before Christ by Saba, surnamed Pistio, elder broth Nimrod, and Noah's great grandson-what was th me? I bade him push on, through the midday sun, ing even in October, to the Tesoretto of the Valdica Leading by the hand a lovely little sister, whom I here call Mary, Désirée at the sound of wheels ran to come me in the hall. My driver, struck by the saint beauty of the fair English children, called out, I remer 'Vergine santissima, che miracolo, Madonna dell' Umi (a venerated image at Pistoia); but I remember not more of the scene, except that exquisite sense of rac and confusing happiness which accompanied always, effaced by excess of joy, the first moments with Désirée XXVIII We spent the soon-closing afternoon in a c nut wood above the white Tesoretto. This grove, slop four hundred feet up from the torrent, appeared like a nat temple; a vast labyrinth of almost equal columns, as read of the mosque of Cordova; and, like that, vau over at the same elevation (reckoning from the immed ground-level) throughout, but with curve and fretwor even more than Arabian fancy. The high-channe stems, scarcely narrowing for forty feet, allowed our eye range unimpeded to the topmost crest, where the last le age was lighted with a silver brilliance; or, if direc before the sun, leafage and boughs seemed dark with cessive glory. Here and there above us, as we climbed sliding cliff with delight, the wind that could not reach stirred in the extreme pinnacles and shook them in feathery sparkles; and high, then, over the highest boug we saw the pale trembling of the crystalline heavens. Furth on and nearer the summit, as we seemed by measurable a vances to approach the sun, stars, green and golden, blaz brother of as this to un, glowIdicampo. I shall n to welSaint-like member, Umiltà'! nothing radiant ys, and sirée. a chessloping natural , as we vaulted nediate work of nelled eyes to t leaf Frectly th exed the ch us into ughs rther e ad azed 6 flickeringly amongst the leaves, or at any more dividing more riot, till hand in hand we reached a stone on w below the lily shield of Florence, was written the d FEDELE LEALE', and over it saw Valdarno at a gl one hollow of hot haze to the hills beyond Fiesole were silenced. XXIX That evening, when, after Désirée had ro the Tuscan echoes with old-remembered English airs the manly pathos of Handel, through a long corridor reached my room, many childish thoughts, but amo them the first conscious thoughts for life, crowded on n the darkness. 'God's glory, watchfulness', has been John Henry Newman touchingly called 'man's dise but I was far from this bitter-this, I trust, not univ experience: to me, at least, the silences of the night then filled with memories of more than earthly sweetness wake from the death of sleep, and at one instant's thou be with Désirée, appeared often almost to equal the mi of a resurrection. And to this pleasure was here added exquisite sense that not only was I lying within shelt the same house, but that, by the fact of her parents' abse that house might be considered her's: there was ness in the walls, and peace in the timbers :- the furniture, I extravagantly thought, had something sa in it a certain sweet personality. Now, however, c the heart-quickening conviction, shouted by many voice once-by that day's delight in her undivided compani ship, by growing sensations of life, by approaching entra on what I might not unjustly call life itself, and loud and purest, by the voice of love; that though there co be but two answers, and one-I could not think of that yet it might be timely time to speak; that the hour struck; that, for fear of risking all, I must risk somethi on which, he device a glance, esole, and ad roused on me in been by disease'; universal ght were ness: to thought miracle ded the elter of bsence, holi he very came ices at anion trance oudest e could hatar had thing. 1 Silent I had hitherto been, in part from the mere fact of XXX Stormy and pale,' to quote a song not then written, arose the next morning. For a half-hour's interval the little Mary was on my knee: she praised her sister with a child's warm-hearted admiration; her eyes brightened at my answer; she rewarded me with kisses for loving Désirée. Then my passionate evocations, which had already a hundred times traversed the chesnut stair, appeared to have fulfilled their innocent mission; and 'Paradise', as Wordsworth has it (under shield of great calm spirit let me shelter myself from the hin excess), 'by the simple opening of a door, let itself upon me'. Again came the long discourse on a thous household and summer memories; again the mut 'smile when hearts are of each other sure'; again impulse to speak; again the terror with which Love rec from the syllable Love-the mysterious Anteros of E Meantime rain fell fast, and the sun-dried Ombr breathed a thanksgiving in vaporous exhalations; the r and swirl of its waters deepened, and, listening at an of window, we heard fresh cataracts burst into life a answer from the heart of the forest ravines above us. But the hour for starting to meet the diligence at summit of the pass had arrived; their English nurse monstrated to no purpose; Désirée, with her frank si plicity, would accompany me to the roadshed at La Collin That drive is among the treasures of memory I do not en him who does not envy. Why, however, is recollectio clear as if on familiar matters of to-day in recalling t local circumstances of happiness, silent on the words whi were one main portion (Désirée's simple presence, and Hop the other) of that felicity? As by the bridge of Guad we drove slowly up the winding way, the mist was ofte fitfully withdrawn, and we saw the massy chesnut dome the keen cypress spires, the shoulders of gleaming pi through veils of silver. The hill-haze, by degrees meltin in fine fringes, went aloft into the clouds of the uppe sky, and the blue now opened through a torn silke chasm like a lake suspended, and with its own swanlik specks of vapour, in soft inversion' above us. The suddenly the heaven cleared-sunbeams travelling from |