ld of that he hint of - itself in - thousand e mutual again the ve recoils of Eros. Ombrone the rush an open life and S. ce at the urse re k simCollina. ot envy lection, ng the which Hope, Guado often omes, pine elting upper ilken nlike Then from rocks and high towering clouds where, through the shattered mist, we had just before seen them resting, sparkled below and around on ten thousand raindrops; we looked down on a sea of dark-topped vines and olives, intersected by the dim serpentine Arno, bearing southward from Castello to Florence. Pistoia with her many domes and towers was below, sunk in hot haze beside the level highway of the Ombrone, and edged with shining houses beyond, the white line of road to Serravalle. This was, in fact, one of three views which our ascent successively afforded us. Splintered rocks, rich in verdure climbing and clinging, gay with butterflies and alive with simmering cicale; and over the rocks, shorn russet cornfields, planted with the cherry and the pear, composed another. But, more impressive perhaps than even the vast Valdarno, and momently assuming a nearer and more personal importance, was our third prospect: the tossed and distempered Apennines-a dappled scene of a thousand lights and blue shadows, curves, and seams, and crests, topped by the ragged clouds that floated at last into one long white floor above, whilst an amethystine gleam, like some false sunset, burned behind their purple summits. XXXI Meanwhile our conversation ran most on the little things of home, on the dear country I was to see a few weeks earlier than Désirée, on my own plans, more especially fears and hopes for that new life which was awaiting me. How many meaningless fancies-foolish alarms-she dispersed with the smiling wisdom of her sunbright courage, with the counsels of the royal 'heart of innocence'! This fair scene we felt rather than studied; and if any tone of human reflectiveness, any 'pathetic fallacy', has entered my brief description, are due to that other and more refracting mist of y through which I now see it. No space was then for interferences: But we received the shock of mighty scenes roused only so far to conscious harmony with nature, XXXII Then, to crown all by the sharpness of its co tion, they of years for such ure, that favourite ensation ess long ton ty. has So It went happy , was a worldly at I had ood. I w? O to this ature. ad no ence I ssings God hardly = con trast, came a farewell such as, in Dante's pathetic phrase, 'said how much'. But before the first turn of the road- little hand held out a few green leaves above me ; beams touched the blue dress at her shoulder; her deli features were chequered with warm bars of light, shadowed by torrents of golden hair that reminded n Désirée's. At Milan I looked on indeed, but as i dreams, where, flickering with a thousand pinnacles, marble wonder of the Duomo went up like a white fire heaven; but with the real eyes saw only the fresco which the wedded ecstasy of Joseph, chosen by the mir of the budding palm-rod for that legendary betrothal, kneeling before his royal bride, has been represented Luini with an almost superhuman intensity of passion abandonment. XXXIII Many years later, and I am passing w must be, I know, almost the anniversary of the day of Collina, near a seaside city of Neustrian France. Grey its depths, pale rose and emerald in its shallows, the ripples at my feet with a low sweet murmur, a lisp when children come close and whisper their secrets. Yie ing to the pleasure of an ancient superstition, I count waves, and fancy the tenth rolls in with a whiter mass subdued undertone of power. If there were any spirit voice from the deep, I should hear it now: for there is human sound but the measured beat of pile-drivers at t harbour; no human sight to break the spell but a f idle fisher-boats, their brown sails spread indeed, motionless. The heavy sun, sinking like Adonis into a b of dense violet, sends a few ruddy rays to the shore; b reserving for his own regions his more especial glo Overweaves the pale heavens above with a golden networ a wide web of living flashes, through which the last arro of his radiance strike upward into the azure grey of t |