One in a Cardinal's habit, one in black,

Those of the unhappy brothers, and infer

From the deep silence that his questions drew,

The terrible truth.

Well might he heave a sigh

For poor humanity, when he beheld

That very Cosmo shaking o'er his fire,

Drowsy and deaf and inarticulate,

Wrapt in his night-gown, o'er a sick-man's mess,

In the last stage-death-struck and deadly pale;

His wife, another, not his Eleanora,

At once his nurse and his interpreter.

NOTES.

K

NOTES.

NOTE a. Page 7. line 4.

As on that Sabbath-eve to young Rousseau,

Les Confessions. L. 1.

NOTE b. Page 8. line 13.

like him of old,

The Abbot of Clairvaux.

"To admire or despise

St. Bernard as he ought," says Gibbon," the reader like myself should have before the windows of his library, that incomparable landskip."

K 2

NOTE C. Page 9. line 2.

That winds beside the mirror of all beauty,

There is no describing in words; but the following lines were written on the spot, and may serve perhaps to recall to some of my readers what they have seen in this enchanting country.

I love to watch in silence till the Sun

Sets; and MONT BLANC, arrayed in crimson and gold,

Flings his broad shadow half across the Lake;
That shadow, tho' it comes thro’pathless tracts
Of Ether, and o'er Alp and desert drear,
Only less bright, less glorious than himself.
But, while we gaze, 'tis gone ! And now he shines
Like burnished silver; all, below, the Night's.-

Such moments are most precious. Yet there are Others, that follow them, to me still more so; When once again he changes, once again Clothing himself in grandeur all his own; When, like a Ghost, shadowless, colourless,