CHAP. XII.

I need not record my impressions of Genoa. My new friend and myself did what we could to exhaust it in the few hours during which the steamer lay in its harbour; but nothing that we saw or heard had any reference, either direct or indirect, to what was uppermost in our thoughts. Yet how fain I am to speak of its glories, sea-enthroned and hill-o'er-canopied of princely palace and gorgeous cathedral-of its charms of art and its charms of nature!.... It is not needed. Has it not been already photographed into English literature, in words that are as near to the realities of marble, and clothing, and life, as words can come ?

Late in the afternoon we again went on board, and in a short time Genoa was a tale to be told. Fearing lest my companion would renew the discussion so vitally affecting my hopes in regard to Stephanie, I took the first opportunity of again entrapping him into the story of his previous life. He had made several appeals to the Cyclopean brethren below, but in each instance had been absolutely refused admission into the engine-room.

"I told you," he resumed, when we had managed to secure an uninhabited corner of the ship-"I told you of my introduction to the monastery of Iveron. Some other time, perhaps, I shall tell you more about the place, and about the manners of the monks, which I now know are very different from the ordinary life of the world. But in the meantime it will be sufficient to say that after entering a great isolated gateway, and passing a curiously painted verandah, I found myself in what is rather a little town than a single building, the most characteristic feature of which consists in an intricate confusion of projecting windows wonderfully old and inquisition-looking. How I wish Mr. Winslow would go there, and bring it all back in his portfolio !

"I was fortunate in a companion. The priest to whose care I had been committed was as kind to me as my poor uncle had been. He had been a sailor in his youth, and had not lost the

love of his former life. On the very first evening I spent with him in the monastery, he took down some old books which he had on the shelf of his cell-works on navigation, containing, in addition to many uninteresting diagrams, pictures of ships, which he showed to me, with enthusiastic explanations of the different parts of them. It was now that the light of books first dawned on ine. The priest, whose name was Father Peter, was only too glad to hear me beseech earnestly to be taught the use of them. For days and years the good man laboured at the work of my education, and I never tired of my tasks. Day after day, the mystery became clearer, and the prospect wider and richer. I did not confine myself to one language, but mastered several, especially the old Greek, which was my chief delight. At last the mere mechanical part ceased to be a toil, and reading became a passion with me. But Father Peter's books were few, and I found one day, to my great sorrow, that I had come to the end of the shelf. I began again at the other end, and had done so again and again, before I became aware that the gratification was not such as it had formerly been. And what a chasm now seemed to stretch out darkly before me! A new necessity had grown up within me, and, without the means to meet it, life seemed empty dreariness. For a while I betook myself to my old wandering ways, but without the former relish.

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was much given, too, to basking in the verandah, and to lying in the chapel, dreaming of all that must be somewhere. Father Peter had told me that there were many more books in the world; and what I chiefly wearied for, was to have books that might tell me of the lives of all the great old saints that were painted on the chapel walls, and whose figures were as familiar to me, and as much a part of my life, as those of the living fathers around me.

"My son,' said Father Peter to me, one day, 'I have observed thee of late, that thou art different from thy former wont, and that thou lackest the joyfulness that becometh thy years. I think I know the burden that weighs on thy spirit. I have led thee to a Pisgah-top, whence

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thou hast seen a goodly land flowing with milk and wine and honey, but thou art denied an entrance into it. Is it not so, Iveron?' "It is,' I replied, seeing that he had indeed penetrated into my inmost mind.

"What wouldst thou give me now, were I to open up to thee treasures of learning that all thy years could not contain ?'

"If it were not sin, I could fall down and worship thee!'

"But hast thou considered the danger? Hearken, Iveron; even when I sailed on the deep, loving my ship and the open sea more than the home of my nativity, I yearned after the higher life that drinks its nourishment from the fountains of learning. After many years I retired hither from the world, trusting to dwell during the rest of my days in the calm of study and of worship. But I found ere long that (for me at least) the two paths led in different directions. I found myself losing the God I had innocently worshipped on the sea under the stars: I was losing him in the hopeless labyrinth of learned disputation. Instead of fearing the God to whom my mother taught me to pray, I found myself compelled as by a charm to seek out his uncreated essence, and to strive after such beatific visions of eternal light as I read of in the volumes of ancient lore. I know not where I would have stopped. Perchance I would have striven on to blasphemous questions, till heaven had blasted me with righteous fury. But a holy brother, long since gone to God, perceiving that my prayers were less frequent and my human sympathies less keen, and knowing in himself the refined temptations that Satan uses through learning, counselled me with words of sweetest persuasion to return to the simplicity of worship. After much fasting and prayer, it was given me so to do, and from that time I have restricted my study to the few books which thou and I have read together. I fear for thee, my son; for thou art quick to learn and ever desirous to know more. Yet I fear also to imprison the immortal mind that lives within thee. Thou art old enough now to judge for thyself. I give thee thy choice. Wilt thou for the sake of knowledge enter upon a new world of temptation, or wilt thou live as I live, a simple worshipper of God? Think how glorious all this is and he waved his hand over one of the fairest of scenes. "The whisper of the leaves will not pervert thee from thy God. The little brooks have no doubts wherewith to darken thy soul. This great chasm beneath us doth not veil its danger, and its awful depth hath no temptation to the sound in mind. The great sea worships in unquestioning silence, and only rises from the repose of adoration to do the behest of Him who made it. And this great mountain tells reverently of the years of the right hand of the Most High; and, though it seems almost to touch the heavens, yet clings with its firm foundation to its appointed place on earth. But in the sphere to which thou aspirest, which is peopled with the thoughts that are the offspring of a fallen race, there thou

shalt find confusion, doubt, perversion, the casting off of allegiance, and blasphemy. It is the ground-ah, how fair indeed!-on which earth and hell meet, and where their forces, alas! so frequently mingle, that it is sometimes beyond the keenest vision of men to distinguish them! Iveron, my son, season thy deliberation with prayer, and make thy choice.'

I was not slow in choosing. Indeed, what Father Peter had said to me, only confirmed my choice. I relished the idea of attaining to great learning all the more because there was danger to be encountered. When I announced my opinion to the good father, he said:

"It is God's will. Let Him defend thee. Come then with me, and I will show thee thy heart's desire.'

"I then accompanied him to another part of the monastery, and ascended with him a broad old staircase, terminating in a massive door, strongly secured. He then produced a ponderous key from his girdle, and admitted me into a small room which contained the earnest of what was coming, in the shape of loose leaves of parchment scattered hither and thither on the floor. Then with another ponderous key, which was secreted in a scarcely perceived recess in the wall, another massive door was opened.... I have read in fairy tales of some one being taken by powerful genii into the heart of the great mountains, and being there dazzled, even to fear, with the revelation of the riches of many mighty kings-vessels of gold and silver, rich robes and sparkling crowns, rings and jewels and chains, heaped together in untold profusion. I think I must have felt somehow as that one felt, when I beheld before me more books than I had ever believed to be in the world, ranged shelf above shelf, and heap upon heap, more to be prized than all the treasures in the heart of the earth! And such books, many of them! Massive, awful with the mystery of centuries, and richly encased as by the reverence of men lavishly devoted to the shrines of wisdom, how imposing they looked!-almost too grand to be handled. I clung in a kind of terrified delight to the robe of Father Peter, and asked, hesitatingly, if all this were really open to my use.

"The kind Abbot hath permitted it, though after much entreaty, he knowing the danger. All this is henceforth to be thy charge. The key is to be in thine own keeping. Thou must be answerable for every loss. Thou must watch therefore, for these are precious.... Ah, how precious! God forgive me, but I would fain close the door, Iveron, and throw myself again into the arms of this ancient father!"

"And as he spoke he seized a ponderous old manuscript, and pressed it to his heart, sighing like a man bereaved of a friend.

"I cannot describe my wondering joy; nor shall I dwell on the months and years during which I revelled in this exhaustless banquet of delights. I know, sir, from your face, that you, too, have known the frenzy of lore, that well repays the fevered frame and the aching head. My special delight was in deciphering old Greek

manuscript. The more difficult, the more welcome, as I felt that the feast would be all the longer. Had not Father Peter compelled me to daily exercise, I should long ere this have been among the secrets of the other world. Such continued to be my life until what I calculate to have been my sixteenth year. At length my tastes were turned into a new channel, and in this wise:

"An English artist, who had been travelling through the greater part of Turkey, happened to reach our peninsula. By the time he arrived at our monastery, both he and his servant were so weak with fever as to be unable to proceed on their journey. The monks gave them shelter, and I was appointed to minister to the artist himself. I rejoiced in the office, and wearied for his recovery-not only, I confess, for his own sake, but because I longed to satisfy my curiosity about that outer world of which I had heard so much. It was some weeks before he was able to converse; but I was selfish enough to appropriate the first fruits of his strength. We had many conversations together, much to my satisfaction. A kind of friendship sprang up between us; and when he was sufficiently strong, he began to apply himself to his professional pursuits, by making a few sketches of the scenery and the monasteries. I longed to learn his art, yet I knew his time to be so limited that I had not courage to ask him to teach me ; but having one day furtively employed his materials in painting a rude portrait of himself, which accidentally came under his notice, he professed to see some merit in it, and, on the day of his leaving, left to me as he said-in acknowledgment of my attentions to him, a large supply of colours, brushes, canvas &c., of which he affirmed that he had no further use on account of his intention of returning at once to England.

"My time—at least all the time I could spare from the chapel, in which I performed daily duty as a chorister-was now divided between books and painting. I tried landscape, but with little success; and I next devoted myself to copying the great paintings of the saints and martyrs that adorned the walls of the chapel. In this I found great pleasure. When my hand became a little more skilful, I tried to embody my faint recollections of her of whom we have spoken. I made many attemps before I succeeded in pleasing myself, the difficulty being that whenever I tried to fix my thoughts on the fleeting image, many other faces, equally unsubstantial, mingled themselves with the one I sought, rising from and blending into one another as do pictures seen in the clouds. At last I seemed to myself to have succeeded, and since that time the face has been more constant and more real.

"This kind of life continned till I must have reached my eighteenth year. During all the years I had lived on the peninsula of Monte Santo, I had never seen the face of woman. To me she was a beautiful mystery-a something that would mingle sweetly with the beatitudes

of that heaven to which our life of retirement pointed. You are doubtless aware that no female is permitted to dwell in any part of the peninsula, and that the law extends even to the brute animals. Between Father Peter and myself this was a forbidden subject; and I never heard it spoken of among the monks without a shrug of the shoulders, and an allusion to the story of the fall. But I could not shut my eyes to the pictures of the female saints which even they venerated, nor my mind to the tales of their beauty and of their noble deeds to which the many histories the library contained bore such ample testimony. Above all, the thought of her kept alive within me that sense of pure affection which seems to be reckoned the dearest feature of womanhood.

"One day, as I emerged from the library into the open air, to perform one of my various duties, namely, to sound the hour of noon, which is done, as are all the calls to prayer, by beating with a hammer upon a suspended board, I was startled by the sound of the sweetest laugh that had ever greeted my ear. I listened, and the silver notes were repeated with even more of sweetness than before. They seemed to stir some long silent chord in my heart which now thrilled as at the touch of an angel. I rushed out eagerly into the front court whence the sound seemed to come, and, looking up to the verandab, saw, to my astonishment, the Abbot and several of the monks in conversation with a company of strangers, among whom were two ladies, both of them far more beautiful than any of the pictures of the saints that had hitherto been my ideal of loveliness. From where I stood I could see also the ship in which they had come, and at the landing a boat drawn up, beside which stood several sailors in bright uniform.

"Father Peter was among the number of the monks who were conversing with the strangers. I saw him direct the attention of the Abbot to me, who then beckoned me to him. I ascended the few steps which admitted to the platform of the verandah in great trepidation, wondering what could be wanted with me.

"Iveron,' said Father Peter, when I had joined them, 'do thou interpret for me, while I go and make arrangements for the entertainment of the strangers.'

"How my heart thrilled when I found myself face to face with such beauty, and saw the ladies stretch out their hands to me with looks of kindness such as I had only read or dreamed of before! I had to conduct a long conversation between the Abbot and the visitors, the chief part of which consisted in the apologetic explanations of the former in regard to the strictness of monastic rule not permitting him to receive the ladies within the monastery. Indeed he had gone to the utmost verge of his power in admitting them so far as the verandah. In a short time the Abbot, thinking that all would now be ready for their entertainment, demanded of me the key of the library, and then led the gentlemen off, leaving me in the verandah with