LXVII. And on thy happy shore a Temple still, Its memory of thee; beneath it sweeps Down where the shallower wave still tells its bubbling tales. LXVIII. Pass not unblest the Genius of the place! 'tis to him ye must Pay orisons for this suspension of disgust. The roar of waters! LXIX. from the headlong height Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice; The fall of waters! rapid as the light The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss ; · The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss, And boil in endless torture; while the sweat Of their great agony, wrung out from this Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set, LXX. And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again Is an eternal April to the ground, Making it all one emerald: - how profound The gulf! and how the giant element From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound, Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and ren, With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful ven, LXXI. To the broad column which rolls on, and shows Look back:! As if to sweep down all things in its track, LXXII. Horribly beautiful! but on the verge, From side to side, beneath the glittering morn, Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn : (1) I saw the "Cascata del marmore" of Terni twice, at different periods; once from the summit of the precipice, and again from the valley below. The lower view is far to be preferred, if the traveller has time for one only; but in any point of view, either from above or below, it is worth all the cascades and torrents of Switzerland put together: the Staubach, Reichenbach, Pisse Vache, fall of Arpenaz, &c. are rills in comparative appearance. Of the fall of Schaffhausen I cannot speak, not yet having seen it. (2) Of the time, place, and qualities of this kind of iris the reader may have seen a short account in a note to Manfred. The fall looks so much like "the hell of waters" that Addison thought the descent alluded to by the gulf in which Alecto plunged into the infernal regions. It is singular enough that two of the finest cascades in Europe should be artificial-this of the Velino, and the one at Tivoli, The traveller is strongly recommended to trace the Velino, at least as lugh as the little lake called Pie' di Lup. The Reatine territory was the Italian Temple,* and the ancient naturalist, among other beautiful varieties, remarked the daily rainbows of the lake Velinus. A scholar of great name has devoted a treatise to this district alone.t "Reatini me ad sua Tempe duxerunt." Cicer. epiat ad Attic. xv. lib. iv. ↑ "In eodem lacu nullo non dio apparere arcus." Plin. Hist. Nat. lib. ii, caplxu. † Ald. Manut. de Reatina Urbe Agroque, ap. Sallengre, Thesaur. tom. i. p. 778 LXXIII. Once more upon the woody Apennine, The infant Alps, which had I not before The thundering lauwine — might be worshipp'd more ; (') Her never-trodden snow, and seen the hoar Glaciers of bleak Mount-Blanc both far and near, And in Chimari heard the thunder-hills of fear, LXXIV. Th' Acroceraunian mountains of old name : LXXV. For our remembrance, and from out the plain Too much, to conquer for the poet's sake, The drill'd dull lesson, forced down word by word (2) In my repugnant youth, with pleasure to record (1) In the greater part of Switzerland the avalanches are known by the name of lauwine. (2) These stanzas may probably remind the reader of Ensign Northerton's remarks; "D-n Homo," &c. but the reasons for our dislike are not exactly the same. I wish to express that we become tired of the task before we can comprehend the beauty: that we learn by rote before we can get by heart; that the freshness is worn away, and the future pleasure and advantage deadened and destroyed, by the didactic anticipation, at an age when we can neither feel nor understand the power of compositions which it requires an acquaintance with life, as well as Latin and Greek, to relish, or to reason upon. For the same reason we never can be aware of tho fulness of some of the finest passages of Shakspeare, ("To be, or not to be," for instance,) from the habit of having them hammered into us at eight years old, as an exercise, not of mind, but of memory: so that when we are old enough to enjoy them, the taste is gone, and the appetite palled. In some parts of the Continent, young persons are taught from more common authors, and do not read the best classics till their maturity. I certainly do not speak on this point from any pique or aversion towards the place of my education. I was not a slow, though an idle boy; and I LXXVI. Aught that recalls the daily drug which turn'd My sickening memory; and, though Time hath taught By the impatience of my early thought, Its health; but what it then detested, still abhor. LXXVII. Then farewell, Horace; whom I hated so, LXXVIII. Oh Rome! my country! city of the soul! What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay. believe no one could, or can be, more attached to Harrow than I have always been, and with reason;-a part of the time passed there was the happiest of my life; and my preceptor (the Rev. Dr. Joseph Drury) was the best and worthiest friend I ever possessed, whose warnings I have remembered but too well, though too late, when have erred, and whose counsels I have but followed when I have done well or wisely. If ever this imperfect record of my feelings towards him should reach his eyes, let it remind him of one who never thinks of him but with gratitude and veneration-of one who would more gladly boast of having been his pupil, it, by more closely following his injunctions he could reflect any honour upon his instructor. VOL. III.-M LXXIX. The Niobe of nations! there she stands Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe, Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow, Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress. LXXX. The Goth, the Christian, Time, War, Flood, and Fire, And say, "here was, or is," where all is doubly night? LXXXI. The double night of ages, and of her, Night's daughter, Ignorance, hath wrapt and wrap LXXXII. Alas! the lofty city! and alas! The trebly hundred triumphs! (2) and the day Alas, for Earth, for never shall we see That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was free! (1) For a comment on this and the two following stanzas, the reader may consult Historical Illustrations of the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold. (2) Orosius gives three hundred and twenty for the number of triumphs. He is followed by Panvinius; and Panvinius by Mr. Gibbon and the modern writers. |