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mosaic worker apologizes, saying that he took him to be his friend from seeing him come so frequently out of his dwelling adding that he came to his shop oftener than he should relish, had he a pretty daughter, or-wife. Monaldi is almost stunned by this news, and has barely strength to reach his gateway, where, leaning against a pillar, he hears his wife singing a new polacca, the only air upon which their tastes disagreed; another time he would not have noticed it, but now

"He turned for a moment towards the court

of his house, then pressing his hand to his brain rushed from the gate. Whither he was going he knew not; yet it seemed as if motion gave him the power of enduring what he could not bear at rest; and he continued to traverse street after street, till, quitting the city, he had reached Ponte Molle, where, exhausted by heat and fatigue, he was at length compelled to stop.

"It was one of those evenings never to be forgotten by a painter-but one, too, which must come upon him in misery as a gorgeous mockery. The sun was yet up, and resting on the highest peak of a ridge of mountain-shaped clouds, that seemed to make a part of the distance; suddenly he disappeared, and the landscape was overspread with a cold, lurid hue; then, as if molten in a furnace, the fictitious mountains began to glow; in a moment more they tumbled asunder; in another he was seen again piercing their fragments, and darting his shafts to the remotest east, till, reaching the horizon, he appeared to recall them, and with a parting flash to wrap the whole heavens in flame.

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"Oh, do not say so; something must, or you would not be thus.' "How thus?'

"As you never were before.'

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"True, I never-pshaw-there's nothing the matter; and I have told you I am very well.' 'Nothing!'—This was the first instance of chill as from an actual blast, and her arms mereserve since their marriage. Rosalia felt its chanically dropped by her side. 'Ah, Monaldi ! ought-I do honor your motive; you would you have yet to know your wife. And yet I spare her pain. But if you knew her heart, you would feel that your unkindest act would be to deny her the privilege of sharing your sufferings.' *

**

*

"There is a certain tone-if once heard, and heard in the hour of love-which even the tongue that uttered it can never repeat, should its purpose be false. Monaldi heard it now; there was no resisting that breath from the heart; he felt its truth as it were vibrating through him, and he continued "Monaldi groaned aloud. No, thou art gazing on her till a sense of his injustice flushed nothing to me now, thou glorious sun--noth- him with shame. For a moment he covered ing. To me thou art dead, buried-and for- his face; then turning gently towards her, ever,-in her darkness; hers whose own gloryRosalia,' said he, in a softened accent-but once made me to love thee.'his emotion prevented his proceeding.

"A desolate vacancy now spread over him, and leaning over the bridge, he seemed to lose himself in the deepening gloom of the

scene, till the black river that moved beneath him appeared almost a part of his mind, and its imageless waters but the visible current of his own dark thoughts.

"The very sense of pain will soon force the faculties to return to their wonted action, to pursue again their plans of peace and hope. *** The intense longing for relief brought on a re-action. 'No,' said he, starting up, some fiend has tempted me, and I have mocked myself with monsters only in my brain --she is pure--she must be!"

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He returns homeward, but as he crosses his threshold, and pauses for an instant to

"Speak, my dear husband, and tell me that you think me not unworthy to be one with you

in sorrow.'

"My wife! thou art indeed my own!" said Monaldi, clasping her to his bosom. Oh, what a face is this! How poor a veil would it be to anything evil. Falsehood could not hide there.' Then quitting her for a moment. he walked up the room. I have read her been pebbles at the bottom of a clear stream, every thought,' said he to himself; 'had they they could not have been more distinct. With such a face she cannot be false.' As he said this, an expression of joy lighted up his features, and he turned again to his wife. There needed not a word to interpret his look;-she sprang forward, and his arms again opened to receive her.

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"One day back this sentiment would hardly have struck him; it would have entered his mind only as a part of the harmonious whole which made her character; now it came contrasted with his own dissimulation, and he thought, as he looked on her, that he had never before felt the full majesty of her soul.

"The meaning of his eyes was felt at her heart, and the blushing wife hid her face in his bosom; for, whether maid or wife, a blush is the last grace that forsakes a pure woman; 'tis the abiding hue with her nature; and never is it seen so truly feminine as when, like hers, it reveals the consciousness of merited praise."

But in the midst of this a loud ringing is heard at the door, and presently a servant comes in to say that a person had inquired for Monaldi, but on being told he was at home, had said it was no matter, and went away. This raises again the devil in the husband's breast that his wife's unconscious innocence had just laid. He becomes half frantic, and, in spite of her utmost tenderness, he puts her to the test by naming Fialto, and fiercely recounting a story of a wrong, similar to what he fancies is his own, committed by this man -how he had fixed his eye on a painter's wife-how she would not go to the theatre one evening-" perhaps she pleaded a headache," how the painter saw Fialto leave the box, and so on-looking into her eyes at every particular as though he would read her soul. Poor Rosalia at first thinks he is crazy, but as he approaches the end of the tale, a light breaks upon her, and she confounds him utterly by saying she understands it all, and no longer wonders at his emotion-the unfortunate husband must be his friend.

"Ah,' said Rosalia, with a melancholy smile, that same imagination would be a fearful master over such a heart as yours!'

"Never can it become so," said Monaldi,

kissing her forehead; never while my heart clings to such a reality. Look on me, Rosalia. Oh, how beautiful is Truth when it looks out from the eyes of a pure woman! Such, if ever visible, should be its image-the present shadowing of that hallowed harmony which the soul shall hereafter know in substance.'

"My husband!' Rosalia could say no

more.

"The night now closed upon them, and they sunk to sleep with hearts too full for another wish."

After this Monaldi is master of his suspicions for nearly a month, during which time nothing occurs to excite them afresh. But at length, the evening before he intends to visit Genezzano on business, and be away a day and night from home, Fialto suddenly meets him under his gateway, and thrusts a letter and money into his hand, addressing him as Giuseppe, his servant. The letter is addressed to Rosa

lia, and purports to be in answer to one from her; it alludes to a meeting while her husband was at the theatre, and agrees to another at twelve the next night. This was Fialto's plan having corrupted Antonio, one of Monaldi's household, he learns that he was expected to be away that night; by delivering such a letter in such a way, he knows very well that jealousy will bring him home at the hour of the assignation; meantime, through Antonio, he will himself contrive to be caught in Rosalia's bed-chamber, whence he can easily escape, by having a rope ladder ready from the window, and a spy in the street who shall whistle a certain air when Monaldi enters the house.

And so it falls out. The letter con

vinces Monaldi of his wife's perfidy; yet he will not act without the very last proof of guilt. He dissembles and pretends to leave for Genezzano, but returns at twelve. Fialto, warned of his approach, roughly wakens Rosalia, whose beauty as she lay sleeping almost turns him from his purpose, and leaps from the window just as Monaldi bursts into the room. The frightened Rosalia, supposing her husband to be a robber, throws herself at his feet crying mercy, and is met by his dagger in

her bosom.

In the terrible scene which follows, she begs to know why he has done this, till she faints-he urging her to confess, stanches the wound to give her time to repent—she revives he shows her the let ter-she reads it, and prays Heaven to spare him when he shall know the truth alas! her love manifests it already, and he rushes forth distracted, even while her eyes are closing.

We will hasten rapidly to the end of the tale, for there is no greater injustice to an author than to present extracts from the most passionate parts of his story, or dull the edge of the reader's curiosity by a dry and minute skeleton of his plot.

Fialto meets Maldura that very night, and receives the reward of his villany. Maldura too begins to taste the wages of sin in an overwhelming sense of selfcondemnation. Rosalia is soon discovered by the frightened servants; the old house-keeper finding her still warm, sends for a surgeon, who pronounces the wound not mortal; she is enjoined not to speaknot even to inquire for her husband; days and weeks pass by, and she slowly recovers. When Maldura hears of her recovery, it takes somewhat from his great agony of remorse. But he had still blasted Monaldi's peace-perhaps his life-for Monaldi has been searched for in vain ever since the dreadful night. Hence he is still loaded with guilt, and can only avoid himself by mixing in the world and travelling from city to city.

At length, losing his way in the country near Naples, he espies a hut among the ruins of an ancient tomb: there he finds Monaldi, a wretched maniac. He causes him to be conveyed to the nearest village and procures aid, and himself attends him till at length he is restored and hears that Rosalia lives. (Rosalia and Landi had been sent for meanwhile, and await the physician's permission to see him.) But in the same conversation that Maldura, whom he still looks upon as his old friend, tells him of his wife's recovery, he manifests so much gratitude that Maldura is overpowered by the might of conscience, that will not be relieved till he has confessed all his guilt; and this he does with such an impetuous torrent of self-reproach that it kindles again the fire in Monaldi's,

n, so that when Rosalia and her father

are brought in expecting to find him sane, they behold only a shrieking madman.

From this time he becomes incurably insane, generally sitting motionless with his eyes riveted to one spot for days together, except when he hears the voice of his wife, which always throws him into a paroxysm of raving. It is after one of these paroxysms that, without speaking to any one, he is seen to go into his painting room; he continues to do so month after month, till he finishes the picture described in the introduction. He then disappears for more than a year, and is finally found in the cottage where the traveller has seen him, whence no entreaty will induce him to depart. Rosalia, to be near him, becomes a boarder at a neighboring convent.

Maldura's repentance is sincere; he becomes a brother of this convent, and dies there two years before the traveller's visit, having procured the picture to be near him, that he might be always reminded what a mind he had blasted.

This is the sum of the manuscript given by the Prior to the traveller. Two days after the venerable father calls him to attend the death-bed of Monaldi, to whose closing hours Heaven has mercifully granted an interval of reason. He there sees Rosalia kneeling by her husband's bedside, and the solemn scene which follows finishes, as with a sublime hymn, the tragic drama of their love and sorrow.

We would not have the reader suppose that such a synopsis, and the scattered extracts it contains, can convey a true idea of this affecting story; but this may nevertheless serve to enable us to interest him in a few observations naturally suggested by it; and, which will be much better, they may excite his curiosity to read it. Indeed, if we were certain it would produce the latter effect, we had rather quit the subject here, and leave the book to the opinions of ladies and scholars; for it is not easy to analyze beauties and point out particular excellencies in works which we love as wholes. Just as lovers are unable to tell what separate feature or attribute of form or motion, most warms their hearts in gazing on their mistresses, whether it be the jetty ringlet, the ruby lip, the sparkling eye, the rosy smile, the graceful gesture, or the silvery voice; so it is with books which touch the same 'invisible fin

isher it is not the style alone, the language, the thought, the fancy, or the passion, but the general character, compounded of all these and speaking through them, as the soul of the lover's mistress speaks to him through her charms, that reaches the depth of sympathy. Monaldi is to be loved, in brief, it may be said, because it is a delightful old-fashioned tale, full of reflection, observation, philosophy, character, pictures, true affection-all excellent qualities; because it charms the reader and draws him onward, so that when it is begun it presses to be gone through with ; because it takes him into a new and beautiful region, a modification of one that was already familiar, a peculiar Italy, wherein the real and the romantic are brought into actual harmonious contact; because it is told in a pure simple style, that often rises to the most passionate eloquence; because Rosalia is so lovely and so truly intellectual a lady; or to sum up all in one, as Beatrice does her love to Benedict, "for all these bad parts together," or simply because not to like it is impossible.

as an unique in our literature-a short story of love, ambition, revenge, and jealousy, highly dramatic and picturesque, yet embodying thought enough to give it rank with Rasselas or any similar production in the language. Though written in the form of a tale, it has all the condensation of a tragedy; every page hurries along the action, and every page teems also with suggestive reflection. Its style is pure, and finished with the most extreme care; yet it is also perfectly natural and easy.

There is never a word out of place, or a word too much, and yet it flows with a delicious music, that changes with the passion, as it could only have changed under the guidance of natural emotion. It has a peculiar rhythm, and though it is so admirably sustained that the ear soon becomes quite unconscious it is following aught but the accent of the simplest prose which could be written, yet any judge of style will see that this needs more care to restrain it within its required limits than the poetry of such a writer as Tennyson for example, or any who pitch their work upon a level admitting the most astonishing incongruities of expression. Refinement shows itself no less in style than in thought and mode of treatment; the soul of a true artist manifests itself in all that it does; and its sensitive discrimination is as evident in its manner of expression as in its course of thought and fancy. Some writers at the present time, in de

It may readily be conceived why such a tale should be neglected by the novelreaders of to-day, who only read Mr. Bulwer for excitement, Mr. James out of habit, and Madame Sand for reasons not to be understood for all such readers, Monaldi is too broadly based on common sense and right thinking; its passion is too lofty and real; it is altogether too quietly wrought, the coloring is too rich and delicate, the tone too deep. It is like a fine old paint-spair seemingly of expressing themselves ing, that might hang for years in a row of French daubs and attract no eye-glasses, in-tubes, or parvenu ecstacies.

But there must be many readers who are better capable of understanding and relishing what is good in novels and tales, and who will be glad to discover one that has food in it. There must be many who were great lovers of good stories in early youth, but have long since, they fancy, xhausted that department so as to be mable to find anything they can read. Some remember Godwin, others Scott, and hey have a few old favorites among these, and one or two others, which, for want of ewer, they content themselves with reeading at long intervals. To such as hese, our article is especially addressed; nd to them we would commend Monaldi

in a style sufficiently nice for their overnice conceits, abandon the attempt, and put on the mask of some strange affectation. Carlyle formerly, in the Life of Schiller, and other things, wrote in a very careful rhetorical style; but it was a cold one, and finding that he had not the time to be so elaborate, and not having the manliness to be natural, he determined, in the true spirit of a wrong-headed misanthrope, to attempt to please the world no more, but thenceforth to defy custom and be independent. Among our writers of less strength of intellect than he, how many we have who have followed the same course! In poetry, we have abundant examples among our transcendental minnows on both sides the water. In prose, we have our Jerrolds, and nearer home,

our regular manufacturers of base coin, | be felt a long way off, and at last it dies

who make a trade of passing counterfeit good writing.

Indeed, we have so many such, and the general vice of carelessness in style so affects our hasty-writing age, that the very purity and neatness of the style of Monaldi will at first appear so striking as to seem strained and obtrusive. Yet if we turn suddenly from several weeks of the ordinary current of newspapers and other such writing of the hour, which every one reads, (except those whose necessities oblige them to write it,) to the pages of any of our prose classics, Addison or Goldsmith for example, the same effect will be perceived. The first impression of a pure style is therefore, under such circumstances, no sure test. We must go on at first with an effort, till we become lost in the author; and if we can become so lost, and at the same time still have the consciousness of a pure and graceful flow of expression ever present with us, harmonizing with, not obstructing, the growth of emotion, is not this a higher enjoyment than to lose all consciousness of style whatever? It of course must be; for it is bringing into play another faculty of our nature; pleasing, not lulling, the critical discernment, while the imagination pursues her lofty flight; it is directing our air voyage over a diversified champaign, rather than over a desolate sea, or a region of shapeless clouds.

But the style of Monaldi, though pure, is not rigid; it bends to the story, and this shows how naturally it must have been written. In the opening chapters, it is quiet and reflective, suited to the tone of the thoughtful character-drawing with which the piece commences; as it goes on, we have a vivid epigrammatic dialogue; then the most passionate scenes, all built upon the original reflective back-ground, which is ever coming in, like a prevailing harmony, to sustain the unity of the tone. Finally, nothing can be finer for harmony of style with the thought and with its previous level, than the conclusion. There, where there was so much temptation to be falsely eloquent, the author has so resolutely preserved the dominant tone, that the very melody of the sentences almost gives an effect that we are approaching a ncluding harmony; the end begins to

away with the lofty grandeur of an old Handelian cadence. How far this effect is to be attributed to the pure style, as apart from thought, it is not necessary to ask ourselves, since if the style had not much to do with it, and did not much assist the other, the effect could not be so complete. This conclusion is certainly one of the finest instances of the power of natural reserve in the language.

How admirably suited is this simple, pure, and elevated style, to the tone and passion! We can fancy that a superficial reader of trash should take up the book, and after running over a page or two, throw it, with a flippant sneer at its "purism;" there is a great variety of readers among the educated as well as uneducated, who are not at all up to the appreciation of such writing and such thinking. not from any fault of theirs, but because the providence of Heaven did not furnish them with the requisite susceptibility. For all such, Monaldi will be too "slow" a book; they will want something more dashy and steaming; they will require stories where the passion overpowers the judgment, and sometimes runs riot with the intellect, in order to be stirred up thoroughly; they cannot conceive a mind so constituted that it shall take on, in the production of a work of art, a higher life through its whole substance-in its reason. its apprehension, its invention, its emotion. its consciousness.

But there is a smaller class who can relish all forms of art, from simple fairy stories, where the eye only is amused with pictures, to lofty tragedies, like Hamlet or Macbeth, where the whole soul is brought into activity, and made to experience, as Coleridge says, "a sense of its possible greatness."

These will not fail to be delighted with the beautiful consentaneousness of the styli and thought, particularly in the opening chapters of Monaldi. The extracts have given may be sufficient to make the excellence somewhat apparent; but in th entire book it is one of the most strikin qualities, and shows how perfectly natura is the purity and restrained elegance w diction which the lovers of a showy rhet oric will be ready to cavil at. For, as t style is elevated, pure, and simple, so

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