because the serene temper of my brother forms a striking contrast to the arbitrary impetuosity of such talkers as our friend Tchitserchiff, and others of yonder voluble Sclavonians, he must be ill!"

"I only wish," she replied,--and methought there were tears in her eyes as she answered me," that I was likely to deceive myself!— A person really unhappy-unhappy to death,is to me a novel spectacle. I have seen people suffer from what are called sorrows of the heart,--poor flimsy sorrows, arising from the levity of some giddy woman, the capriciousness of some ungrateful prince, or the severity of some ambitious father.-But I never saw genuine sorrow till now, till this;-this is despair, this is death, this is that biting frost of the soul which withers up leaf and life together. There is no re-creating a feeling in

that broken broken heart!"—

I knew it. I began to see that it was so; to see it all the more cruelly that Danby

uttered no complaints, either of suffering or sorrow. He tried to talk like other people,he tried to smile like other people,- he even tried to eat, drink, and sleep like other people. But his food nourished him not, and his sleep afforded no refreshment:-the inward principle of life was rent in twain !—

I wish my enemy's dog no bitterer curse than to watch, day after day, the decline of a valued and beloved being, whose enfeeblement it might be fatal to notice. I saw him wasting;-I found him overcome by every trifling fatigue. Yet there was nothing to be done,nothing to be said,-nothing to be administered.—I could only trust to the influence of Time the comforter! His wound was yet green. I could still trust to time !—

It was something to have obtained such an auxiliary as the kind-hearted being who seemed to appreciate intuitively in Danby, the high qualities apparent to me through the development of years. Princess L** i was a woman

of rare qualities;-one of those who regard the mission of her sex upon earth, as one of peace and consolation; as though it were the duty of the daughters of Eve to leave no good deed undone in expiation of the fault of the common mother. Wherever a kind act was to be accomplished, an effort of charity performed, there was Nunziata!-Like Paraclete the Comforter, her task was a task of mercy; and her passage on earth might have been traced like that of the angels who wandered so familiarly there in the olden time, by the balm dropping from her wings. It is true that, like most women with German blood in their veins, her susceptibilities were morbidly excitable; and the murmur of the wind among the poplars, the shadowing of clouds before the moon, filled her with mystical apprehensions.Nature seemed to speak to Nunziata in other tones than to other mortals, or rather her ears were prone to discern hidden meanings in the ordinary tones of nature; and to all these

bewilderments of sensibility, was added the energetic demonstrativeness of an Italian nature. The fervid love of art engendered by early association with the fine creations of Italy, suggested higher imaginings than might have been expected from so fair a creature.

She was what is called grossly ignorant; that is, she had little book-learning. But she knew all that can be acquired by an intelligent spirit from the schooling of the noblest objects in nature; -mountains and lakes, a sky which indeed typifies the Heaven of mmortal souls,-an earth which could almost reconcile one to mortality;-and the chef-d'œuvres of ancient art, had looked at her with their earnest eyes, till they imparted a more intimate insight into the prodigies of inspiration.-She thought and talked, as though her mind had been schooled among the Mighty Ones who have bequeathed to Italy trophies devised only as decorations of the palaces of the great, yet constituting the

highest source of national glory; by creating within the mildewed palace and desolate monastery indications of beauty as divine as the blue skies of Naples, or the misty summits of the Apennines. For the wealth wherewith Italy hath been endowed by Raphael and Titian, Michael Angelo and Salvator Rosa, is a richer dowry than all the withered crowns of laurels, bequeathed by all the Cæsars of the Capitol !—

Such a woman was worthy to be the companion of Danby; the very scholar to sit listening at his feet, while, as with an angel's tongue, he expounded the history of the objects of her veneration; and put even Time under his feet, by calling up anew by the magic of his mild eloquence, the marvels of "the most high and palmy state of Rome;" or investing her own fair province,