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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
Once more upon the mountains high
The quiet of a loving eye.

XIII.

I saw them-and they were the same,
* They were not changed like me in frame;
saw their thousand years of snow
On high-their wide long lake below,
And the blue Rhone in fullest flow:
I heard the torrents leap and gush
O'er chanell'd rock and broken bush;
I saw the white-wall'd distant town,
And whiter sails go skimming down;
And then there was a little isle,"
Which in my very face did smile,
The only one in view;

A small green isle, it seem'd no more,
Scarce broader than my dungeon floor,

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But in it there were three tall trees,

And o'er it blew the mountain breeze,
And by it there were waters flowing,
And on it there were young flowers growing,
Of gentle breath and hue.

The fish swam by the castle wall,
And they seem'd joyous each and all :
The eagle rode the rising blast,
Methought he never flew so fast,
As then to me he seem'd to fly,
And then new tears came in my eye,
And I felt troubled-and would fain
⚫ I had not left my recent chain;

And when I did descend again,

The darkness of my dim abode
Fell on me as a heavy load;
It was as is a new-dug grave,
Closing o'er one we sought to save;
And yet my glance, too much opprest,
Had almost need of such a rest.

XIV.

It might be months, or years, or days,
I kept no count-I took no note,

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;
It was at length the same to me,
Fetter'd or fetterless to be-

I learn'd to love despair.

And thus when they appear'd at last,
And all my bonds aside were cast,
These heavy walls to me had grown
A hermitage-and all my own!
And half I felt as they were come
To tear me from a second home:
With spiders I had friendship made,
And watch'd them in their sullen trade,
Had seen the mice by moonlight play,
And why should I feel less than they?
We were all inmates of one place,
And I, the monarch of each race,
Had power to kill—yet, strange to tell!
In quiet we had learn'd to dwell:
My very chains and I grew friends,
So much a long communion tends
To make us what we are :-even I
Regain'd my freedom with a sigh

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.

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