rather than the less, romantic version of the tale, and the foundation on which it rests is sufficient support for the fairy fret-work.

The subject was naturally much in my mind as I traversed the diversified road lead

ing from Avignon to Vaucluse, and every incident of the way become doubly interesting from its associations; and yet there was much to attract and delight the eye in Nature herself. At first starting, and after clearing the quaint old streets, the massive walls and crumbling battlements of the famed city, and losing sight of the colossal palace of the Popes in its ruined grandeur, and of the primitive suburbs, I travelled over a flat but richly cultivated plain: as I proceeded, however, the aspect of the country gradually changed; undulating slopes appeared, then a succession of hills surrounded me, well wooded, and dotted now with single châteaux, now with clustering hamlets, now with graceful bright green stone-pines, and again with cypresses and firs, while the large tracts of olives and vines bespoke the character of the population.

By-and-by a snow-capped spur of the Maritime Alps came in sight, beyond and above peaks of nearer, but still far-off ranges, making a vast panorama of great beauty.

Nearer the road, I passed many antiquatedlooking villages; some insignificant clusters of cottages, others remains of once-important places, as their peculiar sites and fortified walls indicated. Of these the most remarkable were Mornières, Châteauneuf de Cardegne, elevated on a rocky eminence, and looking, in its ruin, like a miniature Toledo; and L'Isle. The latter is an altogether unique little town, situated in the very midst of the confluence of the seven Sorgues, all emanating from the exhaustless spring of the Grotto of Vaucluse; the water of this fathomless source has never, under any circumstances, been known to fail. L'Isle is a veritable island, or cluster of islands, for it is intersected in all directions by these rapid streams, which render it a flourishing manufacturing town-but a manufacturing town worthy of its associations and its size-one in which the noise, and smoke, and gaunt aspect of tall,

denuded brick chimneys are replaced by the more poetical appliances of water-power.

Whichever way the eye turns it is met by lakes, rivulets, cascades, canals; and numerous are the water-wheels rolling ceaselessly their unvarying circuit, while the sparkling streamlets drip from step to step on the bright moss-grown frame-work, imparting a cheerful and promising tone of industry and prosperity to the attractive little paese.

A venerable old gateway, with a deep arched passage through it, and a substantial circular turret on either side, stands at the entrance of the town; and beneath its shade were congregated a number of peasants in various costumes, called together from the neighbouring villages by a horse-fair. It was a scene to be photographed.

All the habitations in this part of the country seem to be most primitive and simple in construction, and the inmates wear an aspect as quaint and local as their dwellings. Asses, mules, and, when they can afford it, oxen, are employed in their agricultural operations, and their carts and ploughs seem to be of a very early date.

The villas and châteaux seen from the road

are of different degrees of importance-mostly the family property of the ancienne noblesse, some re-purchased by the descendants of expelled ancestors, others-one in particular, a

very magnificent property-appropriated by parvenus tradesmen whom Fortune, by one of her unaccountable caprices, has jerked aloft in the social see-saw. Huy mir, morgen dir," is an aphorism as applicable to practical

life as to the Flemish tomb-stone on which I once read it. The Seigneur du Château to whom we have alluded above made his fortune in the somewhat ignoble calling of a truffle vendor.

The luxuriance of Nature observable all

chief and by much the largest of the seven streams which spring beneath the Grotto, accompanies the traveller, now in a narrower, now in a wider bed, along the whole length of the road, sometimes rolling its crystal wave languidly over the polished pebbles, sometimes pouring headlong in bubbling, frothing haste over every obstacle it meets; hereabouts it is lost by a winding in the road, but only to reappear in a new form at the entrance of the valley in which is embosomed Vaucluse, and by a singular combination of gradients reproduces in miniature the effect we may imagine to have been caused by the twin source of the Scamander.

Ἡ μὲν γάρ θ ̓ ὕδατι λιαρῷ ρέέι, ἀμφὶ δὲ καπνὸς
Τίνεται ἐξ αὐτῆς, ὡσεὶ πυρὸς αἰθομένοιο·
Η δ' ἑτέρη θέρεϊ προρέει, εἰκυῖα χαλάζῃ,
*Η χιόνι ψυχρῇ, ἤ ἐξ ὕδατος κρυστάλλῳ.
Ενθα δ ̓ ἐπ ̓ αὐτάων πλυνοὶ εὐρέες ἐγγὺς ἔασι
Καλοὶ, λαΐνεοι .

Thus, in close proximity, and separated only by a narrow olive-yard, we see on one side a glassy lake, reflecting on its crystal surface every stem and leaf that fringes its margin, while, on the other, comes the full and rushing volume, rolling its torrent over the blocks of and vaporous foam. Beyond are the pictustone it encounters, and frothing into a white resque old stone houses, rising one above the other, the arched bridge, the ancient churchtower, with the most modest of modest presbyteries beside it, the village inn, the marketbyteries beside it, the village inn, the marketwheels, moved by the current; all this grouped place, and the large slowly-turning watertogether, as if by the cunning hand of some artist of faultless taste, is enclosed and encircled in the gigantic embrace of the barren while the ruins of the old castle, the origin of rocks and verdant slopes which surround it, which se perd dans la nuit des tems,* seem to look down with mournful dignity from its eminence, and to preside over the hamlet.

Defended by this rampart of granitic rocks, and embosomed in the fertile valley of the Sorgue, there lies Vaucluse, the chosen retreat of Petrarch, in which he lived and loved for fifteen years. It was worthy to be the dwel

most obvious usages of civilised life were unrecognised.

As I drew nearer to Vaucluse the scale on which Nature has planned her work became much grander, and the view of heights, and ravines, and rocky steeps, and broken crags which appear through the arches of the colossal aqueduct as it crosses the road, is one of the finest features in the journey. Another winding turn, and we are swept round into our first sight of the storied village of Vaucluse. Its situation is most beautiful: the Sorgue, the

and its eternal and exhaustless theme is the

* The earliest mention we find of this singularly romantic spot in the pages of authentic history, is from the calamus of Pliny the elder, in whose "Natural History" we meet with the following account of it :-"There is in Narbonnese Gaul a celebrated fountain, called Orgé, in which grow certain herbs for which the cattle show a great liking; so much so, that the oxen will even plunge their heads into the water to get it. These plants, which take birth within the spring, are only fertilised by rain." The plant thus mentioned by the Roman naturalist still grows where he has described it, and is called by the neighbouring peasants la berle. Latin name is berola, and is classed among the umbelliferous tribe, its leaves rising from the stem in pairs, and terminating in a single leaf at the top. It is agreeable to the taste, and possesses various medicinal properties, notwithstanding which it is used for flavouring sauces and omelets: poultry are particularly fond of it.

Its

grottoed source whence start each on its separate mission, the seven sister-streams, to fertilise the rich plains of this favoured district; each being

an eternal April to the ground, Making it all one emerald.

This wild and rocky nook is cloven in all directions by deep and intricate gorges, and surrounded by steeps exhibiting the strangest and most capricious outlines. Towards the north may be discerned the sombre and sinuous spirals of the Val-Obscur, suggestive of the grim and gloomy legends with which a terrorstricken fancy has associated it.

It is in the midst of this rocky labyrinth that tradition has placed La Baume de l'hôte, of which legendary lore relates that here formerly stood a mauvaise auberge the only halting-place for those who followed the mulepath between the border town of the Comté de Soult and that of Provence: few travellers, it is said, if they carried value, ever again awoke from the fatal repose into which they were lured in that treacherous hostelry.

Pauca licet portes argenti vacula puri
Nocte iter ingressus, gladium contumque timebis.

The locality is still haunted (in the imagination of the inhabitants) by the spectres of those who were the victims of these foul deeds.

In the immediate neighbourhood are situated the fathomless abysses of the cavern of Aven, which the popular belief of a past age peopled with a daring race of coiners, still supposed to have carried on their nefarious occupation within its impenetrable depths. This lugubrious locality is overlooked by the extensive ruins of a feudal castle, once the habitation of a community of Benedictine monks; and above all that we can see, lives in lofty and towering pre-eminence the solitary peak of the Mont de la Vache d'Or, with its hidden treasure buried in a cavernous recess so mysterious and inaccessible that the stoutest hearts have failed and the most covetous eye has quailed before the attempt to reach and possess it.

At some obscure period, which even oral history has not ventured to determine, the English are reported to have formed a project (why not a company"?) to buy up this golden mountain, and search out its fabulous wealth; but the unsophisticated Vauclusians, blind to their interest, committed a blunder, refusing to hear the voice of the tempters, and turning a deaf ear to their offers; so that the untold millions slipped through the fingers of these enterprising islanders, and still remains untouched, a tantalising speculation to the present or future generations.

Who knows, as the world grows wiser, whether the amor sceleratus habendi may not penetrate to the simple-minded inhabitants of the valley of Petrarch, and our modern Moseses and Aarons may yet be seen eagerly studying the rise and fall of "Golden Calfscrip," in the quotations of the share list!

To the east of the colossal grotto, whence rises the celebrated spring, we meet with the Fontaine de l'Oulle, doubtless a corruption of ouaille, to which is attached a pastoral legend from which it derives its name.

"Voyez-vous," said a well-to-do looking peasant, who was amusing himself by making ducks and drakes with flat pebbles on the smooth surface of this limpid and fathomless pool; "c'est étrange, mais, ma foi, c'est comme cela-'faut ben le croire puisqu' on la dit," added he, with a suspiciously expressive shrug.

"It was here," he continued, "that the shepherd and his sheep re-appeared." "Re-appeared ?" inquired I.

"What! Did you never hear the story?" "No, this is my first visit; and I live a long, long way off."

"Ah! I see," replied the old fellow, with a knowing chuckle. "You are German, I found that out directly."

"Oh, dear no! that is quite a mistake."

"Then you come from our northern provinces ? I had some idea you were French.' "That is a very bad guess; try again." "No, no; I give it up, unless you are German."

"Well, I see I must tell you; England is my country."

Ah bah ne l'avais-je pas dit? mais c'est la même chose," answered he, for he was evidently determined to maintain the honour of his sagacity; so I humoured him with a conciliating "Précisement," which immediately restored his good humour.

"Well then," he said, "if you come from such a very great distance, I daresay you never heard of Piedmont; so I will try to make you understand where it is."

"O, no, you need not take that trouble. I know Piedmont very well. I have even been in Piedmont."

"Ah! vous avez voyagé dans le Piémont? tant mieux; écoutez donc, et vous allez convenir que c'est une chose merveilleuse que je vais vous raconter. You must know then that, one day-you will bear in mind that this was a great many years ago, before my father or grandfather were born-a shepherd was watching his flock in one of the Piedmontese valleys, when a ram wandered away and fell into a grotto. The shepherd, as in

"Well, that is a curious story; and were they much hurt?" added I, with the gravest face I could assume.

The old fellow looked at me for a moment with his "penetrating grey eye" (it is a fact that he had a penetrating grey eye) as if he wanted to make out whether I was serious or chaffing him. Then with great quickness, determining to pay me in my own coin, he said, with a roguish laugh

"Ah! par exemple, en v'la-t'il un qui croirait ben aux miracles!" but I must not forestal my recital, and the impression produced by the first view of this mighty

cataract.

effect which the contemplation of a grand, interesting, or suggestive sight is calculated to produce. Any description of, or stories concerning it, are admissible either before or after it has been seen; but to be accompanied by a chattering, unintelligent "guide," only capable of repeating by rote the parrotesque lesson of which he understands no more than the bird he "imitates so abominably," is a nuisance I heartily bequeath to my sightseeing fellow-countrymen, to whom we are in a great measure indebted for the existence of these locusts of travel. I remember on my first visit to Rome, turning in disgust from one of its historic remains

The promontory whence the traitor's leap
Cures all ambition-

when in reply to my inquiry for the way which led to it, I was conducted to a house on the closed door of which I read, "Custode della rupe Tarpeiana!"-tea-gardenism rampant even amid the classic ruins of the Eternal City.