sympathy in a stranger will be grateful to him in this foreign land, where friends are so few."

We entered the chapel together, and ascending a flight of steps beside the altar, passed into the cloisters of the convent. Another flight of steps led us to the dormitories above, in one of which the sick man lay. Here my guide left me for a moment, and softly entered a neighbouring cell. He soon returned and beckoned me to come in. The room was dark and hot; for the window-shutter had been closed to keep out the rays of the sun, that in the after part of the day fell unobstructed upon the western wall of the convent. In one corner of the little room, upon a pallet of straw, lay the sick man, with his face towards the wall. As I entered he raised himself upon his elbow, and stretching out his hand to me, said, in a faint voice,—

"I am glad to see you. It is kind in you to make me this visit."

Then speaking to his friend, he begged him to open the window-shutter, and let in the light and air; and as the bright sunbeam through the wreathing vapours of evening played upon the wall and ceiling, he said, with a sigh:

"How beautiful is an Italian sunset! Its splendour is all around us, as if we stood in the horizon itself and could touch the sky. And yet to a sick man's feeble and distempered sight it has a wan and sickly hue. He turns away with an aching heart from the splendour he cannot enjoy. The cool air seems the only friendly thing that is left for him."

As he spake, a deeper shade of sadness stole over his pale countenance, sallow and attenuated by long sickness. But it soon passed off; and as the conversation changed to other topics, he grew cheerful again. He spake of his return to his native land with childish delight. This hope had not deserted him. It seemed never to have entered his mind

that even this consolation would be denied him,—that death would thwart even these fond anticipations.

"I shall soon be well enough," said he, "to undertake the journey; and oh, with what delight shall I turn my back upon the Apennines! We shall cross the Alps into Switzerland, then go down the Rhine to England, and soon, soon we shall see the shores of the Emerald Isle, and once more embrace father-mother-sisters! By my profession I have renounced the world, but not those holy emotions of love, which are one of the highest attributes of the soul, and which, though sown in corruption here, shall hereafter be raised in incorruption. No; even He that died for us upon the Cross, in the last hour, in the unutterable agony of death, was mindful of his mother; as if to teach us that this holy love should be our last worldly thought, the last point of earth from which the soul should take its flight for heaven."

He ceased to speak. His eyes were fastened upon the sky with a fixed and steady gaze, though all unconsciously, for his thoughts were far away amid the scenes of his distant home. As I left his cell he seemed sinking to sleep, and hardly noticed my departure. The gloom of twilight had already filled the cloisters; the monks were chaunting their evening hymn in the chapel, and one unbroken shadow spread through the long "cathedral aisle" of forest trees which led me homeward. There, in the silence of the hour, and amid the almost sepulchral gloom of the woodland scene, I tried to impress upon my careless heart the serious and affecting lesson I had learned.

I saw the sick monk no more; but a day or two afterward I heard in the village that he had departed—not for an earthly, but for a heavenly home.

NOTE-BOOK.

Once more among the old gigantic hills,
With vapours clouded o'er,

The vales of Lombardy grow dim behind,
And rocks ascend before.

They beckon me-the giants-from afar,
They wing my footsteps on;

Their helms of ice, their plumage of the pine,

Their cuirasses of stone.

OEHLENSCHLAGER.

THE
HE glorious autumn closed. From the Abruzzi came

the Zampognari, playing their rustic bagpipes beneath the images of the Virgin in the streets of Rome, and hailing with rude minstrelsy the approach of merry Christmas. The shops were full of dolls and gew-gaws for the Bifana, who enacts in Italy the same merry interlude for children that Santiclaus does in the north; and travellers from colder climes began to fly southward, like the sun-seeking swallows.

I left Rome for Venice, crossing the Apennines by the wild gorge of Strettura, in a drenching rain. At Fano we struck into the sands of the Adriatic, and followed the seashore northward to Rimini, where, in the market-place, stands a pedestal of stone, from which, as an officious cicerone informed me, "Julius Cæsar preached to his army, before crossing the Rubicon." Other principal points in my journey were Bologna, with its Campo Santo, its gloomy arcades, and its sausages; Ferrara, with its Ducal Palace and the dungeon of Tasso; Padua, the learned, with its sombre and scholastic air, and its inhabitants "apt for pike or pen."

I first saw Venice by moonlight, as we skimmed by the island of St. George in a felucca, and entered the Grand Canal. A thousand lamps glittered from the square of St.

Mark, and along the water's edge. Above rose the cloudy shapes of spires, domes, and palaces, emerging from the sea; and occasionally the twinkling lamps of a gondola darted across the water like a shooting star, and suddenly disappeared, as if quenched in the wave. There was something so unearthly in the scene-so visionary and fairy-like -that I almost expected to see the city float away like a cloud, and dissolve into thin air.

Howell, in his Signorie of Venice, says, "It is the water, wherein she lies like a swan's nest, that doth both fence and feed her." Again-" She swims in wealth and wantonness, as well as she doth in the waters; she melts in softness and sensuality, as much as any other whatsoever." And still farther-" Her streets are so neat and evenly paved, that in the dead of winter one may walk up and down in a pair of satin pantables and crimson silk stockings, and not be dirtied." And the old Italian proverb says,

Venegia, Venegia,

Chi non ti vede non ti pregia;

Mà chi t' ha troppo veduto
Ti dispregia.

Venice, Venice, he that doth not see thee, doth not prize thee; but he that hath too much seen thee, doth despise thee!

Should you ever want a gondolier at Venice to sing you a passage from Tasso by moonlight, inquire for Toni Toscan. He has a voice like a raven. I sketched his portrait in my note-book, and he wrote beneath it this inscription,

Poeta Natural che Venizian,

Ch' el so nome xe un tal Toni Toscan.

The road from Venice to Trieste traverses a vast tract of level land, with the Fruilian Mountains on the left, and the Adriatic on the right. You pass through long avenues of

trees, and the road stretches in unbroken perspective before and behind. Trieste is a busy commercial city, with wide streets intersecting each other at right angles. It is a mart for all nations. Greeks, Turks, Italians, Germans, French, and English meet you at every corner, and in every coffeehouse; and the ever-changing variety of national countenance and costume affords an amusing and instructive study for a traveller.

Trieste to Vienna. Daybreak among the Carnic Alps. Above and around me huge snow-covered pinnacles, shapeless masses in the pale starlight-till, touched by the morning sunbeam, as by Ithuriel's spear, they assume their natural forms and dimensions. A long winding valley beneath, sheeted with spotless snow. At my side a yawning and rent chasm ;-a mountain brook seen now and then through the chinks of its icy bridge-black and treacherous --and tinkling along its frozen channel with a sound like a distant clanking of chains.

Magnificent highland scenery between Graetz and Vienna in the Steiermark. The wild mountain-pass from Meerzuschlag to Schottwein. A castle built like an eagle's nest upon the top of a perpendicular crag. A little hamlet at the base of the mountain. A covered wagon, drawn by twentyone horses, slowly toiling up the slippery zig-zag road. snow-storm. Reached Vienna at midnight.

A

On the southern bank of the Danube, about sixteen miles above Vienna, stands the ancient castle of Greifenstein, where-if the tale be true, though many doubt and some deny it-Richard the Lion-heart of England was imprisoned, when returning from the first Crusade. It is built upon the summit of a steep and rocky hill, that rises just far enough from the river's brink to leave a foothold for the highway.