AN INTERVIEW. LEASURE, that comes unlooked-for, is thrice welcome; And, if it stir the heart, if aught be That may hereafter in a thoughtful hour The sun was wheeling westward, and the cliffs With ashes, and the sides, where roughest, hung Loosely with locks of hair-I looked and saw What, seen in such an hour by Sancho Panza, An allusion to the Cascata delle Marmore, a celebrated fall of the Velino near Terni. Had given his honest countenance a breadth, dale, Squire-less. -Below and winding far away, A narrow glade unfolded, such as Spring Sent up a gale of fragrance. Through the midst, A rain-bow's splendour (somewhere in the east 1 This upper region, a country of dews and dewy lights, as described by Virgil and Pliny, and still, I believe, called La Rosa, is full of beautiful scenery. Who does not wish to follow the footsteps of Cicero there, to visit the Reatine Tempe and the Seven Waters? In rich confusion slung, before, behind, Leveret and quail and pheasant. All announced The Lady, while her courser pawed the ground, The enamelled bank, bruising nor herb nor flower, That place illumined. Ah, who should she be, Dropt from the sky amid the wild and rude, Of many an arch, o'erwrought and lavishly Perhaps the most beautiful villa of that day was the Villa Madama. It is now a ruin; but enough remains of the plan and the grotesque-work to justify Vasari's account of it. The Pastor Fido, Watched her, declining, from a silent dell, Tasso, Guarini, waved their wizard-wands, -Then, in their day, a sylvan theatre, Mossy the seats, the stage a verdurous floor, MONTORIO. ENEROUS, and ardent, and as romantic as he could be, Montorio was in his earliest youth, when, on a summerevening not many years ago, he arrived at the Baths of ***. With a heavy heart, and with many a blessing on his head, he had set out on his travels at day-break. It was his first flight from home; but he was now to enter the world; and the moon was up and in the zenith, when he alighted at the Three Moors,2 a venerable house of vast dimensions, and anciently a palace of the Albertini family, whose arms were emblazoned on the walls. Every window was full of light, and great was the stir, above and below; but his thoughts were on those he had left so lately; and retiring early to rest, and to a couch, the very first for which he if not the Aminta, used to be often represented there; and a theatre, such as is here described, was to be seen in the gardens very lately. A fashion for ever reviving in such a climate. In the year 1783 the Nina of Paesiello was performed in a small wood near Caserta. 2 I Tre Mauri. had ever exchanged his own, he was soon among them once more; undisturbed in his sleep by the music that came at intervals from a pavilion in the garden, where some of the company had assembled to dance. But, secluded as he was, he was not secure from intrusion; and Fortune resolved on that night to play a frolic in his chamber, a frolic that was to determine the colour of his life. Boccaccio himself has not recorded a wilder; nor would he, if he had known it, have left the story untold. At the first glimmering of day he awaked; and, looking round, he beheld—it could not be an illusion; yet any thing so lovely, so angelical, he had never seen before-no, not even in his dreams-a Lady still younger than himself, and in the profoundest, the sweetest slumber by his side. But, while he gazed, she was gone, and through a door that had escaped his notice. Like a Zephyr she trod the floor with her dazzling and beautiful feet, and, while he gazed, she was gone. Yet still he gazed; and, snatching up a bracelet which she had dropt in her flight, “Then she is earthly!" he cried. "But whence could she come? All innocence, all purity, she must have wandered in her sleep." When he arose, his anxious eyes sought her every where; but in vain. Many of the young and the gay were abroad, and moving as usual in the light of the morning; but, among them all, there was nothing like Her. Within or without, she was nowhere to be seen; and, at length, in his despair he resolved to address himself to his Hostess. "Who were my nearest neighbours in that turret ?" and her two "The Marchioness de ** daughters, the Ladies Clara and Violetta; the youngest beautiful as the day!" |