r, keeping
account of happy hours, the unbroken timepiece of home, as if
nowhere else the wheels were arrested, the chain shattered, the hands
motionless, the chime still! No, the grave itself does not remind us of
our loss like the company of those who have no loss to mourn. Go back to
thy solitude, young orphan,--go back to thy home: the sorrow that meets
thee on the threshold can greet thee, even in its sadness, like the
smile upon the face of the dead. And there, from thy casement, and
there, from without thy door, thou seest still the tree, solitary as
thyself, and springing from the clefts of the rock, but forcing its way
to light,--as, through all sorrow, while the seasons yet can renew the
verdure and bloom of youth, strives the instinct of the human heart!
Only when the sap is dried up, only when age comes on, does the sun
shine in vain for man and for the tree.

Weeks and months--months sad and many--again passed, and Naples will
not longer suffer its idol to seclude itself from homage. The world ever
plucks us back from ourselves with a thousand arms. And again Viola's
voice is heard upon the stage, which, mystically faithful to life, is in
nought more faithful than this, that it is the appearances that fill the
scene; and we pause not to ask of what realities they are the proxies.
When the actor of Athens moved all hearts as he clasped the burial urn,
and burst into broken sobs; how few, there, knew that it held the ashes
of his son! Gold, as well as fame, was showered upon the young actress;
but she still kept to her simple mode of life, to her lowly home, to
the one servant whose faults, selfish as they were, Viola was too
inexperienced to perceive. And it was Gionetta who had placed her when
first born in her father's arms! She was surrounded by every snare,
wooed by every solicitation that could beset her unguarded beauty and
her dangerous calling. But her modest virtue passed unsullied through
them all. It is true that she had been taught by lips now mute the
maiden duties enjoined by honour and religion. And all love that spoke
not of the altar only shocked and repelled her. But besides that, as
grief and solitude ripened her heart, and made her tremble at times
to think how deeply it could feel, her vague and early visions shaped
themselves into an ideal of love. And till the ideal is found, how
the shadow that it throws before it chills us to the actual! With
that ideal, ever and ever, unconsciously,