Beatrice for it was she--instantly caught him by the hand to drag him
back; and pronounced his name. The words and the touch dissipated his
illusion; and with the rapidity of lightning revealed to his mind the
fatal secret of his misery. He now saw that, having been occupied with
thoughts of her when he painted his picture, he had lent a portion of
her beauty to the fallen archangel; and hence the pain her looks had
occasionally inflicted on him. While this conviction darted into his
mind, he was already falling over the precipice; but he still grappled
at the rock, and made desperate efforts to recover himself. Beatrice,
also, finding that he was going and drawing her after him, for she still
held him by the hand, caught hold of a tuft of grass which grew on the
edge of the cliff and grasped it convulsively. In this situation they
hung for an instant, suspended over the abyss; but the grass-tuft by
which she clung gradually gave way; and in another instant a sullen
plunge in the deep waters below told that the loves and miseries of
Spinello and Beatrice were ended.
_Note_.--The passage of Lanzi, to which I referred at the
commencement, is as follows:--
"The 'Fall of the Angels,' still remains in St. Angelo, at Arezzo,
in which Lucifer is represented so terrible, that it afterwards haunted
the dreams of the artist, and, deranging both his mind and body,
hastened his death. Bernardo Daddi was his scholar."--_History of
Painting in, Italy_, vol. i. p. 65. _Roscoe's Translation_.
* * * * *
First in the poetry is the Bechuana Boy, an affecting narrative, by Mr.
Pringle, as may be implied from one verse:
He came with open aspect bland,
And modestly before me stood,
Caressing with a kindly hand
That fawn of gentle brood;
Then meekly gazing in my face
Said in the language of his race,
With smiling look yet pensive tone--
"Stranger--I'm in the world alone."
The Irish Mother to her Child, a Song, by Mr. Banim, has great force and
feeling, with the date 1828, significantly appended to this stanza:
Alas! my boy, so beautiful! alas! my love, so brave!
And must your manly Irish limbs still drag it to the grave?
And thou, my son, yet have a son, foredoomed a slave to be?
Whose mother, too, must weep o'er him the tears I weep o'er thee.
Here, too is an exquisite snatch--on Memory:
Fond Memory, like a mockingbird,
Within the widow'd heart is h
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