A SUMMER MEMORY.

BY E. E. M. K.

You remember how we rambled through the fields that sunny day,
Discoursing of all beauteous things that thronged upon our way;
From the wave of vernal grasses to the chaffinch 'mong the boughs,
From the water's spotless lily to the sun that tanned our brows;
From the vetch and azure speedwell to the fly with gorgeous wings,
That hung like gems and silver o'er the trumpet-woodbine rings;
And you culled the pale wild roses with their petals' waxen hue,
So like a maiden's faintest blush, and so rich with sweetness too;
And tufts of bright "forget me not," dear gift for parting hours!
That looked as if the blue rill's wave had bubbled into flow'rs!

You remember all the calmness, and the holy light there seemed,
And the things despised in thoughtless hours how beautiful we deemed;
How ev'n the rook that crossed the sky-as some foul fancy might
A saint in prayer-we greeted then as 'twere some thing of light!
And the gnats that droned above the pool in noonday's insect play,
We discovered wore gay feathers that were glancing in the ray;
And the sombre moth that glided by with brown and velvet wings,
We agreed was clad in raiment such as never mantled kings.

You remember when the length'ning shade fell cool upon the grass,
And we watched it like dark lace-work o'er the verdant meadow pass;
With the trill of linnets near us, and the clover breathing round,

Such ripe sweetness for the pilf'ring bees they swarmed the honeyed ground,—
How you spoke to me of mysteries in Nature's mighty plan,
That, despite its beaten track of laws no mortal eye may scan;
Of marvels such as when the rock 'mid surging billows chained,
The barren rock puts forth a bloom, a flow'ret hued and veined;
And then of other wondrous facts with eloquence of speech,
As if of earth's hushed secrets you were privileged to teach;
And while I listened wond'ringly to wisdom rare as thine,
You sighed to think how poor such store of knowledge the divine!

You remember when the daylight failed, and rose-tints turned to grey,
And the yellow beams were fused with green along the western way;
And silence crept upon the air, and foam-like mists appeared
Along the water's dewy banks, and the trees grew dun and weird,-
How we watched the first soft star arise, and the crowds that gathered soon
About the purple light of eve as the rosy flowers in June;

And the constellations, one by one, we traced amid the maze,
"Crown-jewels" of the summer night with their thousand arrow rays!
Ah! 'twas then our hearts dilated most-then most we yearned "to know”-
"Is that God's diadem ?" we asked, and we felt our spirits glow,—
Glow with a sense of patient trust, that as night brought the stars,
So unto us would wisdom come through death's dark prison bars.

ST. VERONICA; OR, THE ORDEAL OF FIRE.

A BIOGRAPHY.

The Vestibule.

CHAPTER XI.

As the season was still warm, we passed much of our time in the umbrageous shelter skirting the distant woods, at the dinner hour adjourning to a pavilion on the lawn, and after our repast promenading in the adjacent avenue of beeches.

"I have been thinking," said Angus, "that you might effect a subterraneous entrance to those tombs, should they be extensive, from the dungeons of the castle; for I suppose you have accommodation for prisoners here as well as travellers? If such could be managed, it would render the property very private, and consequently safe from wanton injury."

We proceeded to the dungeons of the castle; searched labyrinth and cell; calculated the level of those night streets-for such they seemed— in relation to the tomb, whose doorway had been discovered outside. We walked exploringly along, each bearing his torch, Ippolito among us, beaming like an angel of grace. Cobwebs thickly matted-the accumulation of centuries-dangled from the groined roofs like mourning weeds, for prisoners whom human cruelty had in bygone ages buried alive,—the life supporting, that it might resemble a death conscious of deadly despair.

It was a sight picturesque to witness, this almost funereal procession. Angus bore a pickaxe, and Ippolito waited on him with a torch. The face of the one, calm, observing; of the other, curious, intelligent, good. Musonio followed, with an expression of melancholy, myself at his side. Angus struck the ground with his pickaxe, to ascertain whether the earth beneath were hollow, and the sound reverberated through many a winding passage, as if the spirits of the place, grouped simultaneously with us in the labyrinth, were, like ourselves, in search of hidden wonders, repeating, stroke by stroke, the blows which our pickaxe made. We saluted the invisible shades, they greeted in return; we laughed, they laughed like us. But their "How art thou?" and their laugh, were too familiar for the living to enjoy, sounding like the address and mockery of the dead; and we shrunk from a continuance of the dialogue.

"Hark!" exclaimed Angus. We all hearkened with bristling hair, for the spirits' voice called "Hark!" He struck a slow but heavy blow, which sounded hollow.

"That sound does not proceed from the solid rock," he continued ; "either we are over the tombs, or this ground has in ancient times been quarried."

Saying this he proceeded to pick up the pavement, which was of Roman flag, and to clear away the soil beneath it; which accomplished, he again struck the ground, nothing now remaining but rock, upon which the pickaxe several times alighted, and then vanished suddenly, with a crash. We looked at the heated face of Angus, and at each other with surprise, and, bearing down on the gap with our torches to explore, saw that a

part of the floor, together with the pickaxe, had fallen through into what appeared, as we stooped to gaze, a furnished chamber. With the celerity of lightning Angus seized a torch, and dropped through the opening in the rock, while I leaned on the floor, and, looking into the illumined apartment, beheld a scene too exciting to merely look on. I was soon by the side of Angus, and shortly the whole party was assembled in the tomb with us.

For many minutes we stood in silence, each too much occupied with sensations peculiar to himself to exchange words. For my own part, I felt fully transported from this world to the other side of the grave, and to belong to the procession of souls, which in brilliant shadows crossed the walls, as if startled, and on the way from the tomb we had invaded to regions of bliss or sorrow. I can never feel again what I then felt, until myself conducted by good or evil spirits after death to the judgment-hall; until liberated from the flesh, I tread out my own path upon the evergreen sward afar.

Where had we alighted? We were in a square and not spacious chamber (about sixteen feet in diameter), the walls of which were painted in dazzling colours, and hung with shields. Sarcophagi, too, and vases of noble form struck the eye; but what most arrested its gaze was the frescoes. Of these, the speaking beauty and the history they had pathetically told in silence and darkness so long, took possession of the mind. There was a royal chieftain, wearing an iron crown; and he was seated on a curule chair of ivory. An expression of cruelty marked his face, though not severely, it in part having subsided in death; the upturned eyes denoted agony, but thus far only to be told: its inner source inexpressible, its destiny hidden. His foot was upon a child, whose face had one look left-that of aged care; to his knee clung a beautiful despairing mother, with eyes imploring mercy, not at the tyrant's eyes, but of some airpervading power, invisible to looks so wild. Upon her are many hands, but they move her not, though ready to arrest her: dread paralyses all. By the royal side an angel of love lifts the crushing foot from the body of the feeble; while another with the hand of mercy attempts to spike the hinder wheel of the curule chair or throne. But behind them and over them looms a gigantic fiend, prepared to seize the seat and hurl it with its faint occupant through gates of perdition held open by evil spirits. The family of the dead follow him, but a right hand stretches forth a wand and separates them from the foe.

We remained for hours in the chamber conversing of these strange things, and of the scarce less wonderful realisation of our theory, and prospect of future discovery promised by it. Angus was able to explain much of what had been disclosed to us, having already seen tombs of the same kind. We pledged each other to secrecy, resolving to revisit the place and further pursue our researches.

Musonio was silent while we continued in the tomb, and his soul appeared full of sorrow. I refrained from putting questions regarding the feelings which his face expressed, for I knew well that he disliked our incursion upon the privacy of the ancient dead. In the sarcophagus probably reposed the ashes of that chief whose soul had lingered through the remaining stages of the fatal journey which the frescoes had published in ages gone, and still vividly proclaimed. Musonio felt that we had violated the sacred past—had unbarred the shutters of its closed prospect,

and sacrilegiously looked out upon a once-futurity,-a time to come which had been,-now mingled for not less than thirty centuries with the bygone times of another world. That past had become a history of judgments awarded at a tribunal, not, as expected, of the gods, but of Him whose crucifixion was at that time predoomed only, whose agonies but preordained; of Him whose life had thitherto been the uninterrupted career of Omnipotence, but over whose fated godhead hung a mortal career, to be fulfilled in the remote thereafter, and which yet has been accomplished since in the distant past.

The thoughts of Musonio, while thus I mused, were rolling to and fro like the wheels of an engine in the dark, and murmuring within themselves as in the deepest base of solemn contemplation. They were not such as mine, relating to the fall and rise of man alone. To the philosopher, eternity revealed its capacity for the accomplishment of perfect revolution, of all change that mind and matter, by novel union, could embrace-not once, but through series infinite.

To look at Musonio was certainly enough to convince an observer that nature had shaped his mind to be the depository of a very unusual philosophy. His head was like something formed experimentally out of a vast block of marble, to serve towards the further enlargement of man—not a final, but a wondrous attempt, and one made at a sacrifice of the human material;—and therein it might be supposed were thrown a series of problems, never submitted to thinking machinery before. He was one whose not happy fate, by force of mental structure, was to think with a vigour which nothing but annihilation could arrest; what he thought out being a fitting result of premises comprehensive, but not substantiated as yet to the human point of view, and worked as by a thinking engine. His theory was to him, as might be expected, the law of being and of things; but dreams, however grand, are not necessarily rational, even though they may come to pass.

CHAPTER XII.

WE spent the morning during many successive days in the tomb, of which we took a general plan, and made an inventory of its sculptures, pottery, bronzes, shields, and sacrificial implements. Having completed our task, we paused to look once more at the wondrous place we had discovered, when Angus stepped forward to lift a huge shield from the wall, which he moved to the centre of the chamber. He then held his lamp close to where the shield had rested.

"Do you not see a door?" said Angus. Nor was it the only door; there were other shields with doors behind them, all of which were found to lead into tombs. "Now you are at home," said Augus; “Etruria has yielded up one of her cities in the very heart of your own dwelling; study its contents at leisure."

I had reason, while thus agreeably occupied in these researches, to fear that Angus would not continue much longer with us; he had already hinted that early next spring his destination must be the north; that meantime he proposed to himself to visit Florence. In the furthest lands penetrated by giant Goth he desired to verify, by the inspection of monuments, those descriptions which were preserved by the Norse bards and in the Icelandic legends, and to walk in the footsteps of the Scandinavian.

"How long, Angus, do you remain in Norway?" I took occasion to ask.

"Until the end of summer," replied the traveller. "Will you afterwards visit us here ?"

"Yes, if you will now go to Florence with me."

Adora had not yet slept in the Aula palace; the autumn being passed, it was the season when the city was most attractive, rendered so by its visitors and the amusements attendant on fashion.

"Shall we at once accept these terms and sign the compact ?" said I, turning to Adora.

"Yes," she replied; and it was so settled.

At Florence we entered society, receiving company at home and frequenting the mansions of citizens, among others, that of the doge; and in this course we continued for weeks. Such is life; at first dissipation proves exciting; but it soon becomes burdensome to those who carry mind with them into its monotonous circle. Fashionable pleasures, however, are included in the universal scheme; their votaries, like worshippers of some higher things, are a weary set; their most elevating effort in conversation, to complain of the dreadful dulness of scenes which at a distance, and at first sight, pour their brilliancy upon the eye and overawe imagination. Men, too, however inexhaustible their wit, grow flat under frequent exhibition; but there is a class that frequents the assemblies of the wealthy whose conversation rarely tires the ear. Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci-who would not listen to these?

"What a true picture of autumn this evening presented: were you in the air?" observed that same Leonardo to Michael Angelo himself, on one of these evenings at my palace.

"I was," said Michael Angelo, but engaged in such earnest discussion with the Count of Aula and his friends that I scarcely lifted my eyes above the garden walls."

"I was outside the gates with one companion only-Lorenzino de' Medici--"

"Insist on his describing to you the scene of which he has spoken," interposed Lorenzino, joining our group. "He directed my attention to each feature around, while he printed the whole on my imagination in words which had the vividness of colour."

"We must hear it," said Michael Angelo; and all repeated that it must be heard.

"I would rather paint it than speak it again," said the artist. Come, begin," said Lorenzino.

"Well, then," said the matchless Leonardo, "it was after sunset; we remarked on a grey background the trees with their feathering branches; and that they were dark as if night had roosted upon them. There was a watery moon; it stood on one side above, encased in a pallid zone of gold-tinged green, whose light was not luminous, and dazzled not: on the other side, the dull sky flowed on through leaden and rosy clouds, the tree-tops grouped against them, their stems drawn in dark straight lines on the faint horizon, maintaining the separation of the ground and sky which night was so soon to fill up. And each tree had a sentiment by which it claimed to rest on the soul: one drooping and melancholy was leaning on its sturdy neighbour; another was alone looking beautiful and young, but its delicate figure deserted by a hardier group in advance. Every