And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again Returns in an unceasing shower, which round, With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain, Is an eternal April to the ground, Making it all one emerald: - how profound The gulf and how the Giant Element From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound, Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful vent LXXI. To the broad column which rolls on, and shows More like the fountain of an infant sea Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes Of a new world, than only thus to be Parent of rivers, which flow gushingly, With many windings, through the vale: Look back! Lo! where it comes like an Eternity, As if to sweep down all things in its track, Charming the eye with dread, matchless cataract,1 LXXII. a Horribly beautiful! but on the verge, From side to side, beneath the glittering morn, I saw the Cascata del Marmore of Terni twice, at different periods --once from the summit of the precipice, and again from the valley below. The lower view is far to be preferred, if the traveller has time for one only; but in any point of view, either from above or below, it is worth all the cascades and torrents of Switzerland put together: the Staubach, Reichenbach, Pisse Vache, fall of Arpenaz, etc., are rills in comparative appearance. Of the fall of Schaffhausen I cannot speak, not yet having seen it. [The Falls of Reichenbach are at Rosenlaui, between Grindelwald and Meiringen; the Salanfe or Pisse-Vache descends into the valley of the Rhone near Martigny; the Nant d'Arpenaz falls into the Arve near Magland, on the road between Cluses and Sallanches.] An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge, Like Hope upon a death-bed, and, un worn Its steady dyes, while all around is torn By the distracted waters, bears serene Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn: Resembling, 'mid the torture of the scene, Love watching Madness with unalterable mien. Of the time, place, and qualities of this kind of iris, the reader will see a short account, in a note to Manfred.* The fall looks so much like the Hell of waters," that Addison thought the descent alluded to by the gulf in which Alecto † plunged into the infernal regions. It is singular enough, that two of the finest cascades in Europe should be artificial- this of the Velino, and the one at Tivoli. The traveller is strongly recommended to trace the Velino, at least as high as the little lake called Pie' di Lap. The Reatine territory was the Italian Tempe (Cicer., Epist. ad Attic., lib. iv. 15), and the ancient naturalists, amongst other beautiful varieties, remarked the daily rainbows of the lake Velinus. A scholar of great name has devoted a treatise to this district alone. See Ald. Manut., De Reatina Urbe Agroque, ap. Sallengre, Nov. Thes. Ant. Rom., 1735, tom. i. P. 773, sq. [The Falls of the Anio," which passed over a wall built by Sixtus V., and plunged into the Grotto of Neptune, were greatly diminished in volume after an inundation which took place in 11826. The New Falls were formed in 1834.] * Manfred, act ii. sc. 1, note. This Iris is formed by the rays of the sun on the lower part of the Alpine torrents; it is exactly like a rainbow come down to pay a visit, and so close that you may walk into it: this effect lasts till noon. This is the gulf through which Virgil's Alecto shoots herself into hell; for the very place, the great reputation of it, the fall of waters, the woods that encompass it, with the smoke and noise that arise from it, are all pointed at in the description.. Est locus Italiæ.. densis hunc frondibus atrum Crguet utrimque latus nemoris, medioque fragosus Dat sonitum saxis et torto vertice torrens. Eneid, vii. 563-570.. It was indeed the most proper place in the world for a Fury to make her exit and I believe every reader's imagination is pleased when he sees the angry Goddess thus sinking, at it were, in a tempest, and plunging herself into Hell, amidst such a scene of horror and confusion." -- Remarks on several Parts of Italy, by Joseph Addison, Esq., 1761, pp. 100, 101. For our remembrance, and from out the plain Heaves like a long-swept wave about to break, And on the curl hangs pausing: not in vain May he, who will, his recollections rake, And quote in classic raptures, and awake The hills with Latin echoes - I abhorred Too much, to conquer for the Poet's sake,2 In the greater part of Switzerland, the avalanches are known by the name of lauwine. These stanzas may probably remind the reader of Ensign Northerton's remarks, "D-n The drilled dull lesson, forced down word by word In my repugnant youth, with pleasure to record LXXVI. Aught that recalls the daily drug which turned My sickening memory; and, though Time hath taught My mind to meditate what then it learned, Yet such the fixed inveteracy wrought Homo," etc.; * but the reasons for our dislike are not exactly the same. I wish to express, that we become tired of the task before we can comprehend the beauty; that we learn by rote before we can get by heart; that the freshness is worn away, and the future pleasure and advantage deadened and destroyed, by the didactic anticipation, at an age when we can neither feel nor understand the power of compositions which it requires an acquaintance with life, as well as Latin and Greek, to relish, or to reason upon. For the same reason, we never can be aware of the fulness of some of the finest passages of Shakespeare ("To be or not to be," for instance), from the habit of having them hammered into us at eight years old, as an exercise, not of mind, but of memory: so that when we are old enough to enjoy them the taste is gone, and the appetite palled. In some parts of the continent, young persons are taught from more common authors, and do not read the best classics till their maturity. I certainly do not speak on this point from any pique or aversion towards the place of my education. I was not a slow, though an idle boy; and I believe no one could, or can be, more attached to Harrow than I have always been, and with reason; a part of the time passed there was the happiest of my life; and my preceptor, the Rev. Dr Joseph Drury, was the best and worthiest friend I ever possessed, whose warnings I have remembered but too well, though too late when I have erred, and whose counsels I have but followed when I have done well or wisely. If ever this imperfect record of my feelings towards him should reach his eyes, let it remind him of one who never thinks of him but with gratitude and veneration -of one who would more gladly boast of having been his pupil, if, by more closely following his injunctions, he could reflect any honour upon his instructor. [*"Don't pretend to more ignorance than you have, Mr Northerton; I suppose you have heard of the Greeks and Trojans, though, perhaps, you have never read Pope's Homer.' 'D n Homo with all my heart,' says Northerton: 'I have the marks of him. . . yet. There's Thomas of our regiment always carries a Homo in his pocket.' -The History of Tom Jones, by H. Fielding, vii. 12.] [The tomb of the Scipios, by the Porta Latina, was discovered by the brothers Sassi, in May, 1780. It consists of "several chambers excavated in the tufa." One of the larger chambers contained the famous sarcophagus of L. Scipio Barbatus, and when opened, the skeleton was found to be entire. The bones were collected and removed by Angelo Quirini to his villa at Padua.] [The reference is to the historical inundations of the Tiber, of which a hundred and ⚫ thirty-two have been recorded, from the foundation of the city down to December, 1870, when the river rose to fifty-six feet thirty feet above its normal level.] 1 Orosius gives 320 for the number of triumphs [i.e. from Romulus to the double triumph of Vespasian and Titus (Hist., vii. 9)]. He is followed by Panvinius; and Panvinius by Mr Gibbon and the modern writers. 2 Certainly, were it not for these two traits in the life of Sylla, alluded to in this stanza, we should regard him as a monster unredeemed by any admirable quality. The atonement of his voluntary resignation of empire may perhaps be accepted by us, as it seems to have satisfied the Romans, who if they had not respected must have destroyed him. There could be no mean, no division of opinion; they must have all thought, like Eucrates, that what had appeared ambition was a love of glory, and that what had been mistaken for pride was a real grandeur of soul.("Seigneur, vous changez toutes mes idées, de la façon dont je vous vois agir. croyois que vous aviez de l'ambition, mais aucun amour pour la gloire; je voyois bien que votre ame étoit haute; mais je ne soupçonnis pas qu'elle fût grande.' Dialogue de Sylla et d'Eucrate.) Considerations . . . de la Grandeur des Romains, etc., Paris, 1795, ii. 219. By Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquicu. " Je [Stanza lxxxiii. indicates the following events in the life of Sulla. In B.C. 81 he assumed the name of Felix (or, according to Plutarch, Epaphroditus, Plut., Vita, 1812, iv. 287). (line 1). Five years before this, B.C. 86, during the consulship of Marius and Cinna, his party On the 3rd of September Cromwell gained the victory of Dunbar [1650]; a year afterwards he obtained "his crowning mercy" of Worcester [1651]; and a few years after [1658], on the same day, which he had ever esteemed the most fortunate for him, died. [The statue of Pompey in the Sala dell' Udinanza of the Palazzo Spada is no doubt a portrait, and belongs to the close of the Republican period. It cannot, however, with any certainty be identified with the statue in the Curia, at whose base "great Cæsar fell."] |