ill with many, unless we take heed; and good with all, if we will but learn how to employ them. Petrarca. There is somewhat of reason in this. You strengthen me to proceed with you: I can bear the rest. Boccaccio. Guiberto had taken leave of his friend, and had advanced a quarter of a mile, which (as you perceive) is nearly the whole way, on his return to the monastery, when he was overtaken by some peasants, who were hastening homeward from Florence. The information he collected from them made him determine to retrace his steps. He entered the room again, and, from the intelligence he had just acquired, gave Amadeo the assurance that Monna Tita must delay her entrance into the convent; for that the abbess had that moment gone down the hill on her way toward Siena, to venerate some holy relics, carrying with her three candles, each five feet long, to burn before them; which candles contained many particles of the myrrh presented at the nativity of our Saviour by the wise men of the East. Amadeo breathed freely, and was persuaded by Guiberto to take another cup of old wine, and to eat with him some cold roast kid, which had been offered him for merenda.* After the agitation of his mind a heavy sleep fell upon the lover, coming almost before Guiberto departed; so heavy indeed that Silvestrina was alarmed. It was her apartment; and she performed the honours of it as well as any lady in Florence could have done. Petrarca. I easily believe it: the poor are more attentive than the rich, and the young are more compassionate than the old. Boccaccio. Oh Francesco! what inconsistent creatures are we! Petrarca. True, indeed! I now foresee the end. He might have done worse. Boccaccio. I think so. Petrarca. He almost deserved it. Boccaccio. I think that too. Petrarca. Wretched mortals! our passions for ever lead us into this, or worse. Boccaccio. Ay, truly; much worse generally. Petrarca. The very twig on which the flowers grew lately, scourges us to the bone in its maturity. Boccaccio. Incredible will it be to you, and, by my faith! to me * Merenda is luncheon, meridiana, eaten by the wealthier at the hour when the peasants dine. it was hardly credible. return by sunrise found Amadeo in the arms of sleep. Petrarca. Not at all, not at all incredible: the truest lover would have done the same, exhausted by suffering. Certain however is it, that Guiberto on his Boccaccio. He was truly in the arms of sleep; but, Francesco, there was another pair of arms about him, worth twenty such, divinity as he is. A loud burst of laughter from Guiberto did not arouse either of the parties: but Monna Tita heard it, and rushed into the room, tearing her hair, and invoking the saints of heaven against the perfidy of man. She seized Silvestrina by that arm which appeared the most offending: the girl opened her eyes, turned on her face, rolled out of bed, and threw herself at the feet of her mistress, shedding tears, and wiping them away with the only piece of linen about her. Monna Tita too shed tears. Amadeo still slept profoundly; a flush, almost of crimson, overspreading his cheeks. Monna Tita led away, after some pause, poor Silvestrina, and made her confess the whole. She then wept more and more, and made the girl confess it again, and explain her confession. "I cannot believe such wickedness," she cried: "he could not be so hardened. O sinful Silvestrina! how will you ever tell Father Doni one half! one quarter! He never can absolve you." Petrarca. Giovanni! I am glad I did not enter the house; you were prudent in restraining me. I have no pity for the youth at all: never did one so deserve to lose a mistress. Boccaccio. Say, rather, to gain a wife. Petrarca. Absurdity! impossibility! Boccaccio. He won her fairly; strangely, and on a strange table, as he played his game. Listen! that guitar is Monna Tita's. Listen! what a fine voice (do not you think it ?) is Amadeo's. Amadeo (Singing). Oh! I have err'd! I laid my hand upon the nest Of the wrong bird. Petrarca. She laughs too at it! Ah! Monna Tita was made by nature to live on this side of Fiesole. XIV. CHAUCER, BOCCACCIO, AND PETRARCA. Petrarca. You have kept your promise like an Englishman, Ser* Geoffreddo: welcome to Arezzo. This gentleman is Messer Giovanni Boccaccio, of whose unfinished Decameron, which I opened to you in manuscript, you expressed your admiration when we met at Florence in the spring. Boccaccio. I was then at Certaldo, my native place, filling up my stories, and have only to regret that my acquaintance with one so friendly and partial to me has been formed so late. How did Rome answer your expectations, sir? Chaucer. I had passed through Pisa; of which city the Campo Santo, now nearly finished, after half a century from its foundation, and the noble street along the Arno,† are incomparably more beautiful than anything in Rome. Petrarca. That is true. I have heard, however, some of your countrymen declare that Oxford is equal to Pisa, in the solidity, extent, and costliness of its structures. Chaucer. Oxford is the most beautiful of our cities: it would be a very fine one if there were no houses in it. Petrarca. How is that? Chaucer. The lath-and-plaster white-washed houses look despicably mean under the colleges. Boccaccio. Few see anything in the same point of view. It would gratify me highly, if you would tell me with all the frankness * Ser is commonly used by Boccaccio and others for Messer. †The Corso in Rome is now much finer. P. Leopold dismantled the walls of Pisa, and demolished more than fifty towers and turrets. Every year castellated mansions are modernised in Italy. of your character and your country, what struck you most in the capital of the world,' as the vilest slaves in it call their great open cloaca. Chaucer. After the remains of antiquity, I know not whether anything struck me more forcibly than the superiority of our English churches and monasteries. Boccaccio. I do not wonder that yours should be richer and better built, although I never heard before that they are: for the money that is collected in Rome or elsewhere, by the pontiffs, is employed for the most part in the aggrandisement of their families. Messer Francesco, although he wears the habit of a churchman, speaks plainlier on these subjects than a simple secular, as I am, dares to do. Petrarca. We may however, I trust, prefer the beauty and variety of our scenery to that of most in the world. Tuscany is less diversified, and, excepting the mountains above Camaldoli and Laverna, less sublime, than many other parts of Italy; yet where does Nature smile with more contented gaiety than in the vicinity of Florence? Great part of our sea-coast along the Mediterranean is uninteresting; yet it is beautiful in its whole extent from France to Massa. Afterward there is not a single point of attraction till you arrive at Terracina. The greater part of the way round the peninsula, from Terracina to Pesaro, has its changes of charms: thenceforward all is flat again. Boccaccio. We can not travel in the most picturesque and romantic regions of our Italy, from the deficiency of civilisation in the people. Chaucer. Yet, Messer Giovanni, I never journeyed so far through so enchanting a scenery as there is almost the whole of the way from Arezzo to Rome, particularly round Terni and Narni and Perugia. Our master Virgil speaks of dreams that swarm upon the branches of one solitary elm. In this country more than dreams swarm upon every spray and leaf; and every murmur of wood or water comes from and brings with it inspiration. Never shall I forget the hour when my whole soul was carried away from me by the cataract of Terni, and when all things existing were lost to me in its stupendous waters. The majestic woods that bowed their heads before it; the sun that was veiling his glory in mild translucent clouds over the furthest course of the river; the moon, that suspended her orb in the very centre of it; seemed ministering Powers, themselves in undiminished admiration of the marvel they had been looking on through unnumbered ages. What are the works of man in comparison with this? What, indeed, are the other works of Nature? Petrarca. Ser Giovanni! this, which appears too great even for Nature, was not too great for man. Our ancestors achieved it. Curius Dentatus, in his consulate, forbade the waters of the Velinus to inundate so beautiful a valley, and threw them down this precipice into the Nar. When the traces of all their other victories, all their other labours, shall have disappeared, this work of the earlier and the better Romans shall continue to perform its office, shall produce its full effect, and shall astonish the beholder as it astonished him at its first completion. : Chaucer. I was not forgetful that we heard the story from our guide but I thought him a boaster: and now for the first time I learn that any great power hath been exerted for any great good. Roads were levelled for aggression, and vast edifices were constructed either for pride or policy, to commemorate some victory, to reward the Gods for giving it, or to keep them in the same temper. There is nothing of which men appear to have been in such perpetual apprehension, as the inconstancy of the deities they worship. Many thanks, Ser Francesco, for reminding me of what the guide asserted, and for teaching me the truth. I thought the fall of the Velinus not only the work of Nature, h altogether to you and me, ever made on earth. My pre countenance of Ser Geoffreddo, Rome, was almost as great 7 than sad. r principally what had heard of it both at home and abroad. to the eternal city, she seems to have surrendere wildness, and to have assumed all her stateliness an her awfulness and severity. The vast plain toward the sea abases the soul together with it; while the hills on the left, chiefly those of Tusculum and of Tibur, overshadow and almost overwhelm it with obscure remembrances, some of them descending from the heroic ages, others from an age more miraculous than the heroic, the Herculean infancy of immortal Rome. Soracte comes boldly forward, and stands alone. Round about, on every side, we behold an infinity of baronial castles, many moated and flanked with towers and bastions; many following the direction of the precipitous hills, |