Who little thought of what was yet to come,
And lived but to be told-he bade GARZÌA
Arise and follow him. Holding in one hand
A winking lamp, and in the other a key
Massive and dungeon-like, thither he led;
And, having entered in and locked the door,
The father fixed his eyes upon

the

son, And closely questioned him. No change betrayed Or guilt or fear. Then Cosmo lifted up The bloody sheet. “Look there! Look there l'he cried. • 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 Garzìa's belt he drew the blade, That fatal one which spilt his brother's blood;

some consolation to reflect that their Country did not go unrevenged for the calamities which they had brought upon her. How many of them died by the hands of each other !-See p.

149.

K

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 GARZÌA'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
Upon two portraits there, drawn on the wall |

* De Thou. + The Palazzo Vecchio. Cosmo had left it several years before.

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

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.

* 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.

THE CAMPAGNA OF FLORENCE.

'Tis morning. Let us wander through the fields,
Where CIMABUE* found a shepherd-boy
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

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

“ Cimabuè 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 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.

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 ;t
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,

* 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.