oo, marble?
No. The chisel may create beauty as exquisite, but never combine it with
so great a sorrow. It was Constantia. Too late! Too late! She brought her
tears where one smile would have given life and happiness. She felt the
worth of him who had so passionately loved her, when nothing remained to
love but the ashes in that urn. That pleading in the student's chamber
seemed vain--and at the moment it _was_ vain; but when she recalled it in
her own solitude, her heart had half assented. She remembered how
tenderly--with what an ardent and gentle worship--he had pressed her hand;
her own hand trembled then to the touch which at the time it had coldly
rejected. When, moreover, she heard, through their common friend Petrarch,
of the noble manner in which he had refused the aid of Pepoli, and chose
death rather than the least dishonour, and thought to herself--this man
loved me!--all her heart was won. Alas! too late!

She now knelt at the tomb of Giacomo, afflicted with regret that amounted
to remorse. She raised her head--she raised her hand--there was that
within it which glittered in the moonbeam. But her hand was suddenly
arrested. Petrarch, a frequent visitor at that tomb, had seen and
prevented this movement of despair. "No! no!" he cried. "Beautiful
creature, and too much beloved--live on--live! And when some other Giacomo
appears, make compensation to heaven--by loving him!"

HENRY IV.[18]

So closely united are the arts of history and romance, that they may
almost be said to be twin sisters. In both, the subjects are the same: and
the objects which the artists have in view in handling them are identical.
To impress the mind by the narrative of heroic, or melt it by that of
tragic events--to delineate the varieties of character, incident, and
catastrophes--to unfold the secret springs which influence the most
important changes, and often confound the wisest anticipations--to trace
the chain of causes and effects in human transactions from their
unobserved origin to their ultimate results, is equally the object of both
arts. The delineation of character, passion, and transaction is the great
end of both, but to neither is the subordinate aid of description or
pictorial embellishment denied. On the contrary, to both they constitute
one of the principal charms of this art. The sphere of description is
different, but the object and the impressions are the same. The novelist
paints individual places, and s