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Then, and hence to be discern'd,
How many realms, pastoral and warlike, lay (144)
Along this plain, each with its schemes of
power,
Its little rivalships! What various turns
Of fortune there; what moving accidents
From ambuscade and open violence!

Mingling, the sounds came up; and hence how oft
We might have caught among the trees below,
Glittering with helm and shield, the men of Tibur;'
Or in Greek vesture, Greek their origin,
Some embassy, ascending to Præneste;2
How oft descried, without thy gates, Aricia,3
Entering the solemn grove for sacrifice,
Senate and People!-Each a busy hive,
Glowing with life!

But all ere long are lost
In one. We look, and where the river rolls
Southward its shining labyrinth, in her strength
A City, girt with battlements and towers,
On seven small hills is rising. Round about,
At rural work, the Citizens are seen,
None unemploy'd; the noblest of them all
Binding their sheaves or on their threshing-floors,
As though they had not conquer'd. Every where
Some trace of valour or heroic virtue!
Here is the sacred field of the Horatii, (145)
There are the Quintian meadows. (146)) Here the hill4
How holy, where a generous people, twice,
Twice going forth, in terrible anger sate

Arm'd; and, their wrongs redress'd, at once gave way,
Helmet and shield, and sword and spear thrown down,
And every hand uplifted, every heart
Pour'd out in thanks to heaven.

Once again
We look; and lo, the sea is white with sails
Innumerable, wafting to the shore

Treasures untold; the vale, the promontories,
A dream of glory; temples, palaces,
Call'd up as by enchantment; aqueducts

Among the groves and glades rolling along

Rivers, on many an arch high over-head;
And in the centre, like a burning-sun,
The Imperial City! They have now subdued
All nations. But where they who led them forth;
Who, when at length released by victory,
(Buckler and spear hung up-but not to rust)
Held poverty no evil, no reproach,
Living on little with a cheerful mind,

The Decii, the Fabricii? Where the spade,

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And reaping-hook, among their household-things
Duly transmitted? In the hands of men
Made captive; while the master and his guests,
Reclining, quaff in gold, and roses swim,
Summer and winter, through the circling year,
On their Falernian-in the hands of men
Dragg'd into slavery, with how many more
Spared but to die, a public spectacle,
In combat with each other, and required
To fall with grace, with dignity—to sink,
While life is gushing, and the plaudits ring
Faint and yet fainter on their failing ear,
As models for the sculptor.

But their days, Their hours are number'd. Hark, a yell, a shriek, A barbarous dissonance, loud and yet louder, That echoes from the mountains to the sea! And mark, beneath us, like a bursting cloud, The battle moving onward! Had they slain All, that the Earth should from her womb bring forth New nations to destroy them? From the depth Of forests, from what none had dared explore, Regions of thrilling ice, as though in ice Engender'd, multiplied, they pour along, Shaggy and huge! Host after host, they come; The Goth, the Vandal; and again the Goth!

Once more we look, and all is still as night,
All desolate! Groves, temples, palaces,
Swept from the sight, and nothing visible,
Amid the sulphurous vapours that exhale
As from a land accurst, save here and there
An empty tomb, a fragment like the limb
Of some dismember'd giant. In the midst
A City stands, her domes and turrets crown'd
With many a cross; but they, that issue forth,
Wander like strangers who had built among
The mighty ruins, silent, spiritless;

And on the road, where once we might have met
Cæsar and Cato, and men more than kings,
We meet, none else, the pilgrim and the beggar.

VII.

THE ROMAN PONTIFFS.

THOSE ancient men, what were they, who achieved
A sway beyond the greatest conquerors;
Setting their feet upon the necks of kings,
And, through the world, subduing, chaining down
The free immortal spirit? Were they not
Mighty magicians? Theirs a wondrous spell,
Where true and false were with infernal art
Close-interwoven; where together met
Blessings and curses, threats and promises;
And with the terrors of Futurity

Mingled whate'er enchants and fascinates,
Music and painting, sculpture, rhetoric (147)
And architectural pomp, such as none else;
And dazzling light, and darkness visible! (148)
What in his day the Syracusan sought,
Another world to plant his engines on,

They had; and, having it, like gods, not men,
Moved this world at their pleasure. Ere they came, (149)
Their shadows, stretching far and wide, were known;
And Two, that look'd beyond the visible sphere,
Gave notice of their coming-he who saw

The Apocalypse; and he of elder time,
Who in an awful vision of the night.

Saw the Four kingdoms. Distant as they were,
Well might those holy men be fill'd with fear!

VIII.

CAIUS CESTIUS.

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« Thus,

Thus,

Yet was it sad as sweet, and ere it closed,
Came like a dirge. When her fair head was shorn,
And the long tresses in her hands were laid,
That she might fling them from her, saying,
Thus I renounce the world and worldly things!
When, as she stood, her bridal ornaments
Were, one by one, removed, even to the last,
That she might say, flinging them from her,
Thus I renounce the world! when all was changed,
And, as a nun, in homeliest guise she knelt,
Veiled in her veil, crown'd with her silver crown,
Her crown of lilies as the spouse of Christ,
Well might her strength forsake her, and her knees
Fail in that hour! Well might the holy man,
He, at whose feet she knelt, give as by stealth
(T was in her utmost need; nor, while she lives, (151)
Will it go from her, fleeting as it was)

WHEN I am inclined to be serious, I love to wander
up and down before the tomb of Caius Cestius. The
Protestant burial-ground is there; and most of the little
monuments are erected to the young; young men of
promise, cut off when on their travels, full of enthu-
siasm, full of enjoyment; brides, in the bloom of their
beauty, on their first journey; or children borne from
home in search of health. This stone was placed by his
fellow-travellers, young as himself, who will return to
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.

It is a quiet and sheltered nook, covered in the winter with violets; and the Pyramid, that overshadows it, gives it a classical and singularly solemn air. You feel an interest there, a sympathy you were not prepared for. You are yourself in a foreign land; and they are for the most part your countrymen. They call upon you in your mother-tongue-in English-in words unknown to a native, known only to yourselves and the tomb of Cestius, that old majestic pile, has this also in common with them. It is itself a stranger, among strangers. It has stood there till the language spoken round about it has changed; and the shepherd, born at the foot, can read its inscription no longer.

IX.

THE NUN.

"T is over; and her lovely cheek is now
On her hard pillow-there, alas, to be
Nightly, through many and many a dreary hour,
Wan, often wet with tears, and (ere at length
Her place is empty, and another comes)
In anguish, in the ghastliness of death;
Hers never more to leave those mournful walls,
Even on her bier.

'Tis over; and the rite,
With all its pomp and harmony, is now
Floating before her. She arose at home,
To be the show, the idol of the day;
Her vesture gorgeous, and her starry head-
No rocket, bursting in the midnight-sky,
So dazzling. When to-morrow she awakes,
She will awake as though she still was there,
Still in her father's house; and lo, a cell

Narrow and dark, nought through the gloom discern'd,
Nought save the crucifix, the rosary,
And the grey habit lying by to shroud
Her beauty and grace.

When on her knees she fell,
Entering the solemn place of consecration,
And from the latticed gallery came a chaunt
Of psalms, most saint-like, most angelical, (150)
Verse after verse sung out, how holily!
The strain returning, and still, still returning,
Methought it acted like a spell upon her,
And she was casting off her earthly dross;

Like a dream the whole is fled;
And they, that came in idleness to gaze
Upon the victim dress'd for sacrifice,
Are mingling in the world; thou in thy cell
Forgot, Teresa. Yet, among them all,
None were so form'd to love and to be loved,
None to delight, adorn; and on thee now
A curtain, blacker than the night, is dropp'd
For ever! In thy gentle bosom sleep
Feelings, affections, destined now to die,
To wither like the blossom in the bud,
Those of a wife, a mother; leaving there
A cheerless void, a chill as of the grave,
A languor and a lethargy of soul,

Death-like, and gathering more and more, till Death
Comes to release thee. Ah, what now to thee,
What now to thee the treasure of thy Youth?
As nothing!

But thou canst not yet reflect
Calmly; so many things, strange and perverse,
That meet, recoil, and go but to return,
The monstrous birth of one eventful day,
Troubling thy spirit-from the first, at dawn,
The rich arraying for the nuptial feast,
To the black pall, the requiem. (152)

All in turn

Revisit thee, and round thy lowly bed
Hover, uncall'd. The young and innocent heart,
How is it beating? Has it no regrets?
Discoverest thou no weakness lurking there?
But thine exhausted frame has sunk to rest.
Peace to thy slumbers!

X.

THE FIRE-FLY.

THERE is an Insect, that, when Evening comes,

Small though he be and scarce distinguishable,
Like Evening clad in soberest livery,

Unsheaths his wings, (153) and through the woods and

glades

Scatters a marvellous splendour. On he wheels,
Blazing by fits as from excess of joy, (154)

Each gush of light a gush of ecstacy;
Nor unaccompanied; thousands that fling
A radiance all their own, not of the day,
Thousands as bright as he, from dusk till dawn,

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Well may the child put forth his little hands,
Singing the nursery-song he learnt so soon; (155)
And the young nymph, preparing for the dance (156)
By brook or fountain-side, in many a braid
Wreathing her golden hair, well may she cry,

. Come hither; and the shepherds, gathering round,
Shall say, Floretta emulates the Night,
Spangling her head with stars.>>

Oft have I met
This shining race, when in the Tusculan groves
My path no longer glimmer'd; oft among
Those trees, religious once and always green, (157)
That yet dream out their stories of old Rome
Over the Alban lake; oft met and hail'd,
Where the precipitate Anio thunders down,
And through the surging mist a Poet's house
(So some aver, and who would not believe?) (158)
Reveals itself.

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Ours is a nation of travellers; and no wonder, when the elements, air, water, fire, attend at our bidding, to transport us from shore to shore; when the ship rushes into the deep, her track the foam as of some mighty torrent; and, in three hours or less, we stand gazing and gazed at among a foreign people. None want an excuse. If rich, they go to enjoy, if poor, to retrench; if sick, to recover; if studious, to learn; if learned, to relax from their studies. But whatever they may say, whatever they may believe, they go for the most part on the same errand; nor will those who reflect, think that errand an idle one.

Almost all men are over-anxious. No sooner do they enter the world, than they lose that taste for natural and simple pleasures, so remarkable in early life. Every hour do they ask themselves what progress they have made in the pursuit of wealth or honour; and on they go as their fathers went before them, till, weary and sick at heart, they look back with a sigh of regret to the golden time of their childhood.

Now travel, and foreign travel more particularly, restores to us in a great degree what we have lost. When the anchor is heaved, we double down the leaf; and for a while at least all effort is over. The old cares are left clustering round the old objects; and at every step, as we proceed, the slightest circumstance amuses and interests. All is new and strange. We surrender ourselves, and feel once again as children. Like them, we enjoy eagerly; like them, when we fret, we fret only for the moment; and here indeed the resemblance is very remarkable, for, if a journey has its pains as well as its pleasures (and there is nothing unmixed in this world) the pains are no sooner over than they are forgotten, while the pleasures live long in the

memory.

It was in a splenetic humour that I sate me down to my scanty fare at Terracina; and how long I should have contemplated the lean thrushes in array before me, I cannot say, if a cloud of smoke, that drew the tears into my eyes, had not burst from the green and leafy boughs on the hearth-stone. Why, I exNor is it surely without another advantage. If life claimed, starting up from the table, «< why did I leave be short, not so to many of us are its days and its 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 often do we wish that the earth would turn faster on that befel Horace and Virgil, and Mæcenas, and Plotius, its axis, that the sun would rise and set before it does; and Varius? Horace laughed at them-Then why and, to escape from the weight of time, how many should not I? 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?" My soliloquy reconciled me at once to my fate; and when, for the twentieth time, I had looked through the window on a sea sparkling with innumerable brilliants, a sea on which the heroes of the Odyssey and the Eneid had sailed, I sat down as to a splendid banquet. My

thrushes had the flavour of ortolans; and I ate with an appetite I had not known before.

« Who, I cried as I poured out my last glass of Falernian,2 (for Falernian it was said to be, and in my eyes it ran bright and clear as a topaz-stone) Who would remain at home, could he do otherwise? Who would submit to tread that dull, but daily round; his hours forgotten as soon as spent?" and, opening my journal-book and dipping my pen in my ink-horn, I determined, as far as I could, to justify myself and my countrymen in wandering over the face of the

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danger, and even on death. Intrigue, play, foreign and domestic broil, such are their resources; and, when these things fail, they destroy themselves.

Now in travelling we multiply events, and innocently. We set out, as it were, on our adventures; and many are those that occur to us, morning, noon, and night.

The day we come to a place which we have long heard and read of, and in Italy we do so continually, it is an era in our lives; and from that moment the very name calls up a picture. How delightfully too does the knowledge flow in upon us, and how fast! Would

As indeed it always was, contributing those of every degree, from a milors with his suite to him whose only attendant is his shadow. Coryate in 1608 performed his journey on foot; and, returning, hung up bis shoes in his village-church as an ex-voto. Goldsmith, a century and a half afterwards, followed in nearly the same path; playing a tune on his flute to procure admittance, whenever he approached a cottage at night-fall.

To judge at once of a nation, we have only to throw our eyes on the markets and the fields. If the markets are well-supplied, the fields well-cultivated, all is right. If otherwise, we may say, and say truly, these people are barbarous or oppressed.

he who sat in a corner of his library, pouring over books and maps, learn more or so much in the time, as he who, with his eyes and his heart open, is receiving impressions, all day long from the things themselves? How accurately do they arrange themselves in our memory, towns, rivers, mountains; and in what living colours do we recall the dresses, manners, and customs of the people! Our sight is the noblest of all our senses It fills the mind with most ideas, converses with its objects at the greatest distance, and continues longest in action without being tired.. Our sight is on the alert when we travel; and its exercise is then so delightful, that we forget the profit in the pleasure.

Like a river, that gathers, that refines as it runs, like a spring that takes its course through some rich vein of mineral, we improve and imperceptibly-nor in the head only, but in the heart. Our prejudices leave us, one by one. Seas and mountains are no longer our boundaries. We learn to love, and esteem, and admire beyond them. Our benevolence extends itself with our knowledge. And must we not return better citizens than we went? For the more we become acquainted with the institutions of other countries, the more highly must we value our own.

I threw down my pen in triumph. said I, «is set to rest for ever.

. The question, And yet->

« And yet—, I must still say. The wisest of men seldom went out of the walls of Athens; and for that worst of evils, that sickness of the soul, to which we are most liable when most at our ease, is there not after all a surer and yet pleasanter remedy, a remedy for which we have only to cross the threshold? A Piedmontese nobleman, into whose company I fell at Turin, had not long before experienced its efficacy; and his story, which he told me without reserve, was follows.

as

I was weary of life, and, after a day, such as few

have known and none would wish to remember, was hurrying along the street to the river, when I felt a sudden check. I turned and beheld a little boy, who had caught the skirt of my cloak in his anxiety to solicit my notice. His look and manner were irresistible. Not less so was the lesson he had learnt.

« 'There are six of us; and we are dying for want of food. 'Why should I not,' said I to myself, ' relieve this wretched family? I have the means; and it will not delay me many minutes. But what, if it does? The scene of misery he conducted me to, I cannot describe. I threw them my purse; and their burst of gratitude overcame me. It filled my eyes-it went as a cordial to my heart. 'I will call again tomorrow,' I cried. Fool that I was, to think of leaving a world, where such pleasure was to be had, and so cheaply!',

XII. THE FOUNTAIN.

Ir was a well

Of whitest marble, white as from the quarry;
And richly wrought with many a high relief,

Assuredly not, if the last has laid a proper foundation. Know

Greek sculpture-in some earlier day perhaps
A tomb, and honour'd with a hero's ashes.
The water from the rock fill'd, overflow'd it;
Then dash'd away, playing the prodigal,
And soon was lost-stealing unseen, unheard,
Through the long grass, and round the twisted roots
Of aged trees; discovering where it ran
By the fresh verdure. Overcome with heat,
I threw me down; admiring, as I lay,
That shady nook, a singing-place for birds,
That grove so intricate, so full of flowers,
More than enough to please a child a-Maying.

The sun was down, a distant convent-bell Ringing the Angelus; and now approach'd The hour for stir and village-gossip there, The hour Rebekah came, when from the well She drew with such alacrity to serve The stranger and his camels. Soon I heard Footsteps; and lo, descending by a path Trodden for ages, many a nymph appear'd, Appear'd and vanish'd, bearing on her head Her earthen pitcher. It call'd up the day Ulysses landed there; and long I gazed, Like one awaking in a distant time. (159)

At length there came the loveliest of them all,
Her little brother dancing down before her;
And ever as he spoke, which he did ever,
Turning and looking up in warmth of heart
And brotherly affection. Stopping there,
She join'd her rosy hands, and, filling them
With the pure element, gave him to drink;
And, while he quench'd his thirst, standing on tiptoe,

Look'd down upon him with a sister's smile,
Nor stirr❜d till he had done, fix'd as a statue.

Then hadst thou seen them as they stood, Canova,
Thou hadst endow'd them with immortal youth;
And they had evermore lived undivided,
Winning all hearts-of all thy works the fairest.

XIII. BANDITTI.

"T is a wild life, fearful and full of change,
The mountain-robber's. On the watch he lies,
Levelling his carbine at the passenger;
And, when his work is done, he dares not sleep.

Time was, the trade was nobler, if not honest;

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When they that robb'd, were men of better faith (160)
Than kings or pontiffs, when, such reverence
A voice was heard, that never bade to spare,
The Poet drew among the woods and wilds,
Crying aloud, Hence to the distant hills!
Tasso approaches; he, whose song beguiles
The day of half its hours; whose sorcery
Dazzles the sense, turning our forest-glades
To lists that blaze with gorgeous armoury,
Our mountain-caves to regal palaces.
Hence, nor descend till he and his are gone.
Let him fear nothing."

When along the shore, (161)

ledge makes knowledge as money makes money, nor ever perhaps And by the path that, wandering on its way, Leads through the fatal grove where Tully fell

so fast as on a journey.

(Grey and o'ergrown, an ancient tomb is there),
He came and they withdrew, they were a race
Careless of life in others and themselves,
For they had learnt their lesson in a camp;
But not ungenerous. "T is no longer so.
Now crafty, cruel, torturing ere they slay
The unhappy captive, and with bitter jests
Mocking misfortune; vain, fantastical,
Wearing whatever glitters in the spoil;

And most devout, though when they kneel and pray,
With every bead they could recount a murder,
As by a spell they start up in array, (162)
As by a spell they vanish-theirs a band,
Not as elsewhere of outlaws, but of such
As sow and reap, and at the cottage-door
Sit to receive, return the traveller's greeting;
Now in the garb of peace, now silently
Arming and issuing forth, led on by men
Whose names on innocent lips are words of fear,
Whose lives have long been forfeit.

Some there are

That, ere they rise to this bad eminence,
Lurk, night and day, the plague-spot visible,
The guilt that says, Beware; and mark we now
Him, where he lies, who couches for his prey
At the bridge-foot in some dark cavity
Scoop'd by the waters, or some gaping tomb,
Nameless and tenantless, whence the red fox
Slunk as he enter'd. There he broods, in spleen
Gnawing his beard; his rough and sinewy frame
O'erwritten with the story of his life:
On his wan cheek a sabre-cut, well-earn'd
In foreign warfare; on his breast the brand
Indelible, burnt in when to the port

He clank'd his chain, among a hundred more
Dragg'd ignominiously; on every limb
Memorials of his glory and his shame,
Stripes of the lash and honourable scars,
And channels here and there worn to the bone
By galling fetters.

He comes slowly forth,
Unkennelling, and up that savage dell
Anxiously looks; his cruise, an ample gourd
(Duly replenish'd from the vintner's cask),
Slung from his shoulder; in his breadth of belt
Two pistols and a dagger yet uncleansed,
A parchment scrawl'd with uncouth characters,
And a small vial, his last remedy,

His cure, when all things fail. No noise is heard,
Save when the rugged bear and the gaunt wolf
Howl in the upper region, or a fish
Leaps in the gulf beneath-But now he kneels
And (like a scout, when listening to the tramp
Of horse or foot) lays his experienced ear
Close to the ground, then rises and explores,
Then kneels again, and, his short rifle-gun
Against his cheek, waits patiently.

Two Monks,
Portly, grey-headed, on their gallant steeds,
Descend where yet a mouldering cross o'erhangs
The
grave of one that from the precipice
Fell in an evil hour. Their bridle-bells
Ring merrily; and many a loud, long laugh
Re-echoes; but at once the sounds are lost.
Unconscious of the good in store below,
The holy fathers have turn'd off, and now

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THREE days they lay in ambush at my gate, (163)
Then sprung and led me captive. Many a wild
We traversed; but Rusconi, 't was no less,
Marched by my side, and, when I thirsted, climb'd
The cliffs for water; though, whene'er he spoke,
'T was briefly, sullenly; and on he led,
Distinguish'd only by an amulet,

That in a golden chain hung from his neck,
A crystal of rare virtue. Night fell fast,

When on a heath, black and immeasurable,

He turn'd and bade them halt. 'T was where the earth
Heaves o'er the dead-where erst some Alaric
Fought his last fight, and every warrior threw
A stone to tell for ages where he lay.

Then all advanced, and, ranging in a square, Stretch'd forth their arms as on the holy cross, From each to each their sable cloaks extending, That, like the solemn hangings of a tent, Cover'd us round; and in the midst I stood, Weary and faint, and face to face with one, Whose voice, whose look dispenses life and death, Whose heart knows no relentings. Instantly

A light was kindled, and the Bandit spoke.

I know thee. Thou hast sought us, for the sport Slipping thy blood-hounds with a hunter's cry;

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