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, The pleasant garden of great Italy, with its raiment of glory, as first aroused from the slumber of the night of ages at the revival of the arts, under the sceptre of the great ancestors of Nunziata. I trusted to this congeniality of spirit to create a friendship, such as that of Alfieri for Madame d'Albany. But when Nunziata sometimes bursts forth in his presence, into one of those gushes of enthusiasm with which the skies and soil of Italy appear to endow her children, as the Alpine heights generate the beauteous streams destined to convey fertility and joy to the vales below, the mind's-ear of Danby listened, but his heart stopped its ears. He, to whom the sternness of Dante, the sweetness of Petrarca, the simplicity of Boccaccio, were familiar as household words, seemed as though he did not recognize the currency of that affluence of language, an inheritance to this lovely woman from the immortal fathers of her land's language. His spirit was far away. His spirit was in the past. His spirit was in the old library at Ormington Hall, with a fair child clinging to his knees, whose mind was nourished by the pelican-like out pourings of his own. — He remembered what his daughter had been; how sweet, how duteous, how full of promise. He remembered all he had trusted she would become, Polite as all her life in courts had been, --- Yet good as she the world had never seen: contemplating, with the indulgence of high enlightenment, the weakness of human nature; yet sharing in its mercy and charity, as if undistinguished from the throng. And to turn from such contemplations to think of her as a toy of a thoughtless boy, to be loved and laid aside with fifty others when the gloss of novelty was worn away!-To have had his own devotedness, his own paternal adoration, set at nought for the caprice of a Frank Walsingham! And worse than all this, to reflect on all she might become as the companion of the frivolous women and soul-less men, his chosen associates; The thousand sacrilegious cursed hours might have in store! no won No wonder the father's cheek was so wan; der he turned so careless an ear to the exalted words or soothing whispers of the dear kind Princess!my attention more and more painfully directed to his infirmities, by whose anxious interposition, I soon began to see that his noble mind was, at times, almost overthrown. — After long reveries and solitary walks, his smile became almost ghastly, nor were his words always coherent. I trembled to perceive it! I was alone with him there, in that obscure spot of a foreign country. As if utterly to divorce himself from thoughts of home, he had chosen at Paris to send back to England his personal attendant and engage a foreign servant. Should any mischance betide him, what might not be said, what might not be surmised, at the instigation of those two hard-hearted old people, Lord Ormington and his own man, who had so little scrupled to heap suppositious crimes upon my head! From the moment this dreadful idea entered my mind, my life became a penance. — If I lost sight of Danby for an hour, I became terrified to a degree that rendered me far more infirm of judgment than himself. At times, I was almost frantic. I watched him and watched him, yet apprehended nothing so much as that he should suppose me on the watch. My eye was ever upon him, as though I anticipated hereafter the dread interrogatory that struck terror to the soul of Cain! "WHERE IS THY BROTHER!" It would not have been so, but for my shameful position in Lord Ormington's family! This also, even this last and bitter curse, was entailed upon me by the fault of my mother! CHAPTER X. Beneath a row Of lemon trees, which there did proudly grow, The light they drank from the sun's neighbouring ray, COWLEY. PERSIUS. Ir is strange enough that I should have discovered in the unusual restlessness of Lord Ormington, demonstrated in setting his house in order, and perpetually travelling from Lancashire to town and home again as a mere relief to his irritability of mind, symptoms of a final break up of his constitution; yet that it should be from directly contrary indications I inferred mischief for my brother! Danby, so active, so self-denying, so late a watcher, so early a riser, so untirable a lover of exercise, was now overcome by indolence. All he seemed to desire was to be let alone in his own room, where he pretended to occupy himself with books or writing, yet neither wrote nor read; but sat interrogating the past, interrogating the future, interrogating his own soul, as people do in that terrible consciousness of the decay of their mortal nature, when the time that is gone acquires new and terrible existence from its connection with time that is to come. An expression of the lower Irish Catholics, which I have heard used by O'Brien, of " making one's soul," (synonymous with the "faire son salut" of the French peasant,) has always struck me as more forcible than grotesque! -- 66 But even in this occupation, the spiritual desires of my brother were frustrated by the overweening influence of that one affection! Thoughts of what she was doing, what she was saying, surmises whether her infatuation were subsiding or happily permanent, overpowered his nobler aspirations and dragged him down to earth. When in society he heard an anecdote touching upon the follies or vices of the day, I have seen the colour mount into his wan cheeks, as though Walsingham were expressly designated; while trivial incidents of the most general nature, were, by the morbid feelings of the broken-hearted father, twisted into connection with Jane. One day, we had agreed to accompany the L *** is with the Mitchelstons, to visit at Lucca (which is at a two hour's distance from the Baths) the ducal gallery, then undispersed. In passing through the city, Danby had been too much indisposed for the effort; but now that he was what is called convalescent, the Prince, a kind, warmhearted old man, full of Italian enthusiasm for his country in general, and his little grand duke and little grand duchy in particular, insisted upon showing us the lions of the duodecimo capital. We were to end the day by dining at his own Palazzo; where he possessed a fine old library, containing treasures as great in their way as the virgin of the Candelabrum and three Carracci of his royal master. It was a phenomenon worthy of Italy, by the way, that little Etruscan kingdom! the coin of whose treasury consisted in Raphaels, Carraccis, Fra Bartolomeos, Guercinos, Barroccios, Domenichinos, Gherardos, and Francias, instead of the vulgar sovereigns, shillings and pence, -livres and louis d'ors, constituting the palpable effects of such banks as are above issuing I. O. U.s to the public! The wealth of our friend the Prince was almost equally characteristic; consisting nearly as much in cabinets of pietra-dura, containing missals and monkish MSS., as in olive gardens or vineyards. His fine collections would however have been better placed, both for the sake of the world and the L** i family, in the Ambrosian library at Milan, than in his obscure palace at Lucca, overlooked by all the world save a miserable professor or two, and a few fusty friars. On visiting the palace, the Prince's librarían recited a sonnet in honour of his illustrissimi English visitors, during which operation Lady Mitchelston giggled so incessantly that the dear good Princess, really believing her English friend to be suffering from an attaque de nerfs, presented her with a flacon of one of those delicious Florentine restoratives from Santa Maria di Novello, that seem a concentration of all the sweetness of Italy; — and at the close of the exhibition of a series of bibliographic pheno mena, such as old Droneby would have expired in ecstasy on beholding, (ere he was dunced by lawn sleeves,) the Prince presented to Lord Mitchelston a magnificent Loughi, the original being in his own gallery, and to my brother half a dozen curious volumes which Danby had signalized by his notice. That night, as we returned to the Baths, Danby bore better than usual with the prattle of the women of our party; and seemed struck by the effects of the mountain scenery, viewed through the deceptive medium of moonlight, which confers beauty as a veil does on a bride. He seemed even sorry when our refreshing drive was over; and on reaching home, instead of retiring to rest, sat down near the open window to look over the books, the munificent gift of our friend the Principe. I was reading the newspaper, not attending to him, satisfied that in the pages of Apollonius he would find nothing very exciting to his feelings; when chancing suddenly to look up, I found tears dropping heavily from his eyes upon the open book. A minute afterwards, he closed it and left the room; when I had the curiosity to take up the volume, and ascertain by the moistened leaf what passage had thus moved his sensibility. It was the story of RHECUS! - Do my readers happen to know it? If not, permit me to stand interpreter to that renowned poet of Rhodes, who, in the days of Ptolemy Evergetes succeeded Eratosthenes as librarian at Alexandria; — librarian, not after the fashion of my well-beloved Andrews or trusty Ebers, but like the learned Pundits at the British Museum, who cannot shake their well-powdered heads but the dust of ages flies out like pepper from a castor; and who every now and then get be-knighted for enlightening our darkness. In those passing pleasant days of the olden time, when the Earth and Sky were on a more familiar footing than at present, having a general visiting acquaintance which too frequently rendered gods and demi-gods defendants in Doctors' Commons, and induced goddesses to put on masquerading beards and become private tutors to young gentlemen, as in the case of the son and heir of the wise Ulysses, one RHÆCUS, a youth of Thessaly, by saving a fine forest-tree from the axe, to which it had been con |