looking the thousand thousand springs of action by which the events of the world are brought to pass. Page 293, line 20. Well might the great, the mighty of the world. "Rien ne servit mieux Rome, que le respect qu'elle imprima à la terre. Elle mit d'abord les rois dans le silence, et les rendit comme stupides. Il ne s'agissoit pas du degré de leur puissance; mais leur personne propre étoit attaquée. Risquer une guerre, c'étoit s'exposer à la captivité, à la mort, à l'infamie du triomphe."-MONTESQUIEU. Page 294, line 13. Some invoked Death and escaped. "Spare me, I pray, this indignity," said Perseus to Æmilius. "Make me not a public spectacle; drag me not through your streets."-"What you ask for," replied the Roman, "is in your own power."-PLUTARCH. Page 297, line 28. then on that master-piece. "You admire that picture," said an old Dominican to me at Padua, as I stood contemplating a Last Supper in the Refectory of his Convent, the figures as large as the life. "I have sat at my meals before it for seven and forty years; and such are the changes that have taken place among us-so many have come and gone in the time-that, when I look upon the company there-upon those who are sitting at that table, silent as they are-I am sometimes inclined to think that we, and not they, are the shadows." The celebrated fresco of Lionardo da Vinci in the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie at Milan must again and again have suggested the same reflection. Opposite to it stood the Prior's table, the monks sitting down the chamber on the right and left; and the Artist, throughout his picture, has evidently endeavoured to make it correspond with what he saw when they were assembled there. The table-cloth, with the corners tied up, and with its regular folds as from the press, must have been faithfully copied; and the dishes and drinking-cups are, no doubt, such as were used by the fathers in that day. See GOETHE, vol. xxxix. p. 94. Indefatigable was Lionardo in the prosecution of this work. "I have seen him," says Bandello the novelist, 66 mount the scaffold at day-break and continue there till night, forgetting to eat or drink. Not but that he would sometimes leave it for many days together, and then return only to meditate upon it, or to touch and retouch it here and there." The Prior was for ever complaining of the little progress that he made, and the Duke at last consented to speak to him on the subject. His answer is given by Vasari. "Perhaps I am then most busy when I seem to be most idle, for I must think before I execute. But, think as I will, there are two persons at the supper to whom I shall never do justice-Our Lord and the disciple who betrayed Him. Now if the Prior would but sit to me for the last The Prior gave him no more trouble. Page 301, line 1. Have none appeared as tillers of the ground. The Author of the Letters to Julia has written admirably on this subject. "All sad, all silent! O'er the ear No sound of cheerful toil is swelling. Nature no charm, and Man no dwelling!" Not less admirably has he described a Roman Beauty; such as weaves her spells beyond the Tiber." "Methinks the Furies with their snakes, Or Venus with her zone might gird her; Of fiend and goddess she partakes, And looks at once both Love and Murder." Page 304, line 17. Wander like strangers. It was not always so. There were once within her walls "more erected spirits." "Let me recall to your mind," says Petrarch, in a letter to old Stephen Colonna, "the walk we took together at a late hour in the broad street that leads from your palace to the Capitol. To me it seems as yesterday, though it was ten years ago. When we arrived where the four ways meet, we stopped; and, none interrupting us, discoursed long on the fallen fortunes of your House. Fixing your eyes steadfastly upon me and then turning them away full of tears, 'I have nothing now,' you said, to leave my children. But a still greater calamity awaits me-I shall inherit from them all.' You remember the words, no doubt: words so fully |