to be let in; but it was only the Gossip, come to inform him that he must be patient, and that she did not know when Madonna Lucrezia would please to bring Dianora, but most likely after dinner, when the visitors retired to sleep a little. Of all impertinent things, dinner appeared to him the most tiresome and unfit. He wondered how any thinking beings, who might take a cake or a cup of wine by the way, and then proceed to love one another, could sit round a great wooden table, patiently eating of this and that nicety; and, above all, how they could sit still afterwards for a moment, and not do any thing else in preference,-stand on their heads, or toss the dishes out of window. Then the Festival! God only knew how happy the peasantry might chuse to be, and how long they might detain Dianora with their compliments, dances, and songs. Doubtless, there must be many lovers among them; and how they could bear to go jigging about in this gregarious manner, when they must all wish to be walking two by two in the green lanes, was to him inexplicable. However, Ippolito was very sincere in his gratitude to Gossip Veronica, and even did his best to behave handsomely to her cake and wine; and after dinner his virtue was rewarded.

It is unnecessary to tell the reader, that he must not judge of other times and countries by his own. The real fault of those times, as of most others, lay, not in people's loves, but their hostilities; and if both were managed in a way somewhat different from our own, perhaps neither the loves were less innocent, nor the hostilities more ridiculous. After dinner, when the other visitors had separated here and there to sleep, Dianora, accompanied by her aunt and Veronica, found herself, to her great astonishment, in the same room with Ippolito; and in a few minutes after their introduction to each other, and after one had looked this way, and the other that,

and one taken up a book and laid it down again, and both looked out of the window, and each blushed, and either turned pale, and the gentleman adjusted his collar, and the lady her sleeve, and the elder ladies had whispered one another in a corner, Dianora, less to her astonishment than before, was left in the room with him alone. She made a movement as if to follow them, but Ippolito said something she knew not what, and she remained. She went to the window, looking very serious and pale, and not daring to glance towards him. He intended instantly to go to her, and wondered what had become of his fierce impatience; but the very delay had now something delicious in it, Ob, the happiness of those moments! oh, the sweet morning-time of those feelings! the doubt which is not doubt, and the hope which is but the coming of certainty! Oh, recollections enough to fill faded eyes with tears of renovation, and to make us forget we are no longer young, the next young and innocent beauty we behold! Why do not such hours make us as immortal as they are divine? Why are we not carried away, literally, into some place where they can last for ever, leaving those who miss us to say, "they were capable of loving, and they are gone to heaven!"

Reader. But, sir, in taking these heavenly flights of yours, you have left your two lovers.

Author. Surely, madam, I need not inform you that lovers are fond of being left-at least to themselves.

Reader. But, sir, they are Italians; and I did not think Italian lovers were of this bashful description, I imagined that the moment your two Florentines beheld one another, they would spring into each others arms, sending up cries of joy, and-and

Author. Tumbling over the two old women by the way, It is a very pretty imagination, madam; but Italians partake

of all the feelings common to human nature; and modesty is really not confined to the English, even though they are always saying it is.

Reader. But I was not speaking of modesty, sir, I was only alluding to a sort of,-what shall I say—a kind of irrepressible energy, that which in the Italian character is called violence.

Author, I meant nothing personal, madam, believe me, in using the word modesty. You are too charitable, and have too great a regard for my lovers. I was not speaking myself of modesty in any particular sense, but of modesty in general; and all nations, not excepting our beloved and somewhat dictatorial countrymen, have their modesties and immodesties too, from which perhaps their example might instruct one another. With regard to the violence you speak of, and which is energy sometimes, and the weakest of weaknesses at others, according to the character which exhibits it, and the occasion that calls it forth, the Italians, who live in an ardent climate, have undoubtedly shewn more of it than most people; but it is only where their individual character is most irregular, and education and laws at their worst. In general it is nothing but pure self-will, and belongs to the two extremes of the community-the most powerful whose passions have been indulged, and the poorest whose passions have never been instructed. True energy manifests itself, not in violence, but in strength and intensity; and intensity is by its nature discerning, and not to be surpassed in quietness, where quietness is becoming. Besides, in the age we are writing of, there was as much refinement in love matters with some, as there was outrage and brutality with others. All the faculties of humanity, bad and good, may be said to have been making their way at that period, and trying for the mastery; and if on the one hand we are

presented with horrible spectacles of lust, tyranny, and revenge, on the other we find philosophy and even divinity refining upon the passion of love, and emulating the most beautiful subtleties of Plato in rendering it a thing angelical. Reader. You have convinced me, sir; pray let us proceed. Author. Your us, madam, is flattering; I fancy we are beholding the two lovers in company. We are like Don Cleofas and his ghostly friend, in the Devil on Two Sticks, when they saw into the people's houses; I, of course, the devil; and you the young student, only feminine-Donna Cleofasia, studying humanity.

Reader. Well, sir, as you please; only let us proceed. Author. Madam, your sentiments are engaging to the last degree; so I proceed with pleasure.

We left our two lovers, madam, standing in Signora Veronica's bed-chamber, one at the window, the other at a little distance. They remained in this situation about the same space of time in which we have been talking. Oh! how impossible it is to present to ourselves two grave and happy lovers trembling with the approach of their mutual confessions, and not feel a graver and happier sensation than levity resume its place in one's thoughts!

Ippolito went up to Dianora. She was still looking out of the window, her eyes fixed upon the blue mountains in the distance, but conscious of nothing outside the room. She had a light green and gold net on her head, which enclosed her luxuriant hair without violence, and seemed as if it took it up that he might admire the white neck underneath. She felt his breath upon it; and beginning to expect that his lips would follow, raised her hands to her head, as if the net required adjusting. This movement, while it disconcerted him, presented her waist in a point of view so impossible not to touch, that taking it gently in both his hands, he pressed one

at the same time upon her heart, and said, "It will forgive me, even for doing this." He had reason to say so, for he felt it beat against his fingers, as if it leaped. Dianora, blushing and confused, though feeling abundantly happy, made another movement with her hands as if to remove his own, but he only detained them on either side. "Messer Ippolito," said Dianora, in a tone as if to remonstrate, though suffering herself to remain a prisoner, "I fear you must think me"-" No, no," interrupted Ippolito, "you can fear nothing that I think, or that I do. It is I that have to fear your lovely and fearful beauty, which has been ever at the side of my sick bed, and I thought looked angrily upon me-upon me alone of the whole world." "They told me you had been ill," said Dianora in a very gentle tone, "and my aunt perhaps knew that I—thought that I-Have you been very ill?" And without thinking, she drew her left hand from under his, and placed it upon it. "Very," answered Ippolito ; "do not I look so?" and saying this, he raised his other hand, and venturing to put it round to the left side of her little dimpled chin, turned her face towards him. Dianora did not think he appeared so ill, by a good deal, as he did in the church; but there was enough in his face, ill or well, to make her eyesight swim as she looked at him; and the next moment her head was upon his shoulder, and his lips descended, welcome, upon hers.

There was a practice in those times, generated, like other involuntary struggles against wrong, by the absurdities in authority, of resorting to marriages, or rather plightings of troth, made in secret, and in the eye of heaven. It was a custom liable to great abuse, as all secrecies are; but the harm of it, as usual, fell chiefly on the poor, or where the condition of the parties was unequal. Where the families were powerful and on an equality, the hazard of violating the

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