then it is because the subject of their song was inferior..... For Torquato it is otherwise. Then he strings himself up to realize how she would inspire him could he but reach her presence. In the wild scene he brings before us, he seems to have made his way in the still morning into her bower; he sees her afar off, and appeals to her. It is many months that the thought of her has kept his eyelids from closing; he calls to her to come and gaze on his sufferings. Then he seems to recall that it were not well to speak too loud, he might frighten her away; besides, others may not know that foot of man has penetrated here. Yet he would whisper how entirely his heart was hers-he would wait for her till she could steal out to him-till night-fall, a day, a year, an age, if only she would come at last. Hush! what was that? is she coming? His heart beats, his whole frame trembles at the thought; a glowing heat surrounds him -again it is cold as ice. There is a step upon the secret stairs. It is not Leonora ; an officious lacquey enters the sanctuary which contains his idol. What has he done to merit the privilege? Why cannot the inappreciative idiot lend his livery to her true slave? Now he is in there within her presence, he sees her heavenly form, her sweet voice floats round him, she asks services of him which he renders, and knows not what he does; he passes out without comment. But Leonora comes not..... She comes not, but he will not complain of her; she may not come. Pride has no part in her, but pride surrounds her; a gilded chain holds her away from him, its links none the less fast for being gilded.

The Tenth Veglia seems in the opening to be addressed to the calumniator who betrayed him. Panting for freedom, he asks why he poisons his life with the air of a prison; better to have pierced his heart with a dagger-that would have been but an assassination; this exceeds any barbarity for which language has found a name.

He vows that whatever rights friendship has, and this man by feigning won his friendship, yet it is not among its rights to demand a confession of love. No, Divina donna,' he exclaims, my lips never profaned thy name by breathing it to him. In that he calumniated me, yet was his charge that I had dared to love thee, the truth.' Again departing from the strict order of his words, now that he has called her up, he apostrophizes her again, and calls on her to let him but see her; he will not utter a word, not disturb her with too anxious a gaze, not suffer one throb of his heart to reach her; he will die at her feet content if she but see him expiate his fault. Will she reckon it a fault-a fault in him? in Tasso! Surely she is coming, the more restless throbbings of his heart are a presage of her nearness.... He imagines he has seen her, pale and sad, as though a sorrow one with his, tortured her heart too. Addressing her as alto oggetto dell' immenso amor mio, he bids her not despair, their fate must change, and how could it be severer than now? 'Her cheeks are pale; her hair floats untended; her lips are tightly pressed; her eyes-' but here he stops to exclaim, and what eyes they are!' Now I understand what I am causing her to suffer; to-morrow she shall have rest, for the cause of her anguish shall be no more upon this earth.

In the Eleventh Veglia he continues under the delusion that he has really seen Leonora. He congratulates himself on knowing that he is not indifferent to her.... 'Now, I desire nothing more. Now I can bear to be at a distance from her walls. For wherever I am, I shall still live my true life within those walls, triumphing in my recollection of her. She will let fall words of compassion and sympathy; (Dirà essa; Torquato misero!) and perhaps while I am losing myself in my love for her, she will be responding with equal affection. Take heart, love can overcome great obstacles. Who knows what lucky chances the future has in store for us?' Then he wakes again from the bright hallucination. 'Fool that I am! whither do I let my imagination carry me?... Never may I speak to her.... No shred of hope is left to Torquato!'

In the Twelfth Veglia the sense of the wrong done him by the false friend once more overtakes him; he inveighs in the most violent outpouring to which he has yet had recourse, against the perfidy of courtier friends. ... 'Suspect in friend every traitor, and in the end you will find your judgment has not been often wrong....I hear the voice of the pale hypocrite whispering in the ears of my prince; ... I see how his words excite his fury, .... and I am lost. Come, satellites of iniquity, come and arrest me. I put forth no strength of mine against ye, for all my strength concentrated on loving the object of all my thoughts.'

In the Thirteenth, a new fancy strikes him. He thinks Leonora has come to visit him in his cell. A sound vibrates on his ear, . . . it must be the door opening to admit her; what shall he say to her when she stands before him there, in questa camera? Say to her! he will fall at her feet and die. What more would there be to live for? Yet first he will thank her. How often he has implored this favour of

Heaven!' he will say. Divina donna! hast thou indeed taken compassion on thy faithful adorer? Who told thee of my love?

'Who told her? Is not my love, by my words, my sighs, my silence, impressed on the very air? The air, so long the sensitive witness of my sensations, my vows, my lamentations; and the air circulating hence has penetrated into the elevation of her bower, and announced my condition to her. Another moment, and she will stand beside me whispering, "Peace, be still!" No, she comes not! The bolt is inexorable. Who prevented her entrance? Who drove her from me?'

As if exhausted with the excitement of this scene, he sinks down; and in the Fourteenth Veglia exclaims, "The end is come! Throw my mortal spoil where you will. No! bury it in the royal chapel. She is pious, and from her elevated tribune, whence without being seen she sees all, she will see the place where they have laid me.

HERE LIES TASSO.

Tell the sculptor to cut the letters deep and high, that they may meet her gaze from her high place, and say to her, 'Knowest thou who lies here in sadness?... Nay, recall not his verses, recall his love, his only love, of thee, which bore him to the tomb; and if pity inspire thee with any prayer for peace, stop! What peace for him, for whom there was no peace in life?... Yet yes, peace, if impetrated by thee.'

The Fifteenth Veglia opens with an address to one who keeps watch over him; he sees that he understands him not, and he says it is because the man has not known her, could not know her. Heaven only made two souls in that mould, his own and Leonora's; they are made for each other, what other could understand them? He expresses his relief when the unsympathetic man is gone, and laments the want of any friend to listen to his woes.

In the Sixteenth he has forgotten the decree which imprisons him, and he cries out that he will hence-far from the banks of the ill-fated Po. Poets sang truly of its evil fame; he will leave it far behind; he will go where his present sufferings shall seem like a horrid dream of shipwreck told amid a circle of gladsome friends.

Seventeenth Veglia. The last closed with excited exclamations to open the door of his cell that he might go far away; and we must now imagine him worn with the fruitless appeal, sinking back into an uneasy slumber, from which he wakes fitfully to tell his dream to the cold and silent walls. Che sogno tremendo!... He has seen Leonora stretched upon her bier. Her flashing eyes, which shed life wheresoever they glance, closed for ever!.... let my tears fall on them, and perchance open them again, for love has done stranger things.. No, not even this, my eyes are barren; sorrow has dried up the source of tears.'

6

Eighteenth Veglia. Probably exhausted by his feverish emotions, he sinks at last to rest, and the sun breaking in on his waking dreams recalls but too vividly the glad day on which he first saw Leonora. The whole city had donned its festal dress, My prince rode through the noble streets of Ferrara on a prancing charger, a present from foreign shores; a vast retinue followed him, in which Torquato held no mean place. Then we were admitted to the chamber of honour, where were assembled all the flowers of the court-all beauty, charms, and grace—all was captivating to the senses. But there was one who shone above all others, at sight of whom my soul overflowed with joy, who riveted my gaze. Let us keep the memory of that happy day; let us sing a new hymn to it, which shall be the outpouring of the heart.

Alas! the theme is too vast-my senses wander-dark clouds cover the face of that brilliant heaven. Help! help! Of whom do I ask help? From this narrow cell can my voice reach her? and it is she alone can help me. See the great wound which cleaves my breast, and the thick black blood which wells up from it. Truly my sorrow is supreme-I sought happiness in her, and have found misery.

In the Nineteenth Veglia a new vein of thought occupies his mind. 'I care no longer for the voice of song. Ariosto and Camoens, Virgil and Homer, are names which have lost their spell. The days are past in which I cared to measure my strength against theirs. I follow another glory now, to live only for her. Celeste vergine! were you at last but like another woman, in what hallucination should I have been living? Far from this, while I thought to increase thy glory by casting on it the beams of mine, I see now that its lustre had no need of any addition. Then, let my Gerusalemme perish. Toss it to be scrambled for by the pedants of the Arno

and the triflers of the court. I need not its aid to become the great man of my age, the object of the world's envy; for this, my love suffices.'

In the Twentieth Veglia, the fancy of getting away from his confinement has visited him again; this time, with the perversity of disordered intellect, he declares he will not leave. But anon, I myself desired freedom. Torquato, by that token thou art bereft of reason! It were to conspire against thine own happiness. Thy happiness is here. What matters that the door is closed! What matters that bars of iron replace the balcony! One thing alone matters to me, that her presence perfumes the air I breathe. Oh! degna di tutto il mio cuore, forgive me the thought of leaving this spot. An evil genius tyrannized over me, and made all around seem dark. But to-day I am master of myself, to-day I revoke the thought. My enemies think to have triumphed. In Ferrara they have been saying, Il Tasso appears no more at court; Il Tasso no more haunts the Castello as he was wont, nor the gardens where he was fonder still of wandering. . . . True, I frequent the court no more, but it is because I have found a better abiding-place-even in the heart of her who is the brightest ornament of the court and of the world. . . . . Guard, lock the door or leave it open as you will. Here I will abide content.'

The Twenty-first Veglia developes a return of the ideas we have already followed in the eighteenth, with the addition of some happy conceits on the way in which fate unites hearts.

Twenty-second Veglia. The bells of S. Benedetto ring to matins, and he bids them waft to Leonora the thought that he is waking to think of her. He takes delight in contemplating what her reply may be, and as he dwells on the prospect, it gives him hope; upon which he consoles himself with the reflection that one so miserable as he knows at least a joy which they who have all their wishes already granted cannot taste, the sweets of hope.

In the Twenty-third Veglia he enters into more detailed utterances of his physical feelings than he has yet indulged. Like one whose senses are paralyzed partially, and who is still conscious of his state, he asks himself whether he can yet move and feel; he touches the scanty articles of furniture that surround him, to assure himself the sights around him are real. He apostrophizes his pallet as the wretched witness of his wretchedness. Not a couch on which weary limbs find sweet repose, but a truckle-board on which he writhes in convulsive throes.

In the Twenty-fourth Veglia he is tormented by a new fancy. He thinks Leonora is to be affianced to another, and takes occasion to enlarge upon a favourite topic-the slavery of the great to the exigences of their caste. At the end of this Veglia, however, he recognizes that the theme of his ratiocination was a delusion.

The Twenty-fifth Veglia is filled with the sacro eutusiasmo of his poesy, and traces out in various instances how poets have been afflicted during their lives who have yet been the chief glory of their country in succeeding ages; and he takes some comfort in the thought of the justice which will be done his memory by posterity.

The Twenty-sixth Veglia is suggested one day by the breaking of his daily bread, which he declares coming from the hand of his tyrant is as poison; and then he indulges his fancy in the exercise of considering whether, if it were poison, he should accept it as a means of ridding himself of his woes. The idea of suicide being at his date so much less hackneyed than at the present, he displays equal courage on either side of the argument, but the Christian principle triumphs in him at last.

The Twenty-seventh Veglia gives him by a kind of second sight a foretaste of the glory which settled on his later years when Rome crowned him in the Capitol. He seems to have believed at the time that this triumph would have removed the Duke of Ferrara's objections to his condition; if so, like most indulgences of human wishes, the boon came too late, as on th' uprooted flower the genial rain.'

6

The Twenty-eighth Veglia repeats his laments over the unfaithfulness of friends. If one of them were true to the promises with which they were so lavish in his brighter days, he would send them to Madonna Leonora; and then he indulges in the conception of the conversation that would follow.

In the Twenty-ninth Veglia the rising sun making its way through his prison bars recalls the early toil of the labourers in the field together with the memory that there was a time when he too rejoiced to rise early and wake the poetic afflatus†

We must recall the full bitterness in which ignorant and envious criticism had steeped his soul, and which had its part along with Leonora in unhinging his mind, in order to appreciate the intensity of the proffered sacrifice; just as we must also remember how high a pinnacle of fame his works had actually obtained him, to appreciate justly the parallel he so proudly makes with it of his love for Leonora.

Io scuoteva l'estro. I have adopted the translation in the text as a more usual expression than the literal æsture, but it confessedly does not render so adequately the excited poet's idea.

within him, the dear, dangerous gift of Heaven, and he touchingly contrasts the willing happy labours of those days with the restless inaction of the present.

In the Thirtieth Veglia he calls his father with moving instance to be witness of the uniform purity of his motives and conduct; though infelice, he is not colpevole; this, not in a spirit of boasting, but with the humble desire of shewing his conformity with the Divine Will even in his afflictions.

In the Thirty-first Veglia he continues his retrospection through the days of his first appearance at the court of the Duke of Este, and dilates on his early impression of Leonora in those days of sunshine.

Thirty-second Veglia. Worn and weary, he lays him down as for his last sleep; prescribing to himself each gesture, that it may be conformable to his character; and the ordering of each feature, that it may convey the true tale of his sad love, and that he become not as uno di quei morti che non hanno espressione. Then he sees himself borne out to burial, and the Ferrarese crowding round the funeral train, crying, 'Let us go out to see il Tasso!' They will say that he was a gentleman of the Duke's court, and much esteemed in the other cities of Italy; possessed of a happy genius, one who raised letters in public estimation, who shed a light over his age. And then others will say that he never did harm to any, but good to many; that if prompt to anger he was also easily appeased; that even the wild flights of his imagination were innocent. . . . . Silence, I need not your inappreciative eulogies. Of the one worthy

event of my life,* you have no word to say. Nor of the perversity of my enemies, who have persecuted me to the death. Flatterers of the great, they will not dare to speak of these. Slide me down silently into the dark pit where I have to lie extinguished henceforth..... Then a voice wakes him from his reverie, and shows him that the end is not yet.

The Thirty-third narrates a vision, in which for one moment he had seemed blessed with the union for which he had sighed so long. This and the last (Thirty-fourth) which records his doubts, on finding himself at liberty, whether he should destroy the record of his ravings, bear unquestionably the strongest semblance of want of genuineness. Throughout-though, as I think the reader will allow even in this imperfect rendering, there are sallies of deep feeling worthy of a great mind-the grasp and power one would expect to find are confessedly often wanting. On the other hand, it must be remembered that this work only stands before us as the production of a mind eclipsed, and must not be compared with the fanciful flights in which its muse indulged in its days of strength.

If we omit the two last-the authenticity of which cannot, I imagine, be maintained— the wail ends as it began, in the full force of its agony, one long sostenuto note of mourning, admitting of no increase because full at the beginning, and no diminution because wrung by a sorrow which knew no remedy.

For this sad imprisonment, calculated by its wanton inaction and sameness, to force the sensitive poet to dwell on the one idea of his hopeless love, lasted seven long years, and even after Leonora herself was no more. It is sad to think such sweet sighs were uttered in vain. Or were they in vain? Was it not Tasso's task-the compensatory balance of his immense genius-to cherish his unblest love in secret in order to store the records of human endurance with thoughts which sanctify by their beauty the unblest love of those who were to come after him? To solace them in their despondent sighing over their want of merit, with the memory that il Tasso himself, in all his glory, was rejected even as they.

Is rejected the word? Is it not often circumstances which each is powerless to control, perhaps to perceive, which keep two hearts made for each other, apart? While one is pining in his dismal cell, is not the other pining in her gilded chamber? pining, maybe, because he is pining; maybe, because she knows not that he pines for her. Never, either of them to know perhaps that that other heart was beating in harmony, till they meet in that society where affinity of nature will find union, where there are no adverse circumstances and no misconceptions.

It were difficult to believe there were not something of this true in regard to Leonora. The exigences of the court required that she should give no public encouragement to the attentions of one whose only patent of nobility was his genius, nor even betray any outward token of regard for him; but at the same time, this much we know at all events, that she never gave her love to any other.

CORRESPONDENCE.

WORK SOCIETY AT WINCHESTER.

PARDON the garrulity of an old maid, fair Readers; but having once been allowed, through the kindness of the Editor, to show myself in print, I cannot resist the temptation of having another talk to more than I can comfortably converse with in my own small room.

Do you remember a walk which I took last November, round the old Cathedral of Winchester, to the school where the Work Society was held? Many do, I am sure, from the kind way in which they have answered the President's appeal to them to send her orders for clothes made by the Winchester poor. Once more-this time in August-I was in Winchester; and attracted by the sight of huge bills, announcing a sale of cheap clothing for the poor, to be held at St. Thomas's School, I went thither, and to my astonishment, found my friends of the Work Society of last year turned into saleswomen, surrounded by huge piles of flannel and calico garments of every kind. They seemed to be driving quite a brisk trade. One lady recognized me, and explained that they usually had a regular sale in the course of the summer, in order to get rid of last winter's stock, before commencing a fresh season of work; but, said she, pointing despairingly to the forms, desks, and tables, laden with clothes, Though we have had a good sale to-day, I am afraid that we shall have about £60 or £70 worth of goods left on our hands.' And then added, 'Don't you think that you could remind the readers of The Monthly Packet once again of our existence, and ask them if they do not want flannel petticoats, shirts, shifts, sheets, pillow-cases, pinafores, &c., ready made, for the cost of the material, to give away as winter gifts ?'

Here, Readers, is at once the excuse and object of my talkativeness. May you answer this appeal as liberally and kindly as you did my last, which this lady told me had brought them orders to the amount of £30. Orders will be thankfully received by

MRS. H. MOBERLY,

KINGSGATE STREET,

WINCHESTER.

NEW CHURCH SHIP FOR THE DIOCESE OF NEWFOUNDLAND. Sir,

Some of your readers may remember in the early part of last year that you were good enough to insert a touching narrative of 'A Noble Deed in the Diocese of Newfoundland.' I should be glad if you would allow me through the medium of The Monthly Packet to thank most heartily the many kind friends, known and unknown to me, who in answer to that and other letters have sent me contributions towards providing a sea-worthy vessel for the work of visitation on those dangerous shores. The various sums entrusted to me for the building of the new ship, or towards her working expenses, (including £41 11s., a special fund raised by Bishop Kelly's college contemporaries,) have amounted in all to within a little of £200. Other friends of the Bishop have been still more successful in their efforts; and the result I learn in a letter, lately received from St. John's, dated July 20th. A new Church Ship, the 'Star,' was lying at the wharf, ready to start on the morrow upon her first missionary voyage along the east coast of Newfoundland to the Labrador.

'When they saw the Star they rejoiced.'

The brave old Hawk, which had been buffeted by so many storms, sold at last better than might have been anticipated. The Star is clipper-built, and sails fast. She has been more costly than was expected; when all her fittings are completed, the expense will not fall far short of £1000.