While they, who court the world, like Milton's cloud *
"Turn forth their silver lining" on the crowd,

This gifted Being wraps himself in night;
And, keeping all that softens, and adorns,
And gilds his social nature hid from sight,
Turns but its darkness on a world he scorns

EXTRACT IV.

Venice.

The English to be met with every where.—Alps and Threadneedle Street.The Simplon and the Stocks.-Rage for Travelling.-Blue Stockings among the Wahabees.-Parasols and Pyramids.-Mrs. Hopkins and the Wall of China

AND is there then no earthly place,

Where we can rest, in dream Elysian,
Without some curst, round English face,
Popping up near, to break the vision?
'Mid northern lakes, 'mid southern vines,
Unholy cits we're doomed to meet ;
Nor highest Alps nor Apennines

Are sacred from Threadneedle Street!

If up the Simplon's path we wind,
Fancying we leave this world behind,
Such pleasant sounds salute one's ear
As-"Baddish news from 'Change, my dear→
The Funds-(phew, curse this ugly hill)—
Are lowering fast-(what, higher still?)—
And-(zooks, we're mounting up to heaven !)-~
Will soon be down to sixty-seven."

Go where we may-rest where we will,
Eternal London haunts us still.

The trash of Almack's or Fleet Ditch-
And scarce a pin's head difference which-
Mixes, though even to Greece we run,
With every rill from Helicon !
And, if this rage for travelling lasts,
If Cockneys, of all sects and castes,
Old maidens, aldermen, and squires,
Will leave their puddings and coal fires,
To gape at things in foreign lands,
No soul among them understands;
If Blues desert their coteries,
To show off 'mong the Wahabees;
If neither sex nor age controls,
Nor fear of Mamelukes forbids
Young ladies, with pink parasols,

* "Did a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night?"

Comus.

To glide among the Pyramids *-
Why, then, farewell all hope to find
A spot that's free from London-kind!
Who knows, if to the West we roam,
But we may find some Blue "at home"
Among the Blacks of Carolina-

Or, flying to the Eastward, see
Some Mrs. Hopkins, taking tea

And toast upon the Wall of China!

EXTRACT V.

Florence.

No-'tis not the region where Love's to be found

They have bosoms that sigh, they have glances that rove, They have language a Sappho's own lip might resound,

When she warbled her best-but they've nothing like I ove

Nor is't that pure sentiment only they want,

Which Heaven for the pure and the tranquil hath made-
Calm, wedded affection, that home-rooted plant,

Which sweetens seclusion, and smiles in the shade;
That feeling, which, after long years have gone by,
Remains, like a portrait we've sat for in youth,
Where, even though the flush of the colours may fly,
The features still live, in their first smiling truth;
That union, where all that in Woman is kind,
With all that in Man most ennoblingly towers,
Grow wreathed into one-like the column, combined
Of the strength of the shaft and the capital's flowers.
Of this-bear ye witness, ye wives, everywhere,
By the Arno, the Po, by all Italy's streams-
Of this heart-wedded love, so delicious to share,
Not a husband hath even one glimpse in his dreams.

But it is not this, only;-born full of the light

Of a sun, from whose fount the luxuriant festoons
Of these beautiful valleys drink lustre so bright,

That, beside him, our suns of the north are but moons,—

We might fancy, at least, like their climate they burned;
And that Love, though unused, in this region of spring,
To be thus to a tame Household Deity turned,

Would yet be all soul, when abroad on the wing.

And there may be, there are, those explosions of heart,
Which burst, when the senses have first caught the flame;
Such fits of the blood as those climates impart,

Where Love is a sun-stroke, that maddens the frame.

*It was pink spencers, I believe, that the imagination of the French traveller conjured up.

But that Passion, which springs in the depth of the soul;
Whose beginnings are virginly pure as the source
Of some small mountain rivulet, destined to roll

As torrent, ere long, losing peace in its course—

A course, to which Modesty's struggle but lends
A more headlong descent, without chance of recall;
But which Modesty even to the last edge attends,
And, then, throws a halo of tears round its fall!

This exquisite Passion-ay, exquisite, even

Mid the ruin its madness too often hath made,
As it keeps, even then, a bright trace of the heaven,
That heaven of Virtue from which it has strayed-

This entireness of love, which can only be found,
Where Woman, like something that's holy, watched over,
And fenced, from her childhood, with purity round,
Comes, body and soul, fresh as Spring, to a lover!
Where not an eye answers, where not a hand presses,
Till spirit with spirit in sympathy move;

And the Senses, asleep in their sacred recesses,

Can only be reached through the temple of Love!-

This perfection of Passion-how can it be found,
Where the mystery nature hath hung round the tie
By which souls are together attracted and bound,
Is laid open, for ever, to heart, ear, and eye;—

Where nought of that innocent doubt can exist,

That ignorance, even than knowledge more bright,
Which circles the young, like the morn's sunny mist,
And curtains them round in their own native light-

Where Experience leaves nothing for Love to reveal,
Or for Fancy, in visions, to gleam o'er the thought;
But the truths which, alone, we would die to conceal
From the maiden's young heart, are the only ones taught.

Oh, no, 'tis not here, howsoever we're given

Whether purely to Hymen's one planet we pray,
Or adore, like Sabæans, each light of Love's heaven;
Here is not the region, to fix or to stray.

For faithless in wedlock, in gallantry gross,

Without honour to guard, or reserve to restrain, What have they, a husband can mourn as a loss? What have they, a lover can prize as a gain?

EXTRACT VI.

Rome.

Reflections on reading Du Cerceau's Account of the Conspiracy of Rienzi, in •*- The Meeting of the Conspirators on the Night of the 19th of May. Their Procession in the Morning to the Capitol.-Rienzi's Speech.

1347.

'Twas a proud moment-even to hear the words

Of Truth and Freedom 'mid these temples breathed.

And see, once more, the Forum shine with swords,

In the Republic's sacred name unsheathed—
That glimpse, that vision of a brighter day,
For his dear Rome, must to a Roman be,
Short as it was, worth ages passed away
In the dull lapse of hopeless slavery.

'Twas on a night of May, beneath that moon,
Which had, through many an age, seen Time untune
The strings of this Great Empire, till it fell
From his rude hands, a broken, silent shell—
The sound of the church clock,+ near Adrian's Tomb,
Summoned the warriors, who had risen for Rome,
To meet unarmed,—with nought to watch them there,
But God's own eye,-and pass the night in prayer.
Holy beginning of a holy cause,

When heroes, girt for Freedom's combat, pause
Before high Heaven, and, humble in their might,
Call down its blessing on that awful fight.

At dawn, in arms, went forth the patriot band;
And, as the breeze, fresh from the Tiber, fanned

Their gilded gonfalons, all eyes could see

The palm-tree there, the sword, the keys of Heaven ‡—

Types of the Justice, peace, and liberty,

That were to bless them, when their chains were riven.

On to the Capitol the pageant moved,

While many a Shade of other times, that still

Around that grave of grandeur sighing roved,

Hung o'er their footsteps up the Sacred Hill,
And heard its mournful echoes, as the last
High-minded heirs of the Republic passed.

*The "Conjuration de Nicolas Gabrini, dit de Rienzi," by the Jesuit Du Cerceau, is chiefly taken from the much more authentic work of Fortifiocca on the same subject. Rienzi was the son of a laundress.

It is not easy to discover what church is meant by Du Cerceau here:"Il fit crier dans les rues de Rome, à son de trompe, que chacum eût à se trouver, sans armes, la nuit du lendemain, dixneuvième, dans l'église du château de Saint-Ange, au son de la cloche, afin de pourvoir au Bon E'tat.'

"

"Les gentilshommes conjurés portaient devant lui trois étendarts. Nicolas Guallato, surnommé le bon diseur, portait le premier, qui était de couleur rouge, et plus grand que les autres. On y voyait des caractères d'or avec une femme assise sur deux lions, tenant d'une main le globe du monde, et de l'autre une Palme pour représenter la ville de Rome. C'était le Gonfalon de la Liberté. Le second, à fonds blanc, avec un St. Paul tenant de la droite une Epée nue, et de la gauche la couronne de Justice, était porté par Etienne Magnacuccia, notaire apostolique. Dans le troisième, St. Pierre avait en main les clefs de la Concorde et de la Paix. Tout cela insinuait le dessein de Rienzi, qui était de rétablir la liberté, la justice, et la paix."-Du Cerceau, liv. ii.

"Twas then that thou, their Tribune,* (name, which brought Dreams of lost glory to each patriot's thought,)

Didst, with a spirit Rome in vain shall seek

To call up in her sons again, thus speak :

"Romans, look round you-on this sacred place

There once stood shrines, and gods, and god-like men.
What see you now? what solitary trace

Is left of all, that made Rome's glory then?
The shrines are sunk, the Sacred Mount bereft
Even of its name—and nothing now remains
But the deep memory of that glory, left

To whet our pangs and aggravate our chains!
But shall this be?-our sun and sky the same,—
Treading the very soil our fathers trode,—
What withering curse hath fallen on soul and frame,
What visitation hath there come from God,
To blast our strength, and rot us into slaves,
Here, on our great forefathers' glorious graves?
It cannot be-rise up, ye Mighty Dead,-

If we, the living, are too weak to crush
These tyrant priests, that o'er your empire tread,
Till all but Romans at Rome's tameness blush!

"Happy, Palmyra, in thy desert domes,

Where only date-trees sigh and serpents hiss ;
And thou, whose pillars are but silent homes
For the stork's brood, superb Persepolis !
Thrice happy both, that your extinguished race
Have left no embers-no half-living trace-
No slaves, to crawl around the once proud spot,
Till past renown in present shame's forgot.
While Rome, the Queen of all, whose very wrecks,
If lone and lifeless through a desert hurled,
Would wear more true magnificence than decks
The assembled thrones of all the existing world-
Rome, Rome alone, is haunted, stained and curst,
Through every spot her princely Tiber laves,
By living human things-the deadliest, worst,
This earth engenders-tyrants and their slaves!
And we-oh shame!-we, who have pondered o'er
The patriot's lesson and the poet's lay; +
Having mounted up the streams of ancient lore,
Tracking our country's glories all the way—

Ricnzi.

The finc Canzone of Petrarch, beginning "Spirto gentil," is supposed, by Voltaire and others, to have been addressed to Rienzi; but there is much more evidence of its having been written, as Ginguené asserts, to the young Stephen Colonna, on his being created a Senator of Rome. That Petrarch, however, was filled with high and patriotic hopes by the first measures of this extraordinary man, appears from one of his letters, quoted by Du Cerceau, where he says, -"Pour tout dire, en un mot, j'atteste, non comme lecteur, mais comme témoin oculaire, qu'il nous a ramené la justice, la paix, la bonne foi, la sécurité, et tous les autres vestiges de l'âge d'or.'