whited sepulchers of crime; whose
echoes were never stirred except by such words as they dared not
repeat;[22] from which the rod of power, or the dagger of passion, came
forth invisible; before whose stillness princes grew pale, as their
fates were prophesied or fulfilled by the horoscope or the hemlock; and
nations, as the whisper of anarchy or of heresy was avenged by the
opening of the low doors, through which those who entered returned not.

[Footnote 22: Shelley has caught the feeling finely:--"The house is
penetrated to its corners by the peeping insolence of the day. When the
time comes the crickets shall not see me."--_Cenci_ [Act II. scene I,
quoted from memory.]]

146. The mind of the Italian, sweet and smiling in its operations, deep
and silent in its emotions, was thus, in some degree, typified by those
abodes into which he was wont to retire from the tumult and wrath of
life, to cherish or to gratify the passions which its struggles had
excited; abodes which now gleam brightly and purely among the azure
mountains, and by the sapphire sea, but whose stones are dropped with
blood; whose vaults are black with the memory of guilt and grief
unpunished and unavenged, and by whose walls the traveler hastens
fearfully, when the sun has set, lest he should hear, awakening again
through the horror of their chambers, the faint wail of the children of
Ugolino,[23] the ominous alarm of Bonatti, or the long low cry of her
who perished at Coll' Alto.

OXFORD, _July, 1838._

[Footnote 23: Ugolino; Dante, _Inferno_ xxxiii. Guido Bonatti, the
astrologer of Forli, _Inferno_ xx., 118. The lady who perished at Coll'
Alto, _i.e._ the higher part of Colle de Val d'Elsa, between Siena and
Volterra--was Sapia; _Purgatorio_, xiii. 100-154.]

IV.

THE LOWLAND VILLA--ENGLAND.

147. Although, as we have frequently observed, our chief object in these
papers is, to discover the connection existing between national
architecture and character, and therefore is one leading us rather to
the investigation of what is, than of what ought to be, we yet consider
that the subject would be imperfectly treated, if we did not, at the
conclusion of the consideration of each particular rank of building,
endeavor to apply such principles as may have been demonstrated to the
architecture of our country, and to discover the _beau ideal_ of English
character, which should be preserved through all the decorations which
the builder may desi