Humble themselves, and kneel and supplicate
To be delivered from a dream like this!

Here Cincinnatus pass'd, his plough the while
Left in the furrow, and how many more
Whose laurels fade not, who still walk the earth,
Consuls, dictators, still in curule pomp
Sit and decide; and, as of old in Rome,

Name but their names, set every heart on fire! Here, in his bonds, he whom the phalanx saved not,*

The last on Philip's throne; and the Numidian,†
So soon to say, stript of his cumbrous robe,
Stript to the skin, and in his nakedness

Thrust under ground, "How cold this bath of yours!"

And thy proud queen, Palmyra, through the sandst
Pursued, o'ertaken on her dromedary;
Whose temples, palaces, a wondrous dream
That passes not away, for many a league
Illumine yet the desert. Some invoked
Death, and escaped; the Egyptian, when her asp
Came from his covert under the green leaf;$
And Hannibal himself; and she who said,
Taking the fatal cup between her hands,||
"Tell him I would it had come yesterday;
For then it had not been his nuptial gift."

Now all is changed; and here, as in the wild,
The day is silent, dreary as the night;
None stirring, save the herdsman and his herd,
Savage alike; or they that would explore.
Discuss and learnedly; or they that come,
(And there are many who have cross'd the earth,)
That they may give the hours to meditation,
And wander, often saying to themselves,
"This was the Roman Forum !"

IV.

A FUNERAL.

Alas, I knew her from her earliest youth,
That excellent lady. Ever would she say,
Good even, as she pass'd, and with a voice
Gentle as theirs in heaven !"-But now by fits
A dull and dismal noise assail'd the ear,
A wail, a chant, louder and louder yet;
And now a strange fantastic troop appear'd!
Thronging, they came-as from the shades below;
All of ghostly white! "O say," I cried,
"Do not the living here bury the dead?
Do spirits come and fetch them? What are these
That seem not of this world, and mock the day;
Each with a burning taper in his hand ?"-
"It is an ancient brotherhood thou seest.
Such their apparel. Through the long, long line,
Look where thou wilt, no likeness of a man;
The living mask'd, the dead alone uncover'd.
But mark"-And, lying on her funeral couch,
Like one asleep, her eyelids closed, her hands
Folded together on her modest breast,
As 'twere her nightly posture, through the crowd
She came at last-and richly, gayly clad,
As for a birth-day feast! But breathes she not?
A glow is on her cheek-and her lips move!
And now a smile is there-how heavenly sweet!
"O no!" replied the dame, wiping her tears,
But with an accent less of grief than anger,
No, she will never, never wake again!"
Death, when we meet the spectre in our walks,
As we did yesterday, and shall to-morrow,
Soon grows familiar-like most other things,
Seen, not observed; but in a foreign clime,
Changing his shape to something new and strange,
(And through the world he changes as in sport,
Affect he greatness or humility)

street

A funeral comes, and with unusual pomp."

So I withdrew a little, and stood still,

While it went by. "She died as she deserved,"
Said an abatè, gathering up his cloak,
And with a shrug retreating as the tide

Flow'd more and more." But she was beautiful!"
Replied a soldier of the pontiff's guard.
"And innocent as beautiful!" exclaim'd
A matron sitting in her stall, hung round
With garlands, holy pictures, and what not?
Her Alban grapes and Tusculan figs display'd
In rich profusion. From her heart she spoke;
And I accosted her to hear her story.
"The stab," she cried, "was given in jealousy;
But never fled a purer spirit to heaven,
As thou wilt say, or much. my mind misleads,
When thou hast seen her face. Last night at dusk
When on her way from vespers-None were near,
None save her serving boy, who knelt and wept,
But what could tears avail him, when she fell-
Last night at dusk, the clock then striking nine,
Just by the fountain-that before the church,
The church she always used, St. Isidore's-

In this, this land of shadows, where we live
More in past time than present, where the ground,
League beyond league, like one great cemetery,
Is cover'd o'er with mouldering monuments;
And, let the living wander where they will,
They cannot leave the footsteps of the dead.

Oft, where the burial rite follows so fast,
The agony, oft coming, nor from far,
Must a fond father meet his darling child,
(Him who at parting climb'd his knees and clung.)
Clay cold and wan, and to the bearers cry,
CC Stand, I conjure ye!"

Seen thus destitute, What are the greatest? They must speak beyond A thousand homilies. When Raphael went, His heavenly face the mirror of his mind, His mind a temple for all lovely things To flock to and inhabit-when he went, Wrapt in his sable cloak he wore, To sleep beneath the venerable dome,* By those attended, who in life had loved, Had worshipp'd, following in his steps to fame, ('Twas on an April day, when nature smiles,) All Rome was there. But, ere the march began, Ere to receive their charge the bearers came,

*The Fantheon.

Who had not sought him? And when all beheld
Him, where he lay, how changed from yesterday,
Him in that hour cut off, and at his head
His last great work; when, entering in, they look'd
Now on the dead, then on that master-piece,
Now on his face, lifeless and colourless,
Then on those forms divine that lived and breathed,
And would live on for ages-all were moved;
And sighs burst forth, and loudest lamentations.

V.

NATIONAL PREJUDICES.

"ANOTHER assassination! This venerable city," I exclaimed, "what is it, but as it began, a nest of robbers and murderers? We must away at sunrise, Luigi." But before sunrise I had reflected a little, and in the soberest prose. My indignation was gone; and, when Luigi undrew my curtain, crying, "Up, signor, up! The horses are at the door."—"Luigi," I replied," if thou lovest me, draw the curtain." 330

-I respect knowledge; but I do not despise ignorance. They think only as their fathers thought, worship as they worshipped. They do no more ; and, if ours had not burst their bondage, braving imprisonment and death, might not we at this very moment have been exhibiting, in our streets and our churches, the same processions, ceremonials, and mortifications?

Nor should we require from those who are in an earlier stage of society, what belongs to a later? They are only where we once were; and why hold them in derision? It is their business to cultivate the inferior arts before they think of the more refined; and in many of the last what are we as a nation, when compared to others that have passed away? Unfortunately, it is too much the practice of governments to nurse and keep alive in the governed their national prejudices. their attention from what is passing at home, and makes them better tools in the hands of ambition. Hence next-door neighbours are held up to us from our childhood as natural enemies; and we are urged on like curs to worry each other.*

It withdraws

In like manner we should learn to be just to individuals. Who can say, "In such circumstances I should have done otherwise?" Who, did he but

Laws create a habit of self-restraint, not only by the influence of fear, but by regulating in its exercise the passion of revenge. If they overawe the bad by the prospect of a punishment certain and well defined, they console the injured by the infliction of that punishment; and, as the infliction is a public act, it excites and entails no enmity. The laws are offended; and the community, for its own sake, pursues and overtakes the offender; often without the concurrence of the sufferer,

sometimes against his wishes.

Now those who were not born, like ourselves, to such advantages, we should surely rather pity than hate; and, when at length they venture to turn against

their rulers, we should lament, not wonder at their excesses; remembering that nations are naturally patient, and long-suffering, and seldom rise in rebellion till they are so degraded by a bad government as to be almost incapable of a good one. "Hate them, perhaps," you may say, "we should not; but despise them we must, enslaved, like the people of Rome, in mind as well as body; if their religion be a gross and barbarous superstition."

A dialogue, which is said to have passed many years ago at Lyons, (Mem. de Grammont, I. 3,) and which may still be heard in almost every hôtellerie at daybreak.

+ As the descendants of an illustrious people have lately done. Can it be believed there are many among us, who, from a desire to be thought superior to commonplace sentiments and vulgar feelings, affect an indifference to their cause! "If the Greeks," they say, "had the probity of other nations-but they are false to a proverb!" And is not falsehood the characteristic of slaves? Man is the creature of circumstances. Free, he has the qualities of a freeman; enslaved, those of a slave.

strange concurrences, we are led astray; with how much reluctance, how much agony, how many efforts to escape, how many self-accusations, how many sighs, how many tears-Who, did he but reflect for a moment, would have the heart to cast a stone? Fortunately, these things are known to Him, from whom no secrets are hidden; and let us rest in the assurance that his judgments are not as ours are.

VI.

THE CAMPAGNA OF ROME.

None since they went-as though it still were HAVE none appear'd as tillers of the ground,

theirs,

And they might come and claim their own again? Was the last plough a Roman's ?

From this seat, Sacred for ages, whence, as Virgil sings,

The Queen of Heaven, alighting from the sky

Look'd down and saw the armies in array,†
Let us contemplate; and, where dreams from Jove
Some inspirations may be lingering still,
Descended on the sleeper, where perhaps
Some glimmerings of the future or the past,
Await their influence; silently revolving
The changes from that hour, when he from Troy
Went up the Tiber; when refulgent shields,
No strangers to the iron hail of war,
Stream'd far and wide, and dashing oars were heard

*Candour, generosity, how rare are they in the world; and how much is to be deplored the want of them! When a minister in our parliament consents at last to a measure, which, for many reasons perhaps existing no longer, he had before refused to adopt, there should be no exultation as over the fallen, no taunt, nojeer. How often may the resistance be continued lest an enemy should triumph, and the result of conviction be received as a symptom of fear! † Æneid, xii. 131.

Among those woods where Silvia's stag was lying,
His antlers gay with flowers; among those woods
Where, by the moon, that saw and yet withdrew
not,

Two were so soon to wander and be slain,
Two lovely in their lives, nor in their death
Divided.

Then, and hence to be discern'd,

How many realms, pastoral and warlike, lay
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;t
How oft descried without thy gates, Aricia,‡
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. Everywhere
Some trace of valour or heroic virtue!
Here is the sacred field of the Horatii,
There are the Quintian meadows. Here the hill,§
How holy, where a generous people, twice,
Twice going forth, in terrible anger sate [way,
Arm'd; and, their wrongs redress'd, at once gave
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
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 d wn
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
And architectural pomp, such as none else;
And dazzling light, and darkness visible!
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,
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.

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 enthusiasm, 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 husband or a father, now in his native country. His heart 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 tongueEnglish-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.

TIS

over;

IX.

THE NUN.

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, naught through the gloom dis-
cern'd,

Naught save the crucifix, the rosary,

And the gray 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 chant Of psalms, most saint-like, most angelical, 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; 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,

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.

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, and through the woods and
glades

Scatters a marvellous splendour. On he wheels,
Blazing by fits as from excess of joy,
Each gush of light a gush of ecstasy;
Nor unaccompanied; thousands that fling
A radiance all their own, not of the day,
Thousands as bright as he, from dusk till dawn,
Soaring, descending.

In the mother's lap
Well may the child put forth his little hands,
Singing the nursery-song he learnt so soon