WHERE THERE IS NO REMORSE. 107 was his very disappointment that drove away the fogs and vapours that, rising from the marshes of the great world, had gradually settled round his soul. Valerie de St. Ventadour had taught him not to despise her sex, not to judge by appearances, not to sicken of a low and a hypocritical world. He looked in his heart for the love of Valerie, and he found there the love of virtue. Thus, as he turned his eyes inward, did he gradually awaken to a sense of the true impressions engraved there. And he felt the bitterest drop of the deep fountains was not sorrow for himself, but for her. What pangs must that high spirit have endured ere it could have submitted to the avowal it had made! Yet even in this affliction he found at last a solace. A mind so strong could support and heal the weakness of the heart. He felt that Valerie de St. Ventadour was not a woman to pine away in the unresisted indulgence of morbid and unholy emotions. He could not flatter himself that she would not seek to eradicate a love she repented; and he sighed with a natural selfishness when he owned also that sooner or later she would succeed. "But be it so," said he, half aloud; "I will prepare my heart to rejoice when I learn that she remembers me only as a friend. Next to the bliss of her love is the pride of her esteem." Such was the sentiment with which his reveries closed; and with every league that bore him farther from the south, the sentiment grew strengthened and confirmed. Ernest Maltravers felt that there is in the affections themselves so much to purify and exalt, that even the error of an unlawful love, conceived without a cold design, and (when its nature is fairly understood) wrestled against with a noble spirit, leaves the heart more tolerant and tender, and the mind more settled and enlarged. The philosophy limited to the reason puts into motion the automata of the closet; but to those who have the world for a stage, and who find their hearts are the great actors, experience and wisdom must be wrought from the philosophy of the passions. END OF BOOK II. BOOK IIL Ω 'πόλλων οὐ παντὶ φαίνεται, CALLIM.-Ex hymno in Apollinem "Not to all men Apollo shows himself- VOL. I.-K BOOK III. " CHAPTER I. 'Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music SHAKSPEARE. BOAT SONG ON THE LAKE OF COMO I. THE beautiful clime! the clime of love! Thou beautiful Italy! Like a mother's eyes, the earnest skies Ever have smiles for thee ! Not a flower that blows, not a beam that glows, II. The beautiful lake, the Larian lake!* Soft lake like a fairy sea, The huntress queen, with her nymphs of sheen, See, the lady of night and her maids of light III. Beautiful child of the lonely hills, Ever bless'd may thy slumbers be; The tears of the earth, since thy harmless birth, All cradled in flowers, the beelike hours Bring nothing but sweets to thee! Such, though uttered in the soft Italian tongue, and now imperfectly translated-such were the notes that floated one lovely evening in summer along the Lake of Como. The boat from which came the song drifted gently down the sparkling waters towards the mossy banks of a lawn, whence, on a little eminence, gleamed the white walls of the villa backed by vineyards. On The ancient name for Como. |