Know that the lightning sanctifies below Whate'er it strikes ;-yon head is doubly sacred now. XLII. Italia! O Italia! thou who hast A funeral dower of present woes and past, And annals graved in characters of flame. Thy right, and awe the robbers back, who press To shed thy blood, and drink the tears of thy distress; XLIII. Then might'st thou more appal; or, less desired, Be homely and be peaceful, undeplored For thy destructive charms; then, still untired, Would not be seen the armed torrents pour'd Down the deep Alps; nor would the hostile horde Of many-nation'd spoilers from the Po Quaff blood and water; nor the stranger's sword Be thy sad weapon of defence, and so, [foe.* Victor or vanquish'd, thou the slave of friend or XLIV. Wandering in youth, I traced the path of him, t The Roman friend of Rome's least mortal mind, The friend of Tully as my bark did skim In ruin, even as he had seen the desolate sight; XLV. For time hath not rebuilt them, but uprear'd Barbaric dwellings on their shatter'd site, Which only make more mourn'd and more endear'd The few last rays of their far-scatter'd light, And the crush'd relics of their vanish'd might. The two stanzas XLII. and XLIII. are, with the excep tin of a Ene or two, a translation of the famous sonnet of Fja-Italia, Italia, O tu cui feo la sorte!' The celebrated letter of Servius Sulpicius to Cicero, on the death of his daughter, describes as it then was, and now is, a path which I often traced in Greece, both by sea and and in different journeys and voyages. On my return from Ala, as I was sailing from Egina towards Megara, I began to contemplate the prospect of the countries around me: Egina was baland, Megara before me; Piraeus on the right, Corinth on the left: all which towns, once famous and flourishing, now lie overturned and buried in their ruins. Upon this sight, I could not but think presently within myself, Alas! how do we. poor mortals fret and vex ourselves if any of our friends happen to die or be killed, whose life is yet so short, when the carcasses of so many noble cities lie here exposed before me in one view. -See Middleton's Cicero, vol ii. p. 371. Away!-there need no words, nor terms preThe paltry jargon of the marble mart, [cise, Where Pedantry gulls Folly-we have eyes : Spirits which soar from ruin :-thy decay Blood, pulse, and breast, confirm the Dar-Such as the great of yore, Canova is to-day. dan Shepherd's prize. LI. Appear'dst thou not to Paris in this guise? Or to more deeply blest Anchises? or, In all thy perfect goddess-ship, when lies Before thee thy own vanquish'd Lord of War? And gazing in thy face as toward a star, Laid on thy lap, his eyes to thee upturn, Feeding on thy sweet cheek!* while thy lips are With lava kisses melting while they burn, Shower'd on his eyelids, brow, and mouth, as from an urn! LII. Glowing, and circumfused in speechless love, That feeling to express, or to improve, Of carth recoils upon us ;-let it go ! which grow, [low. LVI. But where repose the all Etruscan threeDante, and Petrarch, and, scarce less than they, The Bard of Prose, creative spirit! he Of the Hundred Tales of love-where did they lay [clay Their bones, distinguish'd from our common In death as life? Are they resolved to dust, And have their country's marbles nought to say? Could not her quarries furnish forth one bust? Did they not to her breast their filial earth entrust? LVII. Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar, wore, Into thy statue's form, and look like gods be- His life, his fame, his grave, though rifled—not Upon a far and foreign soil had grown, LIII. thine own. LVIII. Boccaccio to his parent earth bequeath'd His dust, and lies it not her Great among, With many a sweet and solemn requiem breathed [tongue? O'er him who form'd the Tuscan's siren That music in itself, whose sounds are song, The poetry of speech? No;-even his tomb Uptorn, must bear the hyæna bigots' wrong, No more amidst the meaner dead find room, Nor claim a passing sigh, because it told for whom ! LIX. And Santa Croce wants their mighty dust; Yet for this want more noted, as of yore The Cæsar's pageant, shorn of Brutus' bust, Did but of Rome's best son remind her more: Happier Ravenna! on thy hoary shore, Fortress of falling empire! honour'd sleeps The immortal exile ;-Arqua, too, her store Of tuneful relics proudly claims and keeps, While Florence vainly begs her banish'd dead, and weeps. LX. What is her pyramid of precious stones? Torn from the womb of mountains by the Of a new world, than only thus to be Lo! where it comes like an eternity, As if to sweep down all things in its track, Charming the eye with dread,*-a_matchless cataract, LXXII. Horribly beautiful! but on the verge, Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn: LXXIII. Once more upon the woody Apennine, Sits on more shaggy summits, and where roar But I have seen the soaring Jungfrau rear And in Chimari heard the thunder-hills of fear, LXXIV. The Acroceraunian mountains of old name; All, save the lone Soracte's height display'd, Not now in snow, which asks the lyric Roman's aid LXXV. For our remembrance, and from out the plain In my repugnant youth, with pleasure to record. LXXVI. Aught that recalls the daily drug which turn'd My mind to meditate what then it learn'd, If free to choose, I cannot now restore Its health; but what it then detested, still abhor. LXXVII. Then farewell, Horace; whom I hated so, These stanzas may probably remind the reader of Ensign Northerton's remarks, D-n Homo,' &c.; but the reasons for our dislike are not exactly the same. I wish to express, that we become tired of the task before we can comprehend the beauty; that we learn by rote before we can get by heart; that the freshness is worn away, and the future pleasure and advantage deadened and destroyed, by the didactic anticipa tion, at an age when we can neither feel nor un lerstand the power of compositions which it requires an acquaintance with life, as well as Latin and Greek, to relish, or to reason upon. For the same reason, we can never be aware of the fulness of some of the finest passages of Shakspeare (To be, or not to ⚫ I saw the Cascata del Marmore of Terni twice, at different periods-once from the summit of the precipice, and again from the valley below. The lower view is far to be preferred, if the traveller has time for one only; but in any point of view, either from above or below, it is worth all the cascades and torrents of Switzerland put together: the Staubach, Reichen-be,' for instance), from the habit of having them hammered bach, Pisse Vache, fall of Arpenaz, &c. are rills in comparative appearance. Of the fall of Schaffhausen I cannot speak, not yet having seen it. Of the time, place, and qualities of this kind of iris, the reader will see a short account in a note to Manfred. The fall looks so much like the hell of waters,' that Addison thought the descent alluded to by the gulf in which Alecto plunged into the infernal regions. It is singular enough, that two of the finest cascades in Europe should be artificial-this of the Velino, and the one at Tivoli. The traveller is strongly recommended to trace the Velino, at least as high as the little lake called Pie' di Lup. The Reatine territory was the Italian Tempe (Cicer. Epist. ad Attic. xv. lib. iv.), and the ancient naturalists (Plin. Hist. Nat. lib, ii. cap. lxii.), amongst other beautiful varieties, remarked the daily rainbows of the lake Velinus. A scholar of great name has devoted a treatise to this district alone. See All. Manut. De Reatina Urbe Agroque,' ap. Sallengre, Thesaur. tom. i. p. 773. In the greater part of Switzerland, the avalanches are known by the name of lauwine. into us at eight years old, as an exercise, not of mind, but of memory: so that when we are old enough to enjoy them, the taste is gone, and the appetite palled. In some parts of the continent, young persons are taught from more COMMON authors, and do not read the best classics till their maturity. I certainly do not speak on this point frem any pique craversion towards the place of my education, I was not a slow, though an idle boy; and I believe no one could, or can be, more attached to Harrow than I have always been, and with reason: a part of the time passed there was the happiest or my lie; and my preceptor, the Rev. Dr Joseph Drury, was the best in i worthiest friend I ever possessed, whose warnings I have remembered but too well, though too late, when I have erred.and whose counsels I have but followed when I have done well or wisely. If ever this imperfect record of my feelings to wards him should reach his eyes, let it remind him of one who never thinks of him but with gratitude and veneration—of one who would more gladly boast of having been his pupil, if, by more closely following his injunctions, he could reflect any honour upon his instructor. LXXVIII. O Rome! my country! city of the soul! The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay. The Niobe of nations! there she stands, Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow, LXXX. The Goth, the Christian, Time, War, Flood, and Fire, Have dealt upon the seven-hill'd city's pride: She saw her glories star by star expire, And up the steep barbarian monarchs ride, Where the car climb'd the Capitol; far and wide [site: Temple and tower went down, nor left a Chaos of ruins! who shall trace the void, O'er the dim fragments cast a lunar light, And say, 'Here was, or is,' where all is doubly night? LXXXI. The double night of ages, and of her, Night's daughter, Ignorance, hath wrapt, and wrap All round us; we but feel our way to err: The ocean hath its chart, the stars their map, And Knowledge spreads them on her ample lap; But Rome is as the desert, where we steer Stumbling o'er recollections: now we clap Our hands, and cry Eureka!' it is clearWhen but some false mirage of ruin rises near. LXXXII. Are in her eyes less happy than the tomb? Were they but so in man's, how different were [be his doom! Alas, the lofty city! and alas, The trebly hundred triumphs!* and the day When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpass The conqueror's sword in bearing fame away! Alas for Tully's voice, and Virgil's lay, And Livy's pictured page! But these shall Her resurrection; all beside-decay. Alas, for Earth, for never shall we see That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was free! • Orosius gives 320 for the number of triumphs. He is followed by Panvinius, and Panvinius by Mr Gibbon and the modern writers. LXXXVII. And thou, dread statue! yet existent in The austerest form of naked majesty, On the 3rd of September Cromwell gained the victory of Dunbar; a year afterwards he obtained his crowning mercy of Worcester; and a few years after, on the same day, which he had ever esteemed the most fortunate for him, died. |