which made her friend so light-hearted. She wondered whether it was perfectly real, yet instantly dismissed the doubt, and reproached herself for having entertained it.

of which was produced with an effort, and a manifest disconnexion from the preceding one. The interruptions were accompanied by slight springs forward, as he fancied he heard his wife's step approaching the door; and the final words were addressed apologetically to a very stern and yellow officer who seemed to him to frown more than usual, as the sonorous bell of the clock resounded to eight fatal strokes. Edith wished he wouldn't try to talk to her till he was more at ease. She felt relieved when Amy made her appearance, looking perfectly cool and quiet, and dressed with so much simplicity as to put it out of the

room.

Several persons from the neighbourhood were assembled, but they were strangers to Edith, and she felt no interest or curiosity about them. A momentary thought did flit across her mind as she passed to a seat in a quiet corner of the room, that Amy's habitual disregard of all etiquettes but those which precisely suited herself, was a curious exemplification of her theory of getting rid of as much evil and obtaining as much pleasure as possible, and the question suggested itself, whether in all cases the pleasure was to be sought for yourself without regard to the evil to others; but she had no time to follow out the idea, for Mr. Dalton, who was making the agreeable to a hungry squire and an exhausted dowager, with a face expressive of a most unsuccessful effort to subdue impatience, carrying on a conversation in short starts, perpetually on the look-out for an interruption, came towards her, and introduced himself in a very friendly manner. He was a gentlemanlike man, about fortyfive years old, rather portly, and a little fussy, but not sufficiently so to suggest at once the idea of underbreeding. His forehead was bald and ample, and his features were well cut, so that the general contour of the face was intellectual, though perhaps the expression could scarcely be so designated. There was all the formal cordiality of an Englishman in the manner in which he shook hands with Edith, welcomed her to Beechwood, and began the business of small talk; yet he was not thoroughly pleasing, even on first acquaintance. He gave you the notion of a man who was perpetually undergoing a kind of self-drill-a very different thing from self-discipline. He seemed satisfied if only he succeeded in making himself different from what nature intended him to be, without troubling himself to examine into the character of the difference. Superficially, he was a hearty country gentleman, covered by a dubious sort of deposit, left by the course of London society, redolent rather of blacking than of polish; yet his joviality seemed a little too elaborate to be genuine, his seriousness a little too self-important to be dignified. fact, there was an uneasy consciousness about him, betokening peculiarity of temperament, or want of practice in society, and in either case occasioning a contagious awkwardness which prevented a sensitive person from feeling quite at ease in his company.

In

had kept them waiting for the sake of her toilette. She was glad when they moved into the dining-room, but she had not been seated five minutes ere she began to feel hopelessly weary of Major Fellowes's efforts to amuse her, and to watch the progress of the repast with a nervous impatience for its conclusion. In the drawing-room she withdrew from the circle, and occupied herself with a book of prints, but she caught Amy's eyes wandering towards her, and, afraid of betraying herself more than she had already done, she came desperately forward, and plunged into conversation. There is nothing like habitual intercourse with society for teaching a woman how to suppress and conceal her feelings. For the sake of those she loves, she may indeed, and does often subdue them, and avoid all indulgence of them, but it is hard for her to hide their very existence from eyes which are waiting to weep with her, if only she will let them. But where she is sure of not meeting with sympathy, and would scarcely value it if she found it— where she lives among conventionalisms, and shows, and coldnesses, the difficulty to one who feels acutely is not so much to hide the appearance of tenderness as to avoid that of hardness. Physical weakness generally saves her from the latter supposition; but if her nerves be strong and her heart sensitive, she is pretty sure to pass before the world in general as a sober pattern of chilly gentleness, who is neither to be kindled nor melted. Edith got through the evening, as the phrase is, wonderfully well. She talked, laughed, listened, played, and sang, and was universally pronounced to be as agreeable as she was beautiful. And then she went up to her bedroom, looking round her as she entered, with a kind of fear, as though the thoughts kept at bay during the day were lying there in wait, and ready to spring upon her. Let us leave her for the night, and not inquire how much she slept, nor of what aspect were her dreams.

MR. F. W. NEWMAN'S INTRODUCTORY

LECTURE.1

"You have scarcely had time yet to see anything of our beauties," observed he. " The park-I hope Mrs. Dalton-the park has some fine views. The park is small-but-didn't I hear?-it has fine views. Fine views. Did you walk to-eight o'clock !-the western side of the hill? Major Fellowes, I believe we are fast."

the enchanters by whom the weapons of the Black | Art were wielded. We were a little startled by the novelty of this view, and felt disposed to inquire for a moment whether we were not reading a fairy tale or an allegory, instead of a speech delivered at the opening of a great educational institution. But the happy delusion did not last. The manner in which our author applies the lesson, derived from this mode of contemplating the past, to our own times, is so striking that we must indulge ourselves in an extract.

"If the study of sorcery had been public and free to all, it could not much longer have seemed evil; but while it was uncertain how many possessed this wonderful science-what was their relative proficiency-and up to what limits their power extended, no man could speculate even on the probability that the bad designs of the one would be checked by the virtue or the interests of the other. Thus it was not the knowledge, and the power derived from it, at which human nature shuddered, but the appropriation or monopoly of it by a few, who constituted a secret brotherhood, perhaps in league against the rest of their species. Such precisely is the nature of the dangers to be feared," &c.

The italics are our own. This idea is very awful. It is impossible to contemplate without trembling the nearness of a danger so mysterious. A secret brotherhood in league against the rest of their species! It makes a reviewer's flesh creep to have to copy such a sentence. And a few lines lower, the prophet speaks more plainly, and gives us a straightforward warning against turning the academic clergyman into a professor of the black art." Heaven forbid that any Englishman should ever make such an attempt! We can fancy the consternation of the reverend subjects of the metamorphosis, as the prospect of their probable fate begins to open upon them. What nerves must the man require, to whose gifted eyes the terrific vision just revealed itself! We wonder whether Mr. F. Newman ever sleeps nights.

Our fears are, however, relieved by the smiling picture which our orator presently offers us of the Utopian felicity of these favoured times. Man, who began life as a monkey, seems to be fast developing into an angel. Wars and tumults have ceased, and their renewal is no longer within the limits of probability. The reign of Peace, Love, and Liberty, has actually begun upon earth. Stay-was there not a faint cry from Algeria? Has opium so effectually soothed the Chinamen into slumber, that they have no voice to protest against the conclusion? Is Caubul forgotten? Are there no stiffened corpses of slaughtered Sikhs drying in the Indian sun? Away with such unsavoury reminiscences! Mr. F. Newman is ready with his answer-somewhat allegorically shaped, as usual. "The British Association," says he, "is the great fact which typifies-(what?)-which typifies THE STATE OF THINGS." With this delicious vagueness we are quite content. It must mean something, and as we are quite unable to discover what, we gladly accept it as meaning whatever Mr. F. Newman may please.

By this time we are pretty well accustomed to the lecturer's manner of dealing with fancies as facts, and facts as fancies, and are, therefore, not quite so much astonished as we otherwise should have been at his next grand coup de théâtre. He is overtaken in a metaphor, and he makes the most of it. We give the passage entire :

"Break down the walls of exclusiveness; let the wind of heaven play through the dark chambers of pretension; pour the natural light into the desks and drawers of

official technicality; and a healthier, sweeter breath soon comes forth from professional halls, when scholastic and traditionary lore is forced to endure the gaze of strong native intelligence. ALL THIS IS NOTORIOUS."

amazed us. It is not then, as we at first held it to be, The last sentence of the quotation is the one which a somewhat clumsy complication of metaphorical which has actually happened, and which is now expressions: it is a simple description of something matter of notoriety. We are a little puzzled by the phraseology, but we endeavour to receive it with that absolute submission of the understanding which must always be the first step required of Mr. F. Newman's pupils. What a subject for a picture! Imagine the ancient walls of Cambridge levelled with the ground, and the venerable master of Trinity, fit representative of "scholastic and traditionary lore," confronting Mr. Francis Newman, the allegorical embodiment of "strong native intelligence," among the ruins! We wonder which of the two would first stare the other out of countenance. Yet, if all tales be true, Dr. Whewell has a vigorous mode of repelling intruders from the precincts of his dominions, which might lead Mr. F. Newman to think twice ere he

encounters it.

of

One word more, and we have done. Mr. F. Newman says that he dares scarcely allude to the beneficial action of increasing knowledge on religious sentiments, "lest he should offend against the proprieties of the place." The expression is singularly well chosen. There is, we hope, scarcely a place to be found in England, against the "proprieties which an exposition of the "religious sentiments which could lead to such principles as are propounded in this discourse, would not offend. And among the many causes which, under God, have conduced to this state of public opinion among us, we hold that the tone and temper fostered by the system of collegiate instruction, bequeathed to us by our fathers, and very imperfectly followed out by ourselves, stand in the foremost rank. Long may they continue as they are; the only change which we wish to see is a fuller Restoration!

the subject of the present article. His personal chaWe have no quarrel with Mr. F. Newman, beyond racter may be blameless, and his talents of a high order. But it is absolutely necessary to show, that when a man sets himself to oppose the first simple dictates of conscience and the plain law of God, no degree of amiability can render him respectable, no amount of genius can save him from being ridiculous.

A TALE OF FLORENCE:

SOME ACCOUNT OF THE YOUTHFUL LIFE OF DANTE

ALIGHIERI.

L.

"Dante was born at Florence, in the year 1265. He met in boyhood a certain Beatrice Portinari, a beautiful little girl of his own age and rank, and grew up thenceforth in partial sight of her, in some distant intercourse with her. All readers know his graceful affecting account of this."-CARLYLE, Hero Worship.

It was on one of the first days of spring, in the year 1274, that a festive meeting of friends was gathered together in the palace of Folco Portinari, one of the richest citizens of Florence, then exulting in the strength and life of her new-found liberty.

Allighiero Allighieri, with his youthful son Durante, (by consent of the world and his nursery Dante,) formed part of that joyful assembly. The site of the palace to which they hastened through the narrow, towercrowded streets, which lie unchanged between the Cathedral and the dark mass of the Palazzo Vecchio, may to this day be traced;-memory lingers on the spot. Not far from it yet stands the house which the boy left on that morning; the doorway through which he passed bears the proud inscription, at which the Florentine crowd now gazes with love and wonder, -Here was born the Divine Poet.

Florence, we have said, was then free, already worthy of the name of "the Beautiful," not unlike Athens in her earlier days. Here, however, the influence of Christianity on the mixed Teutonic and Southern elements of her population had given to the life of her citizens a more free and yet a purer develop ment. It was a place and a time worthy to elicit greatness; and like a star shining forth at some solemn conjuncture of the heavens, the great poet of the middle ages had now entered on the life over which the events of that spring day were to exercise so strange and so mighty an influence.

So greatly increased is intercourse with the Continent, that we are not without hopes that the attention of many, especially of the young, may be turned at last to the great writers of neighbouring nations, whose works they may study, not merely by the painful aid of lexicons and learned guess-work, but by the guidance of those who have been themselves brought up in the language, and are proud of the great names of Schiller, Göthe, Ariosto, or Dante. We are hopes also that in this case the little work, or rather song, of Dante's, recounting his first meeting, and all that in this world he saw of his Beatrice, of which we now propose, in our "fainting and inefficient periods," to give some short account, may not be without its fit audience.

This book, called Vita Nuova, or Youthful Life, (not New, as some have rendered it,) which has been named by Shelley the idealized history of that period and of those intervals of Dante's life which were dedicated to Love," seems to have been composed by him about 1291, when the violence of his grief for the death of his beloved was calmed into an intense and lifelong affection. An unfeeling reader might remark on the absence of any striking or romantic incident in the simple history contained in the "Vita Nuova"-a few sonnets and other lyrical poetry set in a prose narrative, relating merely to the interviews of Beatrice and the youthful Alighieri; to her early death and his overflowing sorrow, such is its simple foundation; --but to those who retain the freshness and untiring admiration of childhood, the inexpressible ardour of affection breathing through every line, now sinking in low notes to express the almost unendurable recollections of the thronging past, now rising with no uncertain hope for the future,-will raise feelings but of delight, admiration, or sympathy.

We may add, that the Italian language possesses few more beautiful prose writings than the "Vita Nuova" of Dante, which is itself one of her earliest efforts;-the language throughout displays that intenseness and purity, whether expressing the stern or the gentle, which is ever characteristic of Dante. In the story itself, the thoughts and feelings of the poet are so intimately blended with the facts which he relates, and both are told with such vividness and earnestness of feeling, that it is with difficulty they are distinguished; the ideal mingles with the real;

the fact is united to thought, and the thought is placed before us with the vividness and precision of fact. Alas! but faintly is it that we can call up to memory across the waste of years the dark high-walled palace of the Portinari, its pointed windows, each divided by a slender shaft,—the graceful cressets beside the lofty portal; far less the gay company which five hundred and fifty years ago met within the brightly painted rooms, to celebrate the first days of a forgotten springtime. But from the simple story of the great Florentine, the mind's eye may still view the earnest, speechless glance of the youthful Dante-(alter ab octavo jam te tum ceperat annus)—yet a child in nothing but years and purity of affection; the expressive eyes and movements, the graceful form, the "noble and praiseworthy demeanour," as Dante suddenly found her,--standing a little apart, as we may suppose, from her youthful companions,-of that Angiola giovanissima, Beatrice Portinari.

It is with this picture that the book opens. A belief in astrology and visions was, as every one knows, common in those ages, and Dante, after mentioning that the number nine seemed to rule his youthful life, and expressing in his strange figurative way, that “ All the colour of his after-life Would be the shadow of to-day," and influenced by this mysterious number passes over the next nine years, and relates the further progress of his love.

We have next a beautiful picture of his meeting Beatrice with two older companions: he tells the dream and vision which then peopled his solitary room, and thus his first sonnet, addressed to the famous "troubadours" of that day, and requesting an explanation of the vision, is introduced.

The events which follow each other in the course of the Life are simple and unmarked, and would hardly bear the rude process of analyzing; it is in the mind of the great poet that the storms and calms, the conflict of passion, of timidity, of grief, arise,-his spirit casts a hue of sunset glow and melancholy over the little events of daily life in Florence, and invests them with superhuman beauty and interest. We find him at one time commemorating the death of a friend of Beatrice; he sees her lying lifeless, and wept by many, and, as his wont was, offers sweets to the sweet in a few graceful lines:

Weep, lovers, weep; Love weeps:-and at the woe
Which draws his tears, oh! let not yours be dry.
He weeps that gentle ladies' grief should flow
In sorrow vain, and lamentable cry.
For cruel death, with baleful enmity,
Hath spoiled of life the loveliest, gentlest breast,
And all, save spotless fame, that cannot die,
In one fair dame hath utterly oppressed.
Mark now by Love how honoured was her rest :-
In present form I saw him where she lay

And oft towards heaven he looked in sorrowing quest,
Mourning that form whence life had passed away;
Where joyed in her bright throne that Spirit blest,
That lady once so lovely and so gay.

At another time, excess of grief when travelling at a distance from Florence called up before him Love, dressed as a pilgrim on his journey, and as he went, casting his eyes on a stream running by the road-side, such as may often be seen in Tuscany, bello, corrente, e chiarissimo. We quote the sonnet to which this vision gave rise

On toilsome journey bound as forth I rode,

With weary sameness and sad thought oppressed,