FOSCARI.

LET us lift up the curtain, and observe

What passes in that chamber.

Now a sigh,

And now a groan is heard. Then all is still.

Twenty are sitting as in judgment there;'

Men who have served their country and grown grey

In governments and distant embassies,

Men eminent alike in war and peace;

Such as in effigy shall long adorn

The walls of VENICE-to show what she was!

Their garb is black, and black the arras is,
And sad the general aspect. Yet their looks
Are calm, are cheerful; nothing there like grief,
Nothing or harsh or cruel. Still that noise,

That low and dismal moaning.

Westminster Bridge.-In that island is the Exchange; and I have often walked there as on classic ground. In the days of Antonio and Bassanio it was second to none. "I sottoportici," says Sansovino, writing in 1580, " sono ogni giorno frequentati da i mercatanti Fiorentini, Genovesi, Milanesi, Spagnuoli, Turchi, e d'altre nationi diverse del mondo, i quali vi concorrono in tanta copia, che questa piazza è annoverata fra le prime dell' universo." It was there that the Christian held discourse with the Jew; and Shylock refers to it when he says:

"Signor Antonio, many a time and oft,

In the Rialto you have rated me—”

"Andiamo a Rialto"-" L'ora di Rialto "-were on every tongue; and continue so to the present day, as we learn from the comedies of Goldoni, and particularly from his Mercanti There is a place adjoining, called Rialto Nuovo; and so called, according to Sansovino, "perchè fù fabbricato dopo il vecchio."

1 The Council of Ten and the Giunta, "nel quale," says Sanuto, "fù messer lo doge." The Giunta at the first examination consisted of ten Patricians, at the last of twenty. This story and the tragedy of the Two Foscari were published, within a few days of each other, in November 1821.

Half withdrawn,

A little to the left, sits one in crimson,

A venerable man, fourscore and five.

Cold drops of sweat stand on his furrowed brow.

His hands are clenched; his eyes half shut and glazed; His shrunk and withered limbs rigid as marble.

'Tis FOSCARI, the Doge. And there is one,
A young man, lying at his feet, stretched out
In torture. 'Tis his son. 'Tis GIACOMO,
His only joy, (and has he lived for this?)
Accused of murder. Yesternight the proofs,
Q Q

If proofs they be, were in the lion's mouth

Dropt by some hand unseen; and he, himself,
Must sit and look on a beloved son

Suffering the Question.

Twice to die in peace,

To save, while yet he could, a falling House,
And turn the hearts of his fell Adversaries,
Those who had now, like hell-hounds in full cry,
Chased down his last of four, twice did he ask

To lay aside the Crown, and they refused,
An oath exacting, never more to ask;
And there he sits, a spectacle of woe,
Condemned in bitter mockery to wear
The bauble he had sighed for.

Once again

The screw is turned; and, as it turns, the Son

Looks up, and, in a faint and broken tone,

Murmurs "My Father!" The old man shrinks back,

And in his mantle muffles up his face.

"Art thou not guilty?" says a voice, that once
Would greet the Sufferer long before they met ;
"Art thou not guilty?"-"No! Indeed I am not!"
But all is unavailing. In that Court

Groans are confessions; Patience, Fortitude,
The work of Magic; and, released, revived,
For Condemnation, from his Father's lips
He hears the sentence, "Banishment to CANDIA.
Death, if he leaves it." And the bark sets sail;
And he is gone from all he loves in life!
Gone in the dead of night-unseen of any-
Without a word, a look of tenderness,
To be called up, when, in his lonely hours,
He would indulge in weeping. Like a ghost,
Day after day, year after year, he haunts
An ancient rampart that o'erhangs the sea;
Gazing on vacancy, and hourly there

Starting as from some wild and uncouth dream,
To answer to the watch.-Alas, how changed
From him the mirror of the Youth of VENICE;
Whom in the slightest thing, or whim or chance,
Did he but wear his doublet so and so,

All followed; at whose nuptials, when he won
That maid at once the noblest, fairest, best,'
A daughter of the House that now among
Its ancestors in monumental brass

Numbers eight Doges-to convey her home,
The Bùcentaur went forth; and thrice the sun
Shone on the chivalry, that, front to front,
And blaze on blaze reflecting, met and ranged
To tourney in ST. MARK'S.—But lo, at last,
Messengers come. He is recalled his heart
Leaps at the tidings. He embarks: the boat
Springs to the oar, and back again he goes-
Into that very Chamber! there to lie
In his old resting-place, the bed of steel;
And thence look up (five long, long years of grief
Have not killed either) on his wretched Sire,
Still in that seat-as though he had not stirred;
Immovable, and muffled in his cloak.

But now he comes, convicted of a crime
Great by the laws of VENICE. Night and day,

Brooding on what he had been, what he was,

'Twas more than he could bear. His longing fits
Thickened upon him. His desire for home
Became a madness; and, resolved to go,

If but to die, in his despair he writes

1 She was a Contarini; a name coeval with the Republic, and illustrated by eight Doges. On the occasion of their marriage the Bùcentaur came out in its splendour; and a bridge of boats was thrown across the Canal Grande for the Bridegroom and his retinue of three hundred horse. Sanuto dwells with pleasure on the costliness of the dresses and the magnificence of the processions by land and water. The tournaments in the Place of St. Mark lasted three days, and were attended by thirty thousand people.

A letter to the sovereign prince of MILAN,
(To him whose name, among the greatest now,
Had perished, blotted out at once and rased,
But for the rugged limb of an old oak,)
Soliciting his influence with the State,

And drops it to be found.-"Would ye know all?
I have transgressed, offended wilfully ;2
And am prepared to suffer as I ought.
But let me, let me, if but for an hour,
(Ye must consent for all of you are sons,
Most of you husbands, fathers,) let me first
Indulge the natural feelings of a man,
And, ere I die, if such my sentence be,
Press to my heart ('tis all I ask of you)
My wife, my children—and my aged mother-
Say, is she yet alive?"

He is condemned

To go ere set of sun, go whence he came,
A banished man; and for a year to breathe
The vapour of a dungeon. But his prayer
(What could they less ?) is granted.

In a hall

Open and crowded by the common herd,
'Twas there a Wife and her four sons yet young,
A Mother borne along, life ebbing fast,
And an old Doge, mustering his strength in vain,
Assembled now, sad privilege, to meet

One so long lost, one who for them had braved,

For them had sought—death, and yet worse than death!

1 Francesco Sforza. His father, when at work in the field, was accosted by some soldiers and asked if he would enlist. "Let me throw my mattock on that oak," he replied; "and if it remains there, I will." It remained there; and the peasant, regarding it as a sign, enlisted. He became soldier, general, prince; and his grandson, in the palace at Milan, said to Paulus Jovius, “You behold these guards and this grandeur. I owe everything to the branch of an oak, the branch that held my grandfather's mattock."

2 It was a high crime to solicit the intercession of any foreign prince.