Still it was thought a dangerous trial of the public pulse. The pity felt for the tender age of Ippolito was increased by the anguish which he found himself unable to repress. "Good God!" cried he, "must I die so young? And must I never see must I never see the light again, and Florence, and my dear friends?" And he fell into almost abject entreaties to be spared; for he thought of Dianora. But the bystanders fancied that he was merely afraid of death; and, by the help of suggestions from the Bardi partisans, their pity almost turned into contempt. He prostrated himself at the magistrate's feet; he kissed his knees; he disgusted his own father; till, finding every thing against him, and smitten at once with a sense of his cowardly appearance, and the necessity of keeping his mistress's honor inviolable, he declared his readiness to die like a man; and, at the same time, stood wringing his hands, and weeping like an infant. He was sentenced to die next day.

The day came. The hour came. The Standard of Justice was hoisted before the door of the tribunal; and the trumpet blew through the city, announcing the death of a criminal. Dianora, to whom the news had been gradually broken, heard it in her chamber, and would have burst forth, and proclaimed the secret, but for Madonna Lucrezia, who spoke of her father and mother and all the Bardi, and the inutility of attempting to save one of the opposite faction, and the dreadful consequences to every-body if the secret were betrayed. Dianora heard little about everybody ; but the habit of respecting her father and mother, and dreading their reproaches, kept her, moment after

moment, from doing any thing but listen, and look pale; and, in the mean time, the procession began moving towards the scaffold.

Ippolito issued forth from the prison, looking more like a young martyr than a criminal. He was now perfectly quiet, and a sort of unnatural glow had risen into his cheeks, the result of the enthusiasm and conscious self-sacrifice into which he had worked himself during the night. He had only prayed, as a last favor, that he might be taken through the street in which the house of the Bardi stood: for he had lived, he said, as everybody knew, in great hostility with that family; and he now felt none any longer, and wished to bless the house as he passed it. The magistrate, for more reasons than one, had no objection: the old confessor, with tears in his eyes, said that the dear boy would still be an honor to his family, as surely as he would be a saint in heaven; and the procession moved on. The main feeling of the crowd, as usual, was that of curiosity; but there were few, indeed, in whom it was not mixed with pity: and many females found the sight so intolerable, that they were seen coming away down the streets, weeping bitterly, and unable to answer the questions of those they met.

The procession now began to pass the house of the Bardi. Ippolito's face, for an instant, turned of a chalky whiteness, and then resumed its color. His lips trembled, his eyes filled with tears; and thinking his mistress might possibly be at the window, taking a last look of the lover that died for her, he bowed his head gently, at the same time forcing a smile, which glittered through his watery eyes. At that instant, the

trumpet blew its dreary blast for the second time. Dianora had already risen on her couch, listening, and asking what noise it was that approached. Her aunt endeavored to quiet her with excuses: but this last noise aroused her beyond control; and the good old lady, forgetting herself in the condition of the two lovers, no longer attempted to stop her. "Go," said she, "in God's name, my child; and Heaven be with you!"

Dianora, her hair streaming, her eye without a tear, her cheek on fire, burst, to the astonishment of her kindred, into the room where they were all standing. She tore them aside from one of the windows with a preternatural strength; and, stretching forth her head and hands, like one inspired, cried out, "Stop, stop! it is my Ippolito! my husband!" And, so saying, she actually made a movement as if she would have stepped to him out of the window; for every thing but his image faded from her eyes. A movement of confusion took place among the multitude. Ippolito stood rapt on the sudden, trembling, weeping, and stretching his hands towards the window, as if praying to his guardian angel. The kinsmen would have prevented her from doing any thing further; but, as if all the gentleness of her character was gone, she broke from them with violence and contempt, and, rushing down stairs into the street, exclaimed, in a frantic manner, "People! dear God! countrymen! I am a Bardi; he is a Buondelmonte: he loved me; and that is the whole crime!" and, at these last words, they were locked in each other's arms.

The populace now broke through all restraint.

They stopped the procession; they bore Ippolito back again to the seat of the magistracy, carrying Dianora with him; they described in a peremptory manner the mistake; they sent for the heads of the two houses; they made them swear a treaty of peace, amity, and unity; and, in half an hour after the lover had been on the road to his death, he set out upon it again, the acknowledged bridegroom of the beautiful creature by his side.

Never was such a sudden revulsion of feeling given to a whole city. The women who had retreated in anguish came back the gayest of the gay. Everybody plucked all the myrtles they could find, to put into the hands of those who made the former procession, and who now formed a singular one for a bridal: but all the young women fell in with their white veils ; and, instead of the funeral dirge, a song of thanksgiving was chanted. The very excess of their sensations enabled the two lovers to hold up. Ippolito's cheeks, which seemed to have fallen away in one night, appeared to have plumped out again faster; and if he was now pale, instead of high-colored, the paleness of Dianora had given way to radiant blushes which made up for it. He looked as he ought, like the person saved; she, like the angelic savior.

Thus the two lovers passed on, as if in a dream tumultuous but delightful. Neither of them looked on the other; they gazed hither and thither on the crowd, as if in answer to the blessings that poured upon them: but their hands were locked fast, and they went like one soul in a divided body.

217

RHYME AND REASON;

Or, a New Proposal to the Public respecting Poetry in Ordinary.

FRIEND of ours the other day, taking up the miscellaneous poems of Tasso, read the titlepage into English as follows, "The Rhymes of the Lord Twisted Yew, Amorous, Bosky, and Maritime."* The Italians exhibit a modesty worthy of imitation in calling their miscellaneous poems rhymes." Twisted Yew himself, with all his genius, has put forth an abundance of these terminating blossoms, without any fruit behind them; and his countrymen of the present day do not scruple to confess, that their living poetry consists of little else. The French have a game at verses, called Rhymed Ends (Bouts Rimés), which they practise a great deal more than they are aware; and the English, though they are a more poetical people, and lay claim to the character of a less vain one, practise the same game to a very uncandid extent, without so much as allowing that the title is applicable to any part of it.

Yet how many "poems" are there among all these nations, of which we require no more than the rhymes to be acquainted with the whole of them?

* "Rime del Signor Torquato Tasso, Amorose, Boschereccie, Marittime," &c.