"I hardly agree with you," replied Mrs. Rochester; "or, rather, with that which your words imply. Little is done here, it is true, for those great life-works, human liberty and human progress, because the people are lying fallow. They may need a red fallow of blood yet to clear out the weeds; but I believe Italy will some time in the future revive her past; and surely, when we recall that past, we, who are only beginners, have need to be patient."

Janet looked triumphant at this earnest reply to my heresy. I shrugged my shoulders, laughed, and remained silent; while Mr. Rochester, with the pretty, attractive gallantry of a husband, came to his wife's aid.

"This little peninsula," he said, "and its surrounding shores have produced more eminent men than any other country on the face of the globe. Art and love of Nature were earliest and best developed here; and history can prove that it was the leading country in all civic and political activity in the early and middle ages of our era. Its history is the base, and gives the key-note to all æsthetical and philosophical study. It is the intellectual home of all artists, where they can best commence true study, and develop themselves most satisfactorily. Many nations have often governed the world by fraud, or force of arms; but only twice in the range of ages has the gentle rule of the Fine Arts held sway. Here in this little quarter of the globe the fair throne of Parnassus was raised; and the world shall ever remember those two epochs, the age of Pericles and the age of the Medici."

Just then some Italian gentlemen passed beneath the terrace, conversing earnestly, pouring out, like rich oil, their beautiful language.

"Listen!" said Venitia, in a low voice; "listen to the

music of this tongue. Notice its rhythm. Its very prose sounds like poesy."

This reminded me of a fine description I had heard of the Italian tongue, and I repeated it to them. "It is by turns royal as the Eridan, boiling like Vesuvius, but always harmonious as the voice of the wind in the great pines on the shores of the Chiassi."

Mr. Rochester quoted to us passages from the Greek poets, to prove to us the analogy between these two tongues in sound. The spoken Greek sounded no more satisfactory to my ears than its tantalizing hieroglyphics appear to my unlearned eyes. But I am as Uncle Miramont, in Fletcher's "Elder Brother,"

"Though I can speak no Greek, I like the sound on 't,
It goes so thundering as it conjured devils."

No signs of the word tongue are so despairingly provoking to me as Greek characters. They have a mysterious beauty too. Those eternities of o's; those X's, looking, with their tails upturned, like frolicsome dolphins in the waves of a Grecian archipelago; the prim w's, with their various accents, seeming to hold a great secret as Lara's nodding steward; busy spider e's, weaving, Arachne-like, interminable webs of mystery; incomplete A's, like Schumann's mute, questioning chords; II's, silent as the weird columns of the Serapeön; the subtle, serpent-like forms, s, 0, p, and those reflective ŋ, μ, p, with "their tenacious flukes mooring them to the shore" of some mighty thought.

I made Mr. Rochester laugh by telling him this, and his wife added,

"Yes, you are right; these word-symbols are as lovely and deceptive as those ivory gates of sleep, through

which come false dreams to mortals.' Whenever I meet with a Greek passage in my reading, it seems as if it intended to resolve itself, just for me alone, into full and perfect meaning; and the sparkling and pretty-winged accents, that hover over the hieroglyphics, wink with seductive familiarity, wooing me on, in vain; the vision passes, and it all remains as incomprehensible as the great stone sphinx which gazes out alone over the desert so silently, and looking almost scornfully too, for every passage seems to resolve itself into those ominous characters pointed at my vulgar ignorance, oi πολλοί ! ”

"But luckily a path for deliverance remains, ladies," said Mr. Rochester. 66 Being women, you are not expected to understand Greek. Remember what that great master of our strong Anglo-Saxon tongue, De Quincey, says:-'Fair reader, our sex enjoys the office and privilege of standing counsel to yours, on all questions of Greek. We are, under favor, perpetual and hereditary dragomans to you; so that if by accident you know the meaning of a Greek word, yet by courtesy to us, your counsel, learned in that matter, you will always seem not to know.'"

And thus passed away this lovely day. We returned by moonlight, and the stars and the sea-ripples shone with a golden sparkle; even the pure moon-rays, as they fell on the tideless Mediterranean, broke into a flood of gold. Part of the company walked the deck of the steamer, chatting gayly; the rest of us remained at the upper part of the boat, and fell into a sweet silence. I passed off into a reverie that was too full of fine visions to be called ordinary slumber, unless it was as Endymion's magic sleep,

"Great key

To golden palaces, strange minstrelsy,

Fountains grotesque, new trees, bespangled caves,

Echoing grottos, full of tumbling waves

And moonlight; ay, to all the mazy world
Of silvery enchantment!"

5*

NEW FRIENDS.

ENITIA is reading Pope's Homer with great interest, and her remarks afford us much amusement. She laid down the book just

now, and, walking across the terrace to the window where I am at my writing, said: "Ottilie, in the Iliad I notice, more than in anything I ever read, the great power, the irresistible influence, exercised by beauty, breeding, grace, and gentleness. Before these the haughty rage of Hector bows, and Priam's afflicted anger melts. Even Troy's matrons accept the naughty, unchaste Helen, won by her unassuming loveliness and lowly grace. Paris, so courtly, gentle, and beautiful, disarms all attacks, however well merited, and yet he shows so much dignity in his meekness as to maintain his position as a gentleman."

I had to laugh at this conclusion.

66

Why, listen," she continued earnestly, half joining in my laugh, and taking up her Homer. "You remember, in the sixth Book, the stern, stormy Hector gives the naughty 'Phrygian boy' a sound berating, which it must be admitted the lazy, but charming, young fellow had richly deserved; but how ashamed the Trojan chief and the reader feel of his violent epithets, when the graceful Paris answers: