Word. It was an age advanced in science and arts, and still retaining all the picturesque character of the Middle Ages; the very soil and atmosphere were ready for the planting and growth of the romantic drama."

"The modern school of music, Janet, is like the romantic drama," I added, with a forced attempt at continuing the conversation, for I felt my sadness increasing beyond my control. “I mean the music commencing with Beethoven; not the gay, joy-loving, Athenian Mozart, but from Beethoven, the sad old giant, up to poor Schubert and Schumann and Chopin. There is a whole lifetime of woe, sometimes, in one of their shortest creations. I wonder, Janet, if the Greeks ever suffered and sorrowed as we moderns do? They seem to have been exempt from our curse; they worshipped the beautiful, and raised it to their altars, — made of it God."

"Their drama, my friend, was the voice of their ideal, not of their real life. The moderns have indeed bowed down before sorrow and pain, lifted them up to their most holy of holies, and there they will remain so long as the quick pulse of anguish throbs in man's and woman's heart. But why are you going? It is not late. Are you not well, dear?"

66

Quite well, thank you; only I wish to have a little chat with myself in my journal, while I can have the benefit of Venitia's music as an inspiring accompaniment. Good night,"

So here I came, and have been all this while striving to write myself quiet, but in vain. The inward unrest still remains. Venitia has stopped the fugue, and is now playing a passage which sounds at times like poor Florestan's delirium, that grand air in "Fidelio" which is "filled with such immeasurable grief." No, it sounds like

the short Adagio in the Beethoven Sonate, which is twin sister to the "Lauben Sonate" of the Countess Juliette (Opus 2, No. 1, E flat). De Lenz says, “It is a distant echo of this great air of 'Fidelio'; it is not the rhythm or the tonality which establishes the analogy, it is the soul of this Adagio which is identical with Florestan's aria.”

I

Yes, it is that Sonate she is playing; and, as I listen to her, my conversation with Janet comes up in my memory, like that mounting, syncopated passage of octaves which Venitia has just grasped so finely; and I think of Hamlet, and of Janet's likening him to a woman. recall his sensitive, delicate feelings, his truthfulness, honor, chivalric romance, deep love, high moral code, and noble nature, quite feminine in its elevation and tender purity. All this might well be likened, as it was by the great German poet, to a frail porcelain vase, for to put such a nature to stern uses is to shatter it.

And thus can we say of woman.

Our code is nobler, our moral nature higher than man's. In intellect he may be stronger, he is. We can freely cede him the intellect, so long as we possess the other. We show this difference thus: when a man feels he is wronged by his brother man, resentment is natural; and not only that, to right himself, even at the bitter expense of his enemy, is a duty. It is admitted by the world's practice that "society can justly be harsh upon a man for being tame under insult or injury." But a woman cannot right herself as a man does, and preserve her interior peace. No matter how just may be her cause, if she violates the high code of her nature by leaping down from her pure, still atmosphere into the hot, crowded arena, to seize on or wrest justice from the hands of her oppressors, she comes out of the fray fatally wounded. Justice

she must forego all

for her is as Prince Adeb's Imam,*. hope of it, and yield "the Imam for her own soul's sake."

Characters of delicate make and subtile stamp should not, cannot contend; they must endure with patience and courage, and look with sorrow and pity, not scorn and anger, on their oppressors. Truly unto woman were the words of Gospel law addressed: "Resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also."

Woe unto that feminine nature that is forced by necessity, as was Hamlet, to right a great wrong. Intense mental anguish must result; and even when the assistance of the Most High seems vouchsafed by the gift of courage and the mysterious power of holding the poor bewildered mind well balanced, even then she is fated, as Electra, to a solemn state, dedicate as it were to sadness. All glad, joyful feelings are hushed, and she will be as an angel who has lost its way from heaven, and its wings also, looking perpetually up, with a sigh and a longing to return.”

66

Why did I touch on this nerve, and set it to aching so fiercely? Venitia's music is ended. She and Janet have gone to their calm, quiet sleep. On the still, soft spring air comes the noisy throb of a steamer passing near the coast, sounding like the throes of some huge animal in mortal anguish. But physical pain is weak when compared with this agony of the lonely heart stung with the necessity to perform a stern duty, and filled with wild, passionate memories of a past forever gone, past which planted no seed for a future in this life! Beat, beat, beat, comes that sorrowful steam-throb on my ears, and to its melancholy sough my heart replies.

*Boker's "Prince Adeb."

a

sullenly back a dull, slow pulse. Poor heart! It sits, like Electra, mourning rebelliously over its griefs.

The steamer has passed, and I now hear the cool, passionless ripple of this tideless sea breaking on a shore strewn with mysterious fragments of a long lost past! "And the stately ships go on

To the haven under the hill;

But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

"Break, break, break

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me."

THE TITAN'S CHILDREN AND CAPRI

THE SPHINX.

HIS delicious climate of Naples is to work wonders upon me; so says Mrs. Rochester, the agreeable wife of the Minister. She paid us a visit last evening, and gave us much clever information on the character of the atmosphere, and the various winds that blow over and around this beautiful boot-like promontory of Europe. The climate, from its lively action on the skin, and the variety of impressions it makes on the body and mind, is capitally suited for alleviating the suffering arising from all sorts of melancholy, and every kind of neurotic intermittent produced by mental causes.

Naples, more than any other place in Italy, is strongly influenced by two great powers, the volcanic soil and the wind. The atmosphere is constantly filled with various gaseous emanations, sulphuric and the like, and carbonic acid is spread throughout the air.

The account Mrs. Rochester gave me of the winds of Naples interested me exceedingly. The gulf or bay is open to the west and southwest. The hills of Posilippo, extending around to Capodimonte, protect the city from the north wind, and Monte Somma is a shelter against the east; but the northeast, southeast, west, southwest,

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