of its efficacy, which covered the long grizzle hair of the worthy quadruped with a profusion of pink blossoms, like embroidery. The offer was declined; but Assunta told Simplizio to carry it himself, and to walk by the side of Ser Canonico quite up to the church-porch, having seen what a 5 sad dangerous beast his Reverence had under him. With perfect good will, partly in the pride of obedience to Assunta, and partly to enjoy the renown of accompanying a canon of holy church, Simplizio did as she enjoined.

And now the sound of village bells, in many hamlets and 10 convents and churches out of sight, was indistinctly heard and lost again; and at last the five of Certaldo seemed to crow over the faintness of them all. The freshness of the morning was enough of itself to excite the spirits of youth; a portion of which never fails to descend on years that are 15 far removed from it, if the mind has partaken in innocent mirth while it was its season and its duty to enjoy it. Parties of young and old passed the canonico and his attendant with mute respect, bowing and bare-headed; for that ebony staff threw its spell over the tongue, which the frank and hearty 20 salutation of the bearer was inadequate to break. Simplizio, once or twice, attempted to call back an intimate of the same age with himself; but the utmost he could obtain was a "Riveritissimo" and a genuflexion to the rider. It is reported that a heart-burning rose up from it in the breast of 25 a cousin, some days after, too distinctly apparent in the longdrawn appellation of "Gnor Simplizio."

Ser Francesco moved gradually forward, his steed picking his way along the lane and looking fixedly on the stones with all the sobriety of a mineralogist. He himself was well 30 satisfied with the pace, and told Simplizio to be sparing of the switch unless in case of a hornet or a gadfly. Simplizio smiled toward the hedge, and wondered at the condescension of so great a theologian and astrologer in joking with him about the gadflies and hornets in the beginning of April. 35 "Ah! there are men in the world who can make wit out of

anything!" said he to himself. As they approached the walls of the town, the whole country was pervaded by a stir

ring and diversified air of gladness. Laughter and songs and flutes and viols, inviting voices and complying responses, mingled with merry bells and with processional hymns, along the woodland paths and along the yellow meadows. It was 5 really the Lord's Day, for he made his creatures happy in it, and their hearts were thankful. Even the cruel had ceased from cruelty, and the rich man alone exacted from the animal his daily labor. Ser Francesco made this remark, and told his youthful guide that he had never been before 10 where he could not walk to church on a Sunday; and that nothing should persuade him to urge the speed of his beast, on the Seventh Day, beyond his natural and willing foot's pace.

He reached the gates of Certaldo more than half an hour 15 before the time of service, and he found laurels suspended over them and being suspended; and many pleasant and beautiful faces were protruded between the ranks of gentry and clergy who awaited him. Little did he expect such an attendance; but Fra Biagio of San Vivaldo, who himself had 20 offered no obsequiousness or respect, had scattered the secret of his visit throughout the whole country. A young poet, the most celebrated in the town, approached the canonico with a long scroll of verses, which fell below the knee, beginning,

25

"How shall we welcome our illustrious guest?"

To which Ser Francesco immediately replied, "Take your favorite maiden, lead the dance with her, and bid all your friends follow; you have a good half hour for it."

Universal applauses succeeded, the music struck up, couples 30 were instantly formed. The gentry on this occasion led out the cittadinanza, as they usually do in the villeggiatura, rarely in the carnival, and never at other times. The elder of the priests stood round in their sacred vestments, and looked with cordiality and approbation on the youths, whose 35 hands and arms could indeed do much and did it, but whose active eyes could rarely move upward the modester of their partners. While the elder of the clergy were thus gathering

the fruits of their liberal cares and paternal exhortations, some of the younger looked on with a tenderer sentiment, not unmingled with regret. Suddenly the bells ceased; the figure of the dance was broken; all hastened into the church; and many hands that joined on the green met together at the 5 font and touched the brow reciprocally with its lustral waters, in soul-devotion.

After the service, and after a sermon a good church-hour in length to gratify him, enriched with compliments from all authors, Christian and pagan, informing him at the conclu- 10 sion that, although he had been crowned in the Capitol, he must die, being born mortal, Ser Francesco rode homeward. The sermon seemed to have sunk deeply into him, and even into the horse under him, for both of them nodded, both snorted, and one stumbled. Simplizio was twice fain to cry, 15 "Ser Canonico! Riverenza! in this country if we sleep before dinner it does us harm. There are stones in the road, Ser Canonico, loose as eggs in a nest, and pretty nigh as thick together, huge as mountains."

"Good lad!" said Ser Francesco, rubbing his eyes, "toss 20 the biggest of them out of the way, and never mind the rest."

The horse, although he walked, shuffled almost into an amble as he approached the stable, and his master looked up at it with nearly the same contentment. Assunta had been 25 ordered to wait for his return, and cried, "O Ser Francesco! you are looking at our long apricot, that runs the whole length of the stable and barn, covered with blossoms as the old white hen is with feathers. You must come in the summer, and eat this fine fruit with Signor Padrone. You 30 cannot think how ruddy and golden and sweet and mellow it is. There are peaches in all the fields, and plums and pears and apples, but there is not another apricot for miles. and miles. Ser Giovanni brought the stone from Naples before I was born; a lady gave it to him when she had eaten 35 only half the fruit off it: but perhaps you may have seen her, for you have ridden as far as Rome, or beyond. Padrone looks often at the fruit, and eats it willingly; and I have seen

5

him turn over the stones in his plate, and choose one out from the rest, and put it into his pocket, but never plant it."

"Where is the youth?" inquired Ser Francesco.
"Gone away," answered the maiden.

"I wanted to thank him," said the Canonico.
"May I tell him so?" asked she.

"And give him," continued he, holding a piece of silver

"I will give him something of my own, if he goes on and 10 behaves well," said she; "but Signor Padrone would drive him away forever, I am sure, if he were tempted in an evil hour to accept a quattrino for any service he could render the friends of the house."

Ser Francesco was delighted with the graceful animation 15 of this ingenuous girl, and asked her, with a little curiosity, how she could afford to make him a present."

"I do not intend to make him a present," she replied; "but it is better he should be rewarded by me," she blushed and hesitated, " or by Signor Padrone," she added, "than by 20 your Reverence. He has not done half his duty yet; not half. I will teach him: he is quite a child; four months younger than me.”

Ser Francesco went into the house, saying to himself at the doorway, "Truth, innocence, and gentle manners have not 25 yet left the earth. There are sermons that never make the I have heard but few of them, and come from church for this."

ears weary.

Whether Simplizio had obeyed some private signal from Assunta, or whether his own delicacy had prompted him to 30 disappear, he was now again in the stable, and the manger was replenished with hay. A bucket was soon after heard ascending from the well; and then two words:

Thomas De Quincey.

1785-1859.

LEVANA AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW.

(From Suspiria de Profundis, 1845.)

I

Oftentimes at Oxford I saw Levana in my dreams. knew her by her Roman symbols. Who is Levana? Reader, that do not pretend to have leisure for very much scholarship, you will not be angry with me for telling you. Levana was the Roman goddess that performed for the new-born 5 infant the earliest office of ennobling kindness,-typical, by its mode, of that grandeur which belongs to man everywhere, and of that benignity in powers invisible which even in pagan worlds sometimes descends to sustain it. At the very moment of birth, just as the infant tasted for the first time the at- 10 mosphere of our troubled planet, it was laid on the ground. That might bear different interpretations. But immediately, lest so grand a creature should grovel there for more than one instant, either the paternal hand, as proxy for the goddess Levana, or some near kinsman, as proxy for the father, raised 15 it upright, bade it look erect as the king of all this world, and presented its forehead to the stars, saying, perhaps, in his heart, "Behold what is greater than yourselves!" This symbolic act represented the function of Levana. And that mysterious lady, who never revealed her face (except to me 20 in dreams), but always acted by delegation, had her name from the Latin verb (as still it is the Italian verb) levare, 66 to raise aloft."

This is the explanation of Levana. And hence it has arisen that some people have understood by Levana the 25 tutelary power that controls the education of the nursery. She, that would not suffer at his birth even a prefigurative or mimic degradation for her awful ward, far less could be