happy; his own words, the proclamation which resounds through the shades when Virgil returns

'Onorate l'altissimo poeta.'

The two allegorical figures were not much to my taste. It is particularly absurd to represent Poetry weeping for Dante. These weeping figures are all very well, when a tomb is erected to a person lately dead; but, when a group of sculpture is set up over a man who has been dead more than five hundred years, such lamentation is nonsensical. Who can help laughing at the thought of tears of regret shed because a man who was born in the time of our Henry the Third is not still alive? Yet I was very near shedding tears of a different kind as I looked at this magnificent monument, and thought of the sufferings of the great poet, and of his incomparable genius, and of all the pleasure which I have derived from him, and of his death in exile, and of the late justice of posterity. I believe that very few people have ever had their minds more thoroughly penetrated with the spirit of any great work than mine is with that of the Divine Comedy. His execution I take to be far beyond that of any other artist who has operated on the imagination by means of words

'O degli altri poeti onore e lume,

Vagliami il lungo studio e 'l grande amore

Che m' han fatto cercar lo tuo volume.'
"1

I was proud to think that I had a right to apostrophise him thus. I went on, and next I came to the tomb of Alfieri, set up by his mistress, the Countess of Albany. I passed forward, and in another minute my foot was on the grave of Machiavel."

"November 7.-While walking about the town, I picked up a little Mass-book, and read for the first time in my life-strange, and almost disgraceful, that it should be so--the service of the Mass from beginning to end. It seemed to me inferior to our Communion Service in one most important point. The phraseology of Christianity

"Glory and light of all the tuneful train,
May it avail me that I long with zeal

Have sought thy volume, and with love immense
Have conn'd it o'er !"

has in Latin a barbarous air, being altogether later than the age of pure Latinity. But the English language has grown up in Christian times; and the whole vocabulary of Christianity is incorporated with it. The fine passage in the Communion Service: Therefore with Angels, and Archangels, and all the company of heaven,' is English of the best and most genuine description. But the answering passage in the Mass: Laudant Angeli, adorant dominationes, tremunt potestates, cœli Cœlorumque virtutes ac beati Seraphim,' would not merely have appeared barbarous, but would have been utterly unintelligible,‚—a mere gibberish, to every one of the great masters of the Latin tongue, Plautus, Cicero, Cæsar, and Catullus. I doubt whether even Claudian would have understood it. I intend to frequent the Romish worship till I come thoroughly to understand this ceremonial."

Florence: November 4, 1838.

Dear Napier, I arrived here the day before yesterday in very good health, after a journey of three weeks from London. I find that it will be absolutely impossible for me to execute the plan of reviewing Panizzi's edition of Boiardo in time for your next Number. I have not been able to read one half of Boiardo's poem, and, in order to do what I propose, I must read Berni's rifacimento too, as well as Pulci's Morgante; and this, I fear, will be quite out of the question. The day is not long enough for what I want to do in it: and if I find this to be the case at Florence, I may be sure that at Rome I shall have still less leisure. However, it is my full intention to be in England in February, and, on the day on which I reach London, I will begin to work for you on Lord Clive.

I know little English news. I steal a quarter of an hour in the day from marbles and altar-pieces to read the Times, and the Morning Chronicle. Lord Brougham, I have a notion, will often wish that he had left Lord Durham alone. Lord Durham will be

in the House of Lords, with his pugnacious spirit, and with his high reputation among the Radicals. In oratorical abilities there is, of course, no comparison between the men; but Lord Durham has quite talents enough to expose Lord Brougham, and has quite as much acrimony and a great deal more nerve than Lord Brougham himself. I should very much like to know what the general opinion about this matter is. My own suspicion is that the Tories in the House of Lords will lose reputation, though I do not imagine that the Government will gain any. As to Brougham, he has reached that happy point at which it is equally impossible for him to gain character and lose it.

Ever, dear Napier,
Yours most truly

T. B. MACAULAY.

There was, indeed, very little reputation to be gained out of the business. No episode in our political history is more replete with warning to honest and public-spirited men, who, in seeking to serve their country, forget what is due to their own interests and their own security, than the story of Lord Durham. He accepted the Governorship of Canada during a supreme crisis in the affairs of that colony. He carried with him thither the confidence of the great body of his fellow-countrymen—a confidence which he had conciliated by his earnest and courageous demeanour in the warfare of Parliament; by the knowledge that, when he undertook his present mission, he had stipulated for the largest responsibility, and refused the smallest emolument; and, above all, by the appeal which, before leaving England, he made in the House of Lords to friends and foes alike. "I feel," he said, "that I can accomplish my task only by the cordial and energetic support, a support which I am sure I shall obtain,

of my noble friends the members of her Majesty's Cabinet; by the co-operation of the Imperial Parliament; and, permit me to say, by the generous forbearance of the noble lords opposite, to whom I have always been politically opposed." From his political opponents, in the place of generous forbearance, he met with unremitting persecution; and as for the character of the support which he obtained from those Ministers who had themselves placed him in the forefront of the battle, it is more becoming to leave it for Tory historians to recount the tale. To Lord Brougham's treatment of his former colleague justice is done in the last sentence of Macaulay's letter.. But on one point Macaulay was mistaken. Lord Durham never called his enemies to account, and still less his friends. His heart was broken, but not estranged. His tongue, which had too seldom, perhaps, refrained from speaking out what was brave and true, could keep silence when silence was demanded by the claims of past alliances and the memory of old friendships. During the remnant of his life, Lord Durham continued to support the Whig Cabinet with all the loyalty and modesty of a young Peer hopeful of an Under Secretaryship, or grateful for having been selected to second the Address. none the less had the blow gone home; and the Administration, which had so long been trembling and dying, was destined to survive by many months the most single-minded and high-natured among that company of statesmen who had wrought for our people the great deliverance of 1832.

But

"Friday, November 9.-Went to Dante's 'bel San Giovanni,' and heard Mass there. Then to another church, and heard another Mass. I begin to follow the service as well as the body of the hearers, which is not saying much. I paid a third visit to Santa Croce, and noticed in the cloister a monument to a little baby, 'Il più bel bambino che mai fosse;' not a very wise inscription for

parents to put up; but it brought tears into my eyes. I thought of the little thing who lies in the cemetery at Calcutta.1 I meditated some verses for my ballad of Romulus,2 but made only one stanza to my satisfaction. I finished Casti's Giuli Tre, and have liked it less than I expected. The humour of the work consists in endless repetition. It is a very hazardous experiment to attempt to make fun out of that which is the great cause of yawning, perpetual harping on the same topic. Sir Walter Scott was very fond of this device for exciting laughter: as witness Lady Margaret, and 'his Sacred Majesty's disjune;' Claude Halcro, and Glorious John; Sir Dugald Dalgetty, and the Marischal College of Aberdeen; the Baillie, and his father, the deacon; old Trapbois, and 'for a consideration.' It answered, perhaps, once, for ten times. that it failed."

66

Saturday, November 10, 1838.-A letter from Mr. Aubin, our Chargé d'Affaires here, to say that he has a confidential message for me, and asking when he might call. I was in bed. I sent word that I would call on him as soon as I had breakfasted. I had little doubt that the Ministers wanted my help in Parliament. I went to him, and he delivered to me two letters—one from Lord Melbourne, and the other from Rice. They press me to become Judge Advocate, and assure me that a seat in Parliament may be procured for me with little expense. Rice dwells much on the salary, which he says is 2,500l. a year. I thought it had been cut down ; but he must know. He also talks of the other advantages connected with the place. The offer did not strike me as even tempting. The money I do not want. I have little; but I have enough. The Right Honourable before my name is a bauble which it would be far, very far indeed, beneath me to care about. The power is nothing. As an independent Member of Parliament I should have infinitely greater power. Nay, as I am, I have far greater power. I can now write what I choose; and what I write may produce considerable effect on the public mind. In office I must necessarily lished as "The Prophecy of Capys."

1 A little niece, who died in 1837, three months old.

2 The poem which was pub.