no resources in his own mind beyond the reputation, transient or permanent, which is to arise from his literary efforts, deserves the fate of authors.

In the course of the following Canto it was my intention, either in the text or in the notes, to have touched upon the present state of Italian literature, and perhaps of manners. But the text, within the limits I proposed, I soon found hardly sufficient for the labyrinth of external objects and the consequent reflections; and for the whole of the notes, excepting a few of the shortest, I am indebted to yourself, and these were necessarily limited

to the elucidation of the text.

It is also a delicate, and no very grateful task, to dissert upon the literature and manners of a nation so dissimilar; and requires an attention and impartiality which would induce us, though perhaps no inattentive observers, nor ignorant of the language or customs of the people amongst whom we have recently abode,—to disturb, or at least defer our judgment, and more narrowly examine our information. The state of literary, as well as political party appears to run, or to have run, so high, that for a stranger to steer impartially between them is next to impossible. It may be enough then, at least for my purpose, to quote from their own beautiful language—“ Mi pare che in un paese tutto poetico, che vanta la lingua la più nobile ed insieme la più dolce, tutte tutte le vie diverse si possono tentare, e ehe sinche la patria di Alfieri e di Monti non ha perduto l'antico valore, in tutte essa dovrebbe essere la prima." Italy has great names still -Canova, Monti, Ugo Foscolo, Pindemonte, Visconti, Morelli, Cicognara, Albrizzi, Mezzophanti, Mai, Mustoxidi, Alietti, and Vacca, will secure to the present generation an honourable place in most of the departments of Art, Science, and Belles Letters; and in some the very highest-Europe--the World-has but one Canova.

It has been somewhere said by Alfieri, that La pianta nomo nasce più robusta in Italia che in qualunque altra terra e che gli stessi atroci delitti che vi si commetono ne sono una prova." Without subscribing to the latter

part of this proposition, a dangerous doctrine, the truth of which may be disputed on better grounds, namely, that the Italians are in no respect more ferocious than their neighbours, that man must be wilfully blind, or ignorantly heedless, who is not struck with the extraordinary capacity of this people, or, if such a word be admissible, their capabilities, the facility of their acquisitions, the rapidity of their conceptions, the fire of their genius, their sense of beauty, and amidst all the disadvantages of repeated revolutions, the desolation of battles and the despair of ages, their still unquenched " longing after immortality," the immortality of independance. And when we ourselves, in riding round the walls of Rome, heard the simple lament of the labourer's chorus, "Roma! Roma! Roma! Roma non è più come era pri ma," it was difficult not to contrast this melancholy dirge with the bacchanal roar of the songs of exultation still yelled from the London taverns, over the carnage of Mount St. Jean, and the betrayal of Genoa, of Italy, of France, and of the world, by men whose conduct you yourself have exposed in a work worthy of the better days of our history. For me,

"Non movero mai corda

"Ova la turba die sue ciance assorda."

What Italy has gained by the late transfer of nations, it were useless for Englishmen to enquire, till it becomes ascertained that England had acquired something more than a permanent army and a suspended Habeas Corpus; it is enough for them to look at home. For what they have done abroad, and especially in the South, "Verily they will have their reward," and at no very distant period.

Wishing you, my dear Hobhouse, a safe and agreeable return to that country whose real welfare can be dearer to none than to yourself, I dedicate to you this poem in its complete state; and repeat once more how truly I

am ever

Your obliged

And affectionate friend,
BYRON.

CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGË.

A ROMAUNT.

CANTO IV.

I.

I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; (1)
A palace and a prison on each hand:

I saw from out the wave her structure rise
As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand:
A thousand years their cloudy wings expand
Around me, and a dying glory smiles

O'er the far times, when many a subject land
Look'd to the winged Lion's marble piles,

Where Venice sate in state, thron'd on her hundred Isles!

II.

She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean, `(2)
Rising with her tiara of proud towers

At airy distance, with majestic motion,

A ruler of the waters and their powers:

And such she was;-her daughters had their dowers
From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East
Pour'd in her lap all gems in sparkling showers.
In purple was she robed, and of her feast

Monarchs partook, and deem'd their dignity increas'd.
III.

In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more, (3)
And silent rows the songless gondolier;
Her palaces are crumbling to the shore,
And music meets not always now the ear:
Those days are gone-but Beauty still is here.
States fall, arts fadebut Nature doth not die.
Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear,
The pleasant place of all festivity,
The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy!

IV.

But unto us she hath a spell beyond
Her name in story, and her long array
Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond
Above the dogeless city's vanish'd sway;
Ours is a trophy which will not decay
With the Rialto; Shylock and the Moor,
And Pierre, can not be swept or worn away
The keystones of the arch! though all were o'er,
For us repeopled were the solitary shore.

V.

The beings of the mind are not of clay;
Essentially immortal, they create
And multiply in us a brighter ray

And more beloved existence: that which Fate
Prohibits to dull life, in this our state

Of mortal bondage, by these spirits supplied
First exiles, then replaces what we hate;

Watering the heart whose early flowers have died And with a fresher growth replenishing the void.

VI.

Such is the refuge of our youth and age,
The first from Hope, the last from Vacancy;
And this worn feeling peoples many a page,
And, may be, that which grows beneath mine eye:
Yet there are things whose strong reality
Outshines our fairy-land; in shapes and hues
More beautiful than our fantastic sky,

And the strange constellations which the Muse
O'er her wild universe is skilful to diffuse:

VII.

I saw or dreamed of such,-but let them goThey came like truth, and disappeared like dreams; And whatsoe'er they were-are now but so. I could replace them if I would, still teems My mind with many a form which aptly seems Such as I sought for, and at moments found; Let these too go for waking Reason deems Such over-weening phantasies unsound And other voices speak, and other sighs surround.

VIII.

I've taught me other tongues-and in strange eyes
Have made me not a stranger; to the mind
Which is itself, no changes bring surprise;
Nor is it harsh to make, nor hard to find
A country with-ay, or without mankind;
Yet was I born where men are proud to be,
Not without cause; and should I leave behind
The inviolate island of the sage and free,
And seek me out a home by a remoter sea,

IX.

Perhaps I loved it well; and should I lay
My ashes in a soil which is not mine,
My spirit shall resume it-if we may
Unbodied choose a sanctuary. Itwine
My hopes of being remembered in my line
With my land's language: If too fond and far
These aspirations in their scope incline,—
If my fame should be, as my fortunes are,
Of hasty growth and blight, and dull Oblivion bar

X.

My name from out the temple where the dead
Are honoured by the nations-let it be-
And light the laurels on a loftier head!
And be the Spartan's epitaph on me

"Sparta hath many a worthier son than he." (4)
Meantime I seek no sympathies, nor need;
The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree
I planted, they have torn me, and I bleed:

I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.

XI.

The spouseless Adriatic mourns her lord,
And, annual marriage now no more renewed,
The Bucentaur lies rotting unrestored,
Neglected garment of her widowhood!
St. Mark yet sees his Lion where he stood
Stand but in mockery of his withered power,
Over the proud Place where an Emperor sued,
And monarchs gazed and envied in the hour
When Venice was a queen with an unequalled dower.