thing she utters. Grace and elegance seem component parts of her nature. Notwithstanding that she adores Lord Byron, it is evident that the exile and poverty of her aged father sometimes affect her spirits, and throw a shade of melancholy on her countenance, which adds to the deep interest this lovely girl creates.

"Extraordinary pains," said Lord Byron one day, 66 were taken with the education of Teresa. Her conversation is lively, without being frivolous; without being learned, she has read all the best authors of her own and the French language. She often conceals what she knows, from the fear of being thought to know too much; possibly because she knows I am not fond of blues. To use an expression of Jeffrey's, If she has blue stockings, she contrives that her petticoat shall hide them'."

Lord Byron is certainly very much attached to her, without being actually in love. His description of the Georgioni in the Manfrini palace at Venice is meant for the Countess. The beautiful sonnet prefixed to the Prophecy of Dante was addressed to her; and I cannot resist copying some stanzas written when he was about to quit Venice to join her at Ravenna, which will describe the state of his feelings at that time.

"River that rollest by the ancient walls

"Where dwells the lady of my love, when she
"Walks by the brink, and there perchance recali
"A faint and feeling memory of me :

"What if thy deep and ample stream should be
"A mirror of my heart, where she may read
"The thousand thoughts I now betray to thee,
"Wild as thy wave, and headlong as thy speed?

*The Po.

"What do I say-a mirror of my heart?

"Are not thy waters sweeping, dark and strong?
"Such as my feelings were and are, thou art;
"And such as thou art, were my passions long.

"Time may have somewhat tamed them, not for ever;
"Thou overflow'st thy banks, and not for aye;
“ Thy bosom overboils, congenial river!
"Thy floods subside; and mine have sunk away—

"But left long wrecks behind them, and again
"Borne on our old unchang'd career, we move;
"Thou tendest wildly onward to the main,
"And I to loving one I should not love.

"The current I behold will sweep beneath

"Her native walls, and murmur at her feet;

"Her eyes will look on thee, when she shall breathe "The twilight air, unharm'd by summer's heat.

"She will look on thee; I have look'd on thee, "Full of that thought, and from that moment ne'er "Thy waters could I dream of, name or see, "Without the inseparable sigh for her.

"Her bright eyes will be imaged in thy stream;
"Yes, they will meet the wave I gaze on now;
"Mine cannot witness, even in a dream,
"That happy wave repass me in its flow.

"The wave that bears my tears, returns no more: "Will she return, by whom that wave shall sweep? "Both tread thy banks, both wander on thy shore; "I near thy source, she by the dark blue deep. *.

"But that which keepeth us apart is not
"Distance, nor depth of wave, nor space of earth,
"But the distraction of a various lot,

"As various as the climate of our birth.

"A stranger loves a lady of the land,

"Born far beyond the mountains, but his blood
"Is all meridian, as if never fann'd

። By the bleak wind that chills the polar flood.

"My blood is all meridian; were it not,
"I had not left my clime ;-I shall not be,
"In spite of tortures ne'er to be forgot,
“A slave again of love, at least of thee.

" "Tis vain to struggle-let me perish young-
"Live as I lived, and love as I have loved :
"To dust if I return, from dust I sprung,

"And then at least my heart can ne'er be mov'd."

Calling on Lord Byron one evening after the opera, we happened to talk of Cavalieri Serventi, and Italian women, and he contended that much was to be said in excuse for them, and in defence of the system.

"We will put out of the question," said he, a Cavalier Serventecism; that is only another term for prostitution, where the women get all the money they can, and have (as is the case in all such contracts) no love to give in exchange.-I speak of another, and of a different service."

"Do you know how a girl is brought up here ?" continued he. "Almost from infancy she is deprived of the endearments of home, and shut up in a convent, till she has attained a marriageable or marketable age. The father now looks out for a suitable son-in-law. As a certain portion of his fortune is fixed by law for the dower of his children, his object is to find some needy man, of equal rank, or a very rich one, the older the better, who will consent to take his daughter off his hands, under the market price. This, if she happen to be hand

some, is not difficult of accomplishment. Objections are seldom made on the part of the young lady to the age, and personal or other defects of the intended, who perhaps visits her once in the parlour as a matter of form or curiosity. She is too happy to get her liberty on any terms, and he her money or her person. There is no love on either side. What happiness is to be expected, or constancy, from such a liaison? Is it not natural, that in her intercourse with a world, of which she knows and has seen nothing, and unrestrained mistress of her own time and actions, she should find somebody to like better, and who likes her better, than her husband? The Count Guiccioli, for instance, who is the richest man in Romagna, was sixty when he married Teresa; she sixteen. From the first they had separate apartments, and she always used to call him Sir. What could be expected from such a preposterous connection? For some time she was an Angiolina, and he a Marino Faliero, a good old man; but young women, and your Italian ones too, are not satisfied with your good old men. Love is not the same dull, cold, calculating feeling here as in the North. It is the business, the serious occupation of their lives; it is a want, a necessity. Somebody properly defines a woman, 'a creature that loves.' They die of love; particularly the Romans: they begin to love earlier, and feel the passion later than the Northern people. When I was at Venice two dowagers of sixty made love to me.-But to return to the Guiccioli. The old Count did not object to her availing herself of the priviledges of her country; an Italian would have reconciled him to the thing: indeed for some

time he winked at our intimacy, but at length made an exception against me, as a foreigner, a heretic, an Englishman, and, what was worse than all, a liberal.

"He insisted-the Guiccioli was as obstinate; her family took her part. Catholics cannot get divorces. But, to the scandal of all Romagna, the matter was at length referred to the Pope, who ordered her a separate maintenance, on condition that she should reside under her father's roof. All this was not agreeable, and at length I was forc'd to smuggle her out of Ravenna, having disclosed a plot laid with the sanction of the Legate for shutting her up in a convent for life, which she narrowly escaped.-Except Greece, I was never so attached to any place in my life as to Ravenna, and but for the failure of the Constitutionalists and this fracas, should probably never have left it. The peasantry are the best people in the world, and the beauty of their women is extraordinary. Those at Tivoli and Frescati, who are so much vaunted, are mere Sabines, coarse creatures, compared to the Romagnese. You may talk of your English women, and it is true that out of one hundred Italians and English you will find thirty of the latter handsome; but then there will be one Italian on the other side of the scale, who will more than balance the deficit in numbers-one who, like the Florence Venus, has no rival, and can have none in the North. I have learnt more from the peasantry of the countries I have travelled in than from any other source, especially from the women*: they are more intelli"Female hearts are such a genial soil

For kinder feeling, whatsoe'er their nation,
They generally pour the wine and oil,

Samaritans in every situation."

Don Juan, Canto V. Stanza 122.