ternal relations, should have made her the more wary in encouraging the addresses of another. Her receiving graciously the sonnets in which she was publicly eulogised, and which, as we read in Villani, were sung by the ballad-mongers of the day all over the south of Europe, may not have been so indelicate a procedure in her century as it would be in this. Yet of one other fault, and a sad one for a poet's idol, we may find repeated vestiges in her life, -an extravagant love of dress and finery. The object of Petrarch's love, then, is not after all so fair, when truth compels his radiant conceits to fall off like spangles from the image. Laura, to say the least, acted a selfish part, and exhibited a recklessness of other men's judgments, which, in a woman, is akin to dishonor. But the condemnation falls heavier still upon Petrarch. Allowance must of course be made for unreal language, which characterises Petrarch's works to an unhappy degree. Yet it must be confessed, that his method of speaking of Laura is for the most part irreligiously idolatrous. This passion dulled his energies, preyed upon the health of his mind, and gave his whole character a tone of querulousness and sickly dissatisfaction, which detracts materially from our admiration. Had he, for instance, emancipated himself from this effeminate phrenzy, it is probable he would never have been guilty of such childishnesses as laming his feet by tight shoes, because small hands and small feet were a sign of pure blood, forgetting the application

H

of that remark to the barbarians, whom he so much. despised, rather than to the natives of Italy. The same sickliness is visible in his friendships. As he grew older he shewed himself singularly unable to realize the lesson of a later poet, who bids us all in our old age to note,

"From our safe recess

Old friends burn dim, like lamps in noisome air.
Love them for what they are; nor love them less,
Because to thee they are not what they were."

Petrarch too was a canon of a cathedral, and this presses down the scale still more against him. It were easy indeed from the morbid anatomy of the literary character to account for and illustrate by anecdotes of dubious propriety that craving of a busy intellect, the chasm created by which this elegant idolatry filled up. But no character has so little worth or virtue in it as that of the man of letters, when the self-contemplation and fretfulness attending upon literary toil are not corrected by the simplicity of a devout heart. The brackish springs of literature, fringed by unhealthy nightshade and the lustrous leaves of poison-plants, require most especially the branch of the healing Tree to make their waters salubrious to the nations. Surely then a man is justified in saying that this famous love was in its first

4 Coleridge.

epoch unhallowed, for Petrarch confesses it himself; and in its second unreal; by which is meant, that it was not anchored in any of those chartered harbors, known to God's ordinances or the customs of natural piety. The poet of beautiful but irregular mind may indeed say that—

"The love from Petrarch's urn,

Yet amid yon hills doth burn,

A quenchless lamp, by which the heart,
Sees things unearthly."

But a pious man will listen rather to the sage and high-souled bard, evoking from the depths of pagan legends that hidden wisdom, which seems to assimilate itself to the lessons of the Gospel, only because it is part of the original instincts of humanity.

"The gods approve

The depth, and not the tumult, of the soul;
A fervent, not ungovernable love.

By no weak pity might the gods be moved;
She, who thus perished not without the crime
Of lovers that in reason's spite have loved,
Was doomed to wander in a grosser clime,
Apart from happy ghosts, that gather flowers
Of blissful quiet mid unfading bowers."

But a man's guilt is half atoned for when he pronounces sentence against his own sin, if only he goes

5 Wordsworth's Laodamia.

on in act to execute the sentence on himself. In his Imaginary Dialogue with St. Augustine, Petrarch puts the following words into the mouth of the Saint: with which the subject may be dismissed. "You say you owe to Laura what you are; that she has caused you to quit the world, and has elevated you to the contemplation of celestial things. But the truth is this: full of confidence, and a good opinion of yourself, entirely occupied with one person in whom your whole soul is absorbed, you despise the rest of the world, and the world in return despises you. It is true she has drawn you out of some vices; but she has also prevented the growth of many virtues. In tears and complaints you have spent that time which should have been devoted to God. The best effect of this affection is, perhaps, to have rendered you eager after glory. We shall presently examine how much you are indebted to her on this account. As to everything else, I venture to declare, that she has been your destruction, in nourishing a passion she ought to have suppressed. She has filled you with a love of the creature rather than the Creator, and this is the death of the soul.

"Of all the passions to which human nature is subject love is the most to be feared. It makes us forget ourselves, and it makes us forget our God. Everything serves to nourish and increase it; and those wretched mortals whom it holds in bondage carry a fire within them, which will finally consume both soul and body. Alas,' returned Petrarch: 'I

6

am not able to answer you, and I must give myself up to despair.' 'No,' was the Saint's reply, 'let your prayers be fervent and sincere that God may hear you, that He may strengthen your mind, and assist you with His grace.'

But see-the sun is setting. Petrarch has kept us long at Vaucluse. never to be forgotten! This is thy first gift of colors, enchanting South! the pale orange rim along the hills, as the sun went down, the dusky rose-colored vapor the instant the orb had passed! These were foretastes of southern sunsets.

And what a sun-set too

Turning to the south-west of Avignon, the specimens of fair Provence and Provençal scenery are not very pleasing. There appears to be no soil, but polished shingle on which the sun shines most painfully. Olive-trees, lavender and box, were the only vegetable things apparent in the region across which our road lay towards Nismes. There must be nooks somewhere, whence the troubadours and melodious courtiers of Thoulouse drew their inspiration; though the eyes of solitude glistened to them with fewer and less precious meanings than the eyes of high-born dames. How slow poetry has been in working itself out of all this!

6

But if in all Provence, no shady bowers, nor coolrooted trees, nor tinkling waters could be found

6 "Bright lakes, those glistening eyes of solitude."

The Gipsies.-By A. P. STANLEY.