"oh-conosco-il Tàs-so;"* and she hung with an accent of beautiful languor upon the first syllable. “Yes,” returned the worthy scholar, "doubtless your accent may be better. Then of course you know those classical lines Intanto Erminia infra l' ombrosy pianty The stranger repeated the words in a tone of fondness, like those of an old friend : Intanto Erminia infra l'ombrose piante D'antica selva dal cavallo è scorta ; Ne più governo il fren la man tremante, E mezza quasi par, tra viva e morta.t Our usher's common-place book had supplied him with a fortunate passage, for it was a favourite one of her country-women. It also singularly applied to her situation. There was a sort of exquisite mixture of clearness in her utterance of these.verses, which gave some of the children a better idea of French than they had had; for they could not get it out of their heads that she must be a French girl;"Italian-French perhaps," said one of them. But her voice trembled as she went on, like the hand she spoke of. "I have heard my poor cousin Montague sing those very lines," said the boy who prevented her from playing. "Montague," repeated the stranger very plainly, but turning paler and fainter. She put one of her hands in turn upon the boy's affectionately, and pointed towards the spot where the church was. "Yes, yes," cried the boy ;-" why, she knew my cousin she must have known him in Florence." "I told you," said the usher, "she was an Italian." "Help her to my aunt's," continued the youth, "she'll understand her :-lean upon me, Miss; " and he repeated the last word without his former hesitation. Only a few boys followed her to the door, the rest having been awed away by the usher. As soon as the stranger entered the house and saw an elderly lady who received her kindly, she exclaimed "La Signora Madre,” and fell in a swoon at her feet. She was taken to bed, and attended with the utmost care by her hostess, who would not suffer her to talk till she had had a sleep. She merely heard enough to find out, that the stranger had known her son in Italy; and she was thrown into a painful state of suspicion by the poor girl's eyes, which followed her about the room till the lady fairly came up and closed them. Oh-I know-Tasso. † Meantime in the old wood, the palfrey bore Erminia deeper into shade and shade; Her trembling hands could hold him in no more, And she appeared betwixt alive and dead. "Obedient! obedient!" said the patient : "obedient in everything: only the Signora will let me kiss her hand;" and taking it with her own trembling one, she laid her cheek upon it, and it staid there till she had dropt asleep for weariness. Silken rest Tie all thy cares up! thought her kind watcher, who was doubly thrown upon a recollection of that beautiful passage in Beaumont and Fletcher, by the suspicion she had of the cause of the girl's visit. "And yet," thought she, turning her eyes with a thin tear in them towards the church spire, "he was an excellent boy,-the boy of my heart." When the stranger woke, the secret was explained and if the mind of her hostess was relieved, it was only the more touched with pity, and indeed moved with respect and admiration. The dying girl (for she evidently was dying, and happy at the thought of it) was the niece of an humble tradesman in Florence, at whose house young Montague, who was a gentleman of small fortune, had lodged and fallen sick during his travels. She was a lively, good-natured girl, whom he used to hear coquetting and playing the guitar with her neighbours; and it was greatly on this account, that her considerate and hushing gravity struck him whenever she entered his room. One day he heard no more coquetting, nor even the guitar. He asked the reason, when she came to give him some drink; and she said she had heard him mention some noise that disturbed him. "But you do not call your voice and your music a noise," said he, "do you, Rosaura ? I hope not, for I had expected it would give me strength to get rid of this fever and reach home." Rosaura turned pale, and let the patient into a secret; but what surprised and delighted him was, that she played her guitar nearly as often as before, and sang too, only less sprightly airs. "You get better and better, Signor," said she, "every day, and your mother will see you and be happy. I hope you will tell her what a good doctor you had." "The best in the world," cried be; and as he sat up in bed, he put his arm round her waist and kissed her. "Pardon me, Signora," said the poor girl to her hostess; "but I felt that arm round my waist for a week after: ay, almost as much as if it had been there." "And Charles felt that you did," thought his mother; "for he never told me the story." "He begged my pardon," continued she, "as I was hastening out of the room, and hoped I should not construe his warmth into impertiAnd to hear him talk so to me, who nence. used to fear what he might think of myself; it made me stand in the passage, and lean my head against the wall, and weep such bitter, and yet such sweet tears!-But he did not hear them. No, Madam, he did not know, indeed, how much I-how much I-" "Loved him, child," interrupted Mrs. Montague; "you have a right to say so, and I wish he had been alive to say as much to you himself." "Oh, good God!" said the dying girl, her tears flowing away, "this is too great a happiness for me, to hear his own mother talking so." And again she lays her weak head upon the lady's hand. The latter would have persuaded her to sleep again; but she said she could not for joy: "for I'll tell you, Madam," continued she, "I do not believe you will think it foolish, for something very grave at my heart tells me it is not so; but I have had a long thought," (and her voice and look grew more exalted as she spoke,) "which has supported me through much toil and many disagreeable things to this country and this place; and I will tell you what it is, and how it came into my mind. I received this letter from your son." Here she drew out a paper which, though carefully wrapped up in several others, was much worn at the sides. It was dated from the village, and ran thus : "This comes from the Englishman whom Rosaura nursed so kindly at Florence. She will be sorry to hear that her kindness was in vain, for he is dying; and he sometimes fears that her sorrow will be greater than he could wish it to be. But marry one of your kind countrymen, my good girl; for all must love Rosaura who know her. If it shall be my lot ever to meet her in heaven, I will thank her as a blessed tongue only can.' "As soon as I read this letter, Madam," continues Rosaura, "and what he said about heaven, it flashed into my head, that though I did not deserve him on earth, I might, perhaps, by trying and patience, deserve to be joined with him in heaven, where there is no distinction of persons. My uncle was pleased to see me become a religious pilgrim; but he knew as little of the world as I, and I found that I could earn my way to England better, and quite as religiously, by playing my guitar, which was also more independent; and I had often heard your son talk of independence and freedom, and commend me for doing what he was pleased to call so much kindness to others. So I played my guitar from Florence all the way to England, and all that I earned by it I gave away to the poor, keeping enough to procure me lodging. I lived on bread and water, and used to weep happy tears over it, because I looked up to heaven and thought he might see me. I have sometimes, though not often, met with small insults; but if ever they threatened to grow greater, I begged the people to desist in the kindest way I could, even smiling, and saying I would please them if I had the heart; which might be wrong, but it seemed as if deep thoughts told me to say so; and they used to look astonished, and left off; which made me the more hope that St. Philip and the Holy Virgin did not think ill of my endeavours. So playing, and giving alms in this manner, I arrived in the neighbourhood of your beloved village, where I fell sick for a while, and was very kindly treated in an out-house; though the people, I thought, seemed to look strange and afraid on this crucifix-(though your son never did),—though he taught me to think kindly of everybody, and hope the best, and leave everything, except our own endeavours, to Heaven. I fell sick, Madam, because I found for certain that the Signor Montague was dead, albeit I had no hope that he was alive." She stopped awhile for breath, for she was growing weaker and weaker, and her hostess would fain have had her keep silence; but she pressed her hand as well as she might, and prayed with such a patient panting of voice to be allowed to go on, that she was. She smiled thankfully and resumed : "So when so when I got my strength a little again, I walked on and came to the beloved village, and I saw the beautiful white church spire in the trees; and then I knew where his body slept, and I thought some kind person would help me to die, with my face looking towards the church as it now does ; and death is upon me, even now: but lift me a little higher on the pillows, dear lady, that I may see the green ground of the hill." She was raised up as she wished, and after looking awhile with a placid feebleness at the hill, said in a very low voice, "Say one prayer for me, dear lady; and if it be not too proud in me, call me in it your daughter." The mother of her beloved summoned up a grave and earnest voice, as well as she might, and knelt and said, "O Heavenly Father of us all, who in the midst of thy manifold and merciful bounties bringest us into strong passes of anguish, which nevertheless thou enablest us to go through, look down, we beseech thee, upon this thy young and innocent servant, the daughter-that might have been-of my heart, and enable her spirit to pass through the struggling bonds of mortality, and be gathered into thy rest with those we love. Do, dear and great God, of thy infinite mercy, for we are poor weak creatures, both young and old-" here her voice melted away into a breathing tearfulness; and after remaining on her knees a moment longer, she rose and looked upon the bed, and saw that the weary smiling one was no more. XLIV.-A "NOW.” DESCRIPTIVE OF A HOT DAY. of. Now a green lane, on the contrary, thickset with hedge-row elms, and having the noise of a brook "rumbling in pebble-stone," is one of the pleasantest things in the world. Now the rosy- (and lazy-) fingered Aurora, Now, in town, gossips talk more than ever to issuing from her saffron house, calls up the one another, in rooms, in door-ways, and out of moist vapours to surround her, and goes veiled window, always beginning the conversation with them as long as she can; till Phoebus, with saying that the heat is overpowering. Now coming forth in his power, looks everything blinds are let down, and doors thrown open, out of the sky, and holds sharp uninterrupted and flannel waistcoats left off, and cold meat empire from his throne of beams. Now the preferred to hot, and wonder expressed why mower begins to make his sweeping cuts more tea continues so refreshing, and people delight slowly, and resorts oftener to the beer. Now to sliver lettuces into bowls, and apprentices the carter sleeps a-top of his load of hay, or water door-ways with tin canisters that lay plods with double slouch of shoulder, looking several atoms of dust. Now the water-cart, out with eyes winking under his shading hat, jumbling along the middle of the street, and and with a hitch upward of one side of his jolting the showers out of its box of water, mouth. Now the little girl at her grand- really does something. Now fruiterers' shops mother's cottage-door watches the coaches that and dairies look pleasant, and ices are the only go by, with her hand held up over her sunny things to those who can get them. Now ladies forehead. Now labourers look well resting in loiter in baths; and people make presents of their white shirts at the doors of rural ale flowers; and wine is put into ice; and the houses. Now an elm is fine there, with a seat after-dinner lounger recreates his head with under it; and horses drink out of the trough, applications of perfumed water out of longstretching their yearning necks with loosened necked bottles. Now the lounger, who cannot collars; and the traveller calls for his glass of resist riding his new horse, feels his boots burn ale, having been without one for more than him. Now buck-skins are not the lawn of Cos. ten minutes; and his horse stands wincing at Now jockeys, walking in great-coats to lose the flies, giving sharp shivers of his skin, and flesh, curse inwardly. Now five fat people in moving to and fro his ineffectual docked tail; a stage-coach hate the sixth fat one who is and now Miss Betty Wilson, the host's daughter, coming in, and think he has no right to be so comes streaming forth in a flowered gown and large. Now clerks in office do nothing but ear-rings, carrying with four of her beautiful drink soda-water and spruce-beer, and read the fingers the foaming glass, for which, after the newspaper. Now the old-clothesman drops traveller has drank it, she receives with an in- his solitary cry more deeply into the areas on different eye, looking another way, the lawful the hot and forsaken side of the street; and two-pence. Now grasshoppers fry," bakers look vicious; and cooks are aggravated; Dryden says. Now cattle stand in water, and and the steam of a tavern-kitchen catches hold ducks are envied. Now boots, and shoes, and of us like the breath of Tartarus. Now delicate trees by the road-side, are thick with dust; and skins are beset with gnats; and boys make dogs, rolling in it, after issuing out of the water, their sleeping companion start up, with playing into which they have been thrown to fetch a burning-glass on his hand; and blacksmiths sticks, come scattering horror among the legs are super-carbonated; and cobblers in their of the spectators. Now a fellow who finds he has stalls almost feel a wish to be transplanted; three miles further to go in a pair of tight and butter is too easy to spread ; and the drashoes, is in a pretty situation. Now rooms goons wonder whether the Romans liked their with the sun upon them become intolerable; helmets; and old ladies, with their lappets and the apothecary's apprentice, with a bitter- unpinned, walk along in a state of dilapidation; ness beyond aloes, thinks of the pond he used and the servant maids are afraid they look vulto bathe in at school. Now men with pow-garly hot; and the author, who has a plate of dered heads (especially if thick) envy those that are unpowdered, and stop to wipe them up hill, with countenances that seem to expostulate with destiny. Now boys assemble round the village pump with a ladle to it, and delight to make a forbidden splash and get wet through the shoes. Now also they make suckers of leather, and bathe all day long in rivers and ponds, and make mighty fishings for "tittlebats." Now the bee, as he hums along, seems to be talking heavily of the heat. Now doors and brick-walls are burning to the hand; and a walled lane, with dust and broken bottles in it, near a brick-field, is a thing not to be thought as strawberries brought him, finds that he has come to the end of his writing. We cannot conclude this article, however, without returning thanks, both on our own account and on that of our numerous predecessors, who have left so large a debt of gratitude unpaid, to this very useful and ready monosyllable-"Now." We are sure that there is not a didactic poet, ancient or modern, who, if he possessed a decent share of candour, would not be happy to own his obligations to that masterly conjunction, which possesses the very essence of wit, for it has the art of bringing the most remote things toge ther. And its generosity is in proportion to its wit, for it always is most profuse of its aid where it is most wanted. We must enjoy a pleasant passage with the reader on the subject of this "eternal Now" in Beaumont and Fletcher's play of the WomanHater. Upon turning to it, we perceive that our illustrious particle does not make quite so great a figure as we imagined; but the whole passage is in so analogous a taste, and affords such an agreeable specimen of the wit and humour with which fine poets could rally the common-places of their art, that we cannot help proceeding with it. Lazarello, a foolish table-hunter, has requested an introduction to the Duke of Milan, who has had a fine lamprey presented him. Before the introduction takes place, he finds that the Duke has given the fish away; so that his wish to be known to him goes with it; and part of the drollery of the passage arises from his uneasiness at being detained by the consequences of his own request, and his fear lest he should be too late for the lamprey elsewhere. Count (aside to the Duke). Let me entreat your Grace to stay a little, To know a gentleman, to whom yourself Duke. His name? Count. Lazarello. Duke. I heard of him this morning :—which is he? Count (aside to Laz.). Lazarello, pluck up thy spirits. Thy fortune is now raising. The Duke calls for thee, and thou shalt be acquainted with him. Laz. He's going away, and I must of necessity stay here upon business. Count. 'Tis all one: thou shalt know him first. Laz. Stay a little. If he should offer to take me with him, and by that means I should lose that I seek for! But if he should, I will not go with him. Count. Lazarello, the Duke stays. Wilt thou lose this opportunity? Laz. How must I speak to him? Count. 'Twas well thought of. You must not talk to him as you do to an ordinary man, honest plain sense; but you must wind about him. For example, if he should ask you what o'clock it is, you must not say, "If it please your Grace, 'tis nine;"-but thus ;-"Thrice three o'clock, so please my Sovereign; "-or thus : "Look how many Muses there do dwell Upon the sweet banks of the learned well, And just so many strokes the clock hath struck;" and so forth. And you must now and then enter into a description. Laz. I hope I shall do it. Count. Come.-May it please your Grace to take note of a gentleman, well seen, deeply read, and thoroughly grounded in the hidden knowledge of all sallets and pot-herbs what soever. Duke. I shall desire to know him more inwardly. Laz. I kiss the ox-hide of your Grace's foot. Count (aside to Laz.). Very well.-Will your Grace question him a little. Duke. How old are you? Laz. Full eight-and-twenty several almanacks Have been compiled, all for several years, Since first I drew this breath. Four 'prenticeships Have I most truly served in this world: Duke. I understand you, Sir. Lucio. How like an ignorant poet he talks! Duke. You are eight-and-twenty years old? What time of the day do you hold it to be? Laz. About the time that mortals whet their knives On thresholds, on their shoe-soles, and on stairs. Laz. Your Grace doth apprehend me very rightly. XLV. THE HONOURABLE MR. ROBERT BOYLE. THE celebrated Robert Boyle, the chemist, was accounted in his days a sort of perfection of a man, especially in all respects intellectual, moral, and religious. This excellent person was in the habit of moralising upon every. thing that he did or suffered; such as, “Upon his manner of giving meat to his dog," "_" Upon his horse stumbling in a very fair way,""Upon his sitting at ease in a coach that went very fast," &c. Among other Reflections, is one "Upon a fish's struggling after having swallowed the hook." It amounts to this: that at the moment when the fish thinks himself about to be most happy, the hook "does so wound and tear his tender gills, and thereby puts him into such restless pain, that no doubt he wishes the hook, bait and all, were out of his torn jaws again. Thus," says he, "men who do what they should not, to obtain any sensual desires," &c. &c. Not a thought comes over him as to his own part in the business, and what he ought to say of himself for tearing the jaws and gills to indulge his own appetite for excitement. Take also the following :— "Fifth Section-Reflection I. Killing a crow (out of window) in a hog's trough, and immediately tracing the ensuing reflection with a pen made of one of his quills.-Long and patiently did I wait for this unlucky crow, wallowing in the sluttish trough (whose sides kept him a great while out of the reach of my gun), e A 1 and gorging himself with no less greediness than the very swinish proprietaries of the feast, till at length my no less unexpected than fatal shot in a moment struck him down, and turning the scene of his delight into that of his pangs, made him abruptly alter his note, and change his triumphant chaunt into a dismal and tragic noise. This method is not unusual to divine justice towards brawny and incorrigible sinners," &c. &c. Thus the crow, for eating his dinner, is a rascal worthy to be shot by the Honourable Mr. Robert Boyle, before the latter sits down to his own; while the said Mr. Boyle, instead of contenting himself with being a gentleman in search of amusement at the expense of birds and fish, is a representative of Divine Justice. We laugh at this wretched moral pedantry now, and deplore the involuntary hard-heartedness which such mistakes in religion tended to produce; but in how many respects should it not make us look about ourselves, and see where we fall short of an enlargement of thinking? XLVI. SUPERFINE BREEDING. THERE is an anecdote in Aulus Gellius (Noctes Attica, lib. 10, cap. vi.) which exhibits, we think, one of the highest instances of what may be called polite blackguardism, that we remember to have read. The fastidiousness, self-will, and infinite resentment against a multitude of one's fellow-creatures for presuming to come in contact with our importance, are truly edifying; and to complete the lesson, this extraordinary specimen of the effect of superfine breeding and blood is handed down to us in the person of a lady. Her words might be thought to have been a bad joke; and bad enough it would have been; but the sense that was shown of them proves them to have been very gravely regarded. Claudia, the daughter of Appius Cæcus, in coming away from a public spectacle, was much pressed and pushed about by the crowd; upon which she thus vented her impatience :"What should I have suffered now, and how much more should I have been squeezed and knocked about, if my brother Publius Claudius had not had his ships destroyed in battle, with all that heap of men? I should have been absolutely jammed to death! Would to heaven my brother were alive again, and could go with another fleet to Sicily, and be the death of this host of people, who plague and pester one in this horrid manner * !" For these words, “so wicked and so uncivic," says good old Gellius (tam improba ac tam incivilia) the Ediles, Caius Fundanus and Tiberius Sempronius, got the lady fined in the sum of twenty-five thousand pounds brass. There is a long account, in Livy, of the speech which they made to the people in reply to the noble families that interceded for her. It is very indignant. Claudia herself confessed her words, and does not appear to have joined in the intercession. They are not related at such length by Livy, as by Aulus Gellius. He merely makes her wish that her brother were alive to take out another fleet. But he shows his sense of the ebullition by calling it a dreadful imprecation; and her rage was even more gratuitous, according to his account; for he describes her as coming from the shows in a chariot. Insolence and want of feeling appear to have been hereditary in this Appian family: which gives us also a strong sense of their want of capacity; otherwise a disgust at such manners must have been generated in some of the children. They were famous for opposing every popular law, and for having kept the commons as long as possible out of any share in public honours and government. The villain Appius Claudius, whose story has been made still more familiar to the public by the tragedy of Mr. Knowles, was among its ancestors. Appius Cæcus, or the Blind, the father of Claudia, though he constructed the celebrated Appian Way and otherwise benefited the city, was a very unpopular man, wilful, haughty, and lawless. He retained possession of the Censorship beyond the limited period. It is an instance perhaps of his unpopularity, as well as of the superstition of the times, that having made a change in one of the priestly offices, and become blind some years afterwards, the Romans attributed it to the vengeance of heaven; an opinion which Livy repeats with great devotion, calling it a warning against innovations in religion. It had no effect, however, upon Claudius the brother, whose rashness furnished the pious Romans with a similar example to point at. Before an engagement with the Carthaginians, the Sacred Chickens were consulted, and because they would not peck and furnish him with a good omen, he ordered them to be thrown into the sea. they won't eat," says he, "let 'em drink." The engagement was one of the worst planned and the worst fought in the world; but the men were dispirited by the Consul's irreverent behaviour to the chickens; and his impiety shared the disgrace with his folly. Livy represents him as an epitome of all that was bad in his family; proud, stubborn, unmerciful, though full of faults himself, and wilful and precipitate to a degree of madness. This was "If frater, aliamque classem in Siciliam ducat, atque istam multitudinem perditum eat, quæ me malè nunc miseram convexavit." |