deal of
love which she had formed. She required some being round whom all her
vainer qualities could rally; she felt that where she loved she must
adore; she demanded no common idol before which to humble so strong and
imperious a mind. Unlike women of a gentler mould, who desire, for a
short period, to exercise the caprices of sweet empire,--when she loved
she must cease to command; and pride, at once, be humbled to devotion.
So rare were the qualities that could attract her; so imperiously did
her haughtiness require that those qualities should be above her own,
yet of the same order; that her love elevated its object like a god.
Accustomed to despise, she felt all the luxury it is to venerate! And
if it were her lot to be united with one thus loved, her nature was
that which might become elevated by the nature that it gazed on. For
her beauty--Reader, shouldst thou ever go to Rome, thou wilt see in the
Capitol the picture of the Cumaean Sibyl, which, often copied, no copy
can even faintly represent. I beseech thee, mistake not this sibyl for
another, for the Roman galleries abound in sibyls. (The sibyl referred
to is the well-known one by Domenichino. As a mere work of art, that by
Guercino, called the Persian sibyl, in the same collection, is perhaps
superior; but in beauty, in character, there is no comparison.) The
sibyl I speak of is dark, and the face has an Eastern cast; the robe
and turban, gorgeous though they be, grow dim before the rich, but
transparent roses of the cheek; the hair would be black, save for that
golden glow which mellows it to a hue and lustre never seen but in the
south, and even in the south most rare; the features, not Grecian, are
yet faultless; the mouth, the brow, the ripe and exquisite contour, all
are human and voluptuous; the expression, the aspect, is something more;
the form is, perhaps, too full for the perfection of loveliness, for the
proportions of sculpture, for the delicacy of Athenian models; but the
luxuriant fault has a majesty. Gaze long upon that picture: it charms,
yet commands, the eye. While you gaze, you call back five centuries. You
see before you the breathing image of Nina di Raselli!

But it was not those ingenious and elaborate conceits in which Petrarch,
great Poet though he be, has so often mistaken pedantry for passion,
that absorbed at that moment the attention of the beautiful Nina. Her
eyes rested not on the page, but on the garden that stretched below the