CI-DEVANT! I cannot, if I would, call back again To dream Love can be what it was to me. O No, my heart can never be Again in lighted hope the same-The love that lingers there for thee Has more of ashes than of flame. Still deem not but that I am yet As much as ever all thine own; On all that heart has had to bear- Oh, Love is destiny, and mine Has long been struggled with in vain— Victim or votary, at thy shrine There I am vow'd-there must remain. My first-my last-my only love, O blame me not for that I dwell On all that I have had to prove Of Love's despair, of Hope's farewell. I think upon mine early dreains, When Youth, Hope, Joy together sprung; When Love seemed only meant to make And wake to weep o'er dreams like these! When we have but to wish, and be I deemed that Love had power to part And shed its influence o'er all. I linked it with all lovely things, I was not happy-Love forbade I need not say how, one by one, Love's flowers have dropp'd from off Love's chain; And that they cannot bloom again. I know not what the pangs may be That hearts betray'd'or slighted prove I speak but of the misery That waits on fond and mutual love. The torture of an absent hour, When doubts mock Reason's faint control: 'Tis fearful thinking of the power Another holds upon our soul! To think another has in thrall All of life's best and dearest part- To that frail bark-the human heart. To yield thus to another's reign To live but in another's breath- While these things present to me seem, Love as I may, yet I can dream Of happiness in Love no more. L. E. L. WALKS IN ROME AND ITS ENVIRONS.-NO. 111. ON returning to my apartments, I found several invitations lying on my table, in answer to the letters of introduction which I had presented in the morning. They were of all complexions and characters; but my valet de place had arranged them "according to the order of their coming," with every due attention to their bearings and precedence. * Goldoni had given Literally and prosaically true: I remember meeting amongst one of these heaps the card of a certain Conte Cavaliere (as he termed himself, anxious not to bate one jot of his stature) emblazoned all over with his arms in all their quarterings, his decorations, titles, &c. "Quot pascit servos ?" was my natural question; and I found that they amounted to two, and that his Feudi had dwindled down to about as many hundred piastres. A Cavaliere Landolina Nava, of Syracuse, went perhaps a little further, for he brought up his literary in support of his aristocratic pretensions. His genealogy, which measured several feet in length, with a variety of apocryphal-looking family-busts, were exhibited, “ more majorum," in the smoky "Atrium" of his Palazzetto, and so far his nobility was satisfied; but his antiquarian claims were of a loftier cast, and required a more extensive circulation. I have one of his "biglietti" still in my possession; it is a pleasant little epitome of all his glories. A vase of the wine "Pollio," which he is supposed to have re-discovered, is at one extremity; at the other is the plant Papyrus, the great wonder of the country, and from which he had been lately making the best cold-pressed antique paper, upon which the Prince of Bavaria " had condescended to write." Between were scattered various Torsi lately dug up in his gardens, bassi rilievi, mutilated Greek inscriptions, and, modestly in the corner, his name. This, which is the "gran moda" in all ancient towns, which of course abound with as many antiquarians as antiquities, now and then invades other classes of society. The me some prepossessions, and more curiosity, in favour of the " mezzo ceto;" and I prefer graduating from low to high in society, as well as in antiquities. I threw more than one name of high classic and feudal glory aside, which I imagined could not be approached without due preliminaries; and, resolving to begin from the beginning, took the first provocation which lay in my way, and in opposition to the smiles and counsels of my attendant, who shops of Rome are furnished, so as to meet all tastes: one may there have, a Colosseum, a St. Peter, an obelisk, a fountain, whatever ground he chooses, to inscribe his "style and quality" upon. Dowagers, for instance, may lay by their venerable honours, like a certain Contessa of C-my acquaintance, very comfortably and nobly, and moulder away on some ruin, of name, at the foot of the Capitol. We cannot make the comparison without much moral consolation, and the "Heu! nos homunculi," &c. immediately occurs to our philosophy. Poets may twine their appellations into the strings of a harp, a Priest may have a portly volume laid open like his breviary to write upon, and young Ladies may see their own blushes transferred and retained in the leaves of a perennial rose. This emblematic sort of visiting is a singularly judicious application of Bob Acres' theory of swearing, and might be adopted with advantage by whole classes of "nondescripts" at home. Then comes the genealogic race of cards, where you have a Lady, and all she has ever been, from brim to brim: this is sometimes gently hinted at with a nata (tale) particularly when the slur of a mésalliance is apprehended; at other times it is put out with all its circumstance of pride and place. The Academician is not less vain of his little history; and "Legations," through all their ranks and denominations, have each their diploma in large characters upon their card. Such a man is a Secretary to another Secretary, who writes for a Prince, which Prince is " Consigliere" to a second, and the second, whether Highness or not, not unfrequently a dependant on a third. Then come their Ex-Majesties ad infinitum," which produces courts within courts, and titles within titles, and cards upon cards, so that a plain Gentleman becomes at last so great a novelty, that more than one of their Excellencies, with the "Falconieri," think it more remarkable to live and die a simple "Don." Yet with all this, our heralds will regret to hear there are no Garter, Norroy, Ulster, or any other king of the kind, amongst them; the people were born with good notions on the subject, every one has the true instinct within him. The cards of invitation, it may well be imagined, are proportionably brilliant; each of them, like their play-bills, is a little poemetto in its way. I was seduced once to a "Giuoco di Pallone," by a vignette of the kind. Ulysses was represented in his ship, thanking the Syrens, but tied to the mast to avoid the consequences of their music. No one could mistake the allegory, and thousands flocked to enjoy "the innocent pleasure." There was little danger indeed to be encountered: the music and the Syrens were execrable, but the apologue was good, and I gave the manager as much credit for it, as for his entertainment. * Goldoni has often exclusively painted from this class. He belonged to it himself, lived in it, thought in it, and laboured for it with the true sympathy of an artist, who found himself even in details at home. The result is natural: there is a certain" sugoso," a richness and plumpness in his portraits, which are wanting altogether in those of his contemporaries and successors, and particularly in Nota, and which his adversaries have gone so far as to designate, with a sort of"civil leer," the "maniere avocatesca.' " His style, it is true, now and then smells strongly of the bar, but there is life, and reality, and nature about it. Nor is this the only principle of the peculiarity just noticed. The fact is, there is little colouring or feature elsewhere: there is no such thing in Italy as the infinite gradations in the higher and lower grades of England. The prince differs little from the bourgeois, except in his chamberlains, his footmen, bis canopy, or his palace; and there is no country in Europe, I believe, where pretension of blood, or aristocracy of manner or opinion is less known. The "privilège" of the French, and the "fashion" of the English (the greater absurdity of the two) is no where to be met with. In the divisions of the different classes, there is also, generally speaking, less of the "casti." Time and circumstance likewise have operated their changes. The Avocato of the "Inamorata" is now nearly extinct. The present generation are more worldly, and may be thought perhaps less ecclesiastical. They retain, however, more or less a tinge of the Church, a sort of lay churchmen, easily compres hensible in a government made up of such anomalies as the Romun. affected an official control over all my tastes, had no sooner done dinner, than I wrapt myself up in my ferraiuolo, and walked down the Corso, to what I inadvertently called the Casa D-. The Casa in Rome bears a very different import and consequence from what it does at Florence. Here, when it does exist, it especially implies the residence of the "Dii minores Gentium;" the Palazzo is the sanctuary of the Majores, or the Patricians. These distinctions, in modern times, have no doubt been much entrenched on-a reform attributable as much to the increasing poverty as to the philosophy of the Roman states; but in the provinces they are still legible, and etiquette of all kinds is much better preserved there than in the capital. In Rome the Novi homines have crept up into part possession of the territory of their superiors, and preferring a suite of apartments in a Palazzo to their own Casas, however comfortable, have emigrated in mass, to the dignities and proprieties to which an Englishman is accustomed; every one assumes a sort of brevet rank, some degrees above his real situation; all the orders are tête-à-tête, there is scarcely a position which has not its contrast, every thing has a solemn burletta tinge, which borders on the best caricature. The Medici get near the Sapienza, which is as far off as can be imagined from the Consolazione and the Santo Spirito. The Avocati are sometimes to be found, at least the oldest, in the gloom of the Strada Giulia, or in the legal gravity of the lanes near the Curia Innocenziana; but by far the majority of both professions prefer the neighbourhood of the Corso, and climb up, when they can, to the fourth or fifth stories of some ex-noble palace; the lower part of which is, by prescription, almost all over Italy, delivered up to the buyers and sellers without clause or compunction. The whole of the Campus Martius (the memory of which is now preserved by a single miserable alley) abounds with these magnificent residences, to be equalled only in England by such piles as Somerset House. They hang like a loose suit about their possessors, or like the skin which marks only the difference between the proportions of youth and age. The noble proprietor himself, if at all discoverable, is generally to be found in the entrails of his entresol, or in one of those lurking dens, perhaps the smallest chamber in the house, which are sometimes to be detected at the extremity of a long corridore. Generations of strangers live and die around him, whom he knows not, and to whom he is equally unknown. Every thing has the appearance of a Cenotaph; whole tracts of building have survived the memory of the families which raised them, as the hive, the bees by which it was inhabited. The "Sic vos non vobis," seems to be inscribed on every door. Enlarge this a little, and the effect becomes sublime. Modern Rome is the shell of the ancient, and we discover three or four empires, one crumbling over the other, in the ruins mouldering upon ruins with which we are encompassed. La Signora D did not come under either of the extensive denominations which I have just enumerated. She was the widow of a general, and her husband was known in Rome whilst the sword was still honoured, the armies of the Revolution feared, and the venerable axiom of her policy," Cedant arma toga," had not yet resumed its influence and importance. Her history, since his death, was short and interesting. What la Tamburini was amongst the Hellenists of Bologna, la D was, or was presumed to be, amongst the older antiquaries (for there are two schools) at Rome. Like the rest of her Ceto, she had to choose between her "Casa" near the Pantheon, or a fifth story in the Corso. I know not how the change accorded with her learned avocations, but her two daughters did not find its noise and carriages too much. In fine the die was cast, the shrine was transferred, and la D- took up her residence in the upper regions of the modern Carinæ, where she held orthodox academies, attracted lawyers and literary surgeons, and was herself the venerable oracle, to whom all "praisers of past times" recurred in their difficulties on Oscan and Cyclopic antiquity. It was natural that I should feel a little more anxiety to see this lady, than might be justified by a visit to the same class in other countries. It was now seven o'clock, and I was already in the Corso. The moon was just rising, and the mists of the Avernaria were gradually dissipating; but a warm confusing haze, half light and half darkness, yet prevailed over the greater part of the city. The caffés were all open, and crowded,-not indeed with politicians, for politics here are a dangerous luxury, and the events of the day are cautiously compressed, without note or comment, into the two or three meagre columns of the " Notizie" and "Diario," but with groups of the perfect idlers of this most indolent of all cities, who, like the night-flower, open the moment the sun is down, and are to be seen awaiting, rather than seeking or giving pleasure. The benches, which are placed outside, as in most other Italian cities, are the chief objects of their gentle ambition: a glass of "mezzo, mezzo," a "granata," an ice, inferior indeed to the unrivalled "matonelle" of Venice, their best entertainment; and the "fonzione" of the morning, the death of a Cardinal, or a new commission to a sculptor, the tender thread upon which they string their desultory conversation. The illuminated awnings, the Madonna which presides in every shop, the lustres, the little shrines at the corner of almost every street, are almost sufficient to supersede the necessity, at least in the Corso, of any other lights; and the "Reverbères" of the French, on the return of the present regime, were, “in odium auctoris," on the very point of being classed amongst the expurganda of the Sacred City. The intervention of Gonsalvi providentially interposed, and they thus escaped the sweeping corrections of the Restoration. The improvements, however, which they still require are so numerous, they might as well have been suppressed altogether; they are scattered up and down at great distances, and are supplied with a singular economy of oil and attention, rari nantes, and so dim, that we are hardly aware of their existence, till every other light is shut up. The most celebrated caffé the stranger meets in his way down the Corso, or indeed in any other part of Rome, is the Caffé Novo, a truly Roman establishment, vast, magnificent, slovenly, means disproportioned to the end, and, like the city itself, in many instances-" mucha portada a teja vana," a mighty portico, and nothing more. It occupies the lower story of the Palazzo Ruspoli, the staircase of which rivals with the Braschi in every thing but the Asiatic richness of its varied coloured marbles; the stranger enters at one side, passes through a street of anti-chambers, chambers, and cabinets, to billiard-rooms, &c. and finds himself at last in an immense hall, which may stand for a ball-room, a caffé, or a church. This hall again communicates with a garden and the street; it is the veriest thoroughfare for all but horses and carriages, and all the old and young dandyism of Rome may be seen here once at least in the four-and-twenty hours. In the summer and autumn its pleasures rage with peculiar fervour: the supreme ton is to eat without; the hall itself is a mere highway, and the sprawling figures of tarnished gold on its ceiling cannot redeem the filth and neglect below. A few artists sketching their neighbours in the alcoves, a bald head or two in the more retired corners, Maestro di lingua calculating on new pupils, or a half-pay soldier from the Army of Italy, are the most regular amongst its frequenters. The gardens are in greater favour, and are generally full; the eye pierces with pleasure through their oranges and lustres, and evening groups, and multiplies them to an extent far beyond the reality. On coming out, I met crowds of carriages at the door: the Corso generally closes with this amusement; and that noble must be poor indeed who cannot afford his three footmen and second-hand equipage, and evening pittance at the Caffé Novo. It is nobility not to descend, and the ceremony is conducted in the carriage, the doors of which are instantly assailed by a whole host of worshippers. The Guarda Nobile rivals with the newly created prelate, and the prelate with the newly arrived Russian, or any other bear or spaniel of the kind, who is vain or patient enough to submit to the observances of the place. The "high Dama" listens to their adoration with nonchalance, and complains, with dignity, of the weather. The prima sera is thus got over, and a conversazione fills up the |