'Blood calls for blood-and from a father's hand!
-Unless thyself wilt 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,
That 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 who 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,†

Silent, deserted-stop awhile to dwell

* DE THOU.

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

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 CIMABUÈ ‡ found a shepherd-boy

* By Vasari, who attended him on this occasion. -Thuanus, de Vitâ suâ, i.

It was given out that they had died of a contagious fever: and funeral orations were publicly pronounced in their honour.

Alfieri has written a tragedy on the subject; if it may be said so, when he has altered so entirely the story and the characters.

He was the father of modern painting, and the master of Giotto, whose talent he discovered in the way here alluded to.

"Cimabue stood still, and having considered the boy and his work, he asked him, if he would go and live with him at Florence? To which the boy answered that, if his father was willing, he would go with all his heart."-VASARI.

Of Cimabue little now remains at Florence, except his celebrated Madonna, larger than the life, in Santa Maria Novella. It was painted, according to Vasari, in a garden near Porta

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.

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, Sate 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,

S. Piero, and, when finished, was carried to the church in solemn procession with trumpets before it. The garden lay without the walls; and such was the rejoicing there on the occasion, such the feasting, that the suburb received the name of Borgo Allegri, a name it still bears, though now a part of the city.

*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.

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 trellissed 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
To lift up to the surface every stone
Of lustre there, and the diminutive fish
Innumerable, dropt with crimson and gold,
Now motionless, now glancing to the sun.

Who has not dwelt on their voluptuous day?
The morning-banquet by the fountain-side,†
While the small birds rejoiced on every bough;
The dance that followed, and the noon-tide slumber;
Then the tales told in turn, as round they lay
On carpets, the fresh waters murmuring;
And the short interval of pleasant talk

* Once, on a bright November-morning, I set out and traced them, as I conceived, step by step; beginning and ending in the Church of Santa Maria Novella. It was a walk delightful in itself and in its associations.

† At three o'clock. Three hours after sun-rise, according to the old manner of reckoning.

Till supper-time, when many a siren-voice

Sung down the stars; and, as they left the sky,
The torches, planted in the sparkling grass,

And every where among the glowing flowers,
Burnt bright and brighter.-He,* whose dream it
was,

(It was no more) sleeps in a neighbouring vale;
Sleeps in the church, where, in his ear, I ween,
The Friar poured out his wondrous catalogue; †
A ray, imprimis, of the star that shone

To the Wise Men; a vial-ful of sounds,

The musical chimes of the great bells that hung
In SOLOMON'S Temple; and, though last not least,
A feather from the Angel GABRIEL'S wing,
Dropt in the Virgin's chamber. That dark ridge,
Stretching south-east, conceals it from our sight;
Not so his lowly roof and scanty farm,
His copse and rill, if yet a trace be left,
Who lived in Val di Pesa, suffering long
Want and neglect and (far, far worse) reproach,
With calm, unclouded mind.‡ The glimmering tower
On the grey rock beneath, his land-mark once,
Now serves for ours, and points out where he ate
His bread with cheerfulness. Who sees him not
('Tis his own sketch-he drew it from himself §)
Laden with cages from his shoulder slung,
And sallying forth, while yet the morn is grey,
To catch a thrush on every lime-twig there;
Or in the wood among his wood-cutters;

*BOCCACCIO.

+ Decameron, vi. 10.

MACCHIAVEL.

§ See a very interesting letter from Macchiavel to Francesco Vettori, dated the 10th of December, 1513.