manner which appeared to me at all times unaccountable, and upon some
occasions even filled me with alarm. Frequently, too, pausing in the
middle of a sentence whose commencement he had apparently forgotten,
he seemed to be listening in the deepest attention, as if either in
momentary expectation of a visiter, or to sounds which must have had
existence in his imagination alone.

It was during one of these reveries or pauses of apparent abstraction,
that, in turning over a page of the poet and scholar Politian's
beautiful tragedy "The Orfeo," (the first native Italian tragedy,)
which lay near me upon an ottoman, I discovered a passage underlined in
pencil. It was a passage towards the end of the third act--a passage of
the most heart-stirring excitement--a passage which, although tainted
with impurity, no man shall read without a thrill of novel emotion--no
woman without a sigh. The whole page was blotted with fresh tears; and,
upon the opposite interleaf, were the following English lines,
written in a hand so very different from the peculiar characters of my
acquaintance, that I had some difficulty in recognising it as his own:--

Thou wast that all to me, love,
For which my soul did pine--
A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,
All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers;
And all the flowers were mine.
Ah, dream too bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope, that didst arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out the Future cries,
"Onward! "--but o'er the Past
(Dim gulf! ) my spirit hovering lies,
Mute--motionless--aghast!
For alas! alas! with me
The light of life is o'er.
"No more--no more--no more,"
(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore,)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
Or the stricken eagle soar!
Now all my hours are trances;
And all my nightly dreams
Are where the dark eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams,
In what ethereal dances,
By what Italian streams.
Alas! for that accursed time
They bore thee o'er the billow,
From Love to titled age and crime,
And an unholy pillow!--
From me, and from our misty clime,
Where weeps the silver willow!

That these lines were written in English--a language with which I had
not believed their author acquainted--afforded me little matter for
surprise. I was too w