and from gondolas on its furface, while groups of mafks were feen dancing on the moonlight terraces, and feemed almost to realize the romance of fairy-land.

The barge stopped before the portico of a large houfe, from whence a servant of Montoni croffed the terrace, and immediately the party difembarked. From the portico they paffed a noble hall to a staircafe of marble, which led to a faloon, fitted up in a style of magnificence that furprised Emily. The walls and ceiling were adorned with hiftorical and allegorical paintings, in frefco; filver tripods, depending from chains of the fame metal, illumined the apartment, the floor of which was covered with Indian mats painted in a variety of colours and devices; the couches and drapery of the lattices were of pale green filk, embroidered and fringed with green and gold. Balcony lattices opened upon the grand canal, whence rofe a confufion of voices and of musical instruments, and the breeze that gave freshness to the

apartment.

Emily, confidering the gloomy temper of Montoni, looked upon the fplendid furniture of his houfe with furprife, and remembered the report of his being a man of broken fortune, with astonishment. "Ah!" faid fhe to herself, "if Valancourt could but fee this mansion, what peace would it give him! He would then be convinced that the report was groundless."

Madame Montoni feemed to affume the airs of a princess; but Montoni was restlefs and discontented, and did not even ob. ferve the civility of idding her welcome to her home.

Soon after his arrival, he ordered his gondola, and, with Cavigni, went out to mingle in the scenes of the evening. Madame then became ferious and thoughtful. Emily, who was charmed with every thing she saw, endeavoured to enliven her; but reflection had not, with Madame Montoni, fubdued caprice and ill-humour, and her answers discovered fo much of both, that Emily gave up the attempt of diverting her, and

with

withdrew to a lattice, to amuse herself with the scene without, fo new and fo enchanting.

The first object that attracted her notice was a group of dancers on the terrace below, led by a guitar, and fome other inftruments. The girl, who ftruck the guitar, and another, who flourished a tamborine, paffed on in a dancing ftep, and with a light grace and gaiety of heart, that would have fubdued the goddefs of fpleen in her worst humour. After thefe came a group of fantastic figures, fome dreffed as gondolieri, others as minstrels, while others feemed to defy all defcription. They fung in parts, their voices accompanied by a few soft inftruments. At a little diftance from the portico they stopped, and Emily distinguished the verses of Ariofto. They fung of the wars of the Moors against Charlemagne, and then of the woes of Orlando: afterwards the meafure changed, and the melancholy fweetnefs of Petrarch fucceeded. The magic of his grief was affifted by all

that

that Italian mufic and Italian expreffion, heightened by the enchantments of Venetian moonlight, could give.

Emily, as the liftened, caught the pensive enthufiafin; her tears flowed filently, while her fancy bore her far away to France and to Valancourt. Each fucceeding fonnet, more full of charming sadness than the last, seemed to bind the fpell of melancholy : with extreme regret the faw the musicians move on, and her attention followed the ftrain till the laft faint warble died in air. She then remained funk in that penfive tranquillity which foft mufic leaves on the mind-a ftate like that produced by the view of a beautiful landscape by moonlight, or by the recollection of scenes marked with the tenderness of friends loft for ever, and with forrows, which time has mellowed into mild regret. Such scenes are indeed, to the mind, like “those faint traces which the memory bears of mufic that is paft."

Other

:

Other founds foon awakened her attention it was the folemn harmony of horns, that fwelled from a distance; and, obferving the gondolas arrange themfelves along the margin of the terraces, fhe threw on her veil, and, stepping into the balcony, difcerned, in the diftant perfpective of the canal, fomething like a proceffion, floating on the light furface of the water: as it approached, the horns and other inftruments mingled fweetly, and foon after the fabled deities of the city feemed to have arisen from the ocean; for Neptune, with Venice perfonified as his queen, came on the undulating waves, furrounded by tritons .and feanymphs. The fantastic fplendour of this fpectacle, together with the grandeur of the furrounding palaces, appeared like the vifion of a poet fuddenly embodied, and the fanciful images, which it awakened in Emily's mind, lingered there long after the proceffion had paffed away. She indulged herself in imagining what might be the

manners