Poured out in thanks to heaven.

Once again

We look; and lo, the sea is white with sails
Innumerable, wafting to the shore

Treasures untold; the vale, the promontories,
A dream of glory; temples, palaces,
Called up as by enchantment; aqueducts
Among the groves and glades rolling along
Rivers, on many an arch high over-head;
And in the centre, like a burning sun,

The Imperial City! They have now subdued All nations. But where they who led them forth;

Who, when at length released by victory,
(Buckler and spear hung up-but not to rust)
Held poverty no evil, no reproach,

Living on little with a cheerful mind,

The Decii, the Fabricii? Where the spade,
And reaping-hook, among their household-things
Duly transmitted? In the hands of men
Made captive; while the master and his guests,
Reclining, quaff in gold, and roses swim,
Summer and winter, through the circling year,
On their Falernian-in the hands of men
Dragged into slavery with how many more
Spared but to die, a public spectacle,
In combat with each other, and required
To fall with grace, with dignity—to sink
While life is gushing, and the plaudits ring
Faint and yet fainter on their failing ear,
As models for the sculptor.

Their hours are numbered.

But their days, Hark, a yell, a shriek,

A barbarous out-cry, loud and louder yet,
That echoes from the mountains to the sea!
And mark, beneath us, like a bursting cloud,
The battle moving onward! Had they slain

All, that the Earth should from her womb bring

forth

New nations to destroy them?

From the depth
Of forests, from what none had dared explore,
Regions of thrilling ice, as though in ice
Engendered, multiplied, they pour along,
Shaggy and huge! Host after host, they come;
The Goth, the Vandal; and again the Goth!
Once more we look, and all is still as night,
All desolate! Groves, temples, palaces,
Swept from the sight; and nothing visible,
Amid the sulphurous vapours that exhale
As from a land accurst, save here and there
An empty tomb, a fragment like the limb
Of some dismembered giant. In the midst
A City stands, her domes and turrets crowned
With many a cross; but they, that issue forth,
Wander like strangers who had built among
The mighty ruins, silent, spiritless;

And on the road, where once we might have met
Cæsar and Cato and men more than kings,
We meet, none else, the pilgrim and the beggar.

THE ROMAN PONTIFFS.

HOSE ancient men, what were they,

who achieved

A sway beyond the greatest conquerors;
Setting their feet upon the necks of

kings,

And, through the world, subduing, chaining down The free, immortal spirit? Were they not Mighty magicians ? Theirs a wondrous spell.

Where true and false were with infernal art

Close-interwoven; where together met
Blessings and curses, threats and promises;
And with the terrors of Futurity

Mingled whate'er enchants and fascinates,
Music and painting, sculpture, rhetoric,
And dazzling light and darkness visible,1
And architectural pomp, such as none else!
What in his day the Syracusan sought,
Another world to plant his engines on,
They had; and, having it, like gods not men
Moved this world at their pleasure.2 Ere they

came,

Their shadows, stretching far and wide, were

known;

And Two, that looked beyond the visible sphere,
Gave notice of their coming-he who saw
The Apocalypse; and he of elder time,

Who in an awful vision of the night

Saw the Four Kingdoms. Distant as they were, Those holy men, well might they faint with fear !3

CAIUS CESTIUS.

HEN I am inclined to be serious, I love to wander up and down before the tomb of Caius Cestius. The Pro

W

testant burial-ground is there; and most of the little monuments are erected to the

I Whoever has entered the church of St. Peter's or the Pauline chapel, during the Exposition of the Holy Sacrament there, will not soon forget the blaze of the altar or the dark circle of worshippers kneeling in silence before it.

2 An allusion to the saying of Archimedes," Give me a place to stand upon, and I will move the earth."

3 An allusion to the prophecies concerning Antichrist. See the interpretations of Mede, Newton, Clarke, &c.; not to mention those of Dante and Petrarch.

young; young men of promise, cut off when on their travels, full of enthusiasm, full of enjoyment; brides, in the bloom of their beauty, on their first journey; or children borne from home in search of health. This stone was placed by his fellow. travellers, young as himself, who will return to the house of his parents without him; that, by a husband or a father, now in his native country. His heart is buried in that grave.

It is a quiet and sheltered nook, covered in the winter with violets; and the Pyramid, that overshadows it, gives it a classical and singularly solemn air. You feel an interest there, a sympathy you were not prepared for. You are yourself in a foreign land; and they are for the most part your countrymen. They call upon you in your mother-tongue-in English-in words unknown to a native, known only to yourself: and the tomb of Cestius, that old majestic pile, has this also in common with them. It is itself a stranger, among strangers. It has stood there till the language spoken round about it has changed; and the shepherd, born at the foot, can read its inscription no longer.

康

THE NUN.

IS over; and her lovely cheek is now
On her hard pillow-there, alas, to be
Nightly, through many and many a
dreary hour,

Wan, often wet with tears, and (ere at length
Her place is empty, and another comes)
In anguish, in the ghastliness of death;
Hers never more to leave those mournful walls,

Even on her bier.

'Tis over; and the rite,
With all its pomp and harmony, is now
Floating before her. She arose at home,
To be the show, the idol of the day;

Her vesture gorgeous, and her starry head-
No rocket, bursting in the midnight-sky,
So dazzling. When to-morrow she awakes,
She will awake as though she still was there,
Still in her father's house; and lo, a cell

Narrow and dark, nought through the gloom discerned,

Nought save the crucifix, the rosary,

And the grey habit lying by to shroud
Her beauty and grace

When on her knees she fell,
Entering the solemn place of consecration,
And from the latticed gallery came a chant
Of psalms, most saint-like, most angelical,
Verse after verse sung out how holily,
The strain returning, and still, still returning,
Methought it acted like a spell upon her,
And she was casting off her earthly dross;
Yet was it sad as sweet, and, ere it closed,
Came like a dirge. When her fair head was shorn,
And the long tresses in her hands were laid,
That she might fling them from her, saying, "Thus,
Thus I renounce the world and worldly things!" 1
When, as she stood, her bridal ornaments
Were, one by one, removed, even to the last,
That she might say, flinging them from her, " Thus,
Thus I renounce the world!" when all was
changed,

It was at such a moment, when contemplating the young and the beautiful, that Tasso conceived his sonnets, beginning "Vergine pia,' and "Vergine bella." Those to whom he addressed them have long been forgotten; though they were as much perhaps to be loved, and as much also to be pitied.