And on thy happy shore a temple still,
Of small and delicate proportion, keeps,
Upon a mild declivity of hill,

Its memory of thee; beneath it sweeps
Thy current's calmness; oft from out it leaps
The finny darter with the glittering scales,
Who dwells and revels in thy glassy deeps;
While, chance, some scatter'd water-lily sails
Down where the shallower wave still tells its bubbling tales.

p. 35, 36.

This gentle scene is again suddenly disturbed by a description of the Cataract of Velino, which absolutely thunders in our ears like a reality. The passion with which the whole description is imbued, is peculiarly characteristic of Byron.

The roar of waters!-from the headlong height
Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice;
The fall of waters! rapid as the light
The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss;
The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss,
And boil in endless torture; while the sweat
Of their great agony, wrung out from this
Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet
That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set,
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
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,-a matchless cataract,

Horribly beautiful! but on the verge,

From side to side, beneath the glittering morn,
An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge,
Like Hope upon a death-bed, and, unworn
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. p. 37–39. There immediately follows this a passage, which produces a powerful effect on our imagination, as it would seem almost entirely by the mere enumeration of the names of famous mountains. We feel as if we, as well as the poet, had been eyewitnesses of all the sublimity.

Once more upon the woody Apennine,

The infant Alps, which-had I not before

Gazed on their mightier parents, where the pine
Sits on more shaggy summits, and where roar
The thundering lauwine-might be worshipp'd more;
But I have seen the soaring Jungfrau rear
Her never-trodden snow, and seen the hoar
Glaciers of bleak Mont-Blanc both far and near,
And in Chimari heard the thunder-hills of fear,
Th' Acroceraunian mountains of old name;
And on Parnassus seen the eagles fly
Like spirits of the spot, as 'twere for fame,
For still they soared unutterably high:
I've look'd on Ida with a Trojan's eye;
Athos, Olympus, Etna, Atlas, made

He

These hills seem things of lesser dignity,' &c. p. 39, 40. But the Pilgrim now approaches-and enters that place whither all his visions were tending, and which surpasses in grandeur all that even his eyes had before witnessed on earth. has not disappointed us in his poetical commemoration of the Eternal City. Souls the most untouched with that inspiration of which he has drunk so deeply, cannot gaze upon that most affecting of all earthly scenes, without being wrapt for a season into something of that high ecstasy which is the privileged element of genius,-without catching a Roman grandeur in the midst of the crumbled palaces of Rome. The Seven Hills themselves have mouldered into one mass of ruin. The concussions of war, time, and barbarism, have levelled the old land-marks with which we are familiar in the pages of Livy, Tacitus and Virgil,-they have bereaved not only the Palatine of its splendour, but the Tarpeian of its height. We descend, not ascend, to the Pantheon; and in a few damp, dreary, and subterranean dungeons, we survey the only relics of the gigantic palace of the Caesars, the Domus Aurea,' the wonder of the world. In the midst of this chaos and this desert-throned on the pathless labyrinth of her ruin, sits the Genius of the place-a personification which is not dreamlike or imaginary, but which rivets and rules the soul of the most prosaic observer,—the ma

jestic image or memory of the fallen city. Here indeed the sombre spirit of Harold must have found a fitting resting-place. Here, indeed, there was no occasion for the exercise of that fearful power, with which it has been his delight to throw a veil over gladness, and make us despise ourselves for being happy even under the fairest influences of the bloom of Nature. The darkest soul might here revel in images of grief, without fearing any want of sympathy for its terrible creations. But Byron has wisely forborne to carry the impression further than was necessary; or rather, with the genuine submission and reverence natural to a truly great mind, he disdains to be other than passive on such an arena; and taking, as it were, the troubled fingers of his Pilgrim from the lyre, he sets up the trembling strings to answer, only as it may be spoken to them by the mournful breezes of the surrounding desolation.

Oh Rome! my country! city of the soul!
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,
Lone mother of dead empires! and controul
In their shut breasts their petty misery.
What are our woes and sufferance?
The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way
O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, Ye!
Whose agonies are evils of a day-

Come and see

A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.

The Niobe of nations! there she stands,
Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe;
An empty urn within her withered hands,
Whose holy dust was scatter'd long ago;
The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now;
The very sepulchres lie tenantless

Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow,
Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness?

Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress!

The Goth, the Christian, Time, War, Flood, and Fire,
Have dealt upon the seven-hill'd city's pride;

She saw her glories star by star expire,
And up the steep barbarian monarchs ride,
Where the car clim'b the capitol: far and wide

:

Temple and tower went down, nor left a site :-
Chaos of ruins! who shall trace the void,
O'er the dim fragments cast a lunar light,

And
say,

"here was, or is," where all is doubly night?
The double night of ages, and of her,

Night's daughter, Ignorance, hath wrapt and wrap.
All round us; we but feel our way to err :
The ocean hath his chart, the stars their map,

And Knowledge spreads them on her ample lap;
But Rome is as the desart, where we steer
Stumbling o'er recollections; now we clap
Our hands, and cry, "Eureka!" it is clear-
When but some false mirage of ruin rises near.
Alas! the lofty city! and alas!

The trebly hundred triumphs! and the day
When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpass
The conqueror's sword in bearing fame away!
Alas, for Tully's voice, and Virgil's lay,
And Livy's pictur'd page!-but these shall be
Her resurrection; all beside-decay.

Alas, for Earth, for never shall we see

That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was free!
Oh thou, whose chariot roll'd on Fortune's wheel,
Triumphant Sylla! Thou, who didst subdue
Thy country's foes ere thou would pause to feel
The wrath of thy own wrongs, or reap the due
Of hoarded vengeance till thine eagles flew
O'er prostrate Asia;-thou, who with thy frown
Annihilated senates-Roman, too,

With all thy vices, for thou didst lay down
With an atoning smile a more than earthly crown-
The dictatorial wreath,-couldst thou divine
To what would one day dwindle that which made
Thee more than mortal? and that so supine

By aught than Romans Rome should thus be laid?
She who was named Eternal, and array'd

Her warriors but to conquer--she who veil'd
Earth with her haughty shadow, and display'd,
Until the o'er-canopied horizon fail'd,

Her rushing wings-Oh! she who was Almighty hail'd!

p. 42-45. Here his mind reverts, in its passion, to the great ruling spirits of his own country or age, in whom he discerns a dark and shadowy resemblance to the Syllas and Cæsars of Rome; and, passing from Cromwell to Napoleon, he glances at the French Revolution, and fills several confused and turbid stanzas with political retrospects and prophecies. From these lucubrations, however, we confess we are not unwillingly brought back to the scene before him, by a very beautiful passage, which ends, like so many others, with the powerful expression of his own gloom and misanthropy. This strain, however, is soon discontinued. Among the ruins of Rome there is no stedfast resting-place for the indulgence of individual sorrow; and the pilgrim, rising into a loftier mood, thus blends his spirit with the glorious decay.

Then let the winds howl on! their harmony
Shall henceforth be my music, and the night
The sound shall temper with the owlet's cry,
As I now hear them, in the fading light
Dim o'er the bird of darkness' pative site,
Answering each other on the Palatine,

With their large eyes, all glistening grey and bright,
And sailing pinions.-Upon such a shrine

What are our petty griefs?--let me not number mine.
Cypress and ivy, weed and wallflower grown
Matted and masse'd together, hillocks heap'd

On what were chambers, arch crush'd, column strown
In fragments, chok'd up vaults, and frescos steep'd
In subterranean damps, where the owl peep'd,
Deeming it midnight:-Temples, baths, or halls?
Pronounce who can; for all that Learning reap'd
From her research hath been, that these are walls-
Behold the Imperial Mount! 'tis thus the mighty falls.
There is the moral of all human tales;

'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past,
First Freedom, and then Glory-when that fails,
Wealth, vice, corruption,-barbarism at last.
And History, with all her volumes vast,
Hath but one page,-'tis better written here,
Where gorgeous Tyranny had thus amass'd
All treasures, all delights, that eye or ear,

Heart, soul could seek, tongue ask-Away with words! draw

near,

Admire, exuit-despise-laugh, weep,-for here

There is such matter for all feeling :-Man!

Thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear,

Ages and realms are crowded in this span,
This mountain, whose obliterated plan
The pyramid of empires pinnacled,

Of Glory's gewgaws shining in the van

Till the sun's rays with added flame were fill'd!

Where are its golden roofs ? where those who dared to build?

Tully was not so eloquent as thou,

Thou nameless column with the buried base!
What are the laurels of the Cæsar's brow?
Crown me with ivy from his dwelling-place.
Whose arch or pillar meets me in the face,
Titus or Trajan's? No-'tis that of Time:
Triumph, arch, pillar, all he doth displace
Scoffing; and apostolic statues climb

To crush the imperial urn, whose ashes slept sublime,