And Bailey says there is that to be written yet, which good old men shall read, and then,

Closing the book, shall utter lowlily,

"Death! thou art infinite; it is life is little."

Ah! some such book once I hoped to attempt writing.

But the trial was not to be allowed me.

MARHAM.

Yes, Oliver, in part it was to be, and is. For no old man would have been more grateful for the book than I am for your talk. We have been talking about how some men have wished to die ; but how one would like to know what thoughts they had at the last, those poets and philosophers that are dead!

Uncle, I have a piece by me that I wrote two years ago. It is called the Last Vision of Tasso. Towards the end of his life, the poet imagined himself visited by a spirit. His friend, the Marquis Manso, says he once heard a most lofty converse; but, as it seemed to him, it was Torquato, at one time questioning, and at another replying. Though, as the listener says, the discourse was marvellously conducted, both in the sublimity of the topics, and in a certain unwonted manner of

talking, that exalted him into an ecstasy with hearing it.

MARHAM.

I should very much like to see what you have written, Oliver. For there is in it, I have no doubt, a good deal of what you have felt yourself.

CHAPTER XXXV.

I can behold how merit lies in ashes;

How darkness, circled round with brightest glories,
Its hollow head upreareth;

How in the wise man's room the fool is sitting,
And virtue grieves all wretched and forsaken;

How hateful vice and vile demerit scoff her,

And drive her trembling from the home of fortune;
The bad tree blossoming, and by lightning stricken
The noble stem. This can I see, still hoping.

And therefore will I hail the better future,
Which in me lives, which I behold within me;
Thither to meet the young day will I hasten,
Following the star to which my fate I 've trusted.
When I the dust from off my feet have shaken,
Then will I, too, soft branches round me waving,
Lie down in happy quiet!

For One I know amid the stars is circling,

And from their bright choir draweth strains harmonious.

F. VON ZEDLITZ.

TASSO.

How the time has gone!

Still I have not

been asleep; at least, I think I have not. And yet now the light shines on the other side of the room. Ah, sun! very beautiful sun! Thou art not wearing old yet, but in thy light I have grown old before my time. No! it was not in thy light that that happened to me, for it was in the dungeon at Ferrara. Seven years! Ay, they madden me to think of. And I was mad; I was.

But on which side of the hospital door I first grew frenzied I will not say, and I will try not to think. That God knows and will judge upon, he will, he will. Nay, but I pray thee, God! pardon the matter, and pardon me. For I will not ask thee to judge between me and him, — him that was my master. God forgive him the wrong he did me! I do, that is I hope I do. Only yesterday they gave me the sacrament, and twice since then I have been bitter against Alfonso, and thought God would judge him. Ay, I should not have thought that without I had wished it. May God, merciful and compassionate, pardon me! I will confess this sin while it is fresh; I will do it this evening. Why, it is nearly evening now! Ah! one, two, three, five swallows! O you blessed creatures! For you have the spring to come before you, and you bring the summer from behind you; and with you it is always a glad earth. This very minute, you are flying up and down, and across the Tiber, and in and out of the Coliseum; and some of you, the while, are resting yourselves on treetops and on churches. And you see the Capitol, and can fly to it so never reach it. I shall die without my crown. I have hoped for it for years, and now I shall miss of it by this sickness. Poor Torquato! I did think once, that Virgil might perhaps have

easily! but now I shall

some time called thee brother.

But that is past

I

hope. For now that I could work, I am dying; and now that I have just got the means of living, my lifetime is over; and now that the hand of tyranny is off me, the heavier hand of death is on me. O, what I might have been! But that will soon be stifled in the dust of what I am about to be. Once I hoped before this to have ascended up on high, and been one of the greater lights in the firmament of thought for ever. But I have not risen, and I shall die out like a marsh-light extinguished in rain, - I, Torquato Tasso. am heart-sick. I am not afraid of death; but can I trust him quite? Me, my uncles, my mother's brothers, have defrauded; to me, friends have been false; and me, my patron imprisoned. There have been times I remember them in which the face of every man was that of an enemy against me. I knew how people felt towards me; and so, by my walking down the streets of Ferrara, my soul has been, as it were, pierced through and through with swords. Then I have been cheated by the very years of my life; for fifty of them have spent out of my strength what ought to have been the health of threescore and ten. After whispering me all my life, and drawing me on to be her crowned poet, fame has deluded me. To me, my own faculties have not always been true. What is there has been true