Genius unsettles with desires the mind, 2. Talent, the sunshine on a cultured soil, с Leaves its large truths a riddle to the dull From eyes profane a veil the Isis screens, And fools on fools still ask "what Hamlet means.” “ As in most of Bulwer's writings, his erudition is shown even in this short extract, by his numerous classical allusions. CHAPTER LXX.-MISCELLANEOUS. Viva Italia! Viva il Re! Written on the departure of the Austrians from Italy, and the entry of the Italian King, Victor Emmanuel, into Venice, November 7, 1866. 1. Haste! open the lattice, Giulia, And wheel me my chair where the sun a Iris, the goddess of the rainbow. In Grecian mythology it was the personification of the rainbow. Horn-book, the first book of children ; -so called because formerly covered with horn to protect it. с Pyth'i-an, pertaining to the priestess of Apollo, who delivered the oracles at Delphi. a The goddess Isis, one of the chief deities of the Egyptians. One of her statues bore this inscription: “I am all that has been or that shall be no mortal has hitherto taken off my veil." e" What Hamlet means,"—in allusion to the long-mooted question as to Shakspeare's intent in the tragedy and character of Hamlet. 1 Giulia (jě-u ́lĭ-ah), for Julia. May fall on my face while I welcome 2. Would God that I only were younger, Viva il Re !" 3. Oh, cursed be these years and this weakness When the people's loud clamor is rending So young when the Corsican sold us! So old when the Furies repay! "Viva! e Viva Italia! Viva il Re!" 4. Not these were the cries when our fathers The gonfalon gave to the breeze, с a Viva Italia! e Viva il Re! (vē'vah ĭ-tal'i-ah! ā vē’vah ēēl rā!) "Hurrah! Hurrah for Italy! Long live the King!" The Corsican, Napoleon Bonaparte, who surrendered Venice to Austria in 1797. In the Congress of Vienna, 1814-15, Lombardy and Venetia were confirmed to Austria. Andrea Dan'dolo, a doge (chief magistrate) of Venice, who destroyed the Genoese fleet in 1353. But the years of the future are ours, 5. Bring, girl, from the dust of yon closet 6. What! tears in your eyes, my Giulia? Viva il Re!" 7. Shame, shame on the weakness that held you, No blood of the gonfaloniere' Shall mingle with blood of the Hun! Viva il Re!" a Andrea Contarino, a doge of Venice who, at the age of eighty years, took command of the Venetian fleet, and freed the republic from its enemies, in 1380. b Gon-fa-lon-ier', a chief standard-bearer.-Gon'fa-lon, a war-flag. 8. Hark! heard you the gun from the mola? The friends of our Venice are near! Viva il Re!"-Charles Dimitry. CHAPTER LXXI.—NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.-1807-1864. I.-Biographical. 1. Nathaniel Hawthorne, born at Salem, Massachusetts, was a classmate of the poet Longfellow at Bowdoin College, Maine, where he graduated in 1825. His first ventures in literature were stories published in a popular annual called The Token. They were afterwards gathered into a volume called Twice-Told Tales. He early joined the Brook Farm community at Roxbury, a band of literary people who undertook to maintain themselves by their own labors; but the experiment was too ideal in plan and too onerous in detail to succeed. 2. Hawthorne's experiences at Brook Farm lie at the foundation of his Blithedale Romance. He next removed to Concord, Massachusetts, and the house which he occupied suggested the title to a further collection of his magazine papers,—Mosses from an Old Manse. Through personal friendship he obtained two political positions. First, by the influence of the historian Bancroft, who was Secretary of the Navy under President Polk, he was made Surveyor a Campanile (kam-pa-nē ́la), a bell-tower. San Marco, the celebrated church of St. Mark's, in Venice. of Customs at Salem; and President Pierce gave him the consulship at Liverpool for four years. 3. Mr. Hawthorne was a timid, sensitive man, fond of seclusion, and he grew slowly into popularity. His diction is felicitously limpid and pure, but most of his works of fiction are on the border-line of the supernatural, and the plots turn upon an acute analysis of human character under such influences. In the use of such themes Ann Radcliffe relied much on weird scenery and unnatural situations, and Mrs. Shelley on fantastic incidents; but Hawthorne's personages move in natural or familiar circumstances, and the development of his plots is more metaphysical. He insisted much on the distinction between the novel and the romance, claiming for the latter a broader and higher range of imagination. 4. Mr. Hawthorne's principal romances are The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, The Marble Faun, and Septimius Felton. He also published Note-books from his English and Italian journals, The Snow Image, Twice-Told Tules, and a Wonder Book for boys and girls. The London Athenæum says of one of his romances, what is equally true of all the others, "If sin and sorrow in their most fearful forms are to be presented in any work of art, they have rarely been treated with a loftier severity, purity, and sympathy, than in Mr. Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter. The supernatural here never becomes grossly palpable, the thrill is all the deeper for its action being indefinite and its source. vague and distant." 5. Longfellow called Hawthorne a poet, and thus writes of his Twice-Told Tales:-"There flow deep waters, silent, calm, and cool; and the green leaves look into them and 'God's blue heaven.' The book, though in prose, is nevertheless written by a poet, who looks upon all things in the spirit of love and with lively sympathies,-for to him eternal form, is but the representation of internal being, all things having a life, and end, and aim." |