Petrarch, on returning to Vaucluse, felt with new and increasing stings the passion which perturbed his breast. Immediately on his arrival at this sequestered spot, the image of his beloved Laura incessantly haunted his imagination. He beheld her at all times, in every place, and under a thousand different forms. “Three times in the middle of the night when every door was closed, she appeared to me,” says he, “at the feet of my bed, with a steadfast look, as if confident of the power of her charms. Fear spread a chilling dew over all my limbs. My blood thrilled through my veins towards my heart. If any one had then entered my apartment with a candle, they would have beheld me as pale as death, with every mark of terror on my face. Rising before the break of day, with trembling limbs, from my disordered bed, and hastily leaving my house, where every thing created alarm, I climbed to the summit of the rocks, and ran wildly through the woods, casting my eyes incessantly on every side, to see if the form which had haunted my repose, still pursued me. Alas! I could find no asylum. Places the most sequestered, where I fondly flattered myself that I should be alone, presented her continually to my mind; and I beheld her sometimes issuing from the hollow trunk of a tree, from the concealed source of a spring, or from the dark cavity of a broken rock. Fear rendered me insensible, and I neither know what I did, or where I went.” The heart of Petrarch was frequently stimulated by ideas of voluptuous pleasure, even among the rocks of Vaucluse, where he sought an asylum from love and Laura. He soon, however, banished sensuality from his mind, and, by refining his passion, acquired that vivacity and heavenly purity which breathes in every line of those immortal lyrics he composed among the rocks. But the city of Avignon, in which the object thus tenderly beloved resided, was not sufficiently distant from the place of his retreat, and he visited it too frequently. A passion indeed, like that which Petrarch felt, leaves the bosom, even when uncorrupted, totally incapable of tranquillity. It is a violent fever of the soul, which inflicts upon the body a complication of painful disorders. Let lovers, therefore, while they possess some control over the passion which fills their breasts, seat themselves on the borders of a river, and reflect that love, like the stream, sometimes precipitates itself with violence down the rocks; and sometimes flowing with soft tranquillity along the plain, meanders through meadows, and loses itself beneath the peaceful shades of solitary bowers.