ew and so
enchanting.

The first object that attracted her notice was a group of dancers on the
terrace below, led by a guitar and some other instruments. The girl, who
struck the guitar, and another, who flourished a tambourine, passed
on in a dancing step, and with a light grace and gaiety of heart, that
would have subdued the goddess of spleen in her worst humour. After
these came a group of fantastic figures, some dressed as gondolieri,
others as minstrels, while others seemed to defy all description. They
sung in parts, their voices accompanied by a few soft instruments. At a
little distance from the portico they stopped, and Emily distinguished
the verses of Ariosto. They sung of the wars of the Moors against
Charlemagne, and then of the woes of Orlando: afterwards the measure
changed, and the melancholy sweetness of Petrarch succeeded. The
magic of his grief was assisted by all that Italian music and Italian
expression, heightened by the enchantments of Venetian moonlight, could
give.

Emily, as she listened, caught the pensive enthusiasm; her tears flowed
silently, while her fancy bore her far away to France and to Valancourt.
Each succeeding sonnet, more full of charming sadness than the last,
seemed to bind the spell of melancholy: with extreme regret she saw the
musicians move on, and her attention followed the strain till the
last faint warble died in air. She then remained sunk in that pensive
tranquillity which soft music leaves on the mind--a state like that
produced by the view of a beautiful landscape by moon-light, or by the
recollection of scenes marked with the tenderness of friends lost for
ever, and with sorrows, which time has mellowed into mild regret. Such
scenes are indeed, to the mind, like 'those faint traces which the
memory bears of music that is past'.

Other sounds soon awakened her attention: it was the solemn harmony of
horns, that swelled from a distance; and, observing the gondolas arrange
themselves along the margin of the terraces, she threw on her veil, and,
stepping into the balcony, discerned, in the distant perspective of the
canal, something like a procession, floating on the light surface of
the water: as it approached, the horns and other instruments mingled
sweetly, and soon after the fabled deities of the city seemed to have
arisen from the ocean; for Neptune, with Venice personified as
his queen, came on the undulating waves, surrounded by tritons and
sea-nymphs. The f