Raphael and Titian should unite; for she has the pure beauty of a Madonna, combined with the rich full size and attraction of a Magdalen.

--

She has all the organization of an artist, too, quick perceptions, keen enjoyments, is sympathetic, and to a certain point creative; but, with all this beauty of mind and mould, there is a mysterious, veiled, inexplicable something about her, which keeps her from developing completely; she is by some enchantment locked up from herself and from others.

Venitia's life melody is not only yet unwritten, but even unprefigured; here is the fine human instrument with its rich assemblage of strings and keys; preluding chords, too, are heard full of promising beauty, but the life-theme is not hinted at. To some women this theme never comes;. the whole human existence is but a gentle soft preluding; and others even have preludes full of complicated harmonies, sounding like intricate themes, but the life pieces end as mere voluntaries, nothing more, and so it may be with our Venitia.

We are very proud of her. She gives us no cause for uneasiness or discomfort. There is none of the restlessness and caprice about her which might be pardoned in one so gifted and charming. She is pure and sparkling, too, like a first-water diamond, - yes, that is just it, — for she is almost as hard.

MIDNIGHT ON MONT CENIS.

E left Vevay last Thursday for Geneva. On board the lake steamer Rhone, we met a Milanese whose conversation amused us; she was not young, about mid-age; not at all pretty, but had an intelligent face. Some chance accident introduced us, a courtesy, I think, such as the offer of a seat or something of the like. She talked rapidly, freely, and well; described Milan, Genoa, and Turin with graphic distinctness; drew a rapid sketch of Italian literature, and touched on Italian politics with a forked tongue.

We talked of books over Heine's "Lutèce," which I was reading, and a novel of De Balzac she held in her hands. She spoke contemptuously of French authors, was well read in English literature, as cultivated Italians are apt to be,- and said she "adored the classic writers of England," as she called the poets and dramatists of the Elizabethan day. When we approached Geneva we all leaned over the guards of the boat together.

"Look!" she cried, "at the ugly place. It is a great phalanstery town; but that is the spirit of the day, — so no wonder. In the last age this community idea was dreamed of by philosophers; in this nineteenth century the people carry it into execution. The philosophers meant it for the improvement of the mind and condition

of the poor; the people of this day use it to give to themselves the luxuries of the old noblesse, the temporal sensual ones, and ragged half-price business they make of it, with their mammoth hotels and community-cafés, their woven cotton lace, and their thin coatings of silver and gold."

Her lips curled scornfully, she drew in her sharp pointed chin and threw back her head with a haughty, resentful air, as she added, in low hissing words with half-closed lips, as Italians speak when at white-heat rage,

"Ah, the influence of the South is over! No more beauty, no more poesy in life. The reign of the cold, rigid North is supreme, with its chemins de fer (railways), its fils de fer (telegraphs), and all other choses de fer" (iron things).

Then she muttered from Dante's Inferno this passage:

"Lo 'mperador del doloroso regno

Da mezzo 'l petto uscia fuor della ghiaccia."

"That Emperor who sways

The realm of sorrow, at mid breast from the ice."*

I have no doubt she felt full of gall and bitterness as she thought how prone to earth lay her beloved Italy under this detested rule of the Teuton.

Venitia, with graceful kindness said to her: "Beautiful Italy, seated in your loveliness on the earth, like poor uncrowned Constance!

'Here I in sorrow sit;

Here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it.'"

The Italian turned sharply, with tears actually glittering in her keen black eyes, and looked at the lovely girl as if she adored her. The boat touched the pier and

* Cary's Dante; Inferno, Canto XXXIV.

knocked all to bits the nice little scene, while in the hurry of landing, porters' bustle, the noise of luggage, and all the other busy attendants of going on shore, we lost sight of our chance acquaintance.

After securing the coupé in the diligence, and setting a commissionaire, or errand-porter, to work about the passports, we took a farewell look at the "phalanstery town," as our boat friend had called it. We went to the head of the city, to our favorite spot, Place St. Antoine, to give a good-by gaze to the beautiful view on which we had looked so often that it had become a possession of memory.

The Savoy Alps stretched out snowy fortifications between us and that wondrous ice-bed, above which towers the "monarch of mountains," Mont Blanc. Deut D'Oche, our old Alpine neighbor, seemed to peep familiarly over the Chablais at us, to tell us "God speed." To the northeast there was the Mole, with its solitary peak, and the Voirons, seated like matrons in the midst of their forests; while to the right, Mont Buet, with its snowy dome, and the dark rocky outworks of the Grenier, summoned us onwards.

At half-past four we returned to the hotel and dined, then went to the Diligence Bureau, received our passport, and were soon snugly packed away in the coupé. The journey from Geneva to Chambèry was the coldest part of the route. We left Geneva at six in the evening, and reached Chambèry at six the next morning, where we staid till midday. At one o'clock in the afternoon we were again on the road. The diligence was lifted upon the rails, and we flew along quite swiftly up to St. Jean, which we reached at nightfall; there we took horses again and commenced the mountain passage.

The passage of Mont Cenis is the least interesting in a picturesque sort of view of all the Alpine entrances into Italy; but it is a superb road, and is as safe and comfortable in mid-winter as an ordinary journey away from the Alps. It is considered a masterpiece of engineering, its ascent and descent are so gradual and secure. Fabbroni, the great engineer, gave seven years' study, thought, and labor, and France over a million of dollars, to accomplish it.

The first Charlemagne crossed Mont Cenis with his army, when it was a true feat to make the passage, for it had to be done on foot and in litters. The road remained impassable for diligence as late as 1800. Then came the second Charlemagne, who wished to go into Italy over mountains as high as his ambition, but he was not of the race of those

"First men who led black horses by the mane";

nor was he of this third race, of which his nephew is a type, who merits, better than his uncle, Carlyle's title "Hero of Tools," who is now driving out over these Alps,

"From the cloud of steam majestical white horses,"

He, the second Charlemagne, the great Napoleon, commanded this fine road, and a greater miracle it was then than the tunnel can be now. We talked of the history of this celebrated road, and the great change the tunnelling of the Alps shall make in a few years. The idea sounds more poetical than the journey then shall be, for the tunnel will alter materially this midnight pass which has its own peculiar charm.

The peal of a bell across the midnight air the An