Down from the Piazza del Popolo on to the Palace

Venetian :

Then the mad race of the riderless horses, and shouts of the people

Ended each many-hued day. Young hearts grew weary of pleasure.

Tired feet trod upon flowers that lay on the pavement neglected,

And the soiled maskers trailed heavily homeward their fanciful trappings.

Silent the stars shone down on the narrow streets, and the watchman

Dozed in his corner and dreamed of the coming delights of the morrow.

Can I forget the wild masque-ball at the brilliant Teatro ?

Dominoes, white, black, and red, all thronging and jostling each other:

Men dark-bearded and women in costumes as fair as

Sultanas,

Every one free as the wind, by fashion's conventions untrammelled,

All borne away by the moment, and chasing the butterfly Pleasure,

Till the stars faded and set in the cold gray light of the morning.

Then, last of all, like a candle that flares at its death in the socket,

Burst on the night the bewildering blaze of the wild Moccoletti,

Flashed in the windows from palace to palace the swift 'llumination,

Flashed in the street, on foot and in carriage each man and each woman

Bearing aloft from all reach their torches, with breath or with flapper

Striving to keep their own and to put out the lights of their neighbors,

While Senza Moccolo, Moccolo! all through the Corso resounded.

Can I forget thee, Rome, at this season of innocent

pleasure ?

Now when I see how the tyrants have caught thee and ruffled thy plumage,

Clipped the gay pinions which once every year thou spreadest in frolic;

Forced thee to laugh, when the bitterest scorn should have answered their meddling;

Forced thee to take thy harp from the willows and sing at their bidding,

When thou shouldst call down the lightning of heaven to blast thy oppressors !

Patience! the day hastens onward.

the horizon

Thunder-clouds on

Rumble and will not rest. Beneath the thrones a vol

cano

Moans, not in vain; and the hour must come when

the forces electric,

Justice and Freedom and Truth, no longer can slumber

inactive.

Then shall thy children exult in a jubilee holier, grander, And thy brief carnival pleasures seem but the sport of a school-boy

To the true freedom that then shall crown thee with blessing and honor!

Christopher Pearse Cranch.

VICOLO DELLA FONTANA.

stand before the dwelling of a man

W who proved, ere meteor-like his spirit fled,

Through Rome's live heart the blood of freedom ran;
That, with the dust of ages o'er her spread,
Prostrate and chained, the Helot was not dead;
A resurrection of futurity

Awaiting yet to raise her buried head,

Cola Rienzi! was reserved for thee:
To breathe into her veins the life of liberty.

Here like a fallen angel mid the wreck Of a crushed world thou stood'st, evoking forth Passionate words that waited at thy beck To raise the fiends hate, vengeance, into birth, And the old memories of heroic worth: The skeleton fragments of Rome's giant power Recalled the minds that once o'erruled the earth; The freemen heard, the spirit that made cower Tyrants, awoke again the Nemesis of the hour.

Patriot, sage, poet, orator, each part

Was subtly played, all save the unattained,

The greatest, the unfelt, the hero heart:
Dazzled wert thou thy giddy eminence gained,
While flattery whispered that the Tribune reigned.
Foes mocked thee: patriots saw their liberty
By crime and vanity and folly stained;
Failure, flight, cowardice, apostasy,

Proved what thou wert too late, vain martyr of the free!

John Edmund Reade.

Rome, Churches of.

ST. PETER'S.

UT lo! the dome, the vast and wondrous dome,

BUT

To which Diana's marvel was a cell,Christ's mighty shrine above his martyr's tomb! I have beheld the Ephesian's miracle,

Its columns strew the wilderness, and dwell
The hyena and the jackal in their shade;

I have beheld Sophia's bright roofs swell

Their glittering mass i' the sun, and have surveyed Its sanctuary the while the usurping Moslem prayed.

But thou, of temples old, or altars new,
Standest alone, with nothing like to thee,-
Worthiest of God, the holy and the true.
Since Zion's desolation, when that he
Forsook his former city, what could be
Of earthly structures, in his honor piled,

Of a sublimer aspect? Majesty,

Power, glory, strength, and beauty, all are aisled In this eternal ark of worship undefiled.

Enter: its grandeur overwhelms thee not;
And why? It is not lessened; but thy mind,
Expanded by the genius of the spot,
Has grown colossal, and can only find
A fit abode wherein appear enshrined
Thy hopes of immortality; and thou
Shalt one day, if found worthy, so defined,
See thy God face to face, as thou dost now
His holy of holies, nor be blasted by his brow.

Thou movest, but increasing with the advance,
Like climbing some great Alp, which still doth rise,
Deceived by its gigantic elegance;

Vastness which grows, but grows to harmonize,
All musical in its immensities;

Rich marbles, richer painting, shrines where flame
The lamps of gold, and haughty dome which vies
In air with earth's chief structures, though their frame
Sits on the firm-set ground, and this the clouds must
claim.

Thou seest not all; but piecemeal thou must break,
To separate contemplation, the great whole;

And as the ocean many bays will make,
That ask the eye, so here condense thy soul
To more immediate objects, and control
Thy thoughts until thy mind hath got by heart
Its eloquent proportions, and unroll