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cied that he could rest, and let his life glide peacefully from him even there.

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Benvolio. I aimed so near when I supposed you loved. Romeo. A right good marksman; and she's fair I love. Benvolio.—A right fair mark, fair coz, is soonest hit. Romeo. But in that hit you miss; she'll not be hit With Cupid's arrow. Romeo and Juliet.

The Italians.

THE heart, like a flower, opens to sunshine. There is something in the smile of nature, sparkling through the blue eye of heaven, that dispels the gloom of lesser disappointments, and casts a warm and gentle glow over all our feelings and sensations. Bitter indeed must be the sufferings of him to whom the gay, unclouded clearness of a summer's day comes like a mockery

a mockery of his miséry; and lost indeed to every renovating power, must be that breast to which the harmonious creation, decked in all the charms of light and cheerfulness, can yield no pleasurable sensation, no redeeming glimpse of joy, to steal it from its depth of care-yet such things are.

But they dwelt not with Charles Melville. He was in the full enjoyment of every hope and hope perhaps is the only pleasure which mingles imagination with reality, which never cloys, however it is indulged, and which seldom fails, however it is disappointed. Mary loved him, happiness was before him, and there was scarcely a probability for fear to cling to, or a subject on which doubt could be entertained.

Charles's mind was always much affected by the scene in which he was placed, and surrounded as he now was by loveliness, he could scarcely have been unhappy. He was at Naples, in the heart of picturesque

VOL. II.

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resque beauty, decked by Nature with every thing she could bestow of rich, or grand, or sweet. Before him spread that unrivalled bay, of which all poets have sung; on one side Vesuvius, with his cloudy head aspiring towards the sky, that stretched blue and unstained to the eye, bright in purity, and lit up with sunshine; and on the other, continued in an amphitheatre circling the city, extended a range of hills, covered with verdure of a thousand shades, and going off softer and more soft, till their delicate line was scarcely visible upon the distant horizon. It was a scene formed for love, and Charles was formed to enjoy it.

There are some that throw away those bright moments of happiness, those glimpses of perfect felicity, that fortune rarely bestows, even on her greatest favourites; that come, like the garden of Irim, to the shepherds wandering in the desert, shewing one short glance of the lost Paradise, and then vanishing, to leave

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the wilderness of the world more bleak · and desolate than ever. There are some that cast from them the jewels of youth, and know not how soon time will strip their feelings of all the lustre they once possessed; but not such was Charles Melville: he revelled in the dream of pleasure now opened to him, nor clouded his sunshine with a thought of its evanescence. Nature, hope, and love, were smiling upon him, and in such circumstances it is a fool who thinks, a philosopher who enjoys.

To Charles Mary's society had now become the all in all of life; she had no reserve from him; and seeing that he was never happy but when she was with him, she accompanied him in all the parties of pleasure that was proposed, to visit the antiquities, both fabricated and otherwise, which are offered to the inspection of the traveller in every direction round the city of the syren. But nevertheless, the long rides which this obliged her to take often fatigued her much, and on many occa

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sions she would have declined accompanying the rest of the party, had she not been afraid, that by so doing, she would have detained her cousin; but at length she told him frankly her embarrassment, and extorted a promise from him, that he would never be prevented from going on any expedition by her desire of remaining at home.

Another day had scarcely passed over, when the baron de S― called to invite Charles to accompany him towards Nola, in order to visit an amphitheatre which they had not before examined, and of which he had never met with an account. Charles hesitated, and looked at Mary; but Mary playfully exacted obedience of her commands; and Charles accordingly agreed, though with some reluctance, to accept the baron's proposal, in pursuance of which they set out on horseback, and after having visited some curious remains in their way, they arrived at the amphitheatre, which Charles found well worth attention,

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