Probably the imagination of the poet was often raised by the grandeur and magnificence of the churches and their decorations, and of the church service, and the monuments erected to the great and learned gave them the ambition. of posthumous fame.

The tombs of La Cava are not very remarkable; Sybilla, the wife of Ruggiero, Duke of Salerno, is buried there; and Bourdin, the pope's legate, whom the Emperor Henry created Anti-Pope, and obliged to crown him at Rome in 1117. This Bourdin expiated his crimes in tears and penitence as a monk of La Cava, and upon his tomb is now traced a reversed mitre, to show both his crime and the punishment that ensued.

*

Last autumn I spent much of my time at La Cava, where the romantic and sublime character of its scenery, the beauty of the climate, and the perusal of the old parchments and books in the monastery library, had a great charm for

The

me. One Sunday I went up to the village of Rottola; it was the festa of La Madonna de' sette dolore; the church was open, and the peasantry and their children were in and about it, and joyously gay under the lime trees that shade the platform round the church. figure of the Madonna at the altar was darkly dressed, and studded over with silver stars, like the figure of Night, and there were seven swords struck through her heart, emblematical of the sette dolore. After strolling about I crossed the ravine into the woods of the Trinità, and got to the church before high mass was finished. The organ particularly annoyed me; it began with a slow movement, but gradually arrived at the finale of the Barbiere di Seviglia, and took the rapt soul, and lapt it--not in Elysium, but in the crowded theatre of a large town. I never could bear to have my soul sent "upon a jig to heaven," however well it may suit the purposes of the catholic religion, who wish its followers to have as few disagreeable moments as

possible. I left the church and walked down by the river side, pondering on much that made me obliged to think, and forced me to feel, whether I liked it or not. The walk I had chosen and the scenery around me were such as to encourage deep thought, and I almost believed myself, sent, banished, and confined to these deep glens and awful solitudes; and I more than once fancied myself a monk, and imagined me poring over a black lettered volume. A long and rugged pathway conducts to the grottoes below; in which still remains are found of a chapel and hermitage, beautiful enough to charm enthusiast, painter, or poet. Part of the principal grotto has fallen in, and what is left is covered with stalactites and beautiful plants, that hang all around in wild profusion; and a bridge of one arch, thrown across a deep ravine, seems to connect the broken ground that an earthquake must have once severed. It was to this spot that Saint Adalferio retired to die. In these woods and

ruined cells, eternal silence dwells, except when the whirlwind, as it sweeps through the valley, roars through the wide chasms of the rock, or huge fragments fall from the broken grottoes. Sometimes a solitary pilgrim breathes a prayer at the ruined altars, and at stated times of the year, the monks of the convent

In slow procession float, and chant the deep-ton'd rhyme.

The day was, for Italy, a gloomy one; and the running stream, the rustling of the leaves of early autumn that were beginning to fall, and, more than all, my own state of mind, weighed down with thought, made me feel cruelly depressed. A disposition, not one of thankfulness to heaven for the blessings of health, and life, and freedom from bodily suffering, but of blame to providence, took deep possession of my mind: blame to providence for having made my destiny as one isolated; bereaved by circumstances both of love and friendship, and an exile from my country; forced by my ill regulated feelings

to endure, and often to inflict severe sufferingall my sins, all my misery, past, present and to come, rose up against me in that walk; and I fancied that I actually beheld the black spirit embodied, that has so often crossed my path in life-that I saw the living dead rise up against mea thousand fancies began to throng my memory. I walked on a considerable distance, when the fear of losing my way, and passing the night in the woods, made me turn back. Soon after retracing my steps by the ruined hermitage, I got into a more composed state of feeling towards myself and human nature in general. Just as I came into the walk directly under the convent, the sun-set reflected against the rocky mountain struck my eyes in all its glory, as if heaven had sent me a token of peace and forgiveness. The evening service had begun in the monastery, and the chant. I distinctly heard through the woods, with the words in Domino confido, &c. &c. In the Lord put I my trust, &c. For the first time for years, bitter