appears there was an Arlesienne there drawing water,—as well as his ascent to the ruined château on the brow of the hill.

That spot had attracted my curiosity, and I had resolved in my own mind to reach it. There is something within our breast that impels us to investigate. The ignotum suggests the magnificum, and becomes a sore bait; we will penetrate the veil that hangs between us and the truth. Standing at the foot of the Staubbach, who has not longed to leap at once upon the summit of that vast ledge of earthwork thrown up by nature, and trace out the sources of those thousand streams which gush at intervals down the perpendicular sides of the valley of the Lauterbrunnen? The feeling is as natural as it is for us, when we have ascended a high hill, to stretch out our arms, and strive to embrace the whole landscape. A longing to be ubiquitous overpowers every other sensation; the heart exclaims, "Oh, that I had wings like a dove!" The spirit flies and soars, though the feet stand rooted to the ground; the eye drinks in the vast sweep of view, though the vile body must rest on the pinnacle from which it surveys these terrestrial glories.

I felt that could I but gain the crest of those rocks, which have already been described as hemming in the Valley of the Fountain, I should have a magnificent view of the country around; and a fond spirit whispered to my soul, "You will tread the path which Petrarch a hundred times has trodden; you will feel the same gales fan your cheek that fanned his; you will see the same forms of cloud, the same blue sky, the same sunset, the same lines of hill and plain, the same expanses of forest and field."

I was precipitate in my attempt to mount the hill; and the effect was to produce a strange feeling of faintness. Mastering the first sensation of feebleness, I hurried on till a lonely bush near the zig-zag pathway that led upwards was reached, and there I laid my body down across the stem, to prevent my rolling down the slope into the Sorgue. Immediately I swooned away; and the first thing I recollect on reawakening was the bathing of my temples by a peasant. Some tourists below had seen me sink down, and conceived with the readiness of instinct the cause. Their handkerchiefs were dipped in the waters of the classic stream I had come to visit, and a labouring man was despatched with them to bring me When those humane ones-Madame Legros and her husband were now amongst the number-saw me rise, they beckoned from below for me to descend cautiously. But, waving my hand, I gave them to understand I should still make another attempt to reach the cliff's head. This I did by walking slowly, and halting whenever the palpitation of the heart recommenced. The messenger had left me, being disinclined to fatigue his legs by winding up the tortuous path I had to pursue.

to.

At length the summit was gained; and prodigious was the view. Looking towards Avignon, at the south-east, the sandy plain of Provence, and its Pontine Marshes, lay stretched like a map before me. There I could trace the windings of the Sorgue; and when the vision lost itself in

the distant horizon, it required little effort to imagine it merging its waters with those of the Durance, and both together rushing onward to swell the impetuous flood of the Rhone,-the symbol of the country; its fetish, if you will,-as the Nile is that of Egypt. Quick in temper, like his own river, the Provençal peasant dreads and worships it. He enumerates the stream amongst the scourges of the province

La peste, le Mistral et le Durance,

Sont les trois fléaus de Provence."

---

Strange as it may appear to our ears, throughout the population of this part of France the most heathenish superstitions prevail. In their torrent rivers they see the emblem of wrath, and personify them as a species of monster. This monster is the drac, the tarasque, a sort of dragon-tortoise, a representation of which is paraded about with great tumult and noise on certain festivals. On St. Martha's Day especially a girl leads the monster in chains to the church; and the fête is considered to have failed if a head or an arm has not been broken. In fact, it is a kind of Provençal Donnybrook. But the festival is not confined to these parts alone. The Isere, surnamed the serpent, and the drac, both threaten Grenoble :

"Le serpent et le dragon

Mettront Grenoble en savon."

Then to the right of where I stood, over beyond Carpentras, rose the lofty Mount Ventoux. As I gazed upon that pile of hill, how vividly the vigorous Petrarch-the man of action, instead of thought-was presented to my mind! When the medieval poet ascended that vast cone-like mountain, of which event he has left us so admirable a description,—his Laura had been dead some years, and the keenness of his grief had been tempered by the soothing processes of time. Her image was still bright in his memory; her spirit ever haunted him; but it was with the subdued influence that had lost the sharpness of death, and assumed the hallowing influence of a sanctifying presence. Besides, Petrarch had since mingled with his sorrows some of the pomps and vanities of life: he had been crowned Laureate at Rome; he had undertaken diplomatic missions; he had sought for peace in the whirl of worldly excitement; he was the sworn friend of Rienzi, the last of the Tribunes,-breathed his aspirations for the regeneration of Italy, and sighed over the fall of their common hopes. A new love was absorbing his soul, and demanding all its passion. As Daphne became gradually metamorphosed into a laurel, so the image of Laura in the mind of Petrarch underwent a similar transformation. She did not die out from his thoughts, but his passion for her became blended with a love for his country; and Italy and Laura became henceforth one in his fancy,—the mutual themes of his most plaintive verse. Who will decide which of the two is the more affecting,-the poet's description of his sorrows when he has lost Laura, or his lamentations over the fate of Italy? Yet, whether

he turned to Italy or to Laura, he cannot help complaining-and how pathetically he does so!-that he has pursued a shadow:

"Sento l' aura mia antica, e i dolci colli

Veggio apparir onde 'l bel lume nacque

Che tenne gli occhi miei, mentr' al ciel piacque
Bramosi e lieti; or li tien tristi e molli.

O caduche speranze, ô pensieri folli!
Vedove l' erbe, e torbide son l' acque,

E voto e freddo 'l nido in ch' ella giacque,
Nel quel io vivo, e morto giacer volli,
Sperando al fin dalle soave piante,

E da' begli occhi suoi, che 'l cor m' hann' arso,
Reposo alcun delli fatiche tante.

Ho servito a signor crudele e scarso,

Ch' arsi, quanto l' mio foco ebbi davante;

Or vo piangendo il suo cenere sparso.”

Yes, Petrarch felt and wrote in the spirit of exile. True, he returned to his country to be crowned with the highest of literary honours, and that the brows of the civilian and canonist were bound with a wreath of bayleaves. But the feuds of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines had decimated the homes of la bella Italia; there was no security for life, no freedom for thought, no peace for the mind. Ignorance, corruption, and superstition had crushed the energies as well as the liberties of the people. The Church was vilest among the vile; her priests polluted her altars, trafficked with her revenues, and fomented discord and hatred. Dante sighed when he contemplated the melancholy condition of his beloved country; when he saw that bright and beautiful land converted into a “dark Cimmerian desert," where Faction and Conspiracy alone dwelt; and bitterly he lashed the crimes and vices of her oppressors. Rienzi fought and died to give life, health, and unity to the distracted land; but Dante and Petrarch could leave nothing behind them beyond their patriotic protests, couched in sublimest verse. What would they not have given to have seen the Italy of to-day? They did look forward to it. Their prophetic vision predicted a future, in which a champion should arise to collect the severed limbs of the broken country, bind them together, and heal her bleeding wounds. Nor did they look forward in vain. In our day Garibaldi has taken the place of Rienzi; the practical policy of Cavour has achieved more than the political subtlety of Macchiavelli; and Passaglia has checked the insolent corruption of the priesthood with a boldness and force which Savonarola himself could not have rivalled. Happily the memory of their poets and historians, philosophers and men of science, of their Dantes, their Petrarchs, their Tassos and Ariostos, their Macchiavellis and Galileos, have kept alive the spark of nationality in the breast of the Italian. That spark has kindled into a flame, the brightness of which we trust may never become dimmed, or burn with less intensity than

now.

How could I fail to ponder over the dream of Petrarch, and its fulfilment, when I stood on the spot where these sorrowful visions, five hun

dred years ago, had taken possession of his soul? The evening had far advanced, and the horses had been harnessed to the carriage, and Madame and Monsieur Legros were impatiently waiting my coming, before I recovered myself sufficiently to regain the hotel. I love these reveries, these séances, not in a spiritualistic sense, with the Great Ones of the Past; and when I explained the cause or causes of my delay, and apologised for it, I, it may be easily imagined, received the ready pardon of the young bride.

The moon had just risen when we left Vaucluse; it was pouring a flood of pale primrose light over the city of Avignon as we approached its gates. The Rhone was rushing impetuously and heedlessly along, as it had done for five thousand years; the prison-palace of the Popes was throwing its shadows across the gray walls; and the lights were twinkling languidly from the windows, as we pulled up in the Place from which we had started in the morning.

Before Madame and Monsieur Legros-I'm determined, with the gallantry of an Englishman, to put the Madame before the Monsieur, in spite of the whole French Academy-were up the next morning, I was far on my way to Marseilles. We have never met since. Such is the fate of the hurried friendships we form en voyageant.

VOL. IV.

At Florence.

"You and I," I read in a letter that lies before, though it is not addressed to, me, "ought never to travel beyond the touch of modern civilisation. Give us indifferent bread, sour wine, dirty table-cloths, rank smells, ugly people, coarse manners, rough roads, damp sheets, pestilent flies, tough mutton, small basins, stinted towels, no sponge-bath, but dust, heat, and filth,—and no sunrise nor sunset, glacier-peaks, mares'-tails, cascades, nor shreckhorns can persuade us that we should not be a deal better in AR. I grow savage when I think how intensely you would enjoy this Florence, and how little, comparatively, in consequence of its attendant fatigues and lack of creature-comforts, you enjoyed Switzerland.”

Whoever the writer of this letter may happen to be, he has expressed my sentiments so accurately, that I have taken the liberty of extracting, with his permission, the above sentences. I, too, had been enjoying what Madame de Staël so well describes as "un des plus tristes plaisirs de la vie;" I had been travelling among Swiss mountains, day after day, without knowing, and, after a very short experience, without wishing to know, where at night I should lay my head. I was not alone; and my companions, having, I am sure, in their heart of hearts come to just the same conclusion as myself, were equally with myself playing the daily hypocrite in swearing that the scenery was worth crossing fifty oceans to see, and the nightly hypocrite in protesting against the slightest imputation thrown out that the beds might have been less populous, or the drops of water more plentiful. At last nature took the matter into her own hands. One, to whom readers of this Magazine are more deeply indebted than most of them think for, gave way under accumulated discomforts of bed and board. I thought I should have left him, "wearied with the march of Life," among the hills southward of Chamounix. Well, the Fates be thanked! I am writing this under his hospitable roof. He and my other companion returned home, as soon as the limited strength of an invalid would permit; and I, very sore at losing them, and very sick of mountains, echoes, and bad suppers, made straight for Florence.

Yes; straight to Florence: but from where? As it happened, from Paris. Thither, so far homewards, had I retraced my steps with my fellow-wanderers. And "straight to Florence" under such circumstances. sounds a much swifter proceeding when simply uttered than it proves to be when carried into execution. But Marseilles once fairly flung behind, consolation began, despite the fact which became evident before we were out of port, that la machine avait quelque chose; something was amiss with the engine, even of one of the boats of the Messageries Imperiales. What at first threatened to be a misfortune turned out, as far as I regarded it, a happy accident; for the Frenchman, with characteristic caution, hugged the shore the whole way. By Heaven! I could not believe by any testi