I made a footing in the wall It was not therefrom to escape, For I had buried one and all Who loved me in a human shape, And the whole earth would henceforth be A wider prison unto me. No child-no sire-no kin had 1, No partner in my misery : I thought of this, and I was glad, For thought of them had made me mad. But I was curious to ascend To my barr'd windows, and to bend XIII. I saw them-and they were the same, A small green isle, it seem'd no more, 3 But in it there were three tall trees, And o'er it blew the mountain breeze, The fish swam by the castle wall, And when I did descend again, The darkness of my dim abode XIV. It might be months, or years, or days, I had no hope my eyes to raise And clear them of their dreary mote; At last men caine to set me free, I ask'd not why, and reck'd not where; I learn'd to love despair. And thus when they appear'd at last, NOTES. Note 1: Page 359. In a single night. Ludovico Sforza, and others.-The same is asserted of Marie Antoinette's, the wife of Louis XVI., though not in quite so short a period. Grief is said to have the same effect: to such, and not to fear, this change in hers was to be attributed. Note 2. Page 361. From Chillon's snow-white battlement. The Château de Chillon is situated between Clarens and Villeneuve; which last is at one extremity of the Lake,of Geneva. On its left are the entrances of the Rhone, and opposite are the heights of Meillerie and the range of Alps above Bôveret and St. Gingo. Near it, on a hill behind, is a torrent; below it, washing its walls, the lake has been fathomed to the depth of 800 feet (French measure): within it are a range of dungeons, in which the early reformers, and subsequently prisoners of state, were confined. Across one of the vaults is a beam black with age, on which we were informed that the condemned were formerly executed. In the cells are seven pillars, or rather eight, one being half merged in the wall; in some of these are rings for the fetters and the fettered; in the pavement the steps of Bonnivard have left their traces he was confined here several years. It is by this castle that Rousseau has fixed the catastrophe of his Héloïse, in the rescue of one of her children by Julie from the water: the shock of which, and the illness produced by the immersion, is the cause of her death. The Château is large, and seen along the lake for a great distance. The walls are white. Note 3. Page 366. And then there was a little isle. Between the entrances of the Rhone and Villeneuve, not far from Chillon, is a very small island; the only one I could perceive, in my voyage round and over the lake, within its circumference. It contains a few trees (I think not above three), and from its singleness and diminutive size has a peculiar effect upon the view. BEPPO; A VENETIAN STORY. ROSALIND. Farewell, Monsieur Traveller: lock you, lisp, and wear strange suits; disable all the benefits of your own country; be out of love with your nativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are; or I will scarce think that you have swam in a GONDOLA. As You Like It, Act IV. Scene 1. Annotation of the Commentators. That is, been at Venice, which was much visited by the young English gentlemen of those times, and was then what Paris is now the seat of all dissoluteness.-S. A. |