PIETRO OF ABANO. The setting sun was flinging its red rays upon the towers and over the houses of Padua, when a young stranger, newly arrived, had his attention excited by a throng of people who were hurrying and running along, and was carried by them out of his way. He askt a girl who was passing quickly by him, what had set the whole town in such an extraordinary commotion. "Don't you know then?" answered she: "the beautiful Crescentia, the young thing, is just going to be buried; everybody wishes to have one more sight of her; for she has always been counted the sweetest maiden in the whole city. Her parents are heartbroken." The last words she called back to him, from some distance beyond him. The stranger turned round the dark palace into the great street, and his ears were now met by the funeral hymn, and his eyes by the flickering light of the pale-red torches. On drawing nearer, pusht forward by the crowding of the people, he saw a scaffold covered with black cloth. Around it were raised seats, likewise black, on which the sorrowing parents and relations were sitting, all in stern gloom, some faces with the look of despair. Figures now began to move forth from the door of the house; priests and black forms bore an open coffin, out of which wreaths of flowers and green garlands were hanging down. In the midst of the blooming gay plants lay the maidenly form raised upon cushions, pale, in a white robe, her lovely slender hands folded and holding a crucifix, her eyes closed, dark black tresses hanging full and heavy round her head, on which a wreath of roses and cypress and myrtle was gleaming. The coffin with its beautiful corpse was placed upon the scaffold; the priests cast themselves down to pray; the parents gave yet louder vent to their grief; yet more wailing grew the sound of the hymns; and everybody around, even the strangers, sobbed and wept. The traveller thought he had never yet seen so lovely a creature, as this corpse that thus mournfully reminded him how fleeting life is, how vain and perishable its charms.