ight, under a warm, hazy sky,
through whose buff-tinted clouds the big moon crept in and out, the
mountain stream was vaguely visible--a dark riband in its wide shingly
bed, when the moon was hidden; a narrow, shallow, broken stream, sheets
of brilliant metallic sheen, and showers of sparkling facets, when the
moon was out; a mere drowsy murmur mixing with the creaking and rustling
of dry reeds in the warm, wet wind. Thus in the evening. Look down from
your window next morning. A tremendous rushing mass of waters, thick,
turbid, reddish, with ominous steel-like lustre where its coppery
surface reflects the moist blue sky, now fills the whole bed, shaking
its short fringe of foam, tossing the spray as it swirls round each
still projecting stone, angrily tugging at the reeds and alders which
flop their draggled green upon its surface; eddying faster and faster,
encircling each higher rock or sandbank, covering it at last with its
foaming red mass. Meanwhile, the sky is covered in with vaporous grey
clouds, which enshroud the hills; the clear runnels, dash over the green
banks, spirt through the walls, break their way across the roads; the
little mountain torrents, dry all summer, descend, raging rivers, red
with the hill soil; and with every gust of warm wind the river rises
higher and rushes along tremendously impetuous. Down in the plain it
eats angrily at the soft banks, and breaks its muddy waters, fringed on
the surface with a sort of ominous grime of broken wood and earth,
higher and higher against the pierheads of the bridges; shaking them to
split their masonry, while crowds of men and women look on, staring at
the rising water, at the planks, tables, beams, cottage thatches, nay,
whole trees, which it hurls at the bridge piers. And then, perhaps, the
terrible, soft, balmy flood-wind persisting, there comes suddenly the
catastrophe; the embankment, shaken by the resistless current, cracks,
fissures gives way; and the river rushes into the city, as it has
already rushed into the fields, to spread in constantly rising,
melancholy livid pools, throughout the streets and squares.

This Lorenzo saw, and, wonderful to say, in this soiled and seething
river, in these torn and crumbling banks, in all the dreadfulness of
these things, he saw a beauty and a grandeur. But he saw not merely the
struggle of the waters and of the land; he--the heartless man who laid
his hand even upon the saved-up money of orphan girls in order