sultation of some minutes, the Judges are proceed. ing to give judgment, silence having been proclaimed in the court, when Lorenzo rises and thus addresses them. "Reverend Signors. Young as I am, may I venture to speak before you? I would speak in behalf of one who has none else to help her; and I will not keep you long. Much has been said; much on the sacred nature of the obligation—and we acknowledge it in its full force. Let it be fulfilled, and to the last letter. It is what we solicit, what we require. But to whom is the bag of gold to be delivered? What says the bond? Not to one-not to two-but to the three. Let the three stand forth and claim it." From that day, (for who can doubt the issue?) none were sought, none employed, but the subtle, the eloquent Lorenzo. Wealth followed Fame; nor need I say how soon he sat at his marriagefeast, or who sat beside him. A CHARACTER. NE of two things Montrioli may have, cannot. Both he Yet on he goes, numbering as miseries, What least of all he would consent to lose, What most indeed he prides himself upon, And, for not having, most despises me. "At morn the minister exacts an hour; At noon the king. Then comes the councilboard; And then the chase, the supper. When, ah when, The leisure and the liberty I sigh for ? Not when at home; at home a miscreant-crew, That now no longer serve me, mine the service. And then that old hereditary bore, The steward, his stories longer than his rent-roll, As though I lived to write and wrote to live, He clanks his fetters to disturb my peace. Born in that middle sphere, that temperate zone, Where Knowledge lights his lamp, there most secure, And Wisdom comes, if ever, she who dwells That Seraph sitting in the heaven of heavens. These dangerous gifts placed in their idle hands, For manhood most mature or reverend age Ꮓ Know not, nor ever can, the generous pride PÆSTUM. MARCH 4, 1815. HEY stand between the mountains and the sea;1 Awful memorials, but of whom we know The seaman, passing, gazes from the deck. How many centuries did the sun go round Waiting the appointed time! All, all within 1 The temples of Pæstum are three in number; and have survived, nearly nine centuries, the total destruction of the city. Tradition is silent concerning them; but they must have existed now between two and three thousand years. Proclaims that Nature had resumed her right, But with thick ivy hung or branching fern; Their iron-brown o'erspread with brightest verdure! From my youth upward have I longed to tread This classic ground—And am I here at last? Wandering at will through the long porticoes, And catching, as through some majestic grove, Now the blue ocean, and now, chaos-like, Mountains and mountain-gulfs, and, half-way up,. Towns like the living rock from which they grew ? A cloudy region, black and desolate, Where once a slave withstood a world in arms.1 The air is sweet with violets, running wild2 Mid broken friezes and fallen capitals; Sweet as when Tully, writing down his thoughts, Ever at hand to calm his troubled soul) Of earth and air its only floor and roof, 1 Spartacus. See Plutarch in the Life of Crassus. 2 The violets of Pæstum were as proverbial as the roses. Martial mentions them with the honey of Hybla. 3 The introduction to his treatise on Glory. Cic. ad Att. xvi. 6. For an account of the loss of that treatise, see Petrarch, Epist. Rer. Senilium, xv. 1, and Bayle, Dict., in Alcyonius. How solemn is the stillness! Nothing stirs Or the green lizard rustling through the grass, In such an hour as this, the sun's broad disk Seen at his setting, and a flood of light Filling the courts of these old sanctuaries, (Gigantic shadows, broken and confused, Athwart the innumerable columns flung) In such an hour he came, who saw and told, Led by the mighty Genius of the Place.1 Walls of some capital city first appeared, Half razed, half sunk, or scattered as in scorn; -And what within them? what but in the midst These Three in more than their original grandeur, And, round about, no stone upon another? As if the spoiler had fallen back in fear, And, turning, left them to the elements. 'Tis said a stranger in the days of old (Some say a Dorian, some a Sybarite; But distant things are ever lost in clouds) 'Tis said a stranger came, and, with his plough, Traced out the site; and Posidonia rose,2 Severely great, Neptune the tutelar God; A Homer's language murmuring in her streets, And in her haven many a mast from Tyre. Then came another, an unbidden guest. He knocked and entered with a train in arms; And all was changed, her very name and language! The Tyrian merchant, shipping at his door Ivory and gold, and silk, and frankincense, 'They are said to have been discovered by accident about the middle of the last century. 2 Originally a Greek City under that name and afterwards a Rman City under the name of Pæstum. It was surprised and destroyed by the Saracens at the beginning of the tenth century. |