Eugenius. The unbelievers: they surely are face the next fortnight. My master had expressed found wanting.

his astonishment that a religion so admirable as ours was represented, should be the only one in Engenius. Ay, ay, thou half renegade! Couldst the world the precepts of which are disregarded not thou go over with a purse of silver, and try by all conditions of men. "Our Prophet," said whether the souls of these captives be recoverable? he, "our Prophet ordered us to go forth and Even if they should have submitted to such un-conquer; we did it yours ordered you to sit holy rites, I venture to say they have repented. quiet and forbear; and, after spitting in his face, Filippo. The devil is in them if they have you threw the order back into it, and fought like

Eugenius. The barbarians talk of our Holy | the desire of transgressing his command. To Scriptures as if they understood them perfectly. spare them as much as possible, I ordered them The impostor they follow has nothing but fustian merely to open a few spaces, and to remove the and rhodomantade in his impudent lying book from weaker trees from the stronger. Meanwhile I beginning to end. I know it, Filippo, from those drew on the smooth blank window the figure of who have contrasted it, page by page, paragraph Abdul and of a beautiful girl. by paragraph, and have given the knave his due. Filippo. Abdul is by no means deficient in a good opinion of his own capacity and his Prophet's all-sufficiency, but he never took me to task about my faith or his own.

Eugenius. Rather say handmaiden: choicer expression; more decorous.

Filippo. Holy Father! I have been lately so much out of practice, I take the first that comes in my way. Handmaiden I will use in preference for the future.

Eugenius. How wert thou mainly occupied ? Filippo. I will give your Holiness a sample both of my employments and of his character. He was going one evening to a country-house, about fifteen miles from Tunis; and he ordered me to accompany him. I found there a spacious garden, overrun with wild-flowers and most luxuriant grass, in irregular tufts, according to the dryness or the humidity of the spot. The clematis overtopped the lemon and orange-trees; and the perennial pea, sent forth here a pink blossom, here a purple, here a white one, and, after holding (as it were) a short conversation with the humbler plants, sprang up about an old cypress, played among its branches, and mitigated its gloom. returned. He White pigeons, and others in colour like the dawn | of day, looked down on us and ceased to coo, until some of their companions, in whom they had more confidence, encouraged them loudly from remoter boughs, or alighted on the shoulders of Abdul, at whose side I was standing. A few of them examined me in every position their inquisitive eyes could take; displaying all the advantages of their versatile necks, and pretending querulous fear in the midst of petulant approaches.

Eugenius. Is it of pigeons thou art talking, O Filippo? I hope it may be.

Filippo. Of Abdul's pigeons. He was fond of taming all creatures; men, horses, pigeons, equally: but he tamed them all by kindness. In this wilderness is an edifice not unlike our Italian chapter-houses built by the Lombards, with long narrow windows, high above the ground. The centre is now a bath, the waters of which, in another part of the inclosure, had supplied a fountain, at present in ruins, and covered by tufted canes, and by every variety of aquatic plants. The structure has no remains of roof and, of six windows, one alone is unconcealed by ivy. This had been walled up long ago, and the cement in the inside of it was hard and polished. "Lippi!" said Abdul to me, after I had long admired the place in silence, "I leave to thy superintendence this bath and garden. Be sparing of the leaves and branches: make paths only wide enough for me. Let me see no mark of hatchet or pruning-hook, and tell the labourers that whoever takes a nest or an egg shall be impaled."

Eugenius. Monster! so then he would really have impaled a poor wretch for eating a bird's egg? How disproportionate is the punishment to the offence !

Filippo. He efficiently checked in his slaves

Eugenius. On then! and God speed thee! Filippo. I drew Abdul with a blooming handmaiden. One of his feet is resting on her lap, and she is drying the ancle with a saffron robe, of which the greater part is fallen in doing it. That she is a bondmaid is discernible, not only by her occupation, but by her humility and patience, by her loose and flowing brown hair, and by her eyes expressing the timidity at once of servitude and of fondness. The countenance was taken from fancy, and was the loveliest I could imagine: of the figure I had some idea, having seen it to advantage in Tunis. After seven days Abdul was delighted with the improvement made in the garden. I requested him to visit the bath. "We can do nothing to that," answered he impatiently. "There is no sudatory, no dormitory, no dressing-room, no couch. Sometimes I sit an hour there in the summer, because I never found a fly in it; the principal curse of hot countries, and against which plague there is neither prayer nor amulet, nor indeed any human defence." He went away into the house. At dinner he sent me from his table some quails and ortolans, and tomatas and honey and rice, beside a basket of fruit covered with moss and bay-leaves, under which I found a verdino fig, deliciously ripe, and bearing the impression of several small teeth, but certainly no reptile's.

Eugenius. There might have been poison in them, for all that.

Filippo. About two hours had passed, when I heard a whirr and a crash in the windows of the bath (where I had dined and was about to sleep), occasioned by the settling and again the flight of some pheasants. Abdul entered. "Beard of the Prophet! what hast thou been doing? That is myself! No, no, Lippi! thou never canst have seen her: the face proves it: but those limbs! thou hast divined them aright: thou hast had sweet dreams then! Dreams are large possessions: in them the possessor may cease to possess his own. To the slave, O Allah! to the slave is permitted what is not his! . . I burn with anguish to think how much yea, at that very hour. I would not another should, even in a dream.. But, Lippi! thou never canst have seen above the sandal?" To which I answered, "I never have allowed my eyes to look even on that. But if anyone of my lord Abdul's fair slaves resembles, as they surely must all do, in duty and docility, the figure I have represented, let it express to

him my congratulation on his happiness." "I believe," said he, "such representations are for bidden by the Koran; but as I do not remember it, I do not sin. There it shall stay, unless the angel Gabriel comes to forbid it." He smiled in saying so.

Eugenius. There is hope of this Abdul. His faith hangs about him more like oil than pitch.

Filippo. He inquired of me whether I often thought of those I loved in Italy, and whether I could bring them before my eyes at will. To remove all suspicion from him, I declared I always could, and that one beautiful object occupied all the cells of my brain by night and day. He paused and pondered, and then said, "Thou dost not love deeply." I thought I had given the true signs. "No, Lippi! we who love ardently, we, with all our wishes, all the efforts of our souls, can not bring before us the features which, while they were present, we thought it impossible we ever could forget. Alas! when we most love the absent, when we most desire to see her, we try in vain to bring her image back to us. The troubled heart shakes and confounds it, even as ruffled waters do with shadows. Hateful things are more hateful when they haunt our sleep: the lovely flee away, or are changed into less lovely."

Eugenius. What figures now have these unbelievers?

Filippo. Various in their combinations as the letters or the numerals; but they all, like these, signify something. Almeida (did I not inform your Holiness?) has large hazel eyes. .

Eugenius. Has she? thou never toldest me that. Well, well! and what else has she? Mind! be cautious! use decent terms.

Filippo. Somewhat pouting lips.

Eugenius. Ha! ha! What did they pout at?
Filippo. And she is rather plump than otherwise.
Eugenius. No harm in that.

Filippo. Am I so unfortunate as to have offended your Beatitude?

Eugenius. Offend me, man! who offends me? I took an interest in thy adventures, and was concerned lest thou mightest have sinned; for by my soul! Filippo! those are the women that the devil hath set his mark on.

Filippo. It would do your Holiness's heart good to rub it out again, wherever he may have had the cunning to make it.

Eugenius. Deep! deep!

Filippo. Yet it may be got at; she being a Biscayan by birth, as she told me, and not only baptised, but going by sea along the coast for confirmation, when she was captured.

Eugenius. Alas! to what an imposition of hands was this tender young thing devoted! Poor soul!

Filippo. I sigh for her myself when I think of her.

Eugenius. Beware lest the sigh be mundane, and lest the thought recur too often. I wish it were presently in my power to examine her myself on her condition. What thinkest thou? Speak.

Filippo. Holy Father! she would laugh in your face.

Eugenius. So lost!

Filippo. She declared to me she thought she should have died, from the instant she was captured until she was comforted by Abdul: but that she was quite sure she should if she were ransomed.

Eugenius. Has the wretch then shaken her faith?

Filippo. The very last thing he would think of doing. Never did I see the virtue of resignation in higher perfection than in the laughing lighthearted Almeida.

Eugenius. Lamentable! Poor lost creature! lost in this world and in the next.

Filippo. What could she do? how could she

Eugenius. She might have torn his eyes out, and have died a martyr.

Filippo. Or have been bastinaded, whipped, and given up to the cooks and scullions for it. Eugenius. Martyrdom is the more glorious the greater the indignities it endures.

Filippo. And moreover is cool, smooth, and firm as a nectarine gathered before sunrise. Eugenius. Ha! ha! do not remind me of nec-help herself? tarines. I am very fond of them; and this is not the season! Such females as thou describest, are said to be among the likeliest to give reasonable cause for suspicion. I would not judge harshly, I would not think uncharitably; but, unhappily, being at so great a distance from spiritual aid, peradventure a desire, a suggestion, an inkling.. ay? If she, the lost Almeida, came before thee when her master was absent. . which I trust she never did... But those flowers and shrubs and odours and alleys and long grass and alcoves, might strangely hold, perplex, and entangle, two incautious young persons.. ay?

Filippo. I confessed all I had to confess in this matter, the evening I landed.

Filippo. Almeida seems unambitious. There are many in our Tuscany who would jump at the crown over those sloughs and briars, rather than perish without them: she never sighs after the like.

Eugenius. Nevertheless, what must she witness! what abominations! what superstitions! Filippo. Abdul neither practises nor exacts any other superstition than ablutions.

Eugenius. Detestable rites! without our autho

Eugenius. Ho! I am no candidate for a seat at the rehearsal of confessions: but perhaps my ab-rity. I venture to affirm that, in the whole of solution might be somewhat more pleasing and unconditional. Well! well! since I am unworthy of such confidence, go about thy business. paint! paint!

Italy and Spain, no convent of monks or nuns contains a bath; and that the worst inmate of either would shudder at the idea of observing such a practice in common with the unbeliever.

For

the washing of the feet indeed we have the autho- | sword in perfectly good-humour, and sheathing rity of the earlier Christians; and it may be done; it again at word of command, just when I begin but solemnly and sparingly. Thy residence among to get into a passion. No; I fight on my own the Mahometans, I am afraid, hath rendered thee account; not as a hired assassin, or still baser more favourable to them than beseems a Catholic, journeyman." and thy mind, I do suspect, sometimes goes back into Barbary unreluctantly.

Eugenius. It appears then really that the Infidels have some semblances of magnanimity and generosity?

Filippo. I thought so when I turned over the many changes of fine linen; and I was little short of conviction when I found at the bottom of my chest two hundred Venetian zecchins.

Eugenius. Corpo di Bacco Better things, far better things, I would fain do for thee, not exactly of this description; it would excite many heartburnings. Information has been laid before me, Filippo, that thou art attached to a certain young person, by name Lucrezia, daughter of Francesco Buti, a citizen of Prato.

Filippo. I acknowledge my attachment: it continues.

Eugenius. Furthermore, that thou hast offspring by her.

Filippo. Alas! 'tis undeniable.

Eugenius. I will not only legitimatize the said offspring by motu proprio and rescript to consistory and chancery.

Filippo. Holy Father! Holy Father! For the love of the Virgin, not a word to consistory or chancery, of the two hundred zecchins. As I hope for salvation, I have but forty left: and thirty-nine would not serve them.

Eugenius. Fear nothing. Not only will I perform what I have promised, not only will I give the strictest order that no money be demanded by any officer of my courts, but, under the seal of Saint Peter, I will declare thee and Lucrezia Buti man and wife.

Filippo. While I continued in that country, although I was well treated, I often wished myself away, thinking of my friends in Florence, of music, of painting, of our villegiatura at the vintage-time; whether in the green and narrow glades of Pratolino, with lofty trees above us, and little rills unseen, and little bells about the necks of sheep and goats, tinkling together ambiguously; or amid the grey quarries or under the majestic walls of ancient Fiesole; or down in the woods of the Doccia, where the cypresses are of such a girth that, when a youth stands against one of them, and a maiden stands opposite, and they clasp it, their hands at the time do little more than meet. Beautiful scenes, on which Heaven smiles eternally, how often has my heart ached for you! He who hath lived in this country, can enjoy no distant one. He breathes here another air; he lives more life; a brighter sun invigorates his studies, and serener stars influence his repose. Barbary hath also the blessing of climate; and although I do not desire to be there again, I feel sometimes a kind of regret at leaving it. A bell warbles the more mellifluously in the air when the sound of the stroke is over, and when another swims out from underneath it, and pants upon the element that gave it birth. In like manner the recollection of a thing is frequently more pleasing than the actuality; what is harsh is dropped in the space between. There is in Abdul a nobility of soul on which I often have reflected with admiration. I have seen many of the highest rank and distinction, in whom I could find nothing of the great man, excepting a fondness for low company, and an aptitude to shy and start at every spark of genius or virtue that sprang up above or before them. Abdul was solitary, but affable: he was proud, but patient and complacent. I ventured once to ask him, how the master of so rich a house in the city, of so many slaves, of so many horses and mules, of such corn-fields, of such pas-mination. tures, of such gardens, woods, and fountains, should experience any delight or satisfaction in infesting the open sea, the high-road of nations? Instead of answering my question, he asked me in return, whether I would not respect any relative of mine who avenged his country, enriched himself by his bravery, and endeared to him his friends and relatives by his bounty? On my reply in the affirmative, he said that his family had been deprived of possessions in Spain, much more valuable than all the ships and cargoes he could ever hope to capture, and that the remains of his nation were threatened with ruin and expulsion. "I do not fight," said he, "whenever it suits the convenience, or gratifies the malignity, or the caprice, of two silly quarrelsome princes, drawing my

Filippo. Man and wife!

Eugenius. Moderate thy transport.
Filippo. O Holy Father! may I speak?
Eugenius. Surely she is not the wife of another?
Filippo. No indeed.

Eugenius. Nor within the degrees of consanguinity and affinity?

Filippo. No, no, no.

But.. man and wife! Consistory and chancery are nothing to this ful

Eugenius. How so?

Filippo. It is man and wife the first fortnight, but wife and man ever after. The two figures change places: the unit is the decimal and the decimal is the unit.

Eugenius. What then can I do for thee?

Filippo. I love Lucrezia: let me love her let her love me. I can make her at any time what she is not: I could never make her again what she is.

Eugenius. The only thing I can do then is to promise I will forget that I have heard anything about the matter. But, to forget it, I must hear it first.

Filippo. In the beautiful little town of Prato, reposing in its idleness against the hill that pro

tects it from the north, and looking over fertile | a sudden that the object of my love should be the meadows, southward to Poggio Cajano, westward object of adoration to thousands, born and unborn, to Pistoja, there is the convent of Santa Margarita. I swept my brush across the maternal face, and I was invited by the sisters to paint an altar- left a blank in heaven. The little girl screamed: piece for the chapel. A novice of fifteen, my own I pressed her to my bosom. sweet Lucrezia, came one day alone to see me work at my Madonna. Her blessed countenance had already looked down on every beholder lower by the knees. I myself who made her could almost have worshipped her.

Eugenius. In the chapel?

Filippo. I knew not where I was: I thought I was in Paradise.

Eugenius. If it was not in the chapel, the sin is venial. But a brush against a Madonna's mouth

Eugenius. Not while incomplete: no half-virgin is worse than a beard against her votary's. will do.

Filippo. But there knelt Lucrezia! there she knelt! first looking with devotion at the Madonna, then with admiring wonder and grateful delight at the artist. Could so little a heart be divided? Twere a pity! There was enough for me: there is never enough for the Madonna. Resolving on

Filippo. I thought so too, Holy Father! Eugenius. Thou sayest thou hast forty zecchins: I will try in due season to add forty more. The fisherman must not venture to measure forces with the pirate. Farewell! I pray God, my son Filippo, to have thee alway in his holy keeping.

PRINCESS MARY AND PRINCESS ELIZABETH.

Mary. My dear dear sister! it is long, very | anywhere, would he, royal soul! have minded long, since we met.

Elizabeth. Methinks it was about the time they chopped off our uncle Seymour's head for him. Not that he was our uncle though. . he was only Edward's.

Mary. The Lord Protector, if not your uncle, was always doatingly fond of you; and he often declared to me, even within your hearing, he thought you very beautiful.

parliament? No such fool he. There were laws before there were parliaments; and there were kings before there were laws. Were I in your Majesty's place (God forbid the thought should ever enter my poor weak head, even in a dream!) I would try the mettle of my subjects: I would mount my horse, and head them.

Mary. Elizabeth! you were always a better horsewoman than I am: I should be ashamed to get a fall among the soldiers.

Elizabeth. He said as much of you, if that is all; and he told me why. "not to vex me as if, Elizabeth. Pish! Pish! it would be among instead of vexing me, it would not charm me. I knights and nobles. . the worst come to the beseech your Highness, is there anything remark-worst. Lord o' mercy! do you think they never able or singular in thinking me. . what he saw such a thing before? thought me ?

Mary. No indeed; for so you are. But why call me Highness? drawing back and losing half your stature in the circumference of the curtsey. Elizabeth. Because you are now, at this blessed hour, my lawful queen.

Mary. Hush, prythee hush! The parliament has voted otherwise.

Elizabeth. They would chouse you.
Mary. What would they do with me?
Elizabeth. Trump you.

Mary. I am still at a loss.
Elizabeth. Bamboozle you.

Mary. Really, my dear sister, you have been so courted by the gallants, that you condescend to adopt their language, in place of graver.

Elizabeth. Cheat you then will that do?
Mary. Comprehensibly.

Elizabeth. I always speak as the thing spoken of requires. To the point. Would our father have minded the caitiffs?

Mary. Naming our father, I should have said, our father now in bliss; for surely he must be; having been a rock of defence against the torrent of irreligion.

Elizabeth. Well; in bliss or out, there, here, or

Mary. I must hear of no resistance to the powers that be. Beside, I am but a weak woman. Elizabeth. I do not see why women should be weak, unless they like.

Mary. Not only the Commons, but likewise the peers, have sworn allegiance.

Elizabeth. Did you ever in your lifetime, in any chronicle or commentary, read of any parliament that was not as ready to be forsworne as to swear! Mary. Alas!

Elizabeth. If ever you did, the book is a rare one, kept in an out-of-the-way library, in a cedar chest all to itself, with golden locks and amber seals thereto.

Mary. I would not willingly think so ill of

men.

Elizabeth. For my part, I can't abide 'em. All that can be said, is, some are not so bad as others. You smile, and deem the speech a silly and superfluous one. We may live, sister Mary, to see and acknowledge that it is not quite so sure and flat a verity as it now appears to us. I never come near a primrose but I suspect an adder under it; and the sunnier the day the more misgivings.

Mary. But we are now, by the settlement of