BOOK THIRD. CHAPTER I. especially of late, if I am fond of music myself." 66 Signorina-pardon me - it is impossible that you should not be. Genius THE next day the guests at the Mor- can never be untrue to itself, and must ley's had assembled when Vane entered. love that in which it excels-that by His apology for unpunctuality was cut which it communicates joy, and," he adshort by the lively hostess: "Your par-ded, with a half-suppressed sigh," attains don is granted without the humiliation of to glory." asking for it; we know that the characteristic of the English is always to be a little behindhand.". Why so?" "Because report says you will create a great sensation at the very commencement of your career; and the New World is ever eager to welcome each celebrity that is achieved in the Old; more especially that which belongs to your enchanting art." "True, sir," said an American senator, solemnly striking into the conversation; "we are an appreciative people; and if that lady be as fine a singer as I am told, she might command any amount of dollars." Isaura coloured, and turning to Graham, asked him in a low voice if he were fond of music. 66 "Genius is a divine word, and not to be applied to a singer," said Isaura, with a humility in which there was an earnest sadness. Graham was touched and startled; but before he could answer, the American Minister appealed to him across the table, asking if he had quoted accurately a passage in a speech by Graham's distinguished father, in regard to the share which England ought to take in the political affairs of Europe. The conversation now became general; very political and very serious. Graham was drawn into it, and grew animated and eloquent. Isaura listened to him with admiration. She was struck by what seemed to her a nobleness of sentiment which elevated his theme above the level of commonplace polemics. She was pleased to notice, in the attentive silence of his intelligent listeners, that they shared the effect produced on herself. In fact, Graham Vane was a born orator, and his studies had been those of a political thinker. In common talk he was but the accomplished man of the world, easy and frank and genial, with a touch of good-natured sarcasm. But when the subject started drew him upward to those heights in which politics become the science of humanity, he seemed a changed being. His cheek glowed, his eye brightened, his voice mellowed into richer tones, his language became unconsciously adorned. In such moments there might scarcely be an audience, even differing from him in opinion, which would not have acknowledged his spell. "I ought of course to say 'yes," answered Graham, in the same tone; but I doubt if that 'yes' would be an honest one. In some moods, music — if a kind of music I like affects me very deeply; in other moods, not at all. And I cannot When the party adjourned to the salon, bear much at a time. A concert wearies Isaura said softly to Graham, “I underme shamefully; even an opera always stand why you did not cultivate music; seems to me a great deal too long. But and I think, too, that I can now underI ought to add that I am no judge of stand what effects the human voice can music; that music was never admitted produce on human minds, without recurinto my education; and, between our-ring to the art of song." selves, I doubt if there be one Englishman in five hundred who would care for opera or concert if it were not the fashion to say he did. Does my frankness revolt you?" "On the contrary—I sometimes doubt, 66 Ah," said Graham, with a pleased smile, " do not make me ashamed of my former rudeness by the revenge of compliment, and, above all, do not disparage your own art by supposing that any prose effect of voice in its utterance of mind can interpret that which music alone can to her carriage- the she-mountebank express, even to listeners so uncultured again fell to the lot of Graham. as myself. Am I not told truly by mu- "Signor," said she, as he respectfully sical composers, when I ask them to ex-placed her shawl round her scarlet-andplain in words what they say in their gilt jacket, "are we so far from Paris music, that such explanation is impossi- that you cannot spare the time to call? ble, that music has a language of its own My child does not sing in public, but untranslatable by words?" at home you can hear her. It is not every woman's voice that is sweetest at home." "Yes," said Isaura, with thoughtful brow but brightening eyes, “you are told truly. It was only the other day that I was pondering over that truth." "But what recesses of mind, of heart, of soul, this untranslatable language penetrates and brightens up! How incomplete the grand nature of man- though man the grandest― would be, if you struck out of his reason the comprehension of poetry, music, and religion! In each are reached and are sounded deeps in his reason otherwise concealed from himself. History, knowledge, science, stop at the point in which mystery begins. There they meet with the world of shadow. Not an inch of that world can they penetrate without the aid of poetry and religion, two necessities of intellectual man much more nearly allied than the votaries of the practical and the positive suppose. To the aid and elevation of both those necessities comes in music, and there has never existed a religion in the world which has not demanded music as its ally. If, as I said frankly, it is only in certain moods of my mind that I enjoy music, it is only because in certain moods of my mind I am capable of quitting the guidance of prosaic reason for the world of shadow; that I am so susceptible as at every hour, were my nature perfect, I should be to the mysterious influences of poetry and religion. Do you understand what I wish to express?" "Yes, I do, and clearly." "Then, Signorina, you are forbidden to undervalue the gift of song. You must feel its power over the heart, when you enter the opera-house; over the soul, when you kneel in a cathedral." 66 Graham bowed, and said he would call on the morrow. Isaura mused in silent delight over the words which had so extolled the art of the singer. Alas, poor child! she could not guess that in those words, reconciling her to the profession of the stage, the speaker was pleading against his own heart. There was in Graham's nature, as I think it commonly is in that of most true orators, a wonderful degree of intellectual conscience which impelled him to acknowledge the benignant influences of song, and to set before the young singer the noblest incentives to the profession to which he deemed her assuredly destined. But in so doing he must have felt that he was widening the gulf between her life and his own; perhaps he wished to widen it in proportion as he dreaded to listen to any voice in his heart which asked if the gulf might not be overleapt. CHAPTER II. ON the morrow Graham called at the Villa at A. The two ladies received him in Isaura's chosen sitting-room. Somehow or other, conversation at first languished. Graham was reserved and distant, Isaura shy and embarrassed. The Venosta had the frais of making talk to herself. Probably at another time Graham would have been amused and interested in the observation of a character new to him, and thoroughly southernlovable, not more from its naïve simplicity of kindliness than from various little foibles and vanities, all of which were harmless, and some of them endearing as those of a child whom it is easy to make happy, and whom it seems so cruel to pain: and with all the Venosta's deviations from the polished and tranquil good taste of the beau monde, she had that inHere Mrs. Morley, joined by the Ameri- describable grace which rarely deserts a can poet, came to the corner in which Florentine, so that you might call her odd the Englishman and the singer had niched but not vulgar; while, though uneduthemselves. The poet began to talk, the cated, except in the way of her old proother guests gathered round, and every fession, and never having troubled herone listened reverentially till the party self to read anything but a libretto, and broke up. Colonel Morley handed Isaura the pious books commended to her by "Oh," cried Isaura, with enthusiasm, a rich glow mantling over her lovely face, 'how I thank you! Is it you who say you do not love music? How much better you understand it than I did till this moment!" her confessor, the artless babble of her talk every now and then flashed out with a quaint humour, lighting up terse fragments of the old Italian wisdom which had mysteriously embedded themselves in the groundwork of her mind. But Graham was not at this time disposed to judge the poor Venosta kindly or fairly. Isaura had taken high rank in his thoughts. He felt an impatient resentment mingled with anxiety and compassionate tenderness at a companionship which seemed to him derogatory to the position he would have assigned to a creature so gifted, and unsafe as a guide amidst the perils and trials to which the youth, the beauty, and the destined profession of Isaura were exposed. Like most Englishmen -especially Englishmen wise in the knowledge of life-he held in fastidious regard the proprieties and conventions by which the dignity of woman is fenced round; and of those proprieties and conventions the Venosta naturally appeared to him a very unsatisfactory guardian and representative. Happily unconscious of these hostile prepossessions, the elder Signora chatted on very gaily to the visitor. She was in excellent spirits; people had been very civil to her both at Colonel Morley's and M. Louvier's. The American Minister had praised the scarlet jacket. She was convinced she had made a sensation two nights running. When the amour propre is pleased, the tongue is freed. "But," she exclaimed, with vivacity of voice and gesticulation, "the Signor does not come to hear the parrot talk. He is engaged to come that he may hear the nightingale sing. A drop of honey attracts the fly more than a bottle of vinegar." Graham could not help smiling at this adage. "I submit," said he, "to your comparison as regards myself; but certainly anything less like a bottle of vinegar than your amiable conversation I cannot well conceive. However, the metaphor apart, I scarcely know how I dare ask Mademoiselle to sing after the confession I made to her last night." "What confession?" asked the Venos ta. "That I know nothing of music, and doubt if I can honestly say that I am fond of it." "Not fond of music! Impossible! You slander yourself. He who loves not music would have a dull time of it in heaven. But you are English, and perhaps have only heard the music of your own country. Bad, very bad a heretic's music! Now listen." Seating herself at the piano, she began an air from the "Lucia," crying out to Isaura to come and sing to her accompaniment. "Do you really wish it?" asked Isaura of Graham, fixing on him questioning timid eyes. "I cannot say how much I wish to hear you." Isaura moved to the instrument, and Graham stood behind her. Perhaps he felt that he should judge more impartially of her voice if not subjected to the charm of her face. But the first note of the voice held him spellbound; in itself, the organ was of the rarest order, mellow and rich, but so soft that its power was lost in its sweetness, and so exquisitely fresh in every note. But the singer's charm was less in voice than in feeling - she conveyed to the listener so much more than what was said by the words, or even implied by the music. Her song in this caught the art of the painter who impresses the mind with the consciousness of a something which the eye cannot detect on the canvas. She seemed to breathe out from the depths of her heart the intense pathos of the original romance, so far exceeding that of the opera- the human tenderness, the mystic terror of a tragic lovetale more solemn in its sweetness than that of Verona. When her voice died away no applause came-not even a murmur. Isaura bashfully turned round to steal a glance at her silent listener, and beheld moistened eyes and quivering lips. At that moment she was reconciled to her art. Graham rose abruptly and walked to the window. "Do you doubt now if you are fond of music?" cried Venosta. "This is more than music," answered Graham, still with averted face. Then, after a short pause, he approached Isaura and said, with a melancholy half-smile "I do not think, Mademoiselle, that I could dare to hear you often; it would take me too far from the hard real world; and he who would not be left behindhand on the road that he must journey cannot indulge frequent excursions into fairy-land." "Yet," said Isaura, in a tone yet sadder," I was told in my childhood, by one whose genius gives authority to her words, that beside the real world lies the ideal. The real world then seemed rough to me. Escape,' said my counsellor, is granted from that stony thoroughfare into the fields beyond its formal hedgerows. The ideal world has its sorrows, but it never admits despair.' That counsel then, methought, decided my choice of life. I know not now if it has done so." "Fate," answered Graham, slowly and thoughtfully-"Fate, which is not the ruler but the servant of Providence, decides our choice of life, and rarely from outward circumstances. Usually the motive power is within. We apply the word genius to the minds of the gifted few; but in all of us there is a genius that is inborn, a pervading something which distinguishes our very identity, and dictates to the conscience that which we are best fitted to do and to be. In so dictating it compels our choice of life; or if we resist the dictate, we find at the close that we have gone astray. My choice of life thus compelled is on the stony_thoroughfares-yours in the green fields." As he thus said, his face became clouded and mournful. "Ah, Mademoiselle! do not misrepresent me. I did not say that I could not sometimes quit the real world for fairy-land- I said that I could not do so often. My vocation is not that of a poet or artist." "It is that of an orator, I know," said Isaura, kindling ; — “so they tell me, and I believe them. But is not the orator somewhat akin to the poet? Is not oratory an art?" "Let us dismiss the word orator: as applied to English public life, it is a very deceptive expression. The Englishman who wishes to influence his countrymen by force of words spoken must mix with them in their beaten thoroughfares — must make himself master of their practical views and interests must be conversant with their prosaic occupations and business — must understand how to adjust their loftiest aspirations to their material welfare - must avoid, as the fault most dangerous to himself and to others, that kind of eloquence which is called oratory in France, and which has helped to make the French the worst politicians in Europe. Alas, Mademoiselle! I fear that an English statesman would appear to you a very dull orator." I see that I spoke foolishly—yes, you show me that the world of the statesman lies apart from that of the artist. Yet "To refine the rude, to exalt the mean to identify their own fame with some new beauty, some new glory, added to the The Venosta, quickly tired of a conver-treasure-house of all." sation in which she had no part, and having various little household matters to attend to, had during this dialogue slipped unobserved from the room; yet neither Isaura nor Graham felt the sudden consciousness that they were alone which belongs to lovers. Graham bowed his head reverently, and then raised it with the flush of enthusiam on his cheek and brow. Why," asked Isaura, with that magic smile reflected in countless dimples which, even when her words were those of a man's reasoning, made them seem gentle with a woman's sentiment -"why must your road through the world be so exclusively the stony one? It is not from necessity it cannot be from taste. And whatever definition you give to genius, surely it is not your own inborn genius that dictates to you a constant exclusive adherence to the commonplace of life." "Oh, Mademoiselle!" he exclaimed, "what a sure guide and what a noble inspirer to a true Englishman's ambition nature has fitted you to be, were it not ." He paused abruptly. This outburst took Isaura utterly by surprise. She had been accustomed to the language of compliment till it had begun to pall, but a compliment of this kind was the first that had ever reached her ear. She had no words in answer to it; involuntarily she placed her hand on her heart as if to still its beatings. But the unfinished exclamation, "Were it not," troubled her more than the preceding words had flattered-and mechanically she murmured, "Were it not - what?" "Oh," answered Graham, affecting a tone of gaiety, "I felt too ashamed of my selfishness as man to finish my sentence." "Do so, or I shall fancy you refrained lest you might wound me as woman." "Not soon the contrary; had I gone on it would have been to say that a woman of your genius, and more especially of such mastery in the most popular and fascinating of all arts, could not be contented if she inspired nobler thoughts in a single breast-she must belong to the public, or rather the public must belong to her: it is but a corner of her heart that an individual can occupy, and even that individual must merge his existence in hers must be contented to reflect a ray of the light she sheds on admiring thousands. Who could dare to say to you, 'Renounce your career confine your genius, your art, to the petty circle of home? To an actress -a singer-with whose fame the world rings, home would be a prison. Pardon me, pardon Isaura had turned away her face to hide tears that would force their way, but she held out her hand to him with a childlike frankness, and said softly, "I am not offended." Graham did not trust himself to continue the same strain of conversation. Breaking into a new subject, he said, after a constrained pause, "Will you think it very impertinent in so new an acquaintance, if I ask how it is that you, an Italian, know our language as a native? and is it by Italian teachers that you have been trained to think and to feel?" "Mr. Selby, my second father, was an Englishman, and did not speak any other language with comfort to himself. He was very fond of me and had he been really my father I could not have loved him more: we were constant companions till till I lost him." "And no mother left to console you." Isaura shook her head mournfully, and the Venosta here re-entered. Graham felt conscious that he had already stayed too long and took leave. They knew that they were to meet that evening at the Savarins'. Graham did not feel unmixed pleasure at that thought; the more he knew of Isaura, the more he felt self-reproach that he had allowed himself to know her at all. But after he had left, Isaura sang low to herself the song which had so affected her listener; then she fell into abstracted reverie, but she felt a strange and new sort of happiness. In dressing for M. Savarin's dinner, and twining the classic ivy wreath into her dark locks, her Italian servant exclaimed, "How beautiful the Signorina looks to-night!" From The Quarterly Review. THE TWO FREDERICKS.* THE two ablest sovereigns that ever bore sway in Germany have both by a strange chance - we must not call it singular-borne the title of Frederick the Second. Of these, the one was Emperor of the Romans; the other, King of Prussia. An interval of five centuries lies between them, marked by the greatest changes in language and in manners, in religion and in modes of thought. Yet still both the characters and times of these two monarchs afford some points of parallel which, as we venture to think, it may not be without interest to trace. Let us then endeavour to compare them in several transactions, and at divers periods of their lives. Let us first take their early years. Frederick, the future Emperor, was born on the day after Christmas, in the year 1194, and in the district of Ancona. At present Jesi is an interesting little town of some 5000 inhabitants, tracing its origin to an ination of Rome, and famed in the middle ages definite number of centuries before the foundas the birthplace of Frederick the Second, the great Emperor of Germany, whose constant wars with the Roman Pontiffs, and encouragement of literature, render his memory very popular amongst Italian writers. A thriving trade in silk has preserved it from the squalid misery discernible in most of the inland towns of the March, and it can boast of some palaces in tolerable preservation, a casino, a very pretty theatre, and several churches. So writes of it Mrs. Gretton, the authoress of two very well informed and very entertaining volumes on Italy, which were published so far back as 1860, and which we are glad to have an opportunity of mentioning, as we do not think that at the time they attracted as much notice as their merit deserved. In the fourth year of his life Frederick lost his father; in the fifth, his mother. The infant prince was proclaimed King |