JULIAN AND MADDALO.

A CONVERSATION.

COUNT MADDALO is a Venetian nobleman of ancient family and of great fortune, who, without mixing much in the society of his countrymen, resides chiefly at his magnificent palace in that city. He is a person of the most consummate genius, and capable, if he would direct his energies to such an end, of becoming the redeemer of his degraded country. But it is his weakness to be proud he derives, from a comparison of his own extraordinary mind with the dwarfish intellects that surround him, an intense apprehension of the nothingness of human life. His passions and his powers are incomparably greater than those of other men; and, instead of the latter having been employed in curbing the former, they have mutually lent each other strength. His ambition preys upon itself, for want of objects which it can consider worthy of exertion. I say that Maddalo is proud, because I can find no other word to express the concentrated and impatient feelings which consume him; but it is on his own hopes and affections only that he seems to trample, for in social life no human being can be more gentle, patient, and unassuming than Maddalo. He is cheerful, frank, and witty. His more serious conversation is a sort of intoxication: men are held by it as by a spell. He has travelled much, and there is an inexpressible charm in his relation of his adventures in different countries.

Julian is an Englishman of good family; passionately attached to those philosophical notions which assert the power of man over his own mind, and the immense improvements of which, by the extinction of certain moral superstitions, human society may yet be susceptible. Without concealing the evil in the world, he is for ever speculating how good may be made superior. He is a complete infidel, and a scoffer at all things

reputed holy; and Maddalo takes a wicked pleasure in drawing out his taunts against religion. What Maddalo thinks on these matters is not exactly known. Julian, in spite of his heterodox opinions, is conjectured by his friends to possess some good qualities. How far this is possible the pious reader will determine. Julian is rather serious.

Of the Maniac I can give no information. He seems, by his own account, to have been disappointed in love. He was evidently a very cultivated and amiable person when in his right senses. His story, told at length, might be like many other stories of the same kind: the unconnected exclamations of his agony will perhaps be found a sufficient comment for the text of every heart.

"The meadows with fresh streams, the bees with thyme, The goats with the green leaves of budding Spring,

Are saturated not-nor Love with tears."-VIRGIL'S GALLUS.

I

RODE one evening with Count Maddalo

Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow
Of Adria towards Venice. A bare strand

Of hillocks heaped from ever-shifting saud,
Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds
Such as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds,
Is this; an uninhabited sea-side,

Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried,
Abandons. And no other object breaks

The waste, but one dwarf tree, and some few stakes
Broken and unrepaired; and the tide makes

A narrow space of level sand thereon,

Where 'twas our wont to ride while day went down.
This ride was my delight. I love all waste
And solitary places; where we taste
The pleasure of believing what we see
Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be:
And such was this wide ocean, and this shore
More barren than its billows. And, yet more

Than all, with a remembered friend I love
To ride as then I rode-for the winds drove
The living spray along the sunny air

Into our faces; the blue heavens were bare,
Stripped to their depths by the awakening north;
And from the waves sound like delight broke forth,
Harmonising with solitude, and sent

Into our hearts aërial merriment.

So, as we rode, we talked; and the swift thought,
Winging itself with laughter, lingered not,
But flew from brain to brain. Such glee was ours,
Charged with light memories of remembered hours,
None slow enough for sadness; till we came
Homeward, which always makes the spirit tame.
This day had been cheerful, but cold; and now
The sun was sinking, and the wind also.
Our talk grew somewhat serious, as may be
Talk interrupted with such raillery

As mocks itself, because it cannot scorn

The thoughts it would extinguish—'twas forlorn,
Yet pleasing; such as once, so poets tell,
The devils held within the vales of hell,
Concerning God, freewill, and destiny.
Of all that Earth has been, or yet may be ;
All that vain men imagine or believe,
Or hope can paint, or suffering can achieve,
We descanted; and I (for ever still
Is it not wise to make the best of ill?)
Argued against despondency; but pride
Made my companion take the darker side.
The sense that he was greater than his kind
Had struck, methink, his eagle spirit blind
By gazing on its own exceeding light.

Meanwhile the sun paused ere it should alight
Over the horizon of the mountains.

Oh !

How beautiful is sunset, when the glow

Of heaven descends upon a land like thee,
Thou paradise of exiles, Italy,

Thy mountains, seas, and vineyards, and the towers
Of cities they encircle! It was ours

To stand on thee, beholding it and then,

:

Just where we had dismounted, the Count's men
Were waiting for us with the gondola.

As those who pause on some delightful way,
Though bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood
Looking upon the evening, and the flood
Which lay between the city and the shore,
Paved with the image of the sky. The hoar
And aery Alps, towards the north, appeared
Through mist-an heaven-sustaining bulwark reared
Between the east and west; and half the sky
Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry,
Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew
Down the steep west into a wondrous hue
Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent
Where the swift sun yet paused in his descent
Among the many-folded hills. They were
Those famous Euganean hills, which bear,
As seen from Lido through the harbour piles,
The likeness of a clump of peaked isles.
And then, as if the earth and sea had been
Dissolved into one lake of fire, were seen

Those mountains towering, as from waves of flame,
Around the vaporous sun; from which there came
The inmost purple spirit of light, and made
Their very peaks transparent.

"Ere it fade,"

Said my companion, "I will show you soon
A better station."

So, o'er the lagune

We glided; and from that funereal bark
I leaned, and saw the city, and could mark
How from their many isles, in evening's gleam,
Its temples and its palaces did seem

Like fabrics of enchantment piled to heaven.
I was about to speak, when-

"We are even

Now at the point I meant," said Maddalo—
And bade the gondolieri cease to row.

66

If

Look, Julian, on the west, and listen well
you hear not a deep and heavy bell.”

I looked, and saw between us and the sun
A building on an island, such an one
As age to age might add, for uses vile-
A windowless, deformed, and dreary pile;
And on the top an open tower, where hung
A bell which in the radiance swayed and swung-
We could just hear its hoarse and iron tongue :
The broad sun sank behind it, and it tolled
In strong and black relief.

"What we behold

Shall be the madhouse and its belfry tower,"
Said Maddalo; "and ever at this hour

Those who may cross the water hear that bell,
Which calls the maniacs, each one from his cell,
To vespers."

"As much skill as need to pray In thanks or hope for their dark lot have they To their stern maker," I replied.

"Oho!