Blew, through the champain bidding to the feast,
Its jocund note to other ears addressed,
Not ours; and, slowly coming by a path,
That, ere it issued from an ilex-grove,
Was seen far inward, though along the glade
Distinguished only by a fresher verdure,
Peasants approached, one leading in a leash
Beagles yet panting, one with various game
In rich confusion slung, before, behind,
Leveret and quail and pheasant. All announced
The chase as over; and ere long appeared,
Their horses full of fire, champing the curb,
For the white foam was dry upon the flank,
Two in close converse, each in each delighting,
Their plumage waving as instinct with life;
A Lady young and graceful, and a Youth,
Yet younger, bearing on a falconer's glove,
As in the golden, the romantic time,
His falcon hooded. Like some spirit of air,
Or fairy-vision, such as feigned of old,
The Lady, while her courser pawed the ground,
Alighted; and her beauty, as she trod
The enamelled bank, bruising nor herb nor flower,
That place illumined. Ah, who should she be,

And with her brother, as when last we met,
(When the first lark had sung ere half was said,
And as she stood, bidding adieu, her voice,
So sweet it was, recalled me like a spell)
Who but Angelica ? - That day we gave
To pleasure, and, unconscious of their flight,
Another and another ! hers a home
Dropt from the sky amid the wild and rude,
Loretto-like; where all was as a dream,
A dream spun out of some Arabian tale
Read or related in a jasmine bower,
Some balmy eve. The rising moon we hailed,
Duly, devoutly, from a vestibule
Of many an arch, o'er-wrought and lavishly
With many a labyrinth of sylphs and flowers,
When Raphael and his school from FLORENCE came,
Filling the land with splendour *-nor less oft
Watched her, declining, from a silent dell,
Not silent once, what time in rivalry

Perhaps the most beautiful villa of that day was the VILLA Madama. It is now a ruin; but enough remains of the plan and the grotesque-work to justify Vasari's account of it.

The Pastor Fido, if not the Aminta, used to be often represented there; and a theatre, such as is here described, was to be seen in the gardens very lately.

Tasso, GUARINI, waved their wizard-wands,
Peopling the groves from Arcady, and lo,
Fair forms appeared, murmuring melodious verse, *
--Then, in their day, a sylvan theatre,
Mossy the seats, the stage a verdurous floor,
The scenery rock and shrub-wood, Nature's own;
Nature the Architect.

*. A fashion for ever reviving in such a climate. In the year 1783 the Nina of Paesiello was performed in a small wood near Caserta.

MONTORIO.

GENEROUS, and ardent, and as romantic as he could be, MONTORIO was in his earliest youth, when, on a summer-evening not many years ago, he arrived at the Baths of * * *. With a heavy heart, and with many a blessing on his head, he had set out on his travels at day-break. It was his first flight from home; but he was now to enter the world ; and the moon was up and in the zenith, when he alighted at the Three Moors,* a venerable house of vast dimensions, and anciently a palace of the Albertini family, whose arms were emblazoned on the walls.

Every window was full of light, and great was the stir, above and below; but his thoughts were on those he had left so lately; and retiring early to rest, and to a couch, the very first for which he had ever exchanged his own, he was soon among them once more; undisturbed in his sleep by the music that came at intervals from a pavilion in the garden, where some of the company had assembled to dance.

But, secluded as he was, he was not secure from intrusion ; and Fortune resolved on that night to play a frolic in his chamber, a frolic that was to determine the colour of his life. Boccaccio himself has not recorded a wilder; nor would he, if he had known it, have left the story untold.

At the first glimmering of day he awaked ; and, looking round, he beheld—it could not be an illusion; yet any thing so lovely, so angelical, he had never seen before—no, not even in his dreams—a Lady still younger than himself, and in the profoundest, the sweetest slumber by his side. But, while he gazed, she was gone, and through a door that had escaped his notice. Like a Zephyr she trod the floor with her dazzling and beautiful feet, and, while he gazed, she was gone. Yet still he gazed; and, snatching up a bracelet which she had dropt in her flight, · Then she is earthly! he cried. But whence could she come ? All innocence, all purity, she must have wandered in her sleep.