“We sate together: _his most noble head_ Bent o’er the storied tome of other days, And still he commented on all we read, And taught me what to love and what to praise. Then Spencer made the summer day seem brief, Or Milton sounded with a loftier song, Then Cowper charmed, with lays of gentle grief, Or rough old Dryden roll’d the hour along. Or, in his varied beauty dearer still, Sweet Shakspeare changed the world around, at will; And we forgot the sunshine of that room To sit with Jacques in the forest gloom; To look abroad with Juliet’s anxious eye For her gay lover ’neath the moonlight sky; Stand with Macbeth upon the haunted heath, Or weep for gentle Desdemona’s death; Watch on bright Cydnus’ wave, the glittering sheen, And silken sails of Egypt’s wanton Queen; Or roam with Ariel through that island strange, Where spirits and not men were wont to range, Still struggling on through brake and bush and hollow, Hearing the sweet voice calling ‘Follow! follow!’ Nor were there wanting lays of other lands, For these were all familiar in his hands: And Dante’s dream of horror work’d its spell,— And Petrarch’s sadness on our bosoms fell.— And prison’d Tasso’s—he, the coldly loved, The madly-loving! he, so deeply proved By many a year of darkness, like the grave, For her who dared not plead, or would not save, For her who thought the poet’s suit brought shame, Whose passion hath immortalized her name! And Egmont, with his noble heart betrayed,— And Carlo’s haunted by a murder’d shade,— And Faust’s strange legend, sweet and wondrous wild, Stole many a tear;—Creation’s loveliest child! Guileless, ensnared, and tempted Margaret, ‘Who could peruse thy fate with eyes unwet?’” If such a quantity of poetry and such poetry—Spencer, Milton, Dryden, Cowper, Shakspeare, Dante, Tasso and Göethe did not enlighten the “young innocent,” respecting the emotions with which she regarded the “fond companion of her dreams,” we do not know to whom to commend her for instruction. But we must hurry on with the story; the pair wander over Italy, and a picture is presented, of mountain and vale, of orange and myrtle groves, of grottoes, fountains, palaces, paintings, and statues that would “create a soul” under the ribs of a utilitarian. We were inclined to think that he of “the most noble brow,” entrapped the young affections of the dreamer in the “old library,” but we do not believe that she breathed the delicious confession into his ear until they reached the sunny clime of Italy. It was the unrivalled music of that land which unsealed her lips.