Let us contemplate; and, where dreams from Jove And reaping-hook, among their household-things
Descended on the sleeper, where perhaps

Duly transmitted ? In the hands of men
Some inspirations may be lingering still,

Made captive; while the master and his guests, Some glimmerings of the future or the past,

Reclining, quaff in gold, and roses swim, Await their influence; silently revolving

Summer and winter, through the circling year, The changes from that hour, when He from Troy

On their Falernian-in the hands of men
Went

up
the Tiber; when refulgent shields,

Dragg'd into slavery, with how many more
No strangers to the iron-hail of war,

Spared but to die, a public spectacle, Stream'd far and wide, and dashing oars were heard In combat with each other, and required Among those woods where Silvia's stag was lying, To fall with grace, with dignity-lo sink, His antlers gay with flowers; among

those woods While life is gushing, and the plaudits ring Where, by the Moon, that saw and yet withdrew not, Faint and yet fainter on their failing car, Two were so soon to wander and be slain, (143)

As models for the sculptor. Two lovely in their lives, nor in their death

But their days, Divided.

Their hours are number'd. Hark, a yell, a shrick, Then, and hence to be discern'd,

A barbarous dissonance, loud and yet louder, How many realms, pastoral and warlike, lay (144)

That echoes from the mountains to the sea! Along this plain, each with its schemes of power,

And mark, beneath us, like a bursting cloud, Its little rivalships! What various turns

The battle moving onward! Had they slain Of fortune there; what moving accidents

All, that the Earth should from her womb bring forth From ambuscade and open violence!

New nations to destroy them? From the depth Mingling, the sounds came up; and hence how oft Of forests, from what none had dared explore, We might have caught among the trees below,

Regions of thrilling ice, as though in ice Glittering with helm and shield, the men of Tibur;' Engender'd, multiplied, they pour along, Or in Greek vesture, Greek their origin,

Shaggy and huge! Host after host, they come;
Some embassy, ascending to Præneste;?

The Goth, the Vandal ; and again the Goth!
How oft descried, without thy gates, Aricia,
Entering the solemn grove for sacrifice,

Once more we look, and all is still as night,
Senate and People! -Each a busy hive,

All desolate! Groves, temples, palaces,
Glowing with life!

Swept from the sight, and nothing visible,
But all ere long are lost

Amid the sulphurous vapours that exhale
In one.
We look, and where the river rolls

As from a land accurst, save here and there
Southward its shining labyrinth, in her strength An emply tomb, a fragment like the limb
A City, girt with battlements and towers,

Of some dismember'd giant. In the midst On seven small hills is rising. Round about,

A City stands, her domes and turrets crown'd At rural work, the Citizens are seen,

With many a cross; but they, that issue forth,
None unemploy'd ; the noblest of them all

Wander like strangers who had built among
Binding their sheaves or on their threshing-floors, The mighty ruins, silent, spiritless;
As though they had not conquer d. Every where And on the road, where once we might have met
Some trace of valour or heroic virtue!

Cæsar and Cato, and men more than kings,
Here is the sacred field of the Horatii, (145)

We meet, none else, the pilgrim and the beggar.
There are the Quintian meadows. (146)) Here the bill4
How holy, where a generous people, twice,

VII.
Twice going forth, in terrible anger sate

THE ROMAN PONTIFFS. Arm’d; and, their wrongs redress'd, at once gave way, Helmet and shield, and sword and spear thrown down, Those ancient men, what were they, who achieved And every hand uplifted, every heart

A sway beyond the greatest conquerors;
Pour'd out in thanks to heaven.

Setting their feet upon the necks of kings,
Once again

And, through the world, subduing, chaining down We look; and lo, the sea is white with sails

The free immortal spirit? Were they not Innumerable, wafting to the shore

Mighty magicians? Theirs a wondrous spell, Treasures untold; the vale, the promontories,

Where true and false were with infernal art A dream of glory; temples, palaces,

Close-interwoven ; where together met Call'd up as by enchantment; aqueducts

Blessings and curses, threats and promises; Among the groves and glades rolling along

And with the terrors of Futurity Rivers, on many an arch high over-head;

Mingled whate'er enchants and fascinates, And in the centre, like a burning-sun,

Music and painting, sculpture, rhetoric (147)
The Imperial City! They have now subdued

And architectural pomp, such as none else ;
All nations. But where they who led them forth; And dazzling light, and darkness visible!(148)
Who, when at length released by victory,

What in his day the Syracusan sought, (Buckler and spear hung up-but not to rust)

Another world to plant his engines on, Held poverty no evil, no reproach,

They had; and, having it, like gods, not men, Living on little with a cheerful mind,

Moved this world at their pleasure. Ere they came, (149) The Decii, the Fabricii? Where the spade,

Their shadows, stretching far and wide, were known;

And Two, that look'd beyond the visible sphere, 1 Tivoli. Palestrina. La Riccia. 4 Moos Socor. Gave notice of their coming-he who saw

a

a

a

The Apocalypse; and he of elder time,

Yet was it sad as sweet, and ere it closed, Who in an awful vision of the night.

Came like a dirge. When her fair head was shorn,
Saw the Four kingdoms. Distant as they were, And the long tresses in her hands were laid,
Well might those holy men be fill'd with fear! That she might fling them from her, saying, « Thus,

Thus I renounce the world and worldly things!,
VIII.

When, as she stood, her bridal ornaments

Were, one by one, removed, even to the last,
CAIUS CESTIUS.

That she might say, flinging them from her, Thus, Wgen I am inclined to be serious, I love to wander Thus I renounce the world !, when all was changed, up and down before the tomb of Caius Cestius. The And, as a nun, in homeliest guise she knelt, Protestant burial-ground is there; and most of the little Veiled in her veil, crown'd with her silver crown, monuments are erected to the young; young men of Her crown of lilies as the spouse of Christ, promise, cut off when on their travels, full of enthu- Well might her strength forsake her, and her knees siasm, full of enjoyment; brides, in the bloom of their Fail in that hour! Well might the holy man, beauty, on their first journey; or children borne from He, at whose feet she knelt, give as by stealth home in scarch of health. This stone was placed by his (T was in her utmost need; nor, while she lives, (151) fellow-travellers, young as himself, who will return to Will it go from her, flecting as it was) the house of his parents without him; that, by a hus- That faint but fatherly smile, that smile of love band or a father, now in his native country. His heart And pity! is buried in that grave.

Like a dream the whole is fled ; li is a quiet and sheltered nook, covered in the winter And they, that came in idleness to gaze with violets; and the Pyramid, that overshadows it, gives Upon the victim dress’d for sacrifice, it a classical and singularly solemn air. You feel an Are mingling in the world; thou in thy cell interest there, a sympathy you were not prepared for. Forgot, Teresa. Yet, among them all, You are yourself in a foreign land; and they are for the None were so form'd to love and to be loved, most part your countrymen. They call upon you in None to delight, adorn ; and on thee now your mother-tongue-in English-in words unknown A curtain, blacker than the night, is dropp'd io a native, known only to yourselves : and the tomb of For ever! In thy gentle bosom sleep Cestius, that old majestic pile, has this also in common Feelings, affections, destined now to die, with them. It is itself a stranger, among strangers. To wither like the blossom in the bud, It has stood there till the language spoken round about those of a wife, a mother; leaving there it has changed ; and the shepherd, born at the foot, can A cheerless void, a chill as of the grave, read its inscription no longer.

A languor and a lethargy of soul,

Death-like, and gathering more and more, till Death
IX.

Comes to release thee. Ah, what now to thee,
THE NUN.

What now to thee the treasure of thy Youth ?

As nothing! 'T is over; and her lovely cheek is now

But thou canst not yet reflect On her hard pillow-there, alas, to be

Calmly; so many things, strange and perverse, Nightly, through many and many a dreary hour,

That meet, recoil, and go but to return, Wan, often wel with tears, and (ere at length

The monstrous birth of one eventful day, Her place is empty, and another comes)

Troubling thy spirit-from the first, at dawn, In anguish, in the ghastliness of death;

The rich arraying for thu nuptial feast, Hers never more to leave those mournful walls, To the black pall, the requiem. (152) Even on her bier.

All in turn 'T is over; and the rite,

Revisit thee, and round thy lowly bed With all its pomp and harmony, is now

Hover, uncall’d. The young and innocent heart, Floating before her. She arose at home,

How is it beating? Has it no regrets ? To be the show, the idol of the day;

Discoverest thou no weakness lurking there? Her vesture gorgeous, and her starry head

But thine exhausted frame has sunk to rest.
No rocket, bursting in the midnight-sky,

Peace to thy slumbers !
So dazzling. When to-morrow she awakes,
She will awake as tlıough she still was there,

X.
Still in her father's house; and lo, a cell
Narrow and dark, nought through the gloom discern'd,

THE FIRE-FLY.
Nought save the crucifix, the rosary,

There is an Insect, that, when Evening comes,
And the grey habit lying by to shroud

Small though he be and scarce distinguishable,
and
grace.

Like Evening clad in soberest livery,
When on her knees she fell, Unsheaths his wings, (153) and through the woods and
Entering the solemn place of consecration,

glades And from the latticed gallery came a chaunt

Scatters a marvellous splendour. On he wheels,
Of psalms, most saint-like, most angelical, (150) Blazing by fits as from excess of joy, (154)
Verse after verse sung out, how holily!

Each gush of light a qush of ecstacy;
The strain returning, and still, still returning,

Nor unaccompanied; thousands that fling Methought it acted like a spell upon her,

A radiance all their own, pot of the day, And she was casting off her earthly dross ;

Thousands as bright as he, from dusk till dawn,

Her beauty

ere it closed er fair head was sborn, mands were laid, from her, saying, «Thus, nd worldly things! I ornaments even to the lası, hem from her, Thus, when all was changed, ise she knelt,

her silver crown, e of Christ,

her, and her knees the holy mai, us by stealth while she lives, (151) was) smile of love

excuse.

le is Aled; ue

chy cell

1

Soaring, descending.

earth. - It may serve me,» said I, «as a remedy in somo In the mother's lap

future fit of the spleen. Well

may the child put forth his little hands,
Singing the nursery-song he learnt so soon; (155)

Ours is a nation of travellers ;' and no wonder, when
And the young nymph, preparing for the dance (156)
By brook or fountain-side, in many a braid

the elements, air, water, fire, attend at our bidding, to Wreathing her golden hair, well may she cry,

transport us from shore to shore; when the ship rusles • Come hither; and the shepherds, gathering round,

into the deep, her track the foam as of some mighty Shall say, Floretta emulates the Night,

torrent; and, in three hours or less, we stand gazing Spangling her head with stars. »

and gazed at among a foreign people. None want an Oft have I met

If rich, they go to enjoy, if poor, to retrench;

if sick, to recover; if studious, to learn; if learned, This shining race, when in the Tusculan groves

to relax from their studies. But whatever they may My path no longer glimmer'd ; oft among Those trees, religious once and always green, (157)

say, whatever they may believe, they go for the most

part on the same errand; nor will those who reflect, That yet dream out their stories of old Rome

think that errand an idle one.
Over the Alban lake; oft met and haila,

Almost all men are over-anxious. No sooner do they
Where the precipitate Anio thunders down,
And through the surging mist a Poet's house

enter the world, than they lose that taste for natural

and simple pleasures, so remarkable in early life. Every (So some aver, and who would not believe?) (158)

hour do they ask themselves what progress they have Reveals itself. Yet cannot I forget

made in the pursuit of wealth or honour; and on they

go as their fathers went before them, till, weary and Him, who rejoiced me in those walks at eve, My earliest, pleasantest; who dwells unseen,

sick at heart, they look back with a sigh of regret to

the golden time of their childhood.
And in our northern clime, when all is still,

Now travel, and foreign travel more particularly,
Nightly keeps watch, nightly in bush or brake
His lonely lamp rekindling. Unlike theirs,

restores to us in a great degree what we have lost.

When the anchor is heaved, we double down the leaf; His, if less dazzling, through the darkness knows

and for a while at least all effort is over. The old No intermission; sending forth its ray Through the green leaves, a ray serene and clear

cares are left clustering round the old objects; and at As Virtue's own.

every step, as we proceed, the slightest circumstance

amuses and interests. All is new and strange. We XI.

surrender ourselves, and feel once again as children. FOREIGN TRAVEL.

Like them, we enjoy eagerly; like them, when we fret, It was in a splenetic humour that I sate me down to we fret only for the moment; and here indeed the remy scanty fare at Terracina ; and how long I should semblance is very remarkable, for, if a journey has its have contemplated the lean thrushes in array before pains as well as its pleasures (and there is nothing unme, I cannot say, if a cloud of smoke, that drew the mixed in this world, the pains are no sooner over than tears into my eyes, had not burst from the green and they are forgotten, while the pleasures live long in the

memory. leafy boughs on the hearth-stone. Why, I exclaimed, starting up from the table, « why did I leave be short, not so to many of us are its days and its

Nor is it surely without another advantage. If life my own chimney-corner ?—But am I not on the road hours. When the blood slumbers in the veins, how to Brundusium ? And are not these the

very calamities that befel Horace and Virgil, and Mæcenas, and Plotius, its axis, that the sun would rise and set before it does ;

often do we wish that the carth would turn faster on and Varius? Horace laughed at them. Then why and, to escape from the weight of time, how many should not l? Horace resolved to turn them to ac- follies, how many crimes are committed! Men rush on count; and Virgil-cannot we hear him observing, that to remember them will, by and by, be a pleasure?" danger, and even on death. Intrigue, play, foreign My soliloquy reconciled me at once to my fate; and and domestic broil, such are their resources; and, when, for the twentieth time, I had looked through the when these things fail, they destroy themselves. window on a sea sparkling with innumerable brilliants,

Now in travelling we multiply events, and innocently. a sea on which the heroes of the Odyssey and the Eneid We set out, as it were, on our adventures ; and many had sailed, I sat down as to a splendid banquet. My The day we come to a place which we have long heard

are those that occur to us, morning, noon, and night. thrushes had the flavour of ortolans; and I ate with an appetite I had not known before.

and read of, and in Italy we do so continually, it is « Who,' I cried as I poured out my last glass of an era in our lives; and from that moment the very Falernian,2 (for Falernian it was said to be, and in my the knowledge flow in upon us, and how fast! Would

name calls up a picture. How delightfully too does eyes it ran bright and clear as a topaz-stone) - Who would remain at home, could he do otherwise? Who " As indeed it always was, contributing those of every degree, would submit to tread that dull, but daily round; his from a milors with his suite to him whoso only attendant is his hours forgotten as soon as spent" and, opening my shadow. Coryate in 1608 performed his journey on foot ; and,

returning, hung up bis shoes in his village-church as an ex-voto. journal-book and dipping my pen in my ink-horn, Goldsmith, a centary and a half afterwards, followed in nearly the I determined, as far as I could, to justify myself same path ; playing a tane on his fute to procure admittance, whenand my countrymen in wandering over the face of the ever he approached a cottage at night-fall

.

To judge at once of a nation, we have orly to throw our eyes on 1 The glow-worm.

the markets and the fields. If the markets are well-supplied, the . We were now within a few hours of the Campania Felix. On fields well-coltivated, all is rigbt. If otherwise, we may say, and ibe colour and favour of Falernian consult Galen and Dioscorides. say truly, these people are barbarous or oppressed.

1

he who sat in a corner of his library, pouring over Greek sculpture-in some earlier day perhaps
books and maps, learn more or so much in the time, A tomb, and honour'd with a hero's ashes.
as he who, with his cyes and his heart open, is re- | The water from the rock fill'd, overtlow'd it;
ceiving impressions, all day long from the things them- Then dash'd away, playing the prodigal,
selves ?' How accurately do they arrange themselves and soon was lostm-stealing unseen, unheard,
in our memory, towns, rivers, mountains; and in Through the long grass, and round the twisted roots
what living colours do we recal dresses, manners, Of aged trees; discovering where it ran
and customs of the people! Our sight is the noblest By the fresh verdure. Overcome with heat,
of all our senses • It fills the mind with most ideas, I threw me down; admiring, as I lay,
converses with its objects at the greatest distance, and That shady nook, a singing-place for birds,
continues longest in action without being tired.» Our That grove so intricate, so full of flowers,
sight is on the alert when we travel; and its exercise More than enough to please a child a-Maying.
is then so delightful, that we forget the profit in the
pleasure.

The sun was down, a distant convent-bell
Like a river, that gathers, that refines as it runs, like Ringing the Angelus; and now approach'd
a spring that takes its course through some rich vein | The hour for stir and village-gossip there,
of mineral, we improve and imperceptibly-nor in the The hour Rebekah came, when from the well
head only, but in the heart. Our prejudices leave us, She drew with such alacrity to serve
one by one. Seas and mountains are no longer our The stranger and his camels. Soon I heard
boundaries. We learn to love, and esteem, and admire Footsteps; and lo, descending by a path
beyond them. Our benevolence extends itself with Trodden for ages, many a nymph appear’d,
our knowledge. And must we not return better citi-Appear'd and vanish'd, bearing on her head
zens than we went? For the more we become ac- Her earthen pitcher. It call'd up the day
quainted with the institutions of other countries, the Ulysses landed there; and long I gazed,
more highly must we value our own.

Like one awaking in a distant time. (159)

And yet

as

I threw down my pen in triumph.

At length there came the loveliest of them all, • The question,

Her little brother dancing down before her; said I, « is set to rest for ever. « And yet—, I must still say. The wisest of men

And ever as lie spoke, which he did ever, seldom went out of the walls of Athens; and for that Turning and looking up in warmth of heart

And brotherly affection. Stopping there, worst of evils, that sickness of the soul, to which we

She join'd her rosy hands, and, filling them are most liable when most at our ease, is there not after

With the pure element, gave him to drink ; all a surer and yet pleasanter remedy, a remedy for which we have only to cross the threshold? A Pied- And, while he quench'd his thirst, standing on tiptoe,

Look'd down

upon

him with a sister's smile, montese nobleman, into whose company I fell at Turin, had not long before experienced its efficacy; and his Nor stirr'd till he had done, fix'd as a stalue. story, which he told me without reserve, was

Then hadst thou seen them as they stood, Canova, follows.

Thou hadst endow'd them with immortal youth; • I was weary of life, and, after a day, such as few have known and none would wish to remember, was

And they had evermore lived undivided, hurrying along the street to the river, when I felt a

Winning all hearts-of all thy works the fairest. sudden check. I turned and beheld a little boy, who

XIII.
had caught the skirt of my cloak in his anxiety to
solicit

my
notice. His look and manner were irresist-

BANDITTS. ible. Not less so was the lesson he had learnt.

"T is a wild life, fearful and full of change, « ‘There are six of us; and we are dying for want The mountain-robber's. On the watch he lies, of food. Why should I not,' said I to myself, 're

Levelling his carbine at the passenger ; lieve this wretched family? I have the means; and it And, when his work is done, he dares not sleep. will not delay me many minutes. But what, if it does ?' The scene of misery he conducted me to, I

Time was, the trade was nobler, if not honest;
cannot describe. I threw them my purse; and their
burst of gratilude overcame me.

When they that robb'd, were men of better faith (160)
It filled

my eyesmit
went as a cordial to my heart. I will call again to- The Poet drew among the woods and wilds,

Than kings or pontiffs, when, such reverence morrow,' I cried. 'Fool that I was, to think of leaving A voice was heard, that never bade to spare, a world, where such pleasure was to be had, and so

Crying aloud, Hence to the distant hills ! cheaply".

Tasso approaches; he, whose song beguiles

The day of half its hours; whose sorcery
XII.

Dazzles the sense, turning our forest-glades
THE FOUNTAIN.

To lists that blaze with gorgeous armoury,
It was a well

Our mountain-caves to regal palaces.
Of whitest marble, white as from the quarry;

Hence, nor descend till he and his are gone. And richly wrought with many a high relief,

Let him fear nothing." " Assuredly not, if the last bas laid a proper foundation. Know

When along the shore, (161) ledgu makes knowledge as money makes money, nor ever perhaps And by the path that, wandering on its way, so fast as on a journey.

Leads through the fatal grove where Tully fell