the dim hypaethric cavern, and after much difficulty succeeded in rejoining
our guides.

During our stay at Naples, we often returned to this cave, sometimes alone,
skimming the sun-lit sea, and each time added to our store. Since that
period, whenever the world's circumstance has not imperiously called me
away, or the temper of my mind impeded such study, I have been employed in
deciphering these sacred remains. Their meaning, wondrous and eloquent, has
often repaid my toil, soothing me in sorrow, and exciting my imagination to
daring flights, through the immensity of nature and the mind of man. For
awhile my labours were not solitary; but that time is gone; and, with the
selected and matchless companion of my toils, their dearest reward is also
lost to me--

Di mie tenere frondi altro lavoro
Credea mostrarte; e qual fero pianeta
Ne' nvidio insieme, o mio nobil tesoro?

I present the public with my latest discoveries in the slight Sibylline
pages. Scattered and unconnected as they were, I have been obliged to add
links, and model the work into a consistent form. But the main substance
rests on the truths contained in these poetic rhapsodies, and the divine
intuition which the Cumaean damsel obtained from heaven.

I have often wondered at the subject of her verses, and at the English
dress of the Latin poet. Sometimes I have thought, that, obscure and
chaotic as they are, they owe their present form to me, their decipherer.
As if we should give to another artist, the painted fragments which form
the mosaic copy of Raphael's Transfiguration in St. Peter's; he would put
them together in a form, whose mode would be fashioned by his own peculiar
mind and talent. Doubtless the leaves of the Cumaean Sibyl have suffered
distortion and diminution of interest and excellence in my hands. My only
excuse for thus transforming them, is that they were unintelligible in
their pristine condition.

My labours have cheered long hours of solitude, and taken me out of a
world, which has averted its once benignant face from me, to one glowing
with imagination and power. Will my readers ask how I could find solace
from the narration of misery and woeful change? This is one of the
mysteries of our nature, which holds full sway over me, and from whose
influence I cannot escape. I confess, that I have not been unmoved by the
development of the tale; and that I have been depressed, nay, agonized, at
some parts of the recital, which I