· arduous task. We meet him in various disguises, and exercising his influence upon different natures-now smiting upon the cold, prond, rocky heart' of the worldling, now flashing out his thoughts like lightning upon the careless crowd: teaching the minstrels in their own souls' language the noblest theme that can inspire their song; and evoking from the depths of woman's gentle nature that mild but spiritual splendour which is the crowning glory of a great cause, like the crescent on the brow of night. Time would fail us were we to expatiate upon each several scene; we must therefore content ourselves with presenting one or two extracts and introducing a few comments. "The opening of the poem strikes us as being very powerfully conceived. The sun is setting and his last streaks of glory are lighting up the heavens, the purple heavens' of Rome. They touch with all their sad and solemn beauty the cramped and fettered limbs of her who once was mistress of the world. They flit among the towers and battlements which flash the splendour back no more; but receive the sunshine shudderingly, and with a fearful air, like a prisoner through the grated window of his cell: and still the bright beams come and go as they were wont to do, and seem to wonder why they meet not with the olden welcome. Upon an ancient battlefield a band of youths and maidens meet; they sing and dance although their land is a desolation and themselves but slaves :-they dance upon the spot where their great fathers fought and bled to bind another chaplet round the laurelled brows of what was then their Country. The Missionary approaches, disguised as a monk, and bids them stop, they dance upon a grave-the grave that holds his Mother! They yield to his solicitations and withdraw a space: he follows and begs them to forgive his vehemence, and bids them listen how he loved his Mother : "And then he tells them how strange robbers seized her, bound her, while he and all her other children denied her in her agony ; counted out the gold that bought her pangs; and when she lifted up her shackled hands and prayed forgiveness for them-struck her! The wellnigh quenched but still existing spirit of his auditors is roused by this tale of violence, and with execrations they attempt to kill him, when he bids them stand off, for they are partners in the wrongs and sharers in the unhallowed gain; that his Mother is their Mother:: Her name is ROME. Look round, And see those features which the sun himself Can hardly leave for fondness. upon Look Her mountain bosom, where the very sky Beholds with passion: and with the last proud Imperial sorrow of dejected empire, She wraps the purple round her outraged breast, And even in fetters cannot be a slave.' "And then he launches into a long and eloquent harangue: he dresses up the past in all its ancient pomp, as sunset streaming through stained windows lights up the dustdimmed statues of ancestral rulers: he shows them their present state, a life in death-a mockery of existence'a broken mirror, which the glass in every fragment multiplies :' and looking forward, with a prophet's vision he evokes the phantoms of the future, the glories nebulous as yet, but destined to become the stars of earth-the fixed and flashing diadems upon the brow of Time. Then by his Country's wrongs, 'By her eternal youth, And coëternal utterless dishonour. Her toils, her stripes, her agonies, her scars And her undying beauty By her long agony and bloody sweat, Her pride, her shame, her worlds subdued He swears She shall be free!' Alas! the heartless slaves have stolen away one by one, and when the poor enthusiast looks to find an answering echo to his great appeal, he is alone with the grass and the ruins and the broad blue sky and the soft wind of heaven. And yet not quite alone: for one of the band of revellers, a Roman maiden, has been attracted, spell-bound by the words that have fallen, like flakes of fire from a burst bombshell, from Vittorio Santo's tongue and now she timidly approaches him and asks if there be no office in the great work which Rome's daughters can fill-no services which they can render to their common mother. A mighty change has passed upon her spirit in these few brief moments: the missionary, all unconscious, held the masterkey of her affections, and now she is his in life and death. 'Alas! the love of women, it is known To be a lovely and a fearful thing; All that they have upon that die is thrown.' She knows he has entered upon a perilous enterprise-that he carries his life in his hand; but she will surrender fortune, fame, friends, everything, to be his follower, to execute his orders, and to live within the shadow of his presence. But what can she do? What part in the drama can she sustain? Woman cannot grasp an abstract idea. This Rome, this Country, this impersonation of the frowning ruins which she saw around but bewildered her: she wanted to observe some glance of human nature in the idol's eyes'-some touch of human feeling in the Queen they strove to reinstate some symbol of humanity upon the banners of the host. It was Rome she loved personified in Rome's deliverer; it was Santo's wild and witching words that woke the music from her heart-strings, and so she strives to do his will, to prove herself not unworthy of her leader. And nobly does she execute her mission: Vittorio is imprisoned by a libertine young lord, Francesca purchases his freedom at the price of herself, and in her superb high loveliness, whose every look enhanced the ransom,' begs Another maiden hour for prayer and Francesca wore a poniard. She is now "The poet has displayed a very high degree of talent in the conception of this character. The labyrinthine mazes of passion are developed with a master hand. The dazzling, blinding rush of fresh thoughts and feelings evoked mysteriously, like the fabled wellspring of Helicon, from the heart of the young Italian girl: the moments of doubt, suspense, hesitation: the conflict between fear and love -the fear of offending, of being cast off as useless, of being but a drag upon the chariotwheels of the emancipator: the love which has dawned suddenly upon her like an Oriental sunrise, and which she knows cannot perish but with her existence-the love which would be contented with the humblest post in his great enterprise: the set determination to do the wishes of her master-and the woman's weakness asking for some tangible reality, some symbol of the divinity she is to servesome star to twinkle with a human radiance on what, to her, would else be but one broad and blinding blue-the still, intense communings with her own spirit when she learns that he is doomed to die by the greatest libertine in Milan'-the shudderings of soul as she contemplates her scheme for his liberation, and her last act of glorious self-forgetfulness, when she accomplishes her object, and baffling the base hopes of the tyrant, dies: and in dying shows the greatness of a woman's heart, the unsullied lustre of a woman's love. There is to us something inexpressibly touching in this portrait, so pure, so exalted, yet so true to nature; something which appeals to our best feelings, and nobly vindicates the noble origin of our common humanity. And it is not merely a fine idea of the poet, a beautiful creation of the fancy with a rainbow's brilliancy and a rainbow's unsubstantial life: it is the personification of a great fact, a special instance of the love which lies about us like the grass upon the meadows. True, the sacrifices woman has to make now are not what they were then; but though the light has come down from the mountains to the valleys-no more a beacon but a household fire-it still exists. Ten thousand silent witnesses are standing round us of the fact, more eloquent in their silence. There are sacrifices offered up every day within our ken as noble as the Roman girl's, and the more we contemplate and admire them the better will our lives become. We cannot bear the vulgar hand which rudely tears away the veil that hides so many sacred scenes; but we give honour to the man who shows us Woman in her noble nature, her generous devotion of herself to others; for we feel he gives an impulse to our spirit, subdues our miserable selfishness, inspires us with a hopeful and a healthy spirit, lightens our burden in this lingering lifejourney, and lifts us nearer Heaven! and sunshine seemed a Paradise which would never pass away-when the moon and the stars were a mystery, and we believed that God was up, far away in the great blue heaven when we felt as secure in the domestic circle, as Adam did within the cherubim-defended battlements' of Eden. Childhood! Before the serpent drew its trail across our path and dimmed the lustre which it takes a life-long labour to regain-before we tasted of the Trees of Life and Knowledge and found them dust and ashes in our mouth-Trees of death and madness.' An immeasurable gulf divides us from that blessed time-we have passed from out that dream-land where we were supremely happy in our ignorance-we have plunged into the fiery furnace of the world, and taken part in its toils and throbbings, and restless heaving passions. We have felt the fever-strife of existence-the elements which constitute at once the blessing and the bane of manhood. Many a hard lesson have we learned, many an agonizing thought has maddened our brain, and many a wild woe has swept across our heart-strings and struck out harsh discord. Love has looked upon us with her heavenly eyes, like a fairy from a fountain, and then died away in bubbling music, leaving us longing to follow her, but not knowing whither. Fame, Fortune, all the wreckers' lights the world hangs out to tempt poor mortals to destruction on its reefs and shoals, have met us. Death has thrown his shadow on our path, and muffled in his mantle those we called our own. And then in some still moment-some hour when we are sitting silently over our lonely fireside, the ghosts of our early days appear like gleams of a remoter world '-old thoughts, old feelings, old associations, come to life again-then, gazing on the laughing landscape we have left for ever, the golden sunrise which has gathered to a burning heat, the fresh young corn-blade which has matured through many a storm and sunbeam till it bows beneath the weight of its own age and longs for the sickle-who has not sometimes wished he was a child again? Sometimes the wish steals on us when the white-robed past confronts the sin-stained present, and aggravates its hue by contrast; but life was breathed into the frame of each that he might answer a purpose, and we must ever Onward! Knowledge is power, though it be stamped into the spirit with a burning brand: and he acts nobly who girds himself up for action. There may be tears for him, and throbbings of the heart, and passionate sad voices from the past; there may be solitude and silence-the solitude of a being friendless in a peopled world: but let him pass on with a resolved but stricken spirit, believing that the path he treads is that of duty and the goal is God; and he shall find that knowledge, purified by faith, is better than unconscious innocence: his shall be the crystal calmness of the current that has passed the rapid and the precipice, and gone to rest in some sequestered spot, the mirror of the Heaven that hangs above it. "Let us glance for a moment at the closing scene. The Monk has fulfilled his mission, the task which was appointed him he has accomplished and now prisoned, condemned, sentenced to die on the morrow, he knows his hour has come. A number of his partisans are gathered in the dungeon to bid him farewell, to hear his parting words, to listen to the last instructions of their leader ere he passes from them for ever, and leaves them to carry on the cause alone. It is a solemn and a critical moment. He is standing in the shadow of death and on the brink of the unseen world: the stormy past lies behind him like the dashing ocean in the wake of the bark that nears the haven. He has stemmed the flood and grappled with the fury of the whirlwind. He has lived among the strife of elements, the war of deadly passions. He had to kindle the first feeble watch-fire, and fan its faint and sickly flame; he had to seek materials to work upon, and then to mould them to his purpose; he had to teach the ignorant, to stimulate the faint-hearted, to cheer the wavering, to check the undisciplined ardour of the over-zealous-and all alone. But now his voice is softened, and a calm-like sunset rests upon his noble features. 'Let us brighten This last best hour with thoughts that, shining through To-morrow's tears, shall set in our worst cloud The bow of promise.' "He puts away from him now the sound of war, the shock of arms, the noise of hosts, the banners and the blazoned ensigns; and he endeavours to instil into the minds of his followers a knowledge of their higher duty, of a more difficult but nobler task which may be theirs. He bids them 'Learn a prophet's duty: For this cause is he born, and for this cause, For this cause comes he to the world,to bear Witness.' "Truly, as his audience thought, 'tis a hard saying-Who shall hear it? It is comparatively easy when the commander says,Up and at them,' to charge down the hill upon the enemy, like the Life Guards at Waterloo; but it is a greater and a hundred-fold more difficult task to stand as those Guards stood for seven mortal hours upon the eminence without stirring a step or firing a shot. It is a gallant thing to fight with the free and the brave in defence of our country, our shrines, our hearth-stones, and our fathers' sepulchres-action animates and prevents the spirits drooping: companions in arms, though they be few, incite us on: we Is a good lover; but thy great apostle, And everlasting high priest, is that sinner Who sheds thine own.' "To bear witness! what a world of meaning lies hidden in these few words! how many of the grandest elements of human nature it requires to mould a character like this! Every man values the honest hearty good word of his neighbours; and there are associations gathered round the heart of each of us which it is impossible to efface. To be estranged from those we have lived with and loved from infancy-to pass from under the shadow of the faith that has fostered us-to look upon old sights, old haunts, familiar scenes, and find they are but fiends to mock us with a memory of what once was-to see contempt and scorn assume the place where love was wont to reign-to know that the affections we prized more than life are changed to wormwood-to watch our tried and trusted friends deliberately range themselves in the foemen's ranks to have the harrowing conviction burned in upon the soul that we must go on now alone go along the path we have chosen, and forego all the pleasures on which we counted to render existence endurable-these, these things try the temper and the tone of spirit these constitute a frightful and a fiery ordeal at which human nature shudders. And yet all this must frequently be undergone for the cause of Truth. The alternative is a terrible one, and many waver; but such have not the elements of real greatness in them, the qualities which constitute one who must bear Witness. The world has its laws and customs, its usages and ordinances; and woe to the man who sets himself in opposition to these. The world has its idols, its creed, its rule of faith-woe to the man who rises and declares its worship blasphemy-its creed a falsehood-its rule of faith a damnable de!lusion. Woe! truly; but unutterable woe would it be if these men did not rise up ever and anon, to smite the lazy blood into the cheeks of humanity; to exorcise the demon that directs the rabid multitude; to breathe a holier feeling through a land defaced by blood and crime. They are the pioneers of Freedom, the vanguard of the hosts of Truth. And their fate is to be reviled and ridiculedblasphemed and buffetted - tortured body and soul with all the ingenuity of cruelty. Well-so it is, and so it will be: they have counted the cost; their death-smile is the calm of conquest; and 'They flee far To a sunnier strand : And follow Love's folding star To the evening land.' "Vittorio Santo is one of these-and now his last hour has come. He has to take a final look at that cause which he has watched alone from its cradle: which he has reared amid ten thousand obstacles, and guided through ten thousand dangers: he is leaving it in the hands of his followers, and with all the solemnity of sorrow, with all the majesty of a man sublime in suffering and crowned with the diadem of death, he endeavours to form their minds, to instil into them those great principles which have regulated his own career. He gives them a glimpse of the higher mysteries, and strives to stimulate their souls to pierce the mist which hides them from the common ken. He labours to communicate to them that strong, calm, deep, earnest feeling which is an ark of refuge to a persecuted cause, and still on every cloud that either frowns or falls imprints the bow of promise. Thus having spoken words of comfort and assurance to the companions of his toil, having done everything in his power for the promotion of the enterprise-with peace upon his brow, he passes from them like the orb of day into the hambers of the West, and then-the night cometh; '—but it is a night of stars.' The 1 Thrown by the blind. Truth is a Nemesis Which leadeth her beloved by the hand Through all things; giving him no task to break A bruised reed, but bidding him stand firm Though she crush worlds.' "Truth is the hidden treasure which a baffled and bewildered universe has been engaged in seeking for six thousand years. What is Truth? 'Tis a question which has been often asked: by the broken heart and the bleeding breast; by the dauntless spirit and the undimmed eye. It has been asked in the full triumph of faith, when the light of eternity illuminated the world-mysteries; it has gone up to heaven with the stifled sob from the stricken spirit; it has been uttered to the silent forest by the lonely anchorite; it has been proclaimed in the majesty of hope, in the agony of despair, in the ghastly eloquence of death. Truth stands ever in still, silent beauty, like a star which reeks not of the clouds which come and go, and make wild warfare in the heavens. These shall pass away-the strife of tongues shall cease-the vain possessions and pursuits of earth shall vanish from their votaries-the workmen on the walls and battlements of this vast Babeltower shall be arrested in their labour like the moon at Ajalon-the incubus shall be removed from the bosom of humanity, and the emancipated universe shall recognize their victim and their Conqueror-the solution of this world-enigma-the Everlasting Truth. But then the end cemeth. Meanwhile there must be agony and tears and death; there must be the faggot and the fire; there must be hollow-heartedness and mockery: for battle must be waged between the true and false till time shall be no more. There will be'Dim echoings Not of the truth, but witnessing the truth Like the resounding thunder of the rock Which the sea passes-rushing thoughts like heralds, Voices which seem to clear the way for greatness, Cry advent in the soul, like the far shoutings That say a monarch comes. These must go by, And then the man who can outwatch this vigil Sees the apocalypse.' "There is a hearty purpose and a solemn earnestness in The Roman' which we think is calculated to teach an admirable lesson to, and produce a powerful effect upon, the minds of the present age. Never perhaps was it more necessary to inculcate independent thought and self-reliance: never more requisite to guard individuals against losing their identity in the mass; never more needful to fix the image of Truth in the heart, and tend it day and night as the virgins watched the fire of Vesta. Our poet shows us the dignity of man-the power he can exercise, the active power of kindling great thoughts in his fellow-men-rousing them up from their lethargic sleep-snapping the fetters which cramp their spiritual freedom, and bidding them pursue the path which God has placed before them, and along which duty guides them-peradventure to a grave. He shows us also Man's passive power-the nobler of the two, and by far the more difficult to practise-the power which can impel the soul right onward, like an arrow to its mark; which yields not to the sun-smile of fortune nor to the pitiless peltings of the tempest-cloud: the power from which the shafts of scorn fall off with deadened point; which walks unscathed through the fiery furnace of a nation's mockery; and gazes with an unblenched eye upon the ghastliest insignia of death. He shows us Pity bending with unutterable tenderness; Love sacrificing self at the altar of its divinity: Resolution stern as fate, sheathing the spirit as in a panoply of steel; Hope, baffled, bleeding, but like the dolphin, beautiful in death; Faith lifting its flashing eyes to Heaven, and speaking forth the words of inspiration. He takes us by the hand and conducts us reverently among the ruins of the past-he leads us within the circle of its magic presence, and bids us look and wonder. "We must conclude as we commenced. What went ye out for to see? The moral of |
