a

in the ice and rend each other, since he did that day's work. It is a poor business to diminish any man's spiritual consolations, whatever they may be; but to take the Christian lamp, however faint and feeble, out of the hand of a sufferer banished from all the lights of earth, is a kind of philosophical atrocity of which surely no man ever could be guilty who was capable of any real sentiment whatever on the subject, or who considered religious speculation in any higher light than as a relish to his beer. Leopardi does not seem to have hated and scorned the Tedeschi, like the rest of his countrymen. And no doubt the Teuton (if it was a Teuton) mooned on upon his way, after he had accomplished this piece of work, with undisturbed equanimity, and would have wondered much, and observed as psychological curiosity, the bitter despair of his hapless convert. This, however, is the only distinct utterance of that grand final despair to which Leopardi gives vent. His want of hope shows itself more in the utter absence of all light, except that of his bitterly-regretted youth, upon the lovely little sketches of nature and rural life, which are all rounded with a sigh, and upon his close and acute studies of men and thought, than in any direct statement. In the East there linger still the traces of that glory by which he was once attended; but neither above him is there any sun shining, nor from the western wilderness before is there any symptom of the evening light. The light comes all from behind, and projects his shadow drearily over the unresponsive earth; and in bitterness, with a sense of wrong and injury and injustice, he recalls to himself the unrealised hopes and vain imaginations of his youth.

Giacomo Leopardi was born in Recanati, in the March of Ancona, in 1795, of a noble, well-regulated (costumata), and religious family. It was perhaps the moment when

the fortunes of Italy were at their lowest ebb, and when least of all she had any career to offer to her children. He was not false to the universal tradition of all the poets and writers of Italy, who have kept up since Dante's time an unfailing and fervent protest against the dismemberment of the patria and the presence of the stranger. But his genius was not political, nor had any such gleam of revival arisen as that which inspired and justified the fiery eloquence of the Florentine Guisti, born later, when the patience or disgust of despair had changed into the fury of hope. It would be well for those who still doubt the reality and stability of the Italian kingdom to study a little the unfailing and unanimous sentiment of all the minds that have in her bitterness and depression given utterance to Italy. Such a study might teach even the narrow spectator who still talks of Piedmont to believe that perhaps the Italians know better what they want and is good for them than he does. Leopardi was not false to this universal sentiment; but the effect of his country's downfall and bondage upon him was characteristic and individual, like that of every other great influence of his life.

The sentiment of national prostration aggravated the gloom of everything that surrounded himself. He was a soul bound hand and foot in a country bound hand and foot, the one completing the other's misery-and, naturally, the view that he took of her position agreed with the general tenor of his mind and thoughts. It was not in his way to gnash his teeth at the stranieri. What he saw and mourned, and chafed over with the bitterness of shame as well as grief, was her submission to her fate, and the supineness of the race under their yoke. At one time, indeed-but the poem bears traces of being one of his earliest he finds his country seated on the ground, with hair dishevelled and unveiled, hiding her

But it is not under this picturesque form that he generally regards the prostration of his country. For the most part he upbraids her and her people with it, with lofty indignation and shame. "Turn thee behind and look at that infinite host of immortals, and weep and disdain thyself," he says. "For once take thought of thine ancestors, and of thy children ". and then he blesses passionately the fate of Dante, who did not live to see these miseries :

Blessed art thou whom fate Gave not to live among so many harms, Who seest not thy Italy for mate Grasped in the barbarous soldier's arms. Nor how the pilgrim's frenzy and vile sale, Ravage and waste our hills and cities fair, Nor of Italian genius rare The works divine dragged over hill and vale,

Beyond the Alps to wretched slavery.

Still more bitter is the bridal song with which he hails the marriage of his sister Paolina, La sua celeste sorella, as his biographer describes her

My sister, who in grave and troublous times,

Wilt give increase to the unhappy race
Of Italy unhappy.

you

Our soul diminished? yours the blame
Of slumbrous minds, unworthy wills,
And this poor mass of flesh and nerve that
fills

The mould of native force and right?
To worthy deeds

Love is a spur to him who loves aright,
And beauty to high influence leads;
But he whose heart ne'er leaps

Within his breast, when to the combat rise

The winds, and when the angry skies
And cloud over Olympus sweeps,

And the dull roar of tempest shakes the hill;

Let him from love be banished still.
Your hearts 'gainst him whom peril
Oh brides, oh virgins, guard

moves;

His wishes and his vulgar loves
With scorn and hate reward.
If in your female race
The love of men, not babes, has place.

This will show how deep in Leopardi's heart was the sense of national downfall-a depression which reacted upon himself. While he was still very young, his wonderful classical acquirements and the beginnings of his genius had attracted so much attention, that Niebuhr, whom he met at Rome, not only declared "publicly to the world his faith in the present and future greatness of the young Recanatese," but "in the name of the dottissima Germania,” which, says Signor Ranieri, "he represented so nobly, offered to Leopardi a chair of Greek philosophy in Prussia;" a thing which, the patriotic biographer adds, “was never offered to him by l'infelicissima Italia, and would not by her have been offered in vain." But Italy, the unhappiest, had nothing to offer at that sad moment. had no public service, no honourable career to give to her children, but had to leave them to consume their hearts and waste their genius; to lose their voices in the silence, or

She

When silent, seated on the verdant sward, Gazing at the clear heavens, hearing afar The distant frog croak in the dusky fields, It was my wont to pass the lingering eve. The glow-worm wandered by the hedge, the nets *

Shrilled to the wind; the odorous alleys breathed,

And the sad cypress yonder in the woodAnd 'neath my father's roof was sound of voice

Alternate, and the servants' tranquil toil

What thoughts immense, what gentle dreams inspired,

The sight of that fair sea, and those blue hills,

Which, one day crossing, I should swift disclose,

Thus said I in my thoughts, mysterious worlds,

Mysterious gladness feigning for my life! For still my fate I knew not, unaware How many times this naked, mournful life, Glad and well pleased, for death I would have changed

Nor did my heart e'er whisper my green

That balcony below, turned to the last Rays of the day; these pictured walls; the herds

Which in my mind I see; the sun that rose O'er the Campagna, to my leisure bore Thousand delights, so long as at my side, Where'er I was, my strong delusion went. In those old balls, when shone the whitening snow,

Around those ample windows when the winds

Whistled, resounded sports and festive voice,

While still the bitter worthless mystery Of all things looked to us a mystery full Of sweetness; and the thoughtless lad

serene,

Like lover inexpert, deceived, would woo
His life, admiring the celestial grace
Of beauty only by his fancy given.

Oh hopes, oh hopes, gentle deceits and sweet,

Of my first age! I still to you return. Nor know I how, by change of time or thought

Or influence, to forget. Phantoms and dreams

Are glory and renown-a mere desire, Goodness and joy. Life has not one sole fruit,

Such is the profound unalterable melancholy which breathes out of everything Leopardi has ever written. He had lived in vain ; God had refused him health and action and happiness, and his country had no occupation for him. A foreign land might have given him employment for his genius, and for the vast stores of learning which his youth had accumulated; but Italy, dismembered and without hope, Italy infelicissima, could but let him go back to the garden at Recanati, to watch the cypress trees sway in the night-wind, and mourn to the stars from the loggia, which he had once paced in the glory of his hope. Touched by another hand than his own, the figure of the sad and sick Italian in his ancestral house, among the frescoed walls and stately gardens, with the blue Apennines at hand, and the great sea, would make just such a picture as once sentimental fancy identified with Italy. But as for the Conte Giacomo, he finds no fitness in it. "The same sound is in his ears as in these days he heard," and those sounds and sights go to his heart. They are so many witnesses and proofs to him that he

TO SILVIA.

Silvia, rememb'rest thou the hour,
When, in this life that mortals live,
Thine eyes shone with the power
Of beauty, laughing, fugitive,

Whilst thou, both glad and pensive, went
Up youth's ascent?

The quiet rooms among,
And all the encircling ways,
Echoed thy ceaseless song;

While on thy woman's work intent,
Seated, thou found'st enough content
In the vague future at thy feet.
The odorous May was sweet,
And thus were wont to pass the quiet days.
I from my studies light,

Or laboured theme on which my prime,
All that in me was best and bright,
Was spent, awoke from time to time-
For so thy voice had power to rouse-
My voice, and the swift hand that flew
The weary linen through-

And from the galleries of my father's house
Would gaze upon the heavens serene,
Orchards and every golden way;
And here the hills and there the sea was

seen

Far off. What mortal tongue can say, What thus within my heart was wrought!

What gentle thought!
What hopes, what hearts, oh Silvia mine!
How human life and fate
When such a hope remembrance wakes,
Upon us two would shine!
Something my spirit takes,
Sharp and disconsolate,

And turns me to bewail and to repine.
Oh nature, wherefore now

Renderest thou ne'er what thou
Didst promise then? and why with such
deceit

Thy children dost thou cheat?

Ére winter dried the grass,
By the close death o'erthrown,
Thou, little tender one, didst pass
And perish: nor had seen nor known
Of thy first years the early flower,
And never yet had the sweet praise
Mellowed thy heart, nor yet the power
Of black locks, and of eyes that rove
Loving-and ne'er to thee of love
Had thy companions talked on festal days.
So perished by-and-by,
Like thee, my sweetest hope-and now
Truth and ripe age have given the lie
To youth. Alas, and how-

Oh dear companion of my years,
How hast thou left me desolate?

Hope wept with many tears!
Is this that world? are these the same
Delights, loves, labours, great event,
Of which we reasoned, every name
Ere thou wert spent?
Is this of mortal folk the fate?

When first the True was known,
Thou, sad one, fell'st, and, pointing, gave
Sign where the cold death and bare grave
Clear in the distance shone.

Still more delicate in its mournful sentiment is the 'Sabato del Villaggio.' The melancholy of the moment after the feast is over, has been often enough the subject of verse; but to Leopardi the feast itself is sad. It is the eve of the holiday, the bloom of anticipation, undebased by any touch of reality, which strikes his pensive fancy. That, unconnected as it is with anything actual, is the true moment of happiness-and it is to this he turns, never without a thought that the festa of his life has been to him disappointment and bitterness, although the eve of that festival, the early moment of hope and anticipation, was so sweet. Nothing can be more sweet and perfect than the original, which, however, like almost all his poems, is in a measure very difficult to follow, and almost impossible to reproduce with any exactness -the arrangement of the rhymes being entirely without rule, and occurring just as it may happen.

THE VILLAGE SATURDAY. From the Campagna, when the sun is low, The little maiden goes,

Bearing her load of grass, her hands aglow With heaps of violet and rose,

With which, as she is wont, to deck her hair,

And her fair bosom to adorn,

To grace the feast to-morrow morn; And seated with her neighbours on the stair

Where latest falls the sun,

The old woman talks and spins and tells her tale

Of her best days before her course was run;
How for the festa, decked and fair,
She danced the evening through among

her peers,

Among the comrades of her fairer years.
The brown air darkens; the blue sky
Deepens; the shadows turn and lie
From bills and house-tops, changing round
At whitening of the recent moon;
And lo, the bell whose sound
Tells of the festa drawing nigh,
And thou wouldst say, to hear
That voice the heart takes cheer.
And in the Piazzetta in a crowd

The children shout and cry,
Making a tumult gay and loud;
And back to his poor board the labourer
goes,

Whistling, and thinking of his day's repose.
And when around all other work is done,
And all the world is still,

I hear the hammer beat, the saw's sharp
tone,
The carver* with his lamp, alone
In his closed shop withdrawn,
Intent to end his work before the dawn.

Of all the seven the happiest morn,
So full of hope and joy!

To-morrow sadness and annoy
Reclaim the hours, and to the accustomed

toil

Each in his fancy will return.
Oh joyous boy!

Thy flowery age that so doth smile,
Is like a day of gladness rife,
A clear day and serene,

That comes before the festa of thy life.
Be glad, my child, the path is fair and
green,

The season sweet to see.
No more to thee I say;
But if thy festa lingers on its way,
It will be well for thee.

These dreary philosophisings never fail to conclude the sweet and

fresh pictures which he seems to linger over with a yearning fondness in spite of himself. Let us add another snatch of verse without the sting, from which it can be separated without injuring the completeness of the picture :

THE QUIET AFTER THE STORM. The storm is past and gone;

I hear the birds make festa, and on high Upon the road the fowls with clearest tone Repeat their verse. And lo, the opening sky

Breaks to the westward o'er the mountain's head;

From the Campagna, all the shadows clear, And, glimmering in the vale, the streams appear.

Now every heart is glad; on each hand
springs

The common sound and din.
The common works begin;
The artisan looks out, and sings,

His work in hand, and by the opening high

Admires the humid sky.

Forth comes the little woman to the tide, The flowing current of new rain;

The herbalist awakes again,

From path to path beside,

His daily cry;

And lo the sun returns, and smiling glows Upon the hills and villas; terrace fair