Note 4, page 11, line 31.

The dust she dooms to scatter, etc.

« Ut si quis predictorum ullo tempore in fortiam dicti communis pervenerit, talis perveniens igne comburatur, sic quod moriatur.»

Second sentence of Florence against Dante, and the fourteen accused with him.-The Latin is worthy of the sentence.

Note 5, page 14, last line.

Where yet my boys are, and that fatal she, etc.

This lady, whose name was Gemma, sprung from one of the most powerful Guelf families, named Donati. Corso Donati was the principal adversary of the Ghibellines. She is described as being « Admodum morosa, ut de Xantippe Socratis philosophi conjuge scriptum esse legimus," according to Giannozzo Manetti. But Lionardo Aretino is scandalized with Boccace, in his life of Dante, for saying that literary men should not marry. Qui il Boccaccio non ha pazienza, e dice, le mogli esser contrarie agli studj; e non si ricorda che Socrate il più nobile filosofo che mai fusse ebbe moglie, e figliuoli e uffici della repubblica mella sua citta ; e Aristotele che, etc. etc. ebbe due mogli in varj tempi, ed ebbe figliuoli, e ricchezze assai.-E Marco Tullio-e Catone-e Varrone, e Seneca-ebbero moglie,» etc. etc. It is odd that honest Lionardo's examples, with the exception of Seneca, and, for any thing I know, of Aristotle, are not the most felicitous. Tully's Terentia, and Socrates' Xantippe, by no means contributed to their husbands' happiness, whatever they might do to their philosophyCato gave away his wife-of Varro's we know nothing-and of Seneca's, only that she was disposed to die with him, but recovered, and lived several years afterwards. But, says Lionardo, «L'uomo è animale civile, secondo piace a tutti i filosofi.» And thence concludes that the greatest proof of the animal's civism is «la prima congiunzione, dalla quale multiplicata nasce la città.»

THE

PROPHECY OF DANTE.

T

CANTO II.

THE Spirit of the fervent days of old,

When words were things that came to pass, and thought

Flash'd o'er the future, bidding men behold

Their children's children's doom already brought

Forth from the abyss of time which is to be,
The chaos of events, where lie half-wrought
Shapes that must undergo mortality;

What the great seers of Israel wore within,
That spirit was on them, and is on me,
And if, Cassandra-like, amidst the din

Of conflict none will hear, or hearing heed
This voice from out the wilderness, the sin

Be theirs, and my own feeling be my meed,
The only guerdon I have ever known.

Hast thou not bled? and hast thou still to bleed,
Italia? Ah! to me such things, foreshown
With dim sepulchral light, bid me forget

In thine irreparable wrongs my own;
We can have but one country, and even yet

Thou 'rt mine-my bones shall be within thy breast,

My soul within thy language, which once set

With our old Roman sway in the wide west;
But I will make another tongue arise

As lofty and more sweet, in which exprest
The hero's ardour, or the lover's sighs,

Shall find alike such sounds for every theme That every word, as brilliant as thy skies, Shall realize a poet's proudest dream,

And make thee Europe's nightingale of song; So that all present speech to thine shall seem The note of meaner birds, and every tongue

Confess its barbarism when compared with thine. This shalt thou owe to him thou didst so wrong, Thy Tuscan bard, the banish'd Ghibelline.

Woe! woe! the veil of coming centuries

Is rent,—a thousand years which yet supine Lie like the ocean-waves ere winds arise, Heaving in dark and sullen undulation, Float from eternity into these eyes;

The storms yet sleep, the clouds still keep their station, The unborn earthquake yet is in the womb,

The bloody chaos yet expects creation,

But all things are disposing for thy doom;
The elements await but for the word,

« Let there be darkness!» and thou grow'st a tomb! Yes! thou, so beautiful, shalt feel the sword, Thou, Italy! so fair that paradise,

Revived in thee, blooms forth to man restored:
Ah! must the sons of Adam lose it twice?
Thou, Italy! whose ever-golden fields,

Plough'd by the sunbeams solely, would suffice
For the world's granary; thou, whose sky heaven gilds
With brighter stars, and robes with deeper blue;
Thou, in whose pleasant places summer builds
Her palace, in whose cradle empire grew,

And form'd the eternal city's ornaments
From spoils of kings whom freemen overthrew;
Birth-place of heroes, sanctuary of saints,

Where earthly first, then heavenly glory made
Her home; thou, all which fondest fancy paints,
And finds her prior vision but pourtray'd

In feeble colours, when the eye-from the Alp
Of horrid snow, and rock, and shaggy shade
Of desert-loving pine, whose emerald scalp
Nods to the storm-dilates and dotes o'er thee,
And wistfully implores, as 't were, for help
To see thy sunny fields, my Italy,

Nearer and nearer yet, and dearer still

The more approach'd, and dearest were they free, Thou-thou must wither to each tyrant's will:

The Goth hath been,-the German, Frank, and Hun Are yet to come,—and on the imperial hill Ruin, already proud of the deeds done

By the old barbarians, there awaits the new, Throned on the Palatine, while, lost and won, Rome at her feet lies bleeding; and the hue

Of human sacrifice and Roman slaughter
Troubles the clotted air, of late so blue,
And deepens into red the saffron water

Of Tiber, thick with dead; the helpless priest,
And still more helpless nor less holy daughter,
Vow'd to their God, have shrieking fled, and ceased
Their ministry: the nations take their prey,
Iberian, Almain, Lombard, and the beast
And bird, wolf, vulture, more humane than they
Are; these but gorge the flesh and lap the gore
Of the departed, and then go their way;
But those, the human savages, explore

All paths of torture, and insatiate yet,
With Ugolino hunger prowl for more.
Nine moons shall rise o'er scenes like this and set;'
The chiefless army of the dead, which late
Beneath the traitor prince's banner met,
Hath left its leader's ashes at the gate;

Had but the royal rebel lived, perchance

Thou hadst been spared, but his involved thy fate,
Oh! Rome, the spoiler or the spoil of France,
From Brennus to the Bourbon, never, never
Shall foreign standard to thy walls advance

But Tiber shall become a mournful river.

Oh! when the strangers pass the Alps and Po,

Crush them, ye rocks! floods, whelm them, and for ever!

Why sleep the idle avalanches so,

To topple on the lonely pilgrim's head?

Why doth Eridanus but overflow

The peasant's harvest from his turbid bed?

Were not each barbarous horde a nobler prey?

Over Cambyses' host the desert spread