AUX ITALIENS.-ROBERT BULWER LYTTON.

At Paris it was, at the opera there;

And she looked like a queen in a book that night. With the wreath of pearl in her raven hair, And the brooch on her breast so bright.

Of all the operas that Verdi wrote,

The best, to my taste, is the Trovatore; And Mario can soothe, with a tenor note, The souls in purgatory.

The moon on the tower slept soft as snow;

And who was not thrilled in the strangest way, As we heard him sing, while the gas burned low, Non ti scordar di me?

The emperor there, in his box of state,

Looked grave; as if he had just then seen The red flag wave from the city gate,

Where his eagles in bronze had been.

The empress, too, had a tear in her eye:

You'd have said that her fancy had gone back again, For one moment, under the old blue sky,

To the old glad life in Spain.

Well, there in our front-row box we sat
Together, my bride betrothed and I;
My gaze was fixed on my opera hat,
And hers on the stage hard by.

And both were silent, and both were sad;-
Like a queen she leaned on her full white arm,
With that regal, indolent air she had;

So confident of her charm!

I have not a doubt she was thinking then
Of her former lord, good soul that he was,
Who died the richest and roundest of men,
The Marquis of Carabas.

I hope that, to get to the kingdom of heaven,
Through a needle's eye he had not to pass;
I wish him well for the jointure given
To my lady of Carabas.

Meanwhile, I was thinking of my first love

As I had not been thinking of aught for years,

Till over my eyes there began to move

Something that felt like tears.

I thought of the dress that she wore last time, When we stood 'neath the cypress-trees together, In that lost land, in that soft clime,

In the crimson evening weather;

Of that muslin dress (for the eve was hot);
And her warm white neck in its golden chain;
And her full soft hair, just tied in a knot,
And falling loose again;

And the jasmine flower in her fair young breast;
(Oh the faint, sweet smell of that jasmine flower!)
And the one bird singing alone in his nest;

And the one star over the tower.

I thought of our little quarrels and strife,
And the letter that brought me back my ring;
And it all seemed then, in the waste of life,
Such a very little thing!

For I thought of her grave below the hill,
Which the sentinel cypress-free stands over:
And I thought, "Were she only living still,
How I could forgive her and love her!"

And I swear, as I thought of her thus, in that hour,
And of how, after all, old things are best,
That I smelt the smell of that jasmine flower
Which she used to wear in her breast.

It smelt so faint, and it smelt so sweet,

It made me creep, and it made me cold!

Like the scent that steals from the crumbling sheet Where a mummy is half unrolled.

And I turned and looked: she was sitting there,
In a dim box over the stage; and drest

In that muslin dress, with that full soft hair,
And that jasmine in her breast!

I was here, and she was there;

And the glittering horse-shoe curved between :From my bride betrothed, with her raven hair And her sumptuous scornful mien,

To my early love with her eyes downcast,
And over her primrose face the shade,
(In short, from the future back to the past,)
There was but a step to be made.

-

To my early love from my future bride

One moment I looked. Then I stole to the door,
I traversed the passage; and down at her side
I was sitting, a moment more.

My thinking of her, or the music's strain,

Or something which never will be exprest, Had brought her back from the grave again, With the jasmine in her breast.

She is not dead, and she is not wed!

But she loves me now, and she loved me then; And the very first word that her sweet lips said, My heart grew youthful again.

The marchioness there, of Carabas,

She is wealthy, and young, and handsome still; And but for her . . . . well, we'll let that pass; She may marry whomever she will.

But I will marry my own first love,

With her primrose face, for old things are best;
And the flower in her bosom, I prize it above
The brooch in my lady's breast.

The world is filled with folly and sin,

And love must cling where it can, I say:

For beauty is easy enough to win;

But one isn't loved every day.

And I think, in the lives of most women and men,

There's a moment when all would go smooth and even,

If only the dead could find out when

To come back and be forgiven.

But oh the smell of that jasmine flower!
And oh that music! and oh the way

That voice rang out from the donjon tower,
Non ti scordar di me,

Non ti scordar di me!

SLY THOUGHTS.-COVENTRY PATMORE.

"I saw him kiss your cheek!"—

""Tis true."

"O modesty!"-" "Twas strictly kept: He thought me asleep; at least, I knew

He thought I thought he thought I slept."

THE STRUGGLE ON THE PASS.

A deadly feud existed, almost from time immemorial, between the families of Macpherson of Bendearg, and Grant of Cairn, and was handed down unimpaired even to the close of the last century. In earlier times the warlike chiefs of these names found frequent opportunities of testifying their mutual animosity; and few inheritors of the fatal quarrel left the world without having moistened it with the blood of some of their hereditary enemies.

But, in our own day, the progress of civilization, which had reached even these wild countries, the heart of the North Highlands, although it could not extinguish entirely the transmitted spirit of revenge, at least kept it within safe bounds; and the feud of Macpherson and Grant threatened, in the course of another generation, to die entirely away, or, at least, to exist only in some vexatious lawsuit, fostered by the petty jealousies of two men of hostile tempers and contiguous property.

It was not, however, without some ebullitions of ancient fierceness, that the flame, which had burned for so many centuries, seemed about to expire. Once, at a meeting of the country gentlemen, on a question of privilege arising, Bendearg took occasion to throw out some taunts, aimed at his hereditary foe, which the fiery Grant immediately received as the signal of defiance, and a challenge was the consequence.

The sheriff of the county, however, having got intimation of the affair, put both parties under arrest; till at length, by the persuasions of their friends-not friends by blood—and the representations of the magistrate, they shook hands, and each pledged his honor to forget-at least never again to remember in speech or action—the ancient feud of his family.

This occurrence, at the time, was the object of much interest in the country-side in that it seemed to give the lie to the prophecies, of which every Highland family has an ample stock in its traditionary chronicles, and which expressly predicted that the enmity of Cairn and Bendearg should not be quenched but in blood; and on this seemingly cross-grained circumstance, some of the young men, who

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had begun already to be tainted with the heresies of the Lowlands, were seen to shake their heads, as they reflected on the tales and the faith of their ancestors; but the grayheaded seers shook theirs still more wisely, and answered with the motto of a noble house,-"I bide my time."

There is a narrow pass between the mountains, in the neighborhood of Bendearg, well known to the traveler who ventures into these wilds in quest of the savage sublimities of nature. At a little distance it has the appearance of an immense artificial bridge thrown over a tremendous chasm, but, on nearer approach, is seen to be a wall of nature's own masonry, formed of vast and rugged bodies of solid rock, piled on each other as if in the giant sport of the architect. Its sides are in some places covered with trees of a considerable size; and the passenger, who has a head steady enough to look down the precipice, may see the eyries of birds of prey beneath his feet.

The path across is so narrow, that it cannot admit of two persons passing alongside; and, indeed, none but natives, accustomed to the scene from infancy, would attempt the dangerous route at all, though it saves a circuit of three miles. Yet it sometimes happens that two travelers meet in the middle, owing to the curve formed by the pass preventing a view across from either side; and when this is the case, one is obliged to lie down, while the other crawls over his body.

One day, shortly after the incident we have mentioned, a Highlander was walking fearlessly along the pass, sometimes bending over to watch the flight of the wild birds that built below, and sometimes detaching a fragment from the top to see it dashed against the uneven sides, and bounding from rock to rock, its rebound echoing the while like a human voice and dying in faint and hollow murmurs at the bottom.

When he had gained the highest part of the arch, he observed another coming leisurely up on the opposite side, and, being himself of the patrician order, called out to him to halt and lie down; the person, however, disregarded the command, and the Highlanders met face to face on the summit. They were Cairn and Bendearg! the two hereditary