loss of blood, that I was scarcely able to move. To my bewildered sense, the strange scenes in which I had so lately been an actor, resembled the creations of a disordered imagination rather than actual events. Whilst I was endeavouring to reduce my ideas to some degree of order, the curtains of my bed were slowly drawn aside, and a female countenance of exquisite loveliness greeted my wandering eyes;-it was but for a moment, however, for no sooner did she see that I was conscious of her presence, than she vanished as suddenly as she had appeared. Before I had recovered the surprise occasioned by this beautiful vision, she again appeared, accompanied by an elderly gentleman, attired in deep mourning. He sat down by me; and after expressing his satisfaction at my recovery from the stupor in which I had so long been plunged, he informed me, that I was in the house of no less a person than the father of my ill-fated friend, Lewis d'Olliever. I was perfectly aware that he resided in the same vicinage as Madame de Chaluz, but I was perfectly at a loss to comprehend how he had discovered my intimacy with his son. He shortly satisfied my curiosity on that head, by giving me the following particulars.

It appeared that the movements of the Count and myself had not been conducted so secretly as to escape the observation of several of the guests, one of them had followed the Count and witnessed the whole transaction. Upon the alarm being given, the spot was quickly surrounded by the inhabitants of almost every house in the village. Amongst others was M. d'Olliever. On my being stript that the wound might be examined, the packet addressed to him was discovered. The reader will easily see the result; I was conveyed to his house, where everything that could facilitate my recovery had been done.

Under the hands of my fair nurse, I grew rapidly convalescent. M. d'Olliever watched over my couch with the solicitude of a parent, and in his attentions to me seemed to lose a portion of that grief for the loss of his brave boy, which I was the means of acquainting him with in so extraordinary a manner.

I have little more now to communicate, with the exception that one fine moonlight night found me at the feet of her who had tended me throughout my illness with more than the care of a sister or mother. What I said upon the occasion, I will not trouble the reader

with the sister of Lewis d' Olliever is now-my wife.

I had hitherto avoided mentioning the attachment of Lewis and Hélène, it was too tender a chord to be lightly touched upon; at length, with a tear bedewed cheek, my lovely bride gave me the following history of this ill-fated attachment.

Madame de Chaluz was the widow of an officer, who falling in battle, left her with an only daughter, (the ill-starred Hélène): she received a small pension from government, with which, and the little property left by her husband, she maintained an appearance of gentility, and educated her daughter in a manner suitable to her station in life. Ever since she had taken up her residence in the village, the strictest intimacy had arisen between her and the d' Ollievers. Hélène and Lewis were much about the same age, and an attachment slowly but deeply wound mutually around their young hearts. this growing affection; but innately resolved that her daughter's beauty should win her an alliance more conducive to the ambitious views she nourished, than that of Lewis, who would have to depend solely upon his own exertions for fortune. The appearance of Count Lenois as a suitor for the hand of Hélène confirmed this determination, and the departure of Lewis for the army, which he had chosen as his profession, was hailed by her as a fortunate occurrence.

Madame de Chaluz saw

No sooner had Lewis departed than the Count urged his suit with ten-fold vigour; but his efforts to win her affections were abortive, his wealth she despised, and his cold and heartless demeanour contrasted too strongly with the frank and manly bearing of his rival ;regardless of the remonstrances of her mother, she gave him a decided negative.

But the Count was not to be thwarted in whatever schemes he undertook, with impunity, he resolved to accomplish by chicanery that which he had so vainly attempted by honourable means. He caused reports of the gaieties and intrigues of the young soldier to be circulated, than which nothing could be more unfounded, he intercepted all his letters, and for months Hélène had not heard from him.

At length his efforts were crowned with success-the harrowing conviction that she was neglected rose upon her imagination. He renewed his suit supported by all the eloquence of Madame de Chaluz. Partly worn out by importu

nity, and partly through the desire of piquing her faithless lover by marrying a man whom she knew he detested-she consented to become his. Still some faint glimmering of hope prompted her to name the day at so distant a period, that ample time was given for Lewis to explain himself, or for the discovery of any treachery on the part of the Count.

The appointed day arrived however without any event occurring that might invalidate her promise, the most magnificent preparations were therefore made for her nuptials. The reader is already acquainted with the transactions which my unexpected arrival occasioned. She discovered at a glance the snare which had been laid for her; that, with the death of her lover occasioned a shock which, to a frame already worn down by grief and anxiety, proved fatal. Her reason was completely overthrown, she languished in that state a few months, when death kindly stepped in, and released her from her woes. "She sleeps well," and the first tears shed by myself and my happy bride fell fast upon the tomb of blighted love. W. C. N.

London, Feb. 10th, 1835.

THERE are very few people in this world, so poorly provided as not to have "a most intimate friend;" albeit there is much difference in the characteristics of the relation. For example, the most intimate friend of a young lady of fashion is one of her own sex and nearly her own age--good-looking and pleasant, but not sufficiently beautiful or attractive to stand in the light of a rival under any possible combination of circumstances. If the friend have a dashing brother or cousin, unmarried, the force of the attachment is seldom diminished by that contingency. Friendship in this case is mostly displayed by a frequent exchange of visits at odd hours, and still more frequent exchange of small three-cornered notes, written in a fine lady-like illegible hand, and abounding with "dears," "loves," and small secrets. They go shopping together, buy their gloves and shoes at the same place, and never adventure upon a new dress or bonnet without several consultations. Marriage generally puts an end to this class of friendships: very soon after the ceremony they are observed to cool down into mere acquaintance, and on some idle day, when the bride has nothing

better to do, she throws the hoarded collection of notes into the fire.

Schoolboys also are much addicted to friendships: if you see a couple of lads with their arms over each other's necks, as they trudge along of a morning, you may be pretty sure they are intimate friends. They sit next to each other at school, have a community of apples and marbles, and generally contrive to get flogged together; there being very few pieces of mischief in which both have not an equal share. A new face will sometimes give the death-blow to an intimacy of this description, but in general they subsist unimpaired until the removal of one to some other school, or of both to college.

Sailors are much given to friendships; but they seldom outlive the voyage. Jack has sometimes been known to refuse a berth on board a vessel without his old shipmate; but sea-cronies in general shake hands and part whenever they reach their port of discharge, and each looks out for a new Achates, Grog and tobacco are the principal tests of maritime friendship. Jack will give his money to any poor fellow that wants it, and thinks nothing of lending a helping hand whereever his aid may be needed; but if he is out of pigtail, or feels inclined to splice the main-brace, his first look-out is for his "particular friend." The old fellow would rather drink with a stranger than drink alone; but he gets drunk with peculiar satisfaction when he sees Tom, "what sailed with him in the saucy little Nancy," tossing off glass for glass.

Young men are less addicted to friendships than almost any other class of rational beings. All the tender and affectionate feelings they have to spare, are chiefly bestowed upon the ladies. Nevertheless, you will now and then see a new edition of Damon and Pythias, between twenty and twenty-five. The characteristics are exceedingly variable, depending more than in any other instance upon the disposition and habits of the parties. If they be of a literary turn, you will find them reading the same books, pursuing the same studies, and very often entertaining the same opinions. They are apt to take long walks together, and each makes a point of admiring the other's poetry. Friendship between young men in business manifests itself chiefly in money accommodations; they endorse for each other, and when one fails, the other is almost certain to have trouble with his creditors. Fashionable young men dine, sup, drink, and go out riding

together, and bet upon the same horses. But friendship in this class of society is more a matter of habit than any thing else, and is very seldom professed to such an extent as to attract notice. "My very intimate friend" in the mouth of a young man, is, for the most part, synonymous with "a capital good fellow, always glad to meet him, and know he would do any thing in the world to serve me-provided he could do it without expense or trouble."

The intimate friendships of old gentlemen are made up with greater caution, and almost universally have their foundation in some accord of taste or occupation. They form the most numerous class of all; there is the friendship of gourmandise, of money-making, and of politics; of wine, whist, back-gammon, and old pictures; and stronger than all these, the friendship of long association. They are less ardent than the attachments of younger people, but more durable; more difficult to ascertain, but with more safety to be relied on. They display themselves rather in actions than in words, and if broken by death or accident, or disagreement, are much less easily replaced by others. G. P. M.

YOUTHFUL AFFECTION.

THE love of children is a sweet thing; and though marked almost by the simplicity of instinct, yet is founded upon the tenderest of all motives, a confidence that it is itself the object of affection. By something resembling intuition, children are enabled to single out that man or woman, among many, who is capable of loving them. To him or her they carry their affections spontaneously; but no affectation of attachment, no hypocrisy of the heart, can for a moment deceive them. They will avoid the pretender with a discernment astonishingly correct, and seek out with equal accuracy the heart that is kindly disposed toward them. As they act with grown persons, so do they with each other. In their own case, the simplicity of their character and their candour of mind, as yet uncorrupted, present greater facilities for mutual understanding. Their attach ments are consequently much more vivid and disinterested than those of mature persons; they love each other sincerely, and their purity of heart takes away that jealous sense which blights the affections of those upon whom the spirit of this world has breathed its chilling influence. We all remember the warmth of our

childish or school-boy attachments. Each of us has had his bosom friend; but the world has come between us; we now, perhaps, pass him unnoticed in the streets, because life has gone hard with him; or, perhaps, he, having had a more prosperous career than ourselves, now meets us like one whom he had never known. Youth and childhood are the Eden of existence, where every thing is pure and joyful about us, and within us; but, alas! we fall like our fathers, and pass out of its happy gates never to enter them more.

There is nothing within the whole compass of existence, within the whole circle of human enjoyment, equal to the intense charm of love that awakens the heart to its own susceptibilities, before the fulness of manhood darkens, by its stronger passions, the purity of simple affection. There is in first love an ideality which engages the higher faculties of the imagination, and keeps the object of our affection far above the reach of our lower thoughts. Subsequent attachments may be stronger, but it is on first love only that the soul can look back with complacency and delight. It alone is pure; none of the baser motives are connected with it. The heart catches the sentiment from the unstained image of early fancy, and the picture it receives, having been adorned with graces which reality cannot boast, is retained by the imagination which created it, long after the heart has ceased to possess the sense of feeling. G. P. M.

NOTES UPON ROME, AND THE CAMPAGNA. Translated for the Parterre, from Didier.

1.-ARDEE.

FROM the narrow valley of Numieus, a steep and slippery ascent leads to the city of Ardée. When I say city, it is from a lingering respect for the ancient capital of the Rutulii: hamlet it should rather be called, for hamlet is the only name that the city of Danaë now merits.

A square platform levelled at the sides; a fresh and circular meadow on the summit; some fifteen cottages scattered around; an old feudal castle empty and dilapidated; grass everywhere--in the courts, the windows, and on the walls; no streets; some fragments of Saturnian ruins, the last vestiges of obliterated fortifications; and a handful of inhabitants, or rather spectres, meagre,

livid and haggard from fever and famine: such is Ardée.

Thus reduced, after three thousand years of existence, it is still the most interesting feature of the desert, both for the warm and magic lines of its colour ing, a tint peculiar to Ardée, and the varied scenery of its landscape.

I know not whether there be throughout the whole Campagna of Rome, a site wealthier in its misery, or lovelier in its decrepitude. Wealthy in remembrances and emotions, beautiful by nature and contrast; the only wealth, the only beauty that can harmonize with such misfortunes.

The cotemporary of the extinct volcanoes of Italy, it still preserves its ancient name of Ardée, as a monument of those fabulous ages when still burnt the phlegreen fields of Latium. Rome did not then exist; it was centuries later before its name was heard. Fifteen different tribes then cultivated the Latin fields now desert and waste: twenty-two cities flourished in those Pontine marshes, whose name is now synonimous with depopulation and death: amongst all these cities and nations, Ardée was esteemed illustrious and powerful. What remains of it, we have seen.

But revolutions have not been able to deprive Ardée of the gift of nature; the magnificence of her sky, the exquisite verdor of her fields. Built on the summit of a hollow and volcanic rock, on the highest tier of the gigantic amphitheatre, which from the Mediterranean rises up to the snowy brow of the Appenine, it commands a boundless horizon on the coasts of the sea and the Tiber, shut out on every other by the Sabine mountains and those of the Abruzzi. At the base of the precipices it surmounts, stretch out gay and fertile valleys, green pasturages, running streams, crystal springs, a young and splendid vegetation. To the sun-set is the sea with its waves, the sea with its infinity; to the north is the Albanian Mount, the Ida of the Romans, with its white cities, marble villas, blue lakes, and belt of forests; higher still, is the rocky country of the wise Sabines, the first residence of the aborigines, when Soractes and the Circean mount were islands, and the whole plain a sea, and ocean washed the rocks of Palestrina and Tivoli. In this magnificent range of aërian mountains, whose moving lines floated in the horizon like the waves of another ocean in graceful and varied play, all is now plain, solitude, and the malaria. Here on this side

Lelius, the Scipios, and Pliny had their pleasure houses; there stretch the dull and unpeopled shores of Antium, where Fortune has no longer her temple: in a word, on every side, is the Campagna of Rome, with its broad and lengthened undulations, its grand recollections, its great names, its serious aspect, its stern melancholy, its pines waving in the wind, its aqueducts and its ruins, the true poetry of the desert.

2.-NEPTUNE.

No point of Latium bears in its site and formation, a clearer impress, than Neptune, the terror of the Corsairs. A fortress of the middle ages, built on a projection of the coast, it commands a distant view of the sea; its now dismantled battlements and high walls, invisible beneath ivy and long grass, proclaim loudly in their monumental eloquence, the ancient dangers of these shores. Eternally threatened by the two-fold pestilence from Africa and the Maremma, these coasts were formerly besieged by a third and yet more formidable scourge-the pirates of Barbary.

Formerly the houses stood beyond the fortress destined to protect them: but gradually drawing closer, and pressing around it from terror, they have at last trenched upon it, and taken refuge within its precincts as an asylum; and jumping one over the other in the narrow circumference, now fill up the whole space. Some winding and damp lanes have been pierced through the contagious labyrinth, without air and almost without light. A church, no longer the magnificent temple of the god who gave his name to this city, rises white and naked in the centre of this formless chaos; and, the heart of a new plague, broods in its sepulchral recesses over the corruption of the dead bodies within. All this, with its population of a few hundred of the living huddled up together with the dead, is denominated a town'; and there, in this forgotten town, lost at the extremity of the desert, they are born, they live, they love, they die; and they have their children and friends, tears and joys, passions and beliefs: they dream there of glory and of fortune; and they die there, as at Rome, in the faith of the crucified; and children sleep by the side of their fathers, beneath the same altar where they received from them the baptismal water, and generations roll silently away, and ocean sees them pass! Occasionally a solitary name glitters above the gloomy tomb of so many unknown generations, carried far

down the stream of ages. Such as it is, this obscure hamlet of the Maremma has given birth to a great artist-André Sacchi; a simple, grand and stern genius; who was the last champion, the last Cato, as it were, of the Roman school.

It was a festival at Neptune, and the tinkling of bells was heard. In Sunday trim, with the white hat over the ear, the population of fishermen, were like all the Italian populace on a day of fete, scattered in idle groups over the square, a name pompously given to a few hun dred of square feet, forming a court in front of the church.

The children rolled about naked amongst people's feet; and women furrowed the groups that opened with admiration before their brilliant Greek attire.

Neptune is to the Campagna of Rome, what Procida is to the Gulph of Naples: , it has preserved in the costume of its women, an undeniable evidence of its Hellenic origin. Young and old, the women of Neptune glitter to the sun in corsets decorated with gold, and long scarlet dresses made in the Greek style. They all wear over their hair a veil of embroidered linen, folded in a square plait above their foreheads, and falling down thence into right angles over their shoulders; it is surmounted by large silver pins wrought in filigree, like the chesa of the Italio-Albanese, which in other respects it resembles.

Fresh and coquettish, the young walked with a lively tread; then, withered and wrinkled, the old, however bent they might be by age, yielded not to their juniors either in decoration or pretension; but the massive trinkets of the mothers shone less brightly in the sun than did the large dark eyes of the daughters the lustre of the jewelry, and splendour of the colours, were in singular contrast to the gloomy humidity of the streets and doors whence issued these living Madonnas.

They hummed in walking the popular ballad of the ever-blessed Louis of Gonzaga, the beloved saint of the Roman

3.-SAINT JOHN-DE-LATRAN. The Golden Basilica-such is the title of Saint John-de-Latran—is built against the walls of Rome. Urbis et orbis mater et caput, it is the cathedral of the sovereign Pontiff as bishop of Rome, and was founded by that Constantine who carried the law of the crucified upon the throne of the Cæsars. He was himself baptized by pope Saint Silvester in the contiguous baptismery of the sumptuous church where the tribune Rienzi created himself a knight, and where the pious farce is still acted every Good Friday, of the converted Jews and Turks. Though not in a pure style, the front of the church is imposing. Amongst the number of statues that encumber, rather than ornament it, the French recognize with pleasure their Henry the Fourth, cast in bronze, as on the Pont-Neuf. The interior of the church is too rich, too dazzling with gold and precious stones; and despite the marble saints, the apostles, patriarchs and popes, with which it is peopled, resembles rather a ball-room than a temple. On days of fête, in particular, it is draped with hangings of red silk in a most profuse style of magnificence; hence the Roman proverb, that we ought to see Saint Peter naked, and Saint John dressed. Several pontiffs sleep beneath this superb dome, and the pencil of Giotte has bequeathed to it a representation of the thundering Bonifaccio Caetani.

But if the sin of the church be an excessive splendour, nothing can be more contemptible or desolate than the square in which it stands. Some mechanics' stalls, built against the walls of villas, and a few mean dwellings, the most miserable in Rome, alone remind us that we are in a city and not a desert. On one side is a vast hospital, on the other the sacred staircase; transported thither from the palace of Pilate, and sanctified by the blood of the Son of Man, its twenty-eight steps of white marble, worn by centuries, are only ascended kneeling. Some arches still standing of the Claudian aqueduct, cast their heavy shadow and long grass over the buildings and the sanctuary; near is a murmuring fountain, whose voice alone breaks the silence; an immense Egyptian obelisk rises above the consecrated solitude.