to you.

stones weep." So great was his fame, that in 1538, four years after he had joined the Capuchin brotherhood, the people of Venice used every effort to induce him to preach in their city. Cardinal Bembo writes to Vittoria, begging her to exercise her great influence over Ochino for that purpose. Vittoria was successful; and, in one of Bembo's letters to the Marchioness, dated from Venice, February 23, 1539, he describes the effect which the friar had produced upon his hearers, and adds:"From the whole city I send your Highness immortal thanks for the favour that you have done us; and I especially will ever feel obliged And again, on the 14th April, he writes:-"Our Frate Bernardino, whom I desire henceforth to call mine as well as yours, is at present adored in this city. There is not a man or woman who does not extol him to the skies." Ochino did not, for some time, openly inculcate the Reformed doctrines. He left his hearers to draw their own conclusion. They could draw but one; and as the preacher waxed bolder in denouncing the infamous corruptions of Church as well as State, vague suspicions that the devout and revered brother was not quite sound ripened into certainty. Formal complaints were laid against him. These he answered with irresistible force. But soon after, while preaching at Venice, in 1542, he heard that one of his personal friends, a convert of Valdez, had been imprisoned for heresy. Then, when all the senators and principal persons of the city were present, he burst forth into impassioned exclamations: "To what purpose do we exhaust ourselves, if those, oh, noble Venice! queen of the Adriatic-if those who preach to you the Truth are to be thrown into prisons, thrust into cells, and loaded with chains and fetters? What place will be left to us? Oh that we had liberty to preach the Truth! How many blind, who now grope their way in the dark, would then be restored to light!"

Soon after this Ochino was summoned to Rome. He proceeded as far as Florence, but, finding that his death was resolved upon, he fled to Geneva, and there openly joined the Reformers, with whom he had long secretly sympathized.

Another of the notables of this time

was Renée, Duchess of Ferrara, and daughter of Louis XII. of France. From her kindness of heart, her superior accomplishments, her engaging manners, and her many virtues, she earned the honourable name of the "Good Duchess." In her early maiden life she had formed an intimacy with many of the leading Reformers who frequented the court of Margaret Queen of Navarre. After her marriage with Ercole II., Duke of Ferrara, she clung to the teaching of the French Reformers. But in Italy caution was needed. She invited to her court those who thought with her; but it was as literati they came, and not as the exposers of ecclesiastical corruption. Upon the terrace of the ducal palace would often assemble a goodly company, intent upon one great subject. There might have been seen, sitting near the "Good Duchess,' Olympia Morata, the most learned, and Julia Gonzaga, the most beautiful women of Italy. At their feet, gazing with large wondering eyes, would sit little Leonora d'Este, still a child, and not yet ripened into that perfect loveliness which Tasso found so fatal to his peace. There, too, grouped around these noble ladies, appeared the Cardinal Pole, with anxious face, full of dread, lest the poison of heresy should infect them, while Contarini strove to cheer his audience with hopes of a bright future. Carnesecchi, standing next to him, seemed already wearing the bright crown of victory, soon to be exchanged for fiery martyrdom. Stern and gloomy, John Calvin, known here as Charles Heppeville, knits his brows in anger at the temporising policy of Contarini and Pole. Valdez, too, is here, justly claiming the "grand old name of gentleman," as he smoothes away the half-uttered taunts of the uncompromising Genevan, doing what he can to mediate between him and Ochino, who, in burning words, carries the hearers with him, urging that the hour to break with Rome, decisively, has not yet arrived. Others there are of lesser note; Flaminio, the poet, and missionaries from the Waldenses, sent to visit their brethren on the hills of Italy. The homage of the company is divided between Renée and Vittoria, Marchioness of Pescara. The beauty of the latter still remains, albeit time and sorrow have dimmed

the brightness of her eye, and tinged her hair with grey. She is calm and resigned; full of earnest desire for the truth; listening reverently to all that is said, and pondering the words in her heart.*

Looking back through three centuries upon those distinguished assemblies, we wonder how it was that so many refined minds, so many generous hearts, so many noble intellects, failed to produce a lasting influence upon the Italian mind. Was it that this people, so prone to gorgeous display, and all the "luxury of devotion,' was naturally unfit for the severe austerity of Northern worship? or, was it that the Reformers of Italy were too refined, too intellectual, and not sufficiently endowed with the mental and physical strength of Luther?

We must retrace our steps. During Vittoria's seven years' sadness were probably written the whole of the 125 sonnets, placed by Rota in the first part of his edition. To this period doubtless belong the Canzoni, which Roscoe esteems above her sonnets; while subsequently must have been written the 212 "Rime Spirituali," and the "Stanze," of which the abovementioned historian remarks, that in simplicity, harmony, and elegance of style, they equal the "productions of any of her cotemporaries, and in lively description and genuine poetry excel them all, excepting only those of the inimitable Ariosto." In the first-mentioned sonnets, and in the Canzoni, she dwells on the eventful life and noble actions of her husband.

In 1537 a friendship commenced which, more than any other circumstance, has handed Vittoria's name down through 300 years, and caused the general reader to have some knowledge, at least, of her history, even though he may be ignorant of her writings.

It was at Rome that Vittoria first saw Michel Angelo. She was then in her forty-seventh year, he in his sixtyfourth. This fact must preclude all ideas of a romantic attachment on the part of the great artist. We cannot look on this as another illustration of "the Loves of the Poets," but be

content with a more common-place view. And yet the affection which this "king of men" felt for our poetess was of no common sort. He looked up to her with reverence. His love for her was that of the artist. He loved her as we do not find he had loved any other woman. More than Laura was to Petrarch-even as Beatrice was to Dante-in his sonnets he makes frequent mention of Vittoria Mr. Taylor has thus translated one of these :

"If it be true that any beauteous thing
Raises the pure and just desire of man
From earth to God, th' Eternal fount of all;
Such I believe my love; for, as in her
So fair, in whom I all besides forget,
I view the gentle work of her Creator,
I have no care for any other thing
Whilst thus I live. Nor is it marvellous,
Since the effect is not of my own power,
If the soul doth by nature, tempted forth,
Enamoured through the eyes,

Repose upon the eyes which it resembleth,
And through them riseth to the primal love
As to its end; and honours in admiring;
For, who adores the Creator needs must
love His work."

Though Angelo's writings often partake of the obscurity of the other great Italian poets, so that it is not always easy to determine whether he is speaking of an abstraction, there can be no doubt that in this case he does refer to an actual person. The last line proves it. In a sonnet translated by Dr. Harford, he speaks of Vittoria as embodying those æsthetic ideas which all his life long he had been striving to express. In another he speaks of painful doubts, which he beseeches her to solve

"I, lady, to your sacred penmanship

Present the blank page of my troubled mind,
That you, in dissipation of my doubts,
May on it write how my benighted soul
Of its desired end may not so fail
As to incur at length a fatal fall.

Be you the writer, who have taught me how
To tread by fairest paths the way to heaven."

The same year that Vittoria became acquainted with Angelo she formed the design of visiting Jerusalem. From this she was dissuaded by her cousin, the Marquis Del Vasto. In 1541 she determined to retire into a convent, and joined a sisterhood at Orvieto, Thence, a few months after, she re

moved to the convent of Santa Caterina, at Viterbo, this being the town where she first heard the sad tidings of her husband's death. Towards the end of 1546 Vittoria returned from Viterbo to Rome, and took up her residence at the convent of Sta-Anna. At the beginning of 1547 she became seriously ill, and was removed to the palace of Giuliano Cesarini. She rapidly grew worse. On the 15th February, she made her will,* and very shortly after her gentle spirit rejoined the spirit of him whom she had so long loved and lost.

Mr. Landor, in his very beautiful Imaginary Conversation between Vittoria and Michel Angelo, has made Vittoria say, "When death approaches me, be present, Michel Angelo, and shed as pure tears on this hand as I did on the hand of Pescara."

"Madonna" replied Angelo, "they are these, they are these! Endure them now rather! Merciful God! grant me to behold her at that hour, not in the palace of a hero, not in the chamber of a saint, but from thine everlasting mansions!"

The prayer was not granted. During the last moments of her life

Angelo came to her bedside, and kissed the hand that was now well nigh cold.

Those who live long learn to be out of love with life. Angelo had worked hard through a protracted existence, and had received but little emolument or honour. In his eightysecond year, his aged and faithful servant, Urbino, died. The old man sat with him night and day, and tended him in his last illness. He, himself, lived seven years longer, and expired, February 17th, 1563.

Some idea of the great popularity of Vittoria's writings may be gathered from the commendatory notices which Rota has attached to them. Many of these are by contemporaries, and all speak almost extravagantly of her powers, calling her divine and Godlike. More than this. While the first edition of her poems appeared in 1538, a second was published in 1539, a third in 1540, a fourth in 1544, a fifth and sixth in 1548, a seventh in 1552, and three more in the same century. Since then editions have been published in 1692 and 1698, and in 1760, this being Rota's, and we believe the last.

No other dominion has advanced so rapidly and steadily as that of steam. By sea, it has altered our principles of maritime warfare, and in peace, reduced contingent to certain calculations. By land, it has associated nation with nation, and replaced weeks by hours in periods of transit. It is hard, indeed, to determine whether our advance during the last forty years has been more rapid in point of railways or steam-ships. In Germany the

"eilwagen" is no more, and in France the "diligence " is nearly extinct. Coaches in England have shared the same fate; but the difference has been, perhaps, least striking amongst ourselves, in consequence of the perfection to which coach-travelling had been carried, since the vehicles established between London and York in the age of Queen Anne boasted of unrivalled celerity when performing the distance in four days. Not thirty

Effingham Wilson. 1857.

By Count London:

London:

years ago, it was a fortnight's weary journey to Vienna; we can now reach it in forty-eight hours. The outward and homeward voyage between this country and America then occupied several months, and the outward and homeward voyage between this country and India a year. We can now steam to America in ten or twelve days, and to India, with the aid of a European railway, in a month.

It may seem surprising that with these rapid strides in steam communication we should not have sooner established railways in Asia. Our steamers have nearly circumnavigated. the globe; sixteen years ago they ascended the Chinese rivers on a hostile expedition. But Indian railways, and railways connecting the Levant with the Indian Ocean, have hitherto remained a dream. Nor does it seem likely that we shall profit, in an appreciable degree, even by the leisure we have given ourselves for maturing our schemes, since it would be difficult to conceive a greater amount of ignorance and contradiction than what still prevails among the authors and promoters of railway communication in India and the west of Asia. The pamphlets whose titles we cite illustrate this. Each of these publications conflicts with the others; each advocates the peculiar hobby of its author with a pertinacity which is amusing. The cause of this delay in the extension of railways to the East is of a two-fold nature. The European nations possessing the necessary wealth have been occupied with railway speculation in their own territories. There are at this day but three countries in Northern Europe-Sweden, Norway, and Denmark; and but three countries in Southern Europe-Spain, Portugal, and Greece (for we except Turkey, as a semi-Asiatic state), that have not an extensive ramification of railways. These lines have absorbed the treasure, and burnt the fingers of many of the capitalists who have engaged in them. Our present railway economics present but a dismal prospect, indeed, to those who meditate the extension of our financial failures into the eastern hemisphere. Nevertheless, the general spirit of reorganization which prevails, with regard both to the direct and incidental relations of India, is, for the present, too strong to be overpowered by ad

verse experiences at home. We assume, therefore, that the progress, if not the completion, of some one of these railway schemes in the East is inevitable; and we shall, consequently, attempt to point out the evils and the advantages which the plans already struck out respectively present.

Three distinct classes of communication have been devised with a view either to bring India into an approximation with this country, or to centralize its government. We state, as the first of these, the lines of railway by which it is proposed to traverse Western Asia, and connect the European with the Indian Seas. Two of these projects have assumed a certain definite form. They are the Euphrates Valley Railway, which is mapped to cross Northern Syria, and follow the course of the river, and the railway designed from Constantinople to the Indus, over Asia Minor and Persia, through Trebizond, Teheran, and Herat. The second of these classes of communication with the East consists of the two projected canals the one designed to connect the Mediterranean with the Red Sea, from the Gulf of Suez to the Bay of Pelusium, and the other to connect it with the Euphrates, from the nearest navigable point of the river to the port of Seleucia (or Suedia), at the north-east corner of the Levant. The third class consists of railways for the Indian territory itself.

We shall deal with the Euphrates Valley Railway alone. We view it as the most important, and (with the exception of the Suez Canal) the most practicable of the schemes. We dismiss the others with the remark, that while the question of purely Indian railways is at present premature, the railway from Constantinople to the Indus is permanently impracticable, in consequence of the immense distance to be traversed, and the canal from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean has been nearly abandoned by its originators, from the physical difficulties of the soil. There remains, therefore, but the scheme of the Suez Canal.

The design of the Euphrates Valley Railway had its origin in the expedition of General Chesney, so long ago as the year 1830. That enterprising officer proceeded to the East, in the first instance, without any authority,

to discover the shortest route between this country and India. He had hardly, however, reached the Euphrates when illness prevented him from following the caravan which he had joined. This incident diverted his survey from the land to the river. Having induced the Arabs to build him a raft, he descended the Euphrates with a view of ascertaining its practicability for navigation. The crew consisted of the General, his servant, an interpreter, and three Arabs. So jealous were the latter of encroachment, that General Chesney was compelled to make secret soundings by means of a pole attached to the after part of the raft, at which he took post under pretext of steering her. Thus his investigations commenced. In 1836 he re-ascended the Euphrates in a steamer from the Persian Gulf; and he has since diverted his inquiry to the question of communication by land.

It is necessary, in the first instance, to state with precision what the scheme of the Euphrates Valley Railway actually is. This railway then is designed to run from Seleucia, at the mouth of the Orontes, and at the north-east of the Levant, either to Bassorah, at the mouth of the Euphrates, and on the Persian Gulf, or to Kurnah, some thirty miles from the mouth of the river, and the highest point at which the Euphrates is navigable for vessels of the greatest draught. The distance from Seleucia to Kurnah is computed at 771 miles, inclusive of the curves of the projected line. From its terminus, on the Mediterranean, the railway will cross the plateau of Aleppo to the nearest point of the Euphrates, opposite Kalat Jaber. The distance from Seleucia to Kalat Jaber is estimated by Sir John Macneill, the engineer of the company, at about 125 miles; but it is thought not improbable that the deviations from the direct track will increase the length of the line to 150. From this point the railway is designed to follow the general course of the Euphrates, although it will avoid the innumerable sinuosities of the stream, and thereby save nearly 200 miles in the course pursued by the navigators of the Euphrates itself.

The course from Seleucia to Kalat Jaber presents the first section of the line; and for this section only have the company as yet obtained a firman from the Porte. The exertions of Lord Stratford and General Chesney have been directed in vain to the extension of these powers. It is true that a concession of the whole line would have been made somewhat after the fashion of the medieval grant by the Papacy to the Spanish court, of the Atlantic Ocean within certain longitudes. The Porte would have been conceding what it is not actually in their power to grant. The authority of the Sultan, always feeble in the region of the Euphrates, is now reduced there to a zero which represents no more than titular sovereignty.

What, therefore, is commonly termed the "Euphrates Valley Railway scheme," presents two distinct questions. We have, first, the ideal line stretching across Northern Syria, from Seleucia to the Euphrates, for which the permission of the Sultan has been given, and where the authority of the Sultan is respected. We have, secondly, the ideal line, in continuation of that railway, stretching along the "valley" of the Euphrates, for which the permission of the Sultan has not been given, and where his authority is not respected. The former involves 150 miles of railway; the latter about 620. At present, therefore, in the strict sense of the term, there is no question of a Euphrates Valley Railway at all. The company are organizing themselves, and preparing to commence their labours, without any assurance that they will obtain a firman for the longer portion of the route, or that (in the event of their obtaining it) they will find a prolongation of the railway practicable.*

As we are compelled to charge the company with temerity on other grounds, it is the more necessary to observe that the success of their experiment does not necessarily depend upon the practicability of a continuation of the line along the course of the Euphrates. If they should be unable to continue the railway, they will cling to the alternative of navigating the river by steamers. A firman, con

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