But while she exercised this pious care,
Love in her heart the lady wounded more,
And kindled from small spark so fierce a fire,
She burnt all over restless with desire:

"Nor thinking she of mightiest king was born,
Who ruled in the East, nor of her heritage,
Forced by too puissant love, had thought no scorn
To be the consort of a poor foot-page."

His story done, to them in proof was borne.
The gem, which, in reward for harborage,

To her extended in that kind abode,
Angelica, at parting, had bestowed.

A deadly ax was this unhappy close,

Which, at a single stroke, lopt off the head;
When, satiate with innumerable blows.
That cruel hangman Love his hate had fed.
Orlando studied to conceal his woes;

And yet the mischief gathered force and spread,
And would break out parforce in tears and sighs,
Would he, or would he not, from mouth and eyes.

When he can give the rein to raging woe,

Alone, by other's presence unreprest,
From his full eyes the tears descending flow,
In a wide stream, and flood his troubled breast.
'Mid sob and groan, he tosses to and fro
About his weary bed in search of rest;
And vainly shifting, harder than a rock
And sharper than a nettle found its flock.

Amid the pressure of such cruel pain,

It past into the wretched sufferer's head,
That oft the ungrateful lady must have lain,
Together with her leman, on that bed:
Nor less he loathed the couch in his disdain,
Nor from the down upstarted with less dread,
Than churl who, when about to close his eyes,
Springs from the turf, if he a serpent spies.

In him, forthwith, such deadly hatred breed
That bed, that house, that swain, he will not stay
Till the morn break, or till the dawn succeed,
Whose twilight goes before approaching day.

In haste, Orlando takes his arms and steel,
And to the deepest greenwood wends his way.
And, when assured that he is there alone,
Gives utterance to his grief in shriek and groan.

Never from tears, never from sorrowing,

He paused; nor found he peace by night or day:
He fled from town, in forest harboring,
And in the open air on hard earth lay.
He marveled at himself how such a spring
Of water from his eyes could stream away,
And breath was for so many sobs supplied;
And thus ofttimes, amid his mourning, cried:

"These are no longer real tears which rise,
And which I scatter from so full a vein.
Of tears my ceaseless sorrow lacked supplies:
They stopt when to mid-height scarce rose my pain.
The vital moisture rushing to my eyes,

Driven by the fire within me, now would gain

A vent; and it is this which I expend,

And which my sorrows and my life will end.

"No; these, which are the index of my woes, These are not sighs, nor sighs are such; they fail At times, and have their season of repose:

I feel my breast can never less exhale

Its sorrow: Love, who with his pinions blows
The fire about my heart, creates this gale.
Love, by what miracle dost thou contrive,
It wastes not in the fire thou keep'st alive?

"I am not am not what I seem to sight:
What Roland was is dead and under ground,
Slain by that most ungrateful lady's spite,
Whose faithlessness inflicted such a wound.
Divided from the flesh, I am his sprite,
Which in this hell, tormented, walks its round,
To be, but in its shadow left above,

A warning to all such as trust in love."

All night about the forest roved the count,
And, at the break of daily light, was brought
By his unhappy fortune to the fount,

Where his inscription young Medoro wrought.

To see his wrongs inscribed upon

that mount,

Inflamed his fury so, in him was nought

But turned to hatred, phrensy, rage, and spite;

Nor paused he more, but bared his faulchion bright;

Cleft through the writing; and the solid block,

Into the sky, in tiny fragments sped.

Wo worth each sapling and that caverned rock,
Where Medore and Angelica were read!
So scathed, that they to shepherd or to flock
Thenceforth shall never furnish shade or bed.
And that sweet fountain, late so clear and pure,
From such tempestuous wrath was ill secure.

For he turf, stone, and trunk, and shoot, and lop,
Cast without cease into the beauteous source;
Till, turbid from the bottom to the top,
Never again was clear the troubled course.
At length for lack of breath, compelled to stop,
(When he is bathed in sweat, and wasted force
Serves not his fury more) he falls, and lies
Upon the mead, and, gazing upward, sighs.

Wearied and woe-begone, he fell to ground,

And turned his eyes toward heaven; nor spake he aught,
Nor ate nor slept, till in his daily round

The golden sun had broken thrice, and sought
His rest anew; nor ever ceased his wound

To rankle, till it marred his sober thought.

At length impelled by phrensy, the fourth day,
He from his limbs tore plate and mail away.

Here was his helmet, there his shield bestowed;
His arms far off; and farther than the rest,

His cuirass; through the greenwood wide was strowed
All his good gear, in fine; and next his vest

He rent; and, in his fury, naked showed

His shaggy paunch, and all his back and breast.

And 'gan that phrensy act, so passing dread,

Of stranger folly never shall be said.

So fierce his rage, so fierce his fury grew,

That all obscured remained the warrior's sprite;
Nor, for forgetfulness, his sword he drew,

Or wonderous deeds, I trow, had wrought the knight:

But neither this, nor bill, nor ax to hew,
Was needed by Orlando's peerless might.
He of his prowess gave high proofs and full,
Who a tall pine uprooted at a pull.

He many others, with as little let

As fennel, wallwort-stem, or dill, uptore;
And ilex, knotted oak, and fir upset,

And beech, and mountain-ash, and elm-tree hoar.
He did what fowler, ere he spreads his net,
Does, to prepare the champaign for his lore,
By stubble, rush, and nettle stalk; and broke,
Like these, old sturdy trees and stems of oak.

The shepherd swains, who hear the tumult nigh,
Leaving their flocks beneath the greenwood tree,
Some here, some there, across the forest hie,
And hurry thither, all, the cause to see.

THE PRINCE.

BY NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI.

[NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI, Florentine writer and statesman, was born May 3, 1469. He came of a noble but impoverished family, his father being Bernardo Machiavelli, a jurist. He was secretary of the council named "The Ten " from 1498 until the fall of the republic in 1512, and during this time was occupied in the voluminous correspondence of his bureau, in diplomatic missions to France, Germany, and the petty states of Italy, and in the organization of the Florentine militia. On the restoration of the Medici in 1512, he was banished, and in the following year arrested and subjected to torture on the charge of conspiracy, but was soon pardoned and liberated. The next eight years he spent in retirement and literary work, was then again employed as ambassador, and died at Florence, June 22, 1527. His chief works are: "The Prince" (Il Principe), a study of the founding and maintenance of a state; "Florentine History"; "Art of War"; "Discourses on Livy "; " Mandragola," and other comedies.]

OF CRUELTY AND CLEMENCY, AND WHETHER IT IS BETTER TO BE LOVED THAN FEARED.

TO PROCEED to other qualities which are requisite in those who govern. A prince ought unquestionably to be merciful, but should take care how he executes his clemency. Cæsar

Borgia was accounted cruel; but it was to that cruelty that he was indebted for the advantage of uniting Romagna to his other dominions, and of establishing in that province peace and tranquillity, of which it had been so long deprived. And, everything well considered, it must be allowed that this prince showed greater clemency than the people of Florence, who, to avoid the reproach of cruelty, suffered Pistoia to be destroyed. When it is necessary for a prince to restrain his subjects within the bounds of duty, he should not regard the imputation of cruelty, because by making a few examples, he will find that he really showed more humanity in the end, than he, who by too great indulgence, suffers disorders to arise, which commonly terminate in rapine and murder. For such disorders disturb a whole community, whilst punishments inflicted by the prince affect only a few individuals.

This is particularly true with respect to a new prince, who can scarcely avoid the reproach of cruelty, every new government being replete with dangers. Thus Virgil makes Dido excuse her severity, by the necessity to which she was reduced of maintaining the interests of a throne which she did not inherit from her ancestors:

Res dura et regni novitas me talia cogunt
Moliri, et latè fines custode tueri.

En. lib. i.

A prince, however, should not be afraid of phantoms of his own raising; neither should he lend too ready an ear to terrifying tales which may be told him, but should temper his mercy with prudence, in such a manner that too much confidence may not put him off his guard, nor causeless jealousies make him insupportable. There is a medium between a foolish security and an unreasonable distrust.

It has been sometimes asked whether it is better to be loved than feared; to which I answer that one should wish to be both. But as that is a hard matter to accomplish, I think, if it is necessary to make a selection, that it is safer to be feared than be loved. For it may be truly affirmed of mankind in general that they are ungrateful, fickle, timid, dissembling, and self-interested; so long as you can serve them, they are entirely devoted to you; their wealth, their blood, their lives, and even their offspring are at your disposal, when you have no occasion for them; but in the day of need, they turn their