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"Ungrateful country, my bones shall not rest with thee."

The acute Forsyth has drawn analogies between Shakspeare and Dante, which have the energy of Johnson without

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turgidity: Finding their native tongues without system "or limit, each formed another language within his own: a "language peculiar as their Creator's. Both have stood the "obliterating waste of ages: have seen younger styles grow “old and disappear; have survived all the short-lived fop

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peries of literature, and flourish now in unabated fashion, "inviting and resisting ten thousand imitations."

To name Dante, however, or any other human being in the same breath with Shakspeare, the super-human, is vain and irrelevant-all other writers, in whatsoever grade they may be, when compared to him, are material: he, alone, is the Immaterial. Least of all, perhaps, should Dante be named against him, for, had the Æneid not been, where had been the Inferno? Thus he himself addresses Virgil:

Thou art the guide and master of my thought:

Sole author thou, from whom the inspired strain

That crowns my name with deathless praise, I brought.*

LVII.

Then, when these hills in fires volcanic blazed:

The Apennines surrounding Florence, from their peculiar conical shapes, and from the nature of their strata, have been considered by geologists to bear incontestable marks of volcanic eruption.

LX.

How the air breathes on me:

These Stanzas were composed in the little garden oehind the Convent-church of St. Miniato, on one of those glorious spring-days which only Italy can produce, when sky, air, and earth, are one harmony; and when the feeling of existence itself is a crowning and ineffable blessing! Perhaps the famous lines in the Prometheus occurred to me, which, after the opening of the third book of Paradise Lost, is surely the most sublime apostrophe ever poured forth from Man to Nature. N díoc aîОn'p, &c.

A paraphrase is subjoined which might convey some faint idea of the original; the avnplwv yeλaona is, however, untranslatable:

Ethereal Air! and ye soft-winged Winds!

Ye Rivers, springing from fresh founts, ye Waves

That o'er interminable Ocean wreath

Your azure smiles!-all-generating Earth!

All-seeing Sun-on you-on you I call!

LXVI.

When barbaric hordes over Europe rolled :

"How rich in virtue was Italy," says Sismondi, "in the "twelfth century! when covered with republics, and when

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every city simultaneously fought for freedom! The pro

digies of this first-born of the fine arts-Florence-multi

* Quoted from Quarterly Review.

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plied in Italy: a pure taste, boldness, and grandeur struck "the eye in all the public monuments, and finally reached "even private dwellings; while the princes of France,

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Germany, and England, in building their castles, seemed "to think only of defence. About the same time, Cimabue "and Giotto revived the art of painting, Cosella music, and "Dante gave to Italy his divine poem, unequalled in sucદ ceeding generations. History was written by Villani; and "Italy, ennobled by liberty, enlightened nations till then "sunk in darkness."

LXX.

Ere called on to descend from that pure height.

Allusion to the exquisitely beautiful doctrines of Platoas developed in the Phædo. "We are sunk down from the "Stars, to dwell on earth as in a prison-house; hence, the "origin of our misery and depravity, It is only by rising "above animal passions, and from sensible objects to the "World of Intelligence, the Soul can be prepared to return "to its original habitation."

LXXVI.

Dark Vallombrosa! to thy hallowed ground:

The courteous reception accorded to strangers who visit Vallombrosa is still the same as when it drew forth the praise of Ariosto.

Vallombrosa

Così fu nominata una badià

Ricca e bella, un omen religiosa,

E cortese a chiunque vi venia.

The wildness and the beauty of the Vallombrosian scenery impress the most indifferent observer. The plain where the Abbey stands, embosomed in the Apennines, lies open to the western sun, elsewhere enclosed by a simicirque of mountains. Their acclivities, feathered mid-way with forests of fir, oak, and beech, open on glades which break their uniformity, while the grassy downs along their summits command the Arno, and its storied vale, Florence, and the Camaldoli. The sound of the wind among those grey forest trees, venerable and splintered with the storms of perhaps a thousand years, is solemn and awakening; and the waste channels of wintry torrents, clogged up with the fragments of trees, and rifted rocks hurled down from overhanging heights, add to the sublime impression.

But, to the reflective mind, the Master Poet who has stamped the place for ever in his lines-who drew from it images that will endure for ever as freshly as yesterday, although Vallombrosa itself were swallowed up and forgotten, is for ever present:

He called

His legions, Angel forms, who lay entranced

Thick as autumnal leaves that strewed the brooks

In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades,

High over-arched, imbower ;

The whole Scenery for the Masque of Comus was drawn from hence, and some of the most magnificent imagery that

fills the first and perhaps sublimer Book of Paradise Losta book which nothing but a higher Inspiration could have embodied, so utterly is its range beyond the powers of ordinary Mind. I shall be thanked for recalling one example in which it is impossible to decide which is the more sublime-the subject, or the illustrating simile:

Millions of Spirits for his fault amerced

Of Heaven, and from eternal splendours flung
For his revolt; yet faithful how they stood
Their glory withered! as when Heaven's fire
Hath scathed the forest oaks, or mountain pines,

With singed top their stately growth, though bare,

Stands on the blasted heath.

Impressive images, that are everywhere presented on the barren heights of Vallombrosa.

LXXXIX.

As, while I gazing stand, yon Mountain's form :

The pure and eloquent language of Mr. Bell in his "Observations," applies well to the plains, but how often travellers appear to forget the grander features of Italy-her Mountains! a truth, however, which all acknowledge on returning through Switzerland, when heights, there, which were before thought so imposing, sink into comparative insignificance.

And yet in the grandeur of the Italian Mountains consists their least part of superiority; it is in that last refinement

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