5 him turn over the stones in his plate, and choose one out from the rest, and put it into his pocket, but never plant it." "Where is the youth?" inquired Ser Francesco. "I wanted to thank him," said the Canonico. "May I tell him so?" asked she. "And give him," continued he, holding a piece of silver "I will give him something of my own, if he goes on and 10 behaves well," said she; "but Signor Padrone would drive him away forever, I am sure, if he were tempted in an evil hour to accept a quattrino for any service he could render the friends of the house." Ser Francesco was delighted with the graceful animation 15 of this ingenuous girl, and asked her, with a little curiosity, how she could afford to make him a present." "I do not intend to make him a present," she replied; "but it is better he should be rewarded by me," she blushed and hesitated, "or by Signor Padrone," she added, "than by 20 your Reverence. He has not done half his duty yet; not half. I will teach him: he is quite a child; four months younger than me.” Ser Francesco went into the house, saying to himself at the doorway, "Truth, innocence, and gentle manners have not 25 yet left the earth. There are sermons that never make the I have heard but few of them, and come from church for this." ears weary. Whether Simplizio had obeyed some private signal from Assunta, or whether his own delicacy had prompted him to 30 disappear, he was now again in the stable, and the manger was replenished with hay. A bucket was soon after heard ascending from the well; and then two words: "Thanks, Simplizio." Thomas De Quincey. 1785-1859. LEVANA AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW. (From Suspiria de Profundis, 1845.) I Oftentimes at Oxford I saw Levana in my dreams. knew her by her Roman symbols. Who is Levana? Reader, that do not pretend to have leisure for very much scholarship, you will not be angry with me for telling you. Levana was the Roman goddess that performed for the new-born 5 infant the earliest office of ennobling kindness,-typical, by its mode, of that grandeur which belongs to man everywhere, and of that benignity in powers invisible which even in pagan worlds sometimes descends to sustain it. At the very moment of birth, just as the infant tasted for the first time the at- 10 mosphere of our troubled planet, it was laid on the ground. That might bear different interpretations. But immediately, lest so grand a creature should grovel there for more than one instant, either the paternal hand, as proxy for the goddess Levana, or some near kinsman, as proxy for the father, raised 15 it upright, bade it look erect as the king of all this world, and presented its forehead to the stars, saying, perhaps, in his heart," Behold what is greater than yourselves!" This symbolic act represented the function of Levana. And that mysterious lady, who never revealed her face (except to me 20 in dreams), but always acted by delegation, had her name from the Latin verb (as still it is the Italian verb) levare, "to raise aloft." This is the explanation of Levana. And hence it has arisen that some people have understood by Levana the 25 tutelary power that controls the education of the nursery. She, that would not suffer at his birth even a prefigurative or mimic degradation for her awful ward, far less could be supposed to suffer the real degradation attaching to the nondevelopment of his powers. She therefore watches over human education. Now, the word educo, with the penultimate short, was derived (by a process often exemplified in the 5 crystallization of languages) from the word educo, with the penultimate long. Whatsoever educes, or develops, educates. By the education of Levana, therefore, is meant, not the poor machinery that moves by spelling-books and grammars, but by that mighty system of central forces hidden in the deep 10 bosom of human life, which by passion, by strife, by tempta tion, by the energies of resistance, works forever upon children, resting not day or night, any more than the mighty wheel of day and night themselves, whose moments, like restless spokes, are glimmering forever as they revolve. 15 If, then, these are the ministries by which Levana works, how profoundly must she reverence the agencies of grief! But you, reader, think that children generally are not liable to grief such as mine. There are two senses in the word 'generally," the sense of Euclid, where it means univer20 sally" (or in the whole extent of the genus), and a foolish sense of this world, where it means "usually." Now, I am far from saying that children universally are capable of grief like mine. But there are more than you ever heard of who die of grief in this island of ours. I will tell you a common 25 case. The rules of Eton require that a boy on the “foundation" should be there twelve years: he is superannuated at eighteen, consequently he must come at six. Children torn away from mothers and sisters at that age not unfrequently die. I speak of what I know. The complaint is not entered 30 by the registrar as grief; but that it is. Grief of that sort, and at that age, has killed more than ever have been counted amongst its martyrs. Therefore it is that Levana often communes with the powers that shake man's heart; therefore it is that she dotes 35 upon grief. "These ladies," said I softly to myself, on seeing the ministers with whom Levana was conversing, "these are the Sorrows; and they are three in number: as the Graces are three, who dress man's life with beauty; the Parca are three, who weave the dark arras of man's life in their mysterious loom, always with colors sad in part, sometimes angry with tragic crimson and black; the Furies are three, who visit with retributions, called from the other side of the grave, offences that walk upon this; and once even the Muses were 5 but three, who fit the harp, the trumpet, or the lute to the great burdens of man's impassioned creations. These are the Sorrows, all three of whom I know." The last words I say now; but in Oxford I said, one of whom I know, and the others too surely I shall know." For already, in my fervent 10 youth, I saw (dimly relieved upon the dark background of my dreams) the imperfect lineaments of the awful Sisters. 66 These Sisters-by what name shall we call them? If I say simply "The Sorrows," there will be a chance of mistaking the term: it might be understood of individual sorrow, sepa- 15 rate cases of sorrow, whereas I want a term expressing the mighty abstractions that incarnate themselves in all individual sufferings of man's heart; and I wish to have these abstractions presented as impersonations, that is, as clothed with human attributes of life, and with functions pointing 20 to flesh. Let us call them, therefore, Our Ladies of Sorrow. I know them thoroughly, and have walked in all their kingdoms. Three sisters they are, of one mysterious household; and their paths are wide apart; but of their dominion there is no end. Them I saw often conversing with Levana, and 25 sometimes about myself. Do they talk, then? Oh, no! Mighty phantoms like these disdain the infirmities of language. They may utter voices through the organs of man when they dwell in human hearts, but amongst themselves is no voice nor sound; eternal silence reigns in their king- 30 doms. They spoke not as they talked with Levana; they whispered not; they sang not; though oftentimes methought they might have sung: for I upon earth had heard their mysteries oftentimes deciphered by harp and timbrel, by dulcimer and organ. Like God, whose servants they are, they utter 35 their pleasure, not by sounds that perish or by words that go astray, but by signs in heaven, by changes on earth, by pulses in secret rivers, heraldries painted on darkness, and They hieroglyphics written on the tablets of the brain. wheeled in mazes; I spelled the steps. They telegraphed from afar; I read the signals. They conspired together; and on the mirrors of darkness my eye traced the plots. Theirs 5 were the symbols; mine are the words. What is it the Sisters are? What is it that they do? Let me describe their form and their presence; if form it were that still fluctuated in its outline, or presence it were that forever advanced to the front or forever receded amongst 10 shades. The eldest of the three is named Mater Lachrymarum, Our Lady of Tears. She it is that night and day raves and moans, calling for vanished faces. She stood in Rama, where a voice was heard of lamentation-Rachel weeping for her 15 children, and refusing to be comforted. She it was that stood in Bethlehem on the night when Herod's sword swept its nurseries of Innocents, and the little feet were stiffened forever, which, heard at times as they trotted along floors overhead, woke pulses of love in household hearts that were 20 not unmarked in heaven. Her eyes are sweet and subtle, wild and sleepy, by turns; oftentimes rising to the clouds, oftentimes challenging the heavens. She wears a diadem round her head. And I knew by childish memories that she could go abroad upon the winds, when she heard the sobbing 25 of litanies or the thundering of organs, and when she beheld the mustering of summer clouds. This Sister, the elder, it is that carries keys more than papal at her girdle, which open every cottage and every palace. She, to my knowledge, sat all last summer by the bedside of the blind beggar, him 30 that so often and so gladly I talked with, whose pious daughter, eight years old, with the sunny countenance, resisted the temptations of play and village mirth, to travel all day long on dusty roads with her afflicted father. For this did God send her a great reward. In the springtime of the year, and 35 whilst yet her own spring was budding, he recalled her to himself. But her blind father mourns forever over her; still he dreams at midnight that the little guiding hand is locked. within his own; and still he wakens to a darkness that is now |