I STARTED from Morosaglia before vespers, to go down the hills to the battle-field of Ponte Nuovo. There is placed also the post-house of Ponte alla Leccia, where the mail from Corte arrives after midnight, and by it I intended to return to Bastia.

The evening was fine and clear, and the calm mountain solitude disposed one to think. The twilight is short here; the Ave Maria is scarcely over before night is come.

How often, when I hear the bells sound for Ave Maria, I am reminded of Dante's beautiful verses, in which he has described the evening frame of mind on both land and water!

Era già la ora che volge il disio

Ai naviganti, e intenerisce il core,

Lo dì che han detto ai dolci amici a dio,

E che lo novo peregrin di amore

Punge, se ode squilla di lontano,

Che paja il giorno pianger che si more. *

There is a single cypress on the mountain there, enkindled by the evening glow like a vesper candle. It is a regular Ave Maria tree, monumental like an obelisk, black and mournful. It is beautiful, the way in which alleys of cypresses are used in Italy to lead up to the convents and the churchyards. We have the weeping willows instead. Both are regular gravetrees; but how contrasted to' one another! The willow points downwards with its drooping shoots to the grave; the cypress rises upwards like a candle, and points from the grave to the skies. Thus they express inconsolable grief for the bereavement, and hopeful faith. The symbolical language of trees is a significant indication of the unison of man with nature, whom he is always drawing into the circle of his feelings, to make her share his sentiments or expound them. So also the fir, the laurel, the oak, the olive, and the palm, have a human significancy, and poetical language.

* Dante, Purgatorio, viii. 1.

I saw but few and small cypresses in Corsica; yet they ought to belong particularly to this island of death. But the Tree of Peace grows every where about; the war-goddess, Minerva, to whom' the olive is consecrated, is likewise goddess of peace.

I had to walk fifteen miglia over wild and silent mountains, with my eye constantly fixed upon the heaven-towering mountains of Niolo yonder, the snow-clad Cinto, Artiga, and Monte Rotondo, the highest mountain in Corsica, 9000 feet high. Monte Rotondo was now violet in the evening glow, and his fields of snow glistened with rose-colour. I had been on his summit, and distinctly perceived the highest pinnacle of rock, on which I had stood with a goatherd. I was delighted to see this. When the moon rose above the mountain there was an enchanting picture.

It is delightful to walk thus by moonlight in the still mountain wilds. There is not a sound, unless it be the gurgling of a spring; the rocks shine in many places, and the stone then looks like solid silver. Nowhere is a village to be seen, nor a human creature. I went at a venture in the direction where I saw the Golo exhaling vapour deep below in the valley. But I fancied I had taken a wrong path, and was just about to cross a ravine to the other side, when some muleteers came up, who told me I had chosen not only a right road, but the very shortest.

So I came to the Golo at last. This river flows through a wide valley, whose air is full of fever, and is shunned by the people. It is the air of the battle-field of Ponte Nuovo. At Morosaglia they warned me against walking through the night mists of the Golo, or remaining long at Ponte alla Leccia; whoever walks about there, may hear the dead beat ghostly drums or call his name, or at least he will get the fever and see visions. Somewhat of the latter I fancy I could verify in my own case; for I saw the entire battle of the Golo before me, and the terrible monk, Clement Paoli, with the large fiery eyes and thick eyebrows, with the rosary in one hand and the fucile in the other, blessing the soul of him whom he is just going to shoot. Then pell-mell flight; and dying men.-"The Corsicans," says Peter Cyrnæus, are men prepared to die." The following trait is characteristic: A Frenchman found a Corsican mortally wounded, awaiting death without a moan. "What do you do when you are wounded," he asked him, "without surgeons and without hospitals?" "We die," said the Corsican, as laconic as a Spartan. A nation whose character is so plastic, and possesses such a mas

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culine greatness as the Corsican, gains nothing by comparison with ancient heroic nations. Yet Lacedæmon is always hovering before my eyes here. If it is allowable to say that the spirit of the Hellenes has been once more quickened in the wonderfully endowed Italian people, then this applies, in my opinion, mainly to the neighbouring provinces of Tuscany and Corsica. The former displays all the richness in ideas of the Ionian mind; and while her poets, from Dante and Petrarch, down to the time of Ariosto, sang in their melodious language, and her artists, in painting, sculpture, and architecture, renewed the days of Pericles, whilst her great historians rivalled the glory of Thucydides, and the philosophers of her academy filled the world with Platonic ideas, here in Corsica the rugged Dorian mind was revived, and Spartan battles were fought.

In the year 1790, young Napoleon visited the battle-field of the Golo. He was then twenty-one years old, but he had probably seen it as a boy. There is something demonic in the thought. Napoleon, on the first battle-field he ever saw, as a youth without formed prospects and without guilt,—he who was to redden half the world from the ocean to the Volga, and from the Alps to the Lybian desert, with the blood of battles!

It was just such a night as this that young Napoleon was roving over the Golo field. He sat down by the river, which on the battle-day, so the people tell, was blood-red for a distance of twenty-four miles to the sea, and carried corpses along with it. The fever-mist made his head heavy and dreamy. A ghost stood behind him with a red sword in his hand. The ghost touched him, and carried his soul flying through the air. They paused over a field where a bloody battle was being fought; a young general galloped off over thousands of corpses. "Montenotte!" cried the spirit; "and thou art he who fights this battle!" They pause over another field, where a bloody battle is being fought; a young general dashes over a bridge with the banner in his hand, in the midst of the smoke of cannon. "Lodi!" cried the spirit, "and thou art he who fights this battle!" And on goes their flight from battle-field to battle-field; the spirits pause over a great river, which is carrying down corpses, while ships are burning upon it, and endless desert bounds the scene. "The Pyramids!" cries the spirit, "and this battle too thou wilt fight!" And so they fly on and on from one battle-field to another, and the spirit calls in quick succession the terrible names, "Marengo! Austerlitz! Eylau! Friedland!

Wagram! Smolensk! Borodino! Beresina! Leipzig!" Till at length he pauses over the last battle-field, and exclaims with a voice of thunder, "Waterloo! Emperor, thy last battle, and thy downfall!"

Young Napoleon sprang on his legs again beside the river Golo, and shuddered; in a fearful dream he had dreamt frenzied fancies. But this entire fantasy was a consequence of the unhealthy Golo mist that surrounded me. On this vaporous Corsican battle-field, and on a night of pale moonshine, it is surely excusable to have visions. And what a wild, misty, awfully beautiful moonlight night! Above yonder gigantic black granite mountains the red moon is poised-no! it is no longer the moon; it is a great head, pale as a corpse, yet horrible with blood, hanging over the island of Corsica, and mutely looking down upon it—a Medusa head, a Vendetta head, awful and with serpent locks. Whoever dares to behold this head is not transformed to stone, but driven like Orestes by the fury, the double fury, that he must first commit murder under the influence of raving passion, and then roam from mountain to mountain, from cavern to cavern, tracked by vengeance and the law, which stick close to his heels, I saw the spirit of vengeance riding through the air on a winged horse, holding the dread Medusa's head by the hair, tearing along and screaming, "Vendetta! vendetta!"

What fancies! and there is no end to them. But, God be praised! here is the post-house of Ponte alla Leccia, and the dogs give the alarm. Some men are sitting at the table in the large desolate room, round the smoky oil-lamp, with their heads drooping on their breasts, heavy with sleep. A priest, in a black coat and hat, is pacing up and down the room, waiting for the mail. I will start a conversation on spiritual subjects with this holy man, that he may dispel all my cobwebs of ghosts' drumming and demons' tricks.

But although this man's orthodoxy was firm as a rock, I could not exorcise the evil Golo spirit in me, but arrived at Bastia with a throbbing and aching head. I uttered my complaint to my landlady, saying that the sun and the mists had occasioned it, and that I feared I should die unlamented on foreign soil. She said nothing would be of any avail in this case but having a wise woman to say an orazion over me. I declined the orazion, and asked to be allowed to sleep; and I slept the deepest sleep during a whole day and night, and when I woke the god of day stood high and glorious in the heaveus.