6 Reflections, resolutions, sufferings,-all become powerless the moment you utter a word. I see no refuge but death, and never has poor wretch prayed for it more earnestly. Ah! if you only knew— if you only read, what happiness was once derived, by a strong and impassioned soul, from the pleasure of being loved by me! He used to compare the love once felt for him, with that felt for him still; and he said to me again and again; My countrywomen are not worthy to be your scholars: your soul has been warmed by the sun of Lima, they seem to have been born amid the snows of Lapland; and it was from Madrid that he told me this. My dear friend, he never praised me; he felt his happiness: nor do I think I praise myself when I tell you that, in loving you to distraction, I only bestow upon you what I have no power to withhold." 66 me. My frame is no longer strong enough for my soul-it is killing You can do nothing to me but make me suffer; do not then make any further attempts to comfort me; don't try to make me the victim of your morality, after having made me the victim of your fickleness. You have not seen me, because there are but twelve hours in the day, and you have had the means of filling them up with interest and pleasure, which must touch you more nearly than my unhappiness. I claim nothing-I exact nothing; but I never cease to tell myself that the source of happiness and pleasure is lost to me for ever." * "Oh, how you oppress my heart, when you wish to prove to me that it ought to be satisfied with yours! I would never complain, but you force me sometimes to cry out, so deeply and painfully do you hurt me! My friend, I have been loved-I am so still-and I die with grief that it is not by you. In vain I say to myself that I have never merited the happiness I regret. My heart tells me that, were I ever to be loved, it was by him who had charms sufficient in my eyes to withdraw me from M. de M-, and to reconcile me to life when I had lost him. I have done nothing but languish since your departure. I have not had an hour free from suffering; my mental disease affects my frame. Every day I have a fever, and my physician, though not one of the ablest of men, tells me incessantly that I am consumed by some hidden grief, and always takes his leave saying, we have no remedy for the mind.' For me there is, indeed, no remedy: but cure is not what I desire. I wish for nothing but a little calm-for a few moments' repose, before obtaining that final rest which nature will soon grant me. This highly-gifted and most unhappy woman died in 1776, in her forty-third year, the victim of violent passions acting on an ill-regulated mind. Though wasted with painful and hopeless disease, she continued to go the accustomed round of gayety; and her salon was filled with company down to the day of her death. THE PASSAGE OF THE SEBETO. "Vixêre fortes ante Agamemnona Multi; sed omnes illacrymabiles Urgentur ignotique longâ Nocte, carent quia vate sacro."-HORACE. THE obligation of heroes to those poets who have celebrated their deeds, has ever been proverbial. Disputes may arise amongst the learned on the subject of the Trojan war, which some may treat as fabulous, and others as historical. But even those who most strenuously defend the authenticity of the siege are compelled to allow that without the aid of Homer the memory of Achilles, at least, would have been more effectually plunged into the waters of Lethe than his body was into those of Styx. Virgil, by throwing the cloak of piety over some very questionable transactions, (a practice, by the way, which has not yet fallen into disuse,) has contrived to patch up the character of Eneas, and we moderns are content to receive that whining Trojan as a hero; not, certainly, in consideration of his own merits, but out of respect for those of his bard. Had not Tasso lived and written, the name of Rinaldo would have been no better known than that of any other valiant crusader whose cross-legged and noseless effigy we occasionally find on a marble tomb. Roland the Brave, Amadis de Gaul, Marmion, Rokeby, and a thousand other heroes, whom it would be tedious to enumerate, have owed their celebrity, nay, many of them their very existence, to the intervention of the vates sacri. The devil, indeed, (who, whether Milton intended it or not, is by many acknowledged as the hero of his "Paradise Lost,") does at first sight appear to be an exception to the general rule. But even he, although it must be confessed that his fame was already established, has great reason to be thankful to his blind poet for the feelings he has excited in his favor, inasmuch as the proud sentiments he is made to utter amidst his fallen peers have, undoubtedly, betrayed many a reader into a passing admiration of his Satanic majesty. Since, then, the weight of obligation has been hitherto so entirely on the one side, it would be both fair and desirable that something should now be thrown into the opposite scale; that the epic and the lyric muse should henceforth derive their whole inspiration from the subjects of their song, and poets be thus enabled to found their own pretensions to fame on the merit of their chosen heroes. Fortunate at least would it be for me if this new order of things could be at once established; for then, in the following humble attempt to describe the heroic passage of the Sebeto, my name might be handed down to posterity with that of the warlike Ferdinando the Second, King of the Two Sicilies, of Cyprus, and of Jerusalem ! THE PASSAGE OF THE SEBETO: A BALLAD.* To the tune of "A Frog he would a-wooing go." A KING went to the "Champ de Mars," To play at soldiers, free from scars, His troops were clad in dresses fine, And, as they glanced in bright sunshine, He wheel'd them left, and wheel'd them right, When they moved so much to his delight, But to check these hopes that high did soar, Alas! the rain of the night before Had wetted the ground ten yards, or more; And, though upon the martial camp His guards, for fear of cold or cramp, No wonder that this should move to rage Who hopes to shine in history's page * That the Royal Neapolitan Guards on a certain field-day about four years ago broke their line to avoid a puddle in the centre of the "Champ de Mars," and that by way of punishment they were led by their angry king through the river Sebeto, is an actual fact. I know not if my manner of relating it may succeed in exciting the risible nerves of my readers, but (in the words of Matthews' prosy retailer of old jokes) " I do assure them that it caused a very great laugh at the time." and "Mangia-macaroni" is the well-known sobriquet of a Neapolitan; King Ferdinando, as in duty bound, daily discusses a huge pile of his national food, to the nutritious qualities of which, his increasing bulk does ample justice. He led them o'er such broken ground, That much his guards it did confound To guess where the devil their king could be bound, So, like Philip's son at the Granic flood, (Though he waded through water unmixed with blood) And as his army thus he led, By those who saw the deed 'tis said And we must e'en believe the tale For little fish of course would quail But lest the stream too high for some, Above their knees might chance to come, A little colonel too he told, Kind Ferdinando! To be by no means rashly bold, But a tall pioneer by the beard to hold, And thus both short and tall defied, The dangers of the swollen tide, "Twas then, in this laconic style. Fat Ferdinando His dripping soldiers did revile, Who trembled with cold and fear the while Of their rowley powley macaroni, Gallant Ferdinando ! "Ye curs! more fit for show than slaughter," Quoth Ferdinando, "Ye curs! more fit for show than slaughter, If you won't face fire, you shall face water, With your rowley powley macaroni, Royal Ferdinando !" |