4

"It is but the reflection of the moonlight, Teresa," said the intruder. "I feel well." So saying, he scowled on the merry party, and turned as if to slink away.

"No, no," whispered Teresa, "you must stay a moment and be presented to my guests; there is an Englishman here whom you will like-who will interest you."

With that she almost dragged him forward, and introduced him to her guests. Signor Cæsarini returned their salutations with a mixture of bashfulness and hauteur, half awkward and half graceful, and muttering some inaudible greeting, sank into a seat and appeared instantly lost in revery. Maltravers gazed upon him, and was pleased with his aspect, which, if not handsome, was strange and peculiar. He was extremely slight and thin; his cheeks hollow and colourless, with a profusion of black silken ringlets that almost descended to his shoulders. His eyes, deeply sunk into his head, were large and intensely brilliant, and a thin mustache, curling downward, gave an additional austerity to his mouth, which was closed with gloomy and half sarcastic firmness. He was not dressed as people dress in general; but wore a frock of dark camlet, with a large shirtcollar turned down, and a narrow slip of black silk twisted rather than tied round his throat; his nether garment fitted tight to his limbs, and a pair of half hessians completed his costume. It was evident that the young man (and he was very young-perhaps about nineteen or twenty) indulged that coxcombry of the picturesque which is the sign of a vainer mind than is the commoner coxcombry of the mode.

It is astonishing how frequently it happens that the introduction of a single intruder upon a social party is sufficient to destroy all the familiar harmony that existed there before. We see it even when the intruder is agreeable and communicative; but in the present instance, a ghost could scarcely have been a more unwelcoming or unwelcome visiter. The presence of this shy, speechless, supercilious-looking man threw a damp over the whole group. The gay Tirabaloschi immediately discovered that it was time to depart—it had not struck any one before, but it certainly was late. The Italians began to bustle about, to collect their music, to make fine speeches and fine professions, to bow and to smile, to scramble into their boats, and to push off to

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wards the inn at Como, where they had engaged their quarters for the night. As the boat glided away, and while two of them were employed at the oar, the remaining four took up their instruments and sang a parting glee. It was quite midnight-the hush of all things around had grown more intense and profound; there was a wonderful might of silence in the shining air and amid the shadows thrown by the near banks and the distant hills over the water. So that as the music, chiming in with the oars, grew fainter and fainter, it is impossible to describe the thrilling and magical effect it produced.

The party ashore did not speak; there was a moisture, a grateful one, in the bright eyes of Teresa, as she leaned upon the manly form of De Montaigne, for whom her attachment was, perhaps, yet more deep and pure for the difference of their ages. A girl who once loves a man, not indeed old, but much older than herself, loves him with such a looking up and venerating love! Maltravers stood a little apart from the couple on the edge of the shelving bank, with folded arms and thoughtful countenance. "How is it," said he, unconscious that he was speaking half aloud, "that the commonest beings of the world should be able to give us a pleasure so unworldly? What a contrast between those musicians and this music! At this distance, their form so dimly seen, one might almost fancy the creators of those sweet sounds to be of another mould from us. Perhaps even thus the poetry of the past rings on our ears -the deeper and the diviner, because removed from the clay which made the poets. Oh Art, Art, how dost thou beautify and exalt us-what is Nature without thee ?"

"You are a poet, signor," said a soft clear voice beside the soliloquist; and Maltravers started to find that he had had, unknowingly, a listener in the young Cæsarini.

"No," said Maltravers; "I cull the flowers, I do not cultivate the soil."

"And why not?" said Cæsarini, with abrupt energy; "you are an Englishman-you have a public-you have a country-you have a living stage, a breathing audience; we Italians have nothing but the dead."

As he looked on the young man, Maltravers was sur

prised to see the sudden animation which glowed upon his pale features.

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"You asked me a question I would fain put to you," said the Englishman, after a pause. You, methinks, are a poet!"

"I have fancied that I might be one. But poetry with us is a bird in the wilderness-it sings from an impulse the song dies without a listener. Oh that I belonged to a living country-France, England, Germany, America-and not to the corruption of a dead giantess for such is now the land of the ancient lyre." "Let us meet again, and soon," said Maltravers, holding out his hand.

Cæsarini hesitated a moment, and then accepted and returned the proffered salutation. Reserved as he was, something in Maltravers attracted him; and, indeed, there was that in Ernest which fascinated most of those unhappy eccentrics who do not move in the common orbit of the world.

In a few moments more the Englishman had said farewell to the owners of the villa, and his light boat skimmed rapidly over the tide.

"What do you think of the Inglese ?" said Madame de Montaigne to her husband, as they turned towards the house. (They said not a word about the Milanese.) "He has a noble bearing for one so young," said the Frenchman, "and seems to have seen the world, and both to have profited and to have suffered by it."

"He will prove an acquisition to our society here," returned Teresa; "he interests me; and you, Castruccio?" turning to seek for her brother; but Cæsarini had already, with his usual noiseless step, disappeared within the house.

"Alas, my poor brother!" she replied, "I cannot com prehend him. What does he desire ?"

"Fame!" replied De Montaigne, calmly. "It is a vain shadow; no wonder that he disquiets himself in vain."

VOL. I.-L

THERE is nothing more salutary to active men than occasional intervals of repose-when we look within, instead of without, and examine almost insensibly (for I hold strict and conscious self-scrutiny a thing much rarer than we suspect) what we have done, what we are capable of doing. It is settling, as it were, a debtor and creditor account with the past before we plunge into new speculations. Such an interval of repose did Maltravers now enjoy. In utter solitude, so far as familiar companionship is concerned, he had for several weeks been making himself acquainted with his own character and mind. He read and thought much, but without any exact or defined object. I think it is Montaigne who says somewhere—“People talk about thinking; but, for my part, I never think, except when I set down to write." I believe this is not a very common case, for people who don't write think as well as people who do; but connected, severe, well-developed thought, in contradistinction to vague meditation, must be connected with some tangible plan or object; and therefore we must be either writing men or acting men, if we desire to test the logic and unfold the symmetrical and fused colours of our reasoning faculty. Maltravers did not yet feel this, but he was sensible of some intellectual want. His ideas, his memories, his dreams, crowded thick and confused upon him; he wished to arrange them in order, and he could not. He was overpowered by the unorganized affluence of his own imagination and intellect. He had often, even as a child, fancied that he was formed to do something in the world, but he had never steadily considered what it was to be, whether he was to become a man of books or a man of deeds. He had written poetry

MALTRAVERS BEGINS TO COMPOSE.

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when it poured irresistibly from the fount of emotion within, but looked at his effusions with a cold and neglectful eye when the enthusiasm had passed away.

Maltravers was not much gnawed by the desire of fame-perhaps few men of real genius are until artificially worked up to it. There is in a sound and correct intellect, with all its gifts fairly balanced, a calm consciousness of power, a certainty that, when its strength is fairly put out, it must be to realize the usual result of strength. Men of second-rate genius, on the contrary, are fretful and nervous, fidgeting after a celebrity which they do not estimate by their own talents, but by the talents of some one else. They see a tower, but are occupied only with measuring its shadow, and think their own height (which they never calculate) is to cast as broad a one over the earth. It is the short man who is always throwing up his chin, and is as erect as a dart. The tall man stoops, and the strong man is not always using the dumb-bells.

Maltravers had not yet, then, the keen and sharp yearning for reputation; he had not, as yet, tasted its sweets and bitters-fatal draught, which, once tasted, begets too often an insatiable thirst! neither had he enemies and decriers whom he was desirous of abashing by merit; and that is a very ordinary cause for exertion in proud minds. He was, it is true, generally reputed clever, and fools were afraid of him; but as he actively interfered with no man's pretensions, so no man thought it necessary to call him a blockhead. At present, therefore, it was quietly and naturally that his mind was working its legitimate way to its destiny of exertion. He began idly and carelessly to note down his thoughts and impressions; what was once put on the paper begot new matter; his ideas became more lucid to himself; and the page grew a looking-glass, which presented the likeness of his own features. He began by writing with rapidity, and without method. He had no object but to please himself, and to find a vent for an overcharged spirit; and, like most writings of the young, the matter was egotistical. We commence with the small nucleus of passion and experience, to widen the circle afterward; and, perhaps, the most extensive and universal masters of life and character

have begun by being egotists. For there is, in a man that has much in him, a wonderfully acute and sensi