ence in the villa gardens. We had passed some hours
in this delicious solitude, enjoying the pure night-breeze, and
admiring the soft and silver tints diffused by an Italian moon over
the lake and landscape. Our spirits were elevated by wine, and song,
and conversation; and our hearts communed together, and expanded into
more than usual freedom and confidence. I described to him the fair
objects of several fleeting attachments, and acknowledged that
my experience of female excellence had never yet realised the
expectations I had formed. "I anticipated from you, however," I
continued, "some illustrations of that wayward thing, the human heart.
A youth so ardent in feeling, and so adorned by nature and education,
must necessarily have had no limited experience of the tender passion;
and surely some of the beautiful heads in your portfolio have been
sketched from life, and _con amore_."

"I do not willingly," he replied, "enter upon acknowledgments of this
nature. They tend to excite feelings of envy, and sometimes expose the
warmest friendship to a severe test. We have now, however, enjoyed
abundant opportunity to study the lights, and shades, and inmost
recesses of our respective characters, and as you have made me your
father-confessor, I shall no longer hesitate to repose in you a
responsive and unbounded confidence. Know, then, that I love, with all
the enthusiasm of a first passion, the most beautiful woman of her
time--that she is the only daughter of the proudest senator in
Venice--that she is no stranger to your family, and now resides within
a league of us. Her name is Laura Foscari; and she is, alas! the
destined and unwilling bride of the opulent Ercole Barozzo, governor
of Candia."

At this unexpected intelligence, I almost started on my feet with
astonishment. My consternation was too great for utterance, and I
listened with breathless and eager attention.

"We became acquainted," he continued, "by a singular accident. I had
long admired her as the most lovely woman in Venice. Her head has all
the beauty of a fine antique, lighted up by dark eyes of radiant
lustre, and heightened by a smile of magic power and sweetness. I have
more than once sketched her unrivalled features when she was kneeling
at church, and her fine eyes were upraised in devotional rapture. In
public places, and at mass, I had frequently seen her, and our eyes
had so often met, that she could not but learn from mine how fervently
I adm