decorated belfry of Giotto. HALLAM'S LITERATURE OF Europe. The banks of the Arno must acquire tenfold additional interest to him who remembers how the greatest of all Poets once trod them with a delight which he has so gratefully recorded. I felt this sentiment profoundly, whilst repeating his lines, when first I walked among the myrtles and poplars which flourished there, as they do now; O ego quantus eram, gelidi cum stratus ad Arni JOURNAL. XIX. Forum of Florence! There is an antique character, a feudal and a venerable look about the Piazza del Gran' Duca, which, aided by its tower and statues, is imposing: we feel we are standing in the "Athens of Italy." The character of Tuscan architecture is that of simple grandeur; the great architects of the Medicean age who built, not for a race of singers, but men, threw an air of Grecian grace round the old Etruscan palaces, without depriving them of their massive proportions and heavy projecting cornices. XX. 'Tis Cosmo: Cosmo, the first who reigned in Florence, was accounted the happiest Prince of his age;-now we can only pity his domestic calamities. Cosmo's second daughter married Alphonso, Duke of Ferrara. Equally lovely as her sister, she, too, was equally unguarded, and shared the same fate of assassination, instigated by her own husband. The unfortunate mother, the Grand Duchess Eleonora, buried herself and her griefs in the gardens of Pisa, and remained there in privacy with her two sons Don Garcia and the Cardinal John de Medicis, during January, in 1562. But the Destiny hanging over the family was present also here. During a shooting expedition, one of the brothers struck down a hare; each claimed it ;—a quarrel ensued, in the heat of which, Don Garcia struck his dagger into his brother's heart. The Duchess, who almost adored the fratricide, after her first horror subsided, listened,-softened, and finally-pardoned him. Confident in her influence to excite the same sentiments in Cosmo, she confessed the whole to him in the presence of her son. Cosmo heard nothing, so frantic was his wrath-and saw nothing but the fratricide before him- "I will have no Cain in my family," he exclaimed, unsheathing his sword, and, before either could take precaution, burying it in the body of his son. The mother and son were borne together to the same tomb. A A XXII. The idol of all Nations: So much has been said of the "Statue which enchants the world," that notes would be irrelevant. In the following extract, more is said in less compass, perhaps, than in anything which I have seen on the subject: La Vénus mériterait que pour elle seule on vînt voir Florence, comme jadis on n'allait au temple de Gnide que pour y admirer la Vénus de Praxitèle. On dirait qu'elle est parmi les Vénus ce que Vénus fut parmi les Déesses. Tout ce que l'on pourrait dire sur cette incomparable statue serait insuffisant pour en donner une juste idée, et on est découragé quand on se propose d'en detailler les beautés. Plus on l'examine et plus on y reconnait le chef-d'œuvre d'art de l'ancienne Grèce, on peut bien comparer la Vénus à celle de Praxitèle, dont l'expression et la vie etaient telles qu'Ovide disait qu'elle n'etait immobile qu'à cause que la majeste divine l'exigeait.* Matthew's remark on the Venus is simple, natural, and just: "It seems rather designed as a personification of all that is "graceful and beautiful, abstracted from all human infir"mities, and elevated above all human feelings and affec"tions; for, though the form is female, the beauty is like "the beauty of the angels, who are of no sex." * Qui que tu sois, voici ton maitre : Il l'est, le fut, ou le doit être. VOLTAIRE. XXVII. The Niobe, the majesty of woe: "The Niobe," says Hazlitt, in one of his happier moments, more than any other antique head, combines truth and "beauty with deep passion. But here the passion is fixed"intense-habitual; it is not a sudden or violent gesticula“tion, but a settled mould of features; the grief it expresses "is such, as might almost turn the human countenance itself "into marble." A nobly repressed feeling, visible only in the fixed resolve of the soul and mastering of sorrow, is the true and the only proper expression in sculpture. alone seems to be admissible in its deepest pathos. XXIX. Behold light Hermes-Messenger of heaven : Grief "On voit le messager de Jupiter dans l'attitude des élancer dans les airs, appuyant légèrement le pied sur le souffle d'un Zephyr. Ses membres sont si bien proportionnés, si dégagés, et sa figure si bien en enquilibre, qu'il paraît vraiment devoir se détacher de la terre, et se dérober aux yeux du spectateur." This is gracefully expressed, but I believe that no one ever looked on this consummate piece of sculpture without wishing it were not of bronze, but marble. XXXVII. Sole mind that soared to triad Deity! In a fragment of Archytas the Pythagorean, cited by Taylor, from whose school Plato derived his philosophy, the following extraordinary passage, as it has been justly deemed, occurs: 66 "So that it is necessary to assert that there are three principles; that which is the subject of things (or matter) "that which is form-and that which is, of itself, mo«tive, and invisible in power; with respect to the last "of which, it is not only necessary that it should have a "subsistence, but that it should be something better than intel "lect. But that which is better than intellect, is evidently "the same with that which we denominate-GOD." XXXIX. Still, guide and light to us ; In the vain science of metaphysics, whose very name carries its own confutation, no single progressive step has been made during the space of three thousand years. Locke's innate ideas, Berkeley's visions, Hume's impressions, and all the wilder reveries of the German School, originate, are compounded, and modified from Plato and Aristotle alone. He who confesses a higher tradition of truth, is following in the steps of Plato; and he who adopts the course of reason and experience, will find it difficult to advance beyond Aristotle. Among our Poets, in the sublimer parts of Childe Harold, how much does its noble author owe to his Platonic remembrances! Numerous passages in Mr. Wordsworth's poetry derive a tone from the same source: his "Ode of |