es. He
is given into the charge of Antonio, and thus ends the drama.

Glancing back over the three last acts, whose action we have summed up
so briefly, we might select many beautiful passages for translation; we
content ourselves with the following.

The princess and Leonora Sanvitale are conversing. There has been
question of the departure of Tasso.

"_Princess._--Each day was _then_ itself a little life;
No care was clamorous, and the future slept.
Me and my happy bark the flowing stream,
Without an oar, drew with light ripple down.
Now--in the turmoil of the present hour,
The future wakes, and fills the startled ear
With whisper'd terrors.

"_Leonora._ But the future brings
New joys, new friendships.

"_Princess._ Let me keep the old.
Change may amuse, it scarce can profit us.
I never thrust, with youthful eagerness,
A curious hand into the shaken urn
Of life's great lottery, with hope to find
Some object for a restless, untried heart.
I honour'd him, and therefore have I loved;
It was necessity to love the man
With whom my being grew into a life
Such as I had not known, or dream'd before.
At first, I laid injunctions on myself
To keep aloof; I yielded, yielded still,
Still nearer drew--enticed how pleasantly
To be how hardly punish'd!

"_Leonora._ If a friend
Fail with her weak consolatory speech,
Let the still powers of this beautiful world,
With silent healing, renovate thy spirit.

"_Princess._--The world _is_ beautiful! In its wide circuit,
How much of good is stirring here and there!
Alas! that it should ever seem removed
Just one step off! Throughout the whole of life
Step after step, it leads our sick desire
E'en to the grave. So rarely do men find
What yet seem'd destined them--so rarely hold
What once the hand had fortunately clasp'd;
What has been giv'n us, rends itself away,
And what we clutch'd, we let it loose again;
There is a happiness--we know it not,
We know it--and we know not how to prize."

Tasso says, when he thought himself happy in the love of Leonora
d'Este--

"I have often dream'd of this great happiness--
'Tis here!--and oh, how far beyond the dream!
A blind man, let him reason upon light,
And on the charm of colour, how he will,
If once the new-born day reveal itself,
It is a new-born sense."

And again on this same felicity,

"Not on the wide sands of t