two hundred years; for, though they often separate, they assign a
different motive. You know that the continental incontinent are
more delicate than the English, and don't like proclaiming their
coronation in a court, even when nobody doubts it.

"All her relations are furious against him. The father has
challenged him--a superfluous valour, for he don't fight, though
suspected of two assassinations--one of the famous Monzoni of
Forli. Warning was given me not to take such long rides in the Pine
Forest without being on my guard; so I take my stiletto and a pair
of pistols in my pocket during my daily rides.

"I won't stir from this place till the matter is settled one way or
the other. She is as femininely firm as possible; and the opinion
is so much against him, that the _advocates_ decline to undertake
his cause, because they say that he is either a fool or a
rogue--fool, if he did not discover the liaison till now; and
rogue, if he did know it, and waited, for some bad end, to divulge
it. In short, there has been nothing like it since the days of
Guido di Polenta's family, in these parts.

"If the man has me taken off, like Polonius 'say, he made a good
end,'--for a melodrama. The principal security is, that he has not
the courage to spend twenty scudi--the average price of a
clean-handed bravo--otherwise there is no want of opportunity, for
I ride about the woods every evening, with one servant, and
sometimes an acquaintance, who latterly looks a little queer in
solitary bits of bushes.

"Good bye.--Write to yours ever," &c.

[Footnote 74: M. Lamartine.]

* * * * *

LETTER 377. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, June 7. 1820.

"Enclosed is something which will interest you, to wit, the opinion
of _the_ greatest man of Germany--perhaps of Europe--upon one of
the great men of your advertisements, (all 'famous hands,' as Jacob
Tonson used to say of his ragamuffins,)--in short, a critique of
_Goethe's_ upon _Manfred_. There is the original, an English
translation, and an Italian one; keep them all in your
archives,--for the opinions of such a man as Goethe, whether
favourable or not, are always interesting--and this is more so, as
favourable. His _Faust_ I never read, for I don't know German; but
Matthew Monk L