tween them only the folds of their velvet and silken garments, and hence the iliad of their woes.

Lanciotto must have been suspicious, jealous from the first. Such men are usually so without the slightest cause. And he assuredly had cause. Paolo and Francesca were much together, and the deformed either secretly watched them, or ordered them to be watched.

One direful day, when they with Nature were alone or fondly thought they were—he stole upon their conceived security, destruction glaring in his eye, sword gleaming in his hand, and slew them both. They had but time to tighten affection's clasp, to syllable their love, and breathe their last.

That picture stands beyond any that limner has ever hued-the lovers dying in one another's arms, and smiling at death; their slayer scowling over their bleeding forms, hell in his face, and heaven in theirs. That picture by its airy magic still draws from distant climes the pilgrim's wandering feet, and makes of Rimini a fane of love, a sentimental shrine.

I have heard of a maiden lady of uncertain age (her ancestors came over in the Mayflower, and she vegetates in stern morality at Plymouth when at home), who stubbornly refused to go from Bologna to Rimini because Parisina Malatesta and Francesca Polenta were from Rimini, and, as both were, she had been told, very improper persons, she had reason to believe the atmosphere of the place unfavorable to propriety.

All women are not so supernaturally righteous as that supersensitive soul. Most of them, the moment they have crossed the Marecchia, thrust their heads out of the car or carriage window in hope of discovering by some inward revelation the house in which Francesca formerly abode. Men have much the same curiosity; indeed, as I have been informed on the spot, the first question asked by nearly every tourist is, "Where did Francesca live?"

The valet de place or commissionnaire who could not answer that might as well turn his attention to the means of earning an honest livelihood. But a fellow of such calling never fails to have a reply for any and every inquiry that is often made. If Polenta had never had a daughter, or had never existed, the stupidest valet in the town would be able to point out to you the family residence, and in any street you might have a fancy for. He could tell you, also, where Lanciotto and Paolo dwelt; where the lovers were in the habit of meeting; where they first read of Lancelot and Guinevere; and the identical spot where the infuriated husband surprised and smote them in their sin.

If not content with this, you could learn from him where the marital Malatesta bought his sword; how much he gave for it; what barber Paolo employed to dress his hair; and the exact price Francesca paid for her beautiful stockings—an article, you would be apprised in confidence, she was extremely particular about-purchasing none but the best, though more of the same kind might be had at No. in the Piazza Giulio Cesare.

Wonderful creatures, these valets de place! After a country editor, they are the nearest approach to human omniscience.

The valets of Rimini are not compelled, however, to draw so liberally on their imagination. It is claimed, with show of authority, that Francesca's house has been identified with what was the Palazzo Ruffi (Count Cisterni occupied it a few years since, 2nd may occupy it now for aught I know to the contrary), or, to speak strictly, that it stood on the site of that palace. The eyes of many nations have been riveted on that gloomy building; the feet of many travelers have trodden its brick floors for no better reason than because they believed that one of the heroines of medieval romance once ate and slept there, laughed and cried, put on her clothes and took them off, like any other woman whose romance-for every woman has her romance-is as yet unknown to the world. Leigh Hunt went there for inspiration ere he wrote his poem; Ary Scheffer before he painted his picture; and a troop of other artists who have told the pathetic tale in marble, music, pigment, and ink. And for centuries to come Rimini will be the Loretto of sensibility, the Mecca of romance.

How any great love, ending in tragedy, singles out and consecrates the place where the love has been felt, and the tragedy so enacted as to make of passion a poetic whole!

Italy is full of such places. Verona has had its fatal history of Romeo and Giulietta; Ferrara of Ugo and Parisina; Faenza of Galeotto and Francesca Manfredi; Bologna of Bonifazio and Imelda. But none of these, not even the tender tale on which Shakespeare has breathed his immortality, touch the mind with so deep a sympathy, or nestle so close to the heart, as the cypress-bound idyl of Paolo Malatesta and Francesca da Rimini.

Who that has been to the ancient town on the Adriatic has not thought more of the unhappy pair than of its Roman or literary antecedents? Who has not slighted the Bridge of Augustus (over the Marecchia); the antique arch (now the Porta Romano); the Church of San Francesco, Alberti's masterpiece; even the (extremely apocryphal) spot, marked by a chapel, where St. Anthony preached to the fish, because the people refused to listen to him -to hurry to the house known as Francesca's? It is she who gives interest to the mutilated Castel Malatesta, on which may yet be traced the insignia of the family she was allied to the rose and elephant. Proper symbol, as I once heard a sentimental maiden say: Francesca was the rose, Lanciotto the elephant that trampled out her beauty and her sweetness.

Malatesta! The name is significant of the character of many of its sons. Still, the Malatestas were not worse than other ignobly noble, infamously famous families that tyrannized over Italy in the middle ages. A precious crew of cultured villains, verse-scanning poisoners, dilettant ravishers, critical cut-throats, were they all-the Gonzagas, Manfredis, Estes, Viscontis, Sforzas, Orsinis, Frangipannis, Medicis, Borgias, Grimaldis, alike and equal in iniquity,

patrons of art and betrayers of women, students of literature and assassins of their nearest kin, poltroons before superstition and doers of every shame, quibblers over Aristotle, and committers of unnatural crimes.

How readily we forget all their honors, even their dishonors, and fix upon some example of suffering humanity, which, though we may not approve, we cannot condemn, like that of Rimini's lovers! The noblest place that man can die is where he dies for man; and yet many of us feel that the noblest place is where he dies, as Paolo died, for woman. Died he for her, or she for him, or each for the other, or both for both? Who can say? But all agree that they died, and, even if selfishly, they died in that illustrious, dramatic fashion which guards the globe against oblivion-when gifted poets turn historians.

All Rimini is now but as a setting for Paolo and Francesca's love. And, when the places filled with their associations have been visited, the seat of the Malatestas is dull and done. They who have been within its walls are apt to believe they have sacrificed to Cytherea and her eternal son, and so secured their fealty and favor. "I am always lucky in the game of hearts," says the Frenchwoman; "I have bathed fifty times in the waves that kiss the shores of Francesca's home."

"Never doubt me," murmurs the passionate Italienne; "I have stood where Polenta's daughter died." "I am no novice in love," exclaims the fair American; "I have been where that monster Malatesta killed his charming wife."

Francesca, it must be acknowledged, was not a pattern of conjugal fidelity; but say the ultraromantic, she was loyal to love, if not to her husband, and, while marriage is an accident, love is an essential. Hands may be given where they are ordered; but we cannot command the soul. The fault was less in Francesca than in her circumstances. She atoned by death for her great sin, and, being dead, it is only natural that lovers in every land should mourn the memory of her who died for love.

This may be the sentimental view, and sentiment springs from the lapse of years. The grave quenches animosities and annuls scandals. Conventionality is contemporaneous; but Nature is everlasting. To obey both is sometimes hard. We reprove those who offend the former: we execrate them that transgress the latter.

Had Francesca been called Mrs. Malatesta, and lived across the street-but the subject, declares Mrs. Grundy, is not proper for discussion in the light of to-day. The indiscreet young lady should not be brought from Rimini to be sent to Coventry. She must be allowed to slumber in her mediæval tomb in order that distance in time may lend her the hues of enchantment or the grace of condonation.

Perhaps Mrs. Grundy is right. Five centuries contain enormous power, not of idealization alone, but of assuagement and absolution. We refuse to pardon, or to tolerate in the Now, what we sympathize with and reverence in the Remote. She who

would be a horrid creature in the Present becomes a suffering saint, seen through the dimness of departed years. Time teaches charity because it stifles passion and expels prejudice. Blessed, therefore, be time. History is more than philosophy teaching by example, it is humanity enforcing its lessons by illustration.

One always learns much of what has happened by going to the place where the happening has been -no matter how long after. It is impossible to tell in what proportions the information is true or false; but the same may be said of everything you have not witnessed yourself, and sometimes even of that.

I have learned a great deal about Francesca by visiting Rimini, and I was surprised, on arriving there, how very little I knew of her beyond her sad fate. Such things as I have mentioned were gathered in the town. They may be old; but they were new to me. Chronicles of love, particularly when they have a local habitation and a name, never cease to be related, never lose their interest or freshness, in Italy. They spring spontaneous from the soil; the warm sun yields them nourishment; the blue sky · bends over them in benediction. The people narrate them from generation to generation, and thus the tradition of ages becomes the sentimental gossip of the hour.

While you listen to the prattle of the crone respecting Francesca, you may be getting the but slightly-altered facts of five hundred years before. I remember hearing in Rimini that, three centuries after their death, the bodies of the lovers were found in Ravenna, in such a state of preservation that the silken garments they had been buried in had undergone little change. I did not know that they had even been laid in one grave, and the other part of the story seemed a palpable invention. To my surprise, I learned, somewhat later, that Carlo Troya (in his "Introduction to the History of the Middle Ages," I believe) had mentioned those circumstances as irrefragable facts. So, no doubt, many things related of the couple, that are thought fictitious, might be proved authentic by examination.

I had no trouble in obtaining in Rimini a detailed personal description of Francesca. She was of medium size, slight, but round, and lithe as a willow. Her complexion was pale-olive; her hair a rich, lustrous brown, rather light than dark, a shade of red in it. Her eyes were purple, and under her nearly sable lashes—her eyebrows were of the same coloroften looked black as night. Their greatest beauty was in their variety of expression. They took their hue from the mood of her mind, from the emotions of her heart. It was impossible to name their color; for, ere it could be mentioned, another color came and went, and was succeeded by still another. Her nose was moderately small, turned up slightly; her mouth was somewhat large, but beautifully shaped, the lips being full; her teeth like little pearls, though she barely showed their tips when she laughed. Her ears were diminutive and transparent; her chin full and round; her hands and feet not so small as they might have been, but of exceeding symmetry.

I like the description, because it agrees with my notion of her; and yet it differs from the order of beauty poets and painters have endowed her with.

ognomically, it corresponds with her nature so far as we know it. Judged as she always is by the uncertain rules that apply to poetry, she must have been attractive enough to make her husband jealous, and to have offered to her lover some compensation for

THE

HERE is a poverty-smitten town, about halfway between Tivoli and Subiaco, on the north bank of the Agnio, some twelve miles south of the farm of Horace, called La Scarpa. Its crazy-looking tenements find an unwholesome footing upon the first rise of one of the lowest ranges of the Sabine Hills. La Scarpa is noted as sending down to Rome more beggars than any other of the upland villages, and rivals Saracinesca itself for its supply of costume models and models also who pose without costume of any sort. Among its most distinguished | models was Francesco, a tall, picturesque-looking fellow of five-and-thirty. He was thin and supple, with gypsy-like features, and a wonderful head of black, curly hair; his covering, that of the poorest class of mountain shepherds. Francesco was a bit of a religious enthusiast, his imagination having been very likely excited by the legendary stories which make such a disproportionate part of the pious education received in such places as La Scarpa. His whole appearance and manner had a tinge of melancholy fanaticism. These peculiar characteristics made him a valuable model for all the St. Johns of the Wilderness, St. Anthonys, and other meagre saints and Biblical subjects. Between the few posings he could find for these and soliciting charity he pursued his career in Rome.

Every winter at the time when the pifferari came down with their bagpipes to play before the altars of the Virgin, came Francesco, with his two children who were also destined to become acolytes of art. Mariuccio, the youngest, was a very pretty little child, who inherited her father's raven ringlets and fine eyes, with the difference that her curls were more soft and silky, and her eyes sparkled with a bewitching brilliancy, intense animation, and intelligence, which his languid, sad orbs never knew. Quick perception is common to the Italian mountaineers; but I never saw it so strongly expressed as in this girl. Mariuccia commenced her vocation when five years old, and grew rapidly into favor. At fourteen she was one of the most attractive of the Roman female models; her form, though small, was charmingly proportioned. She was the best type for a pretty Bacchante that could be found, as well as for all subjects of that kind; consequently she was more employed in the studios of the sculptors than of the painters-or, in other words, Mariuccia was more

| popular without drapery than with it. Her limbs, I have already said, were of rare perfection, much more perfect, in my opinion, than those of Napoleon's sister, judging from the statue in the Villa Borghese, who posed to Canova.

Francesco never allowed his daughter to go to the studios without her mother, who knit her coarse stockings while Mariuccio posed. The sitting over, when the weather was fine, they went to sun themselves, and eat their bread and salame upon the steps of the Piazza di Spagna. By-the-by, what a striking feature it used to be, these groups spotting the grand stairs, perspectively to its summit, with masses of every bright color known! At a certain distance they might almost have been mistaken for patches of brilliant flowers. Had they been flowers, the prettiest, freshest, and purest among them would have been Francesco's daughter.

It was here, sitting upon those steps, that the charming Mariuccia was seen by a young French artist who had just come to Rome; and here I will relate the little romance of the belle of La Scarpa. The French artist was very much struck by her, and secured at once all her disengaged sittings for months, and made many studies from her in every possible pose. The more he painted and drew from her, the more he became the slave of her unsophisticated charms. The young painter was of a distinguished family, and of independent means. His associates saw and wondered at the untiring fascination which the rustic siren exerted over him. Admitting her extraordinary loveliness of form, they could only see in her the material enchantment of a pretty, ignorant peasant-girl, with whom an artist might toy and amuse himself, but never wed. Their surprise grew into astonishment when they learned that Gustave seriously contemplated to woo honestly and marry the low-born model. Mariuccia ceased to be a model save for the French artist. Among the class to which she belonged there was talk of masters who had been paid by the French painter to teach Mariuccia all sorts of things, and some were malicious enough to say coarse words about the interest which Signore Gustave took in the girl.

Mariuccia was no longer seen in the streets; her radiant smile and black, bright eyes were missed by scores of careless adorers, and they felt aggrieved and sore against the selfish artist who kept her hid

den out of sight, and some of them for revenge insinuated motives as wicked as they were untrue. A year or two passed by, scandal had worn itself into indifference, and, one day meeting Francesco, he accosted me as follows:

Signore, I know that you have always believed my daughter to be an honest girl, and you will be. glad to hear that this day fortnight she is to be married to the French artist Gustave. There are nearly three years that they are promessi sposi; during that time he has been paying teachers to educate her, and is now satisfied that she is well enough taught to be his wife. Proud as I should be with the event, yet, O signore, it breaks my heart to part with her, for she is, though I say it, una troppo cara figlia. He takes her to Paris, and I may never see her again." And poor Francesco's ever-melancholy eyes grew sadder still. "When," he continued, the distinguished French artist proposed for her, both myself and her mother objected; we felt that the difference of station was too great, and, should our child marry, Signore Gustave might subject her to humiliations; far away from those who, poor and miserable as they are, are dear to the child, and would have wept with her and consoled her. She refused to marry old Andrea's son, who owns three of the best vineyards about La Scarpa, and has a flock of two hundred sheep; and she refused also to marry Benedetto, un bravo giovane, whose father is the only tobaccaro of our place. You see, she had already given her heart to the French painter. We were very frank with Signore Gustave, and told him honestly that we feared it would be impossible for Mariuccia to grow into the ways of fine people, and reasoned with the young man (as well as we simple contadini may), and tried to convince him of the mistake of tying himself for life to the daughter of an ignorant peasant, little removed from a beggar" ("Not an ignoble one, at least,” I replied, in parenthesis); "but we could not dissuade him from his resolution. Mariuccia is attached to me,' the artist replied, and I will wait until she has been sufficiently educated for all that I desire. Finally we consented. Dio mio! to believe that the daughter of poor beggarly Francesco should marry a veritable rich signore! It appears a dream, signor pittore; but Mariuccia is an angel of a child, and Signore Gustave told me to-day that she was well enough accomplished to be presented at court to-morrow if it was desirable. Only to think that she is going away from us to become a great lady."

In two weeks after this conversation an event occurred, new to the annals of the miserable village of La Scarpa: the arrival of a splendid carriage in its narrow, pig-infested streets. It was known that the wedding-party would arrive that day among them and all the population were there to shout a welcome to the rich signore and his rustic bride. Mariuccia was dressed in the finest costume known to her native place, without even the bonnet (first object always assumed by most females who drop the mountain dress). Upon her head, instead, was the most costly, lace-worked toccana ever seen. Her bodice

was of the rarest red satin; her apron interwoven with thread of gold in bouquets of flowers, and gaylyplumaged birds wrought skillfully upon the palegreenish ground. Her skirt was of rose-colored silk, and the cloth attached to her waist of the finest material and of the deepest crimson; her deerskin ciocci were laced with golden straps; the entire dress most costly, but strictly adhering in its disposition to the cioceria costume. The poor people of this poorest of towns, feeling proud of the conquest of their village belle, scattered flowers before the carriage-wheels, and filled the air with "Evviva Mariuccia! evviva il Signore Francese! evviva la sposina!" Francesco and his family were for that day the princes of La Scarpa. The best of the wretched dwellings was prepared for the nuptial party; the generous Frenchman distributed largess to the indigent inhabitants of the place. The next day he returned to Rome and departed for Paris, where he now resides. The pretty Mariuccia is the mother of several lovely children, and is known as an accomplished and charming woman. I often ask Francesco, who is still a good model for Biblical subjects (though getting a little too stout for St. John the Baptist), how it fares with his daughter, and his face forgets its gloomy pathos. He really becomes transfigured as he answers: "O signore, she is so happy! and he is so good and fond of her! She never forgets us, and sends us continually nice presents and loving letters. God bless her, the dear child!"

Annina, another of the fortunate models, was from the town of Anticole. I first saw Nina in Rome some fifteen years since, leading about her father, who was blind, and begging for him. She was a graceful, fair-complexioned girl of thirteen or fourteen. Her hair was golden, and her eyes of a darkbluish gray. She had a happy faculty in getting sous out of the pockets of susceptible elderly gentlemen, who found her sparkling glances and merry laugh irresistible-for the girl never asked for alms in a whining tone, and looked as if she would give a kiss for every sous, and the more sous the better. The women, of course, did not approve of Nina, and called her a bold, impudent little minx. The mother of Nina was a licensed beggar, who touched people's hearts by eloquently talking of better days, from which she had been driven by terrible misfortunes, and which might possibly be true, for the old woman had the air of a fallen countess, and exhibited the remains of a once handsome person. She was wise and prudent enough, whatever she had been, or was at present, to look carefully after her attractive daughter, and, when her blind husband died, accompanied Nina to the studios, where she began to find plenty of employment for her fine, undraped, classical figure. Its approximation to the Greek type made her a valuable model for the sculptors, and her pure complexion, auburn hair, and soft, dreamy eyes, made her a favorite model for the painters. From her rise, leaving begging to do the model, Nina abandoned her former lightness of manner, and was noted for her modest, retiring deportment; no one could say