ow it delights--the shade
Of leaves for ever green! how it revives--
The rushing of that brook! with giddy joy
The young boughs swing them in the morning air;
And from their beds the little friendly flowers
Look with the eye of childhood up to us.
The trustful gardener gives to the broad day
His winter store of oranges and citrons;
One wide blue sky rests over all; the snow
On the horizon, from the distant hills,
In light dissolving vapour steals away."

The conversation winds gracefully towards poetry and Tasso. We will
answer at once the interesting question, whether the poet has
represented Leonora d'Este, the princess, as being in love with Tasso.
He has; and very delicately has he made her express this sentiment. From
the moment when, doubtless thinking of the living poet, she twined the
laurel wreath which she afterwards deposited on the brow of Virgil, to
the last scene where she leads the unhappy Tasso to a fatal declaration
of his passion, there is a gentle _crescendo_ of what always remains,
however, a very subdued and meditative affection. She loves--but like a
princess; she muses over the danger to herself from suffering such a
sentiment towards one in so different a rank of life to grow upon her;
she never thinks of the danger to _him_, to the hapless Tasso, by her
betrayal of an affection which she is yet resolved to keep within
subjection. To be sure it may be said, that all women have something of
the princess in them at this epoch of their lives. There is a wonderful
selfishness in the heart, while it still asks itself whether it shall
love or not. The sentiment of the princess is very elegantly disguised
in the jesting vein in which she rallies Leonora Sanvitale--

"_Leonora._--Your mind embraces wider regions; mine
Lingers content within the little isle,
And 'midst the laurel grove of poesy.

"_Princess._--In which fair isle, in which sweet grove, they say,
The myrtle also flourishes. And though
There wander many muses there, we choose
Our friend and playmate not alone from _them_,
We rather greet the poet there himself,
Who seems indeed to shun us, seems to fly,
Seeking we know not what, and he himself
Perhaps as little knows. 'Tis pretty when,
In some propitious hour, the enraptured youth
Looking with better eyes, detects in _us_
The treasure he had been so far to seek.

"_Leonora._--The jest is pleasant--touches, but not near.
I honour