4th Stud. That's the joke. But you should have joined us at the beginning: there's no doubt he loves the girl-loves a model he might hire by the hour!

Gott. See here! He has been accustomed," he writes, "to have Canova's women about him, in stone, and the world's women beside him, in flesh; these being as much below, as those above, his soul's aspiration: but now he is to have the reality." There you laugh again! I say, you wipe off the very dew of his youth.

1st Stud. Schramm! (Take the pipe out of his mouth, somebody!) Will Jules lose the bloom of his youth?

Schramm. Nothing worth keeping is ever lost in this world: look at a blossomit drops presently, having done its service and lasted its time; but fruits succeed, and where would be the blossom's place could it continue? As well affirm that your eye is no longer in your body, because its earliest favorite, whatever it may have first loved to look on, is dead and done with-as that any affection is lost to the soul when its first object, whatever happened first to satisfy it, is superseded in due course. Keep but ever looking, whether with the body's eye or the mind's, and you will soon find something to look on! Has a man done wondering at women?-there follow men, dead and alive, to wonder at. Has he done wondering at men ?-there's God to wonder at and the faculty of wonder may be, at the same time, old and tired enough with respect to its first object, and yet young and fresh sufficiently, so far as concerns its novel one. Thus .

1st Stud. Put Schramm's pipe into his mouth again! There, you see! Well, this

Jules a wretched fribble-oh, I watched his disportings at Possagno, the other day! Canova's gallery-you know; There he marches first resolvedly past great works by the dozen without vouchsating an eye: all at once he stops full at the Psiche-fanciulla-cannot pass that old acquaintance without a nod of encouragement-"In your new place, beauty? Then behave yourself as well here as at Munich -I see you!" Next he posts himself deliberately before the unfinished Pictà for half an hour without moving, till up he starts of a sudden, and thrusts his very nose into --I say, into-the group; by which gesture you are informed that precisely the sole point he had not fully mastered in Canova's practice was a certain method of using the drill in the articulation of the knee-jointand that, likewise, has he mastered at length! Good-by, therefore, to poor Canova -whose gallery no longer needs detain his successor Jules, the predestinated novel thinker in marble!

5th Stud. Tell him about the women: go on to the women !

-

1st Stud. Why, on that matter he could never be supercilious enough. How should we be other (he said) than the poor devils, you see, with those debasing habits we cherish! He was not to wallow in that mire, at least; he would wait, and love only at the proper time, and meanwhile put up with the Psiche-fanciulla. Now, I hap pened to hear of a young Greek-real Greek girl at Malamocco: a true Islander, do you see, with Alciphron's "hair like seamoss - Schramm knows! white and quiet as an apparition, and fourteen years old at farthest,-a daughter of Natalia, so she swears-that hag Natalia, who helps us to models at three lire an hour. We se lected this girl for the heroine of our jest. So, first, Jules received a scented lettersomebody had seen his Tydeus at the Academy, and my picture was nothing to it: a profound admirer bade him persevere-would make herself known to him ere long. (Paolina, my little friend of the Fenice, transcribes divinely.) And in due time, the mysterious correspondent gave certain hints of her peculiar charms--the pale cheeks, the black hair-whatever, in short, had struck us in our Malamocco model; we retained her name, too-Phene, which is, by interpretation, sea-eagle. Now, think of Jules finding himself distinguished from the herd of us by such a creature! In his very first answer he proposed marrying his monitress: and fancy us over these letters, two, three times a day, to receive and dispatch! I concocted the main of it: relations were in the way-secrecy must be observed in fine, would he wed her on trust, and only speak to her when they were indissolubly united? St-st-Here they come !

6th Stud. Both of them! Heaven's love, speak softly, speak within yourselves!

5th Stud. Look at the bridgroom! Half his hair in storm and half in calm,-patted down over the left temple,-iike a frothy cup one blows on to cool it: and the same old blouse that he murders the marble in.

2d Stud. Not a rich vest like yours, Hannibal Scratchy !-rich, that your face may the better set it off.

6th Stud. And the bride! Yes, sure enough, our Phene! Should you have known her in her clothes? How magnificently pale.

Gott. She does not also take it for earnest, I hope?

1st Stud. Oh, Natalia's concern, that is. We settle with Natalia.

6th Stud. She does not speak-has evidently let out no word. The only thing is, will she equally remember the rest of her lesson, and repeat correctly all those verses which are to break the secret to Jules?

Gott. How he gazes on her! Pity-pity! 1st Stud. They go in; now, silence! You three,-not nearer the window, mind,

than that pomegranate; just where the little girl, who a few minutes ago passed us singing, is seated.

II. NOON

Over Orcana. The house of JULES, who crosses its threshold with PHENE: she is silent, on which JULES begins

Do not die, Phene! I am yours now, you

Are mine now; let fate reach me how she likes,

If you'll not die: so, never die! Sit here

My work-room's single seat. I over

lean

This length of hair and lustrous front; they turn

Like an entire flower upward: eyes, lips, last

Your chin-no, last your throat turns: 't is their scent

Pulls down my face upon you. Nay, look ever

This one way till I change, grow youI could

Change into you, beloved!

You by me, And I by you; this is your hand in mine, And side by side we sit all 's true. Thank God!

I have spoken: speak you!

O my life to come! My Tydeus must be carved that 's there in clay;

Yet how be carved, with you about the room?

Where must I place you? When I think that once

This room-full of rough block-work seemed my heaven

Without you! Shall I ever work again,
Get fairly into my old ways again,
Bid each conception stand while, trait
by trait.

My hand transfers its lineaments to stone?

Will my mere fancies live near you, their truth

The live truth, passing and repassing

Your letters next her skin: which drops out foremost?

Ah,-this that swam down like a first moonbeam

Into my world!

Again those eyes complete Their melancholy survey, sweet and slow,

Of all my room holds; to return and

rest

On me, with pity, yet some wonder too : As if God bade some spirit plague a world, [prise And this were the one moment of surAnd sorrow while she took her station, pausing

O'er what she sees, finds good, and must destroy!

What gaze you at? Those? Books, I told you of;

Let your first word to me rejoice them, too:

This minion, a Coluthus, writ in red, Bistre and azure by Bessarion's scribeRead this line. . no, shame-Homer's be the Greek

So you commanded-" carve, against I

come,

A Greek, in Athens, as our fashion was, Feasting, bay-filleted and thunder-free, Who rises 'neath the lifted myrtlebranch.

Praise those who slew Hipparchus !' cry the guests,

Half-softened by a halo's pearly gloom; Down to the crisp imperious steel, so

sure

To cut its one confided thought clean out Of all the world. But marble !-neath my tools

More pliable than jelly-as it were Some clear primordial creature dug from depths

In the earth's heart, where itself breeds itself,

And whence all baser substance may be worked;

Refine it off to air, you may,-condense it

Down to the diamond;-is not metal there,

When o'er the sudden speck my chisel trips?

-Not flesh, as flake off flake I scale, approach,

Lay bare those bluish veins of blood asleep?

Lurks flame in no strange windings where, surprised

By the swift implement sent home at

once,

Flushes and glowings radiate and hover About its track?

Phene? what-why is this? That whitening cheek, those still dilating eyes!

Ah, you will die—I knew that you would die !

PHENE begins, on his having long remained silent.

Phene. Now the end's coming; to be sure, it must

Have ended sometime! Tush, why need I speak

Their foolish speech? I cannot bring to mind

One half of it, beside; and do not care For old Natalia now, nor any of them. Oh, you-what are you?-if I do not try To say the words Natalia made me learn, [self

To please your friends,-it is to keep myWhere your voice lifted me, by letting

Above the world.

You creature with the eyes! If I could look forever up to them, As now you let me,-1 believe, all sin, All memory of wrong done, suffering borne,

Would drop down, low and lower, to the earth

Whence all that's low comes, and there touch and stay

-Never to overtake the rest of me,
All that, unspotted, reaches up to you,
Drawn by those eyes! What rises is
myself,

Not me the shame and suffering; but they sink,

Are left, I rise above them. Keep me

So,

Above the world!

But you sink, for your eyes Are altering-altered! Stay-"I love you, love".

I could prevent it if I understood : More of your words to me: was 't in the tone

Or the words, your power?

Or stay-I will repeat Their speech, if that contents you! Only change

No more, and I shall find it presently Far back here, in the brain yourself filled up.

Natalia threatened me that harm should follow

Unless I spoke their lesson to the end, But harm to me, I thought she meant,

not you.

Your friends,-Natalia said they were your friends

And meant you well,

doubted it,

because, I

Observing (what was very strange to see)

On every face, so different in all else, The same smile girls like me are used to bear,

But never men, men cannot stoop so low; Yet your friends, speaking of you, used that smile,

That hateful smirk of boundless selfconceit

Which seems to take possession of the world

And make of God a tame confederate, Purveyor to their appetites........you know!

But still Natalia said they were your friends, [the more, And they assented though they smiled

What needs some explanation! What means this?

-And I am to go on, without a word

So, I grew wise in Love and Hate,
From simple that I was of late.
Once, when I loved, I would enlace
Breast, eyelids, hands, feet, form and
face

Of her I loved, in one embrace—

As if by mere love I could love immensely!

Once, when I hated, I would plunge
My sword, and wipe with the first lunge
My foe's whole life out like a sponge-
As if by mere hate I could hate intensely!
But now I am wiser, know better the
fashion

How passion seeks aid from its opposite passion:

And if I see cause to love more, hate

more

Than ever man loved, ever hated before—
And seek in the Valley of Love

The nest, or the nook in Hate's Grove
Where my soul may surely reach
The essence, naught less. of each,
The Hate of all Hates, the Love

Of all Loves, in the Valley or Grove,—
I find them the very warders
Each of the other's borders.

When I love most, Love is disguised
In Hate; and when Hate is surprised
In Love, then I hate most: ask

How Love smiles through Hate's iron

Consider. and the money was but meant For two years' travel, which is over now. All chance or hope or care or need of it, This-and what comes from selling these, my casts

And books and medals, except . . . let them go

Together, so the produce keeps you safe Out of Natalia's clutches! If by chance (For all's chance here) I should survive the gang

At Venice, root out all fifteen of them, We might meet somewhere, since the world is wide.

"'T is only a page that carols unseen. Crumbling your hounds their messes!”)

Is she wronged ?—To the rescue of her honor, My heart!

Is she poor ?—What costs it to be styled a donor?

Merely an earth to cleave, a sea to part. But that fortune should have thrust all this upon her!

("Nay, list!"-bade Kate the Queen; And still cried the maiden, binding her tresses,

"T is only a page that carols unseen, Fitting your hawks their jesses!")

JULES resumes.

PIPPA passes.