of glory as the centre of Christendom? The great obstacle to the enjoyment of political unity in Italy is not in the Vatican, but in the character, genius, history, traditions, and conflicting interests of the Italians themselves, and it is called Regionalism. Footnote 1: _Del Regionalismo in Italia—Civiltà Cattolica, Quad._ 656. AMONG THE TRANSLATORS. VIRGIL AND HORACE.—IV. In passages of quiet beauty such as the first six books are full of—the _Odyssey_, we may call them, of the _Æneid_, as the last six are its _Iliad_—Conington is almost always happy. Take, for instance, the picture of the happy valley in Elysium (book vi. 703): “Meantime, Æneas in the vale A sheltered forest sees, Deep woodlands where the evening gale Goes whispering thro’ the trees, And Lethe river which flows by Those dwellings of tranquillity. Nations and tribes in countless ranks Were crowding to its verdant banks; As bees afield in summer clear Beset the flowerets far and near, And round the fair white lilies pour, The deep hum sounds the champaign o’er.” In such lines, too, Mr. Morris, judging from his own poetry, should be at his best; and here again it is hard to choose between him and his predecessor: “But down amid a hollow dale, meanwhile, Æneas sees A secret grove, in thicket fair, with murmuring of the trees, And Lethe’s stream that all along that quiet place doth wend; O’er which there hovered countless folks and peoples without end. And as when bees, amid the fields in summer-tide the bright, Settle on diverse flowery things, and round the lilies white Go streaming, so the fields were filled with mighty murmuring.” Hypercriticism might here point out as a blemish the use of the same word “murmuring” to express the different sounds indicated in the Latin by the words _sonantia_ and _murmure_; these are just the delicacies to be looked for in Virgil and not to be overlooked by his translator. Moreover, the line, “A secret grove, in thicket fair, with murmuring of the trees,” asks considerable good-will and knowledge of the Latin to make it sound quite reasonable, and “diverse flowery things” we have some private doubts about. But “hovered” is certainly a better equivalent for “_volabant_” than “crowded,” which gives no hint of the shadowy, unsubstantial nature of these dwellers in the realms of Dis—_animæ, quibus altera fato corpora debentur_: “Là, les peuples futurs sont des ombres légères,” as Delille puts it by an anticipative paraphrase. Here Mr. Cranch may meet his antagonists on somewhat better terms, though still we seem to miss in his lines the poetical flavor, which he rarely catches throughout: