CLXXX.

His steps are not upon thy paths,-thy fields
Are not a spoil for him-thou dost arise

And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray
And howling, to his Gods, where haply lies
His petty hope in some near port or bay,
And dashest him again to earth :-there let him lay.
CLXXXI.

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals,
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war;

These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
A like the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.

CLXXXII.

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save theeAssyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters wasted them while they were free, And many a tyrant since; their shores obey The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to desarts:-not so thou, Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play-Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure browSuch as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

CLXXXIII.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempest: in all time,

Calm or convuls'd-in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime

Dark-heaving:-boundless, endless, and sublime-
The image of Eternity-the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime

The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

CLXXXIV.

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy
I wantoned with thy breakers-they to me.
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror-'twas a pleasing fear
For I was as it were a child of thee,

And trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid my hand upon thy mane-as I do here.
CLXXXV.

My task is done-my song hath ceased-my theme
Has died into an echo; it is fit

The spell should break of this protracted dream.
The torch shall be extinguish'd which hath lit
My midnight lamp-and what is writ, is writ,-
Would it were worthier! but I am not now
That which I have been-and my visions flit
Less palpably before me-and the glow

Which in my spirit dwelt, is fluttering, faint, and low.
CLXXXVI.

Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been-
A sound which makes us linger;-yet-farewell!
Ye! who have traced the Pilgrim to the scene
Which is his last, if in your memories dwell
A thought which once was his, if on ye swell
A single recollection, not in vain

He wore his sandal-shoon, and scallop-shell;
Farewell with him alone may rest the pain,
If such there were-with you, the moral of his strain!

END OF CANTO THE FOURTH.

NOTES TO THE FOURTH CANTO.

1. The communication between the Ducal palace and the prisons of Venice is a gloomy bridge, or covered gallery, high above the water, and divided by a stone wall into a passage and a cell.

2. An old writer, describing the appearance of Venice, has made use of the above image, which would not be poetical were it not true.

3. The well known song of the gondoliers, of alternate stanzas, from Tasso's Jerusalem, has died with the independance of Venice.

4. The answer of the mother of Brasidas to the strangers who praised the memory of her son.

5. The lion has lost nothing by his journey to the Invalides, but the gospel which supported the paw that is now on a level with the other foot.

6. After many vain efforts on the part of the Italians, entirely to throw off the yoke of Frederic Barbarosse, and as fruitless attempts of the Emperor to make himself absolute master throughout the whole of his Cisalpine dominions, the bloody struggles of four and twenty years, were happily brought to a close in the city of Venice.

7. The reader will recollect the exclamation of the highlander, Oh for one hour of Dundee !

8. After the loss of the battle of Pola, an embassy was sent to the conquerors with a blank sheet of paper, pray. ing them to describe what terms they pleased, and leave to Venice only her independance. The Prince of Padua was inclined to listen to the proposals, but the Genoese, who, after the victory at Pola, had shouted, "to Venice, to Venice, and long live St. George," determined to annihilate their rival, and Peter Doria, their commander-inehief, returned this answer to the supplicants, "On God's faith, gentlemen of Venice, ye shall have no peace from the Signor of Padua, nor from our commune of Genoa, until we have first put a réin upon those unbridled horses of yours, that are upon the Porch of your evangelist St. Mark. Wild as they may be we will soon make them stand still. And this is the pleasure of us and of our commune.

9. The population of Venice at the end of the seventeenth century amounted to nearly two hundred thousand souls. At the last census, taken two years ago, it was no more than about one hundred and three thousand, and it diminishes daily.

10. Tannen is the plural of tanne, a species of fir, peculiar to the Alps.

11. The above description may seem fantastical or exaggerated to those who have never seen an Oriental or an Italian sky, yet it is but a literal and hardly sufficient delineation of an August evening contemplated along the banks of the Brenta near La Mira.

12. Thanks to the critical acumen of a Scotchman, we know as little of Laura as ever.

13. Petrarch retired to Arqua immediately on his return from the unsuccessful attempt to visit Urban V. at Rome, in the year 1370, and, with the exception of his celebrated visit to Venice, in company with Francesco Novella da Carrara, he appears to have passed the four last years of his life between that charming solitude and Padua.

14. The struggle is to the full as likely to be with dæmons as with our better thoughts.

15. Perhaps the couplet in which Boileau deprecates Tasso, may serve as well as any other specimen to justify the opinion given of the harmony of French

verse.

16: Before the remains of Ariosto were removed from the Benedictine church to the library of Ferrara, his bust, which surmounted the tomb, was struck by light. ning, and a crown of iron laurels melted away.

17. The eagle, the sea calf, the laurel, and the white vine, were amongst the most approved preservatives against lightning.

18. The Curtain lake and the Ruminal fig-tree in the Forum, having been touched by lightning, were held sacred, and the memory of the accident was preserved by a puteal, or altar, resembling the mouth of a well, with a little chapel covering the cavity supposed to be made by the thunderbolt.

19. The two stanzas, XLII. and XLIII. are, with the exception of a line or two, a translation of the famous sonnet of Filicaja :

"Italia, Italia, O tu cui feo la sorte."

20. The celebrated letter of Servius Sulpicius to Cicero on the death of his daughter, describes as it then was, and now is, a path which I often traced in Greece, both by sea and land, in different journeys and voyages.

21. It is Poggio who, looking from the Capitoline hill upon ruined Rome, breaks forth into the exclamation; "Ut nunc omni decore nudata, prostrata jacet, iustar gigantei cadaveris corrupti atque undique exesi."

22. The view of the Venus of Medicis instantly suggests the lines in the Seasons,and the comparison of the object with the description proves correct.

23.

"Atque oculos pascat uterque suos,"
Ovtd. Amor. lib. ii.

24. This name will recal the memory of those whose tombs have raised the Santa Croce into the Mecca of Italy 25. Alfieri is the great naine of this age.

26. The tomb of Machiavelli gives no information as to place or time of the birth or death, the age or parentage, of the historian.

27. Dante was born in Florence in the year 1261.

28. The elder Scipio Africanus had a tomb if he was not buried at Liternum, whither he had retired to voluntary banishment.

29. The Florentines did not take the opportunity of Petrarch's short visit to their city in 1350, to revoke the decree which confiscated the property of his father, who had been banished shortly after the exile of Dante.

30. Boccaccio was buried in the church of St. Michael and St. James, at Certaldo.

31. Our veneration for the Medici begins with Cosmo and expires with his grandson.

32. "And such was their mutual animosity, so intent were they upon the batttle, that the earthquake was not noticed by the combatants.

33. No book of travels has omitted to expatiate on the