pounds, for it is sold by weight; and yet, notwithstanding this scarcity, and the vacant lands in the vicinity of the city adapted to its cultivation, there is not sufficient enterprise in the community for its accomplishment. The poorer class can afford to keep no more fire than is barely sufficient for the purposes of cooking; and in the sunshiny days they are seen,-men, women, and children,-performing their domestic labours under the sunny side of their houses and walls.

I feel that I ought to beg pardon of the church for having neglected to notice her temples before the buildings already enumerated. This omission may have been caused by the circumstance of there being no churches here which are remarkable for beauty or magnificence-none corresponding either with the pomp of the national religion or with those which are common in most of the provincial towns of this kingdom. Churches and monasteries, however, abound here; and some of the latter are upon a scale sufficiently extensive to hasten the ruin of a state whose affairs are managed with more wisdom than are those of Spain. The only convent I visited was that of Las Salesas, built by Don Fernando VI, in the year 1749, for the education of noble females. It is a square of great extent, and for this reason only its exterior is remarkable. But its chapel, the finest in Madrid, is worthy the attention of strangers. It is, as usual, in the form of a cross. Over the centre of which is a spacious dome, surmounted by a cupola, from whence it is lighted. The view from below up to this cupola of about two hundred feet, is uninterrupted. The ceiling of the dome is ornamented with beautiful paintings by some of the best Spanish masters. The great altar is ornamented with four solid columns of beautiful green marble, of one piece, each seventeen feet in height. The capitals and bases are of bronze gilt. A great painting in the centre, painted by Murillo, in Naples, representing the Visitation; and the statues in white marble on either side of the altar, of San Fernando VI and his queen Barbara, are all very beautiful. Behind an immense iron grating (gilt) and on one side of the great altar, I heard the nuns repeating their prayers, which resembled the responses, excepting that there was no pause, of the congregation of an Episcopal church. [To be continued.]

ITALIAN LYRICAL POETRY.
TOLOMMEI.

CLAUDIO TOLOMMEI occupied too large a space in the public eye, among the lyrical poets of the sixteenth century, to be entirely neglected, in an attempt to give a full idea of the secondary

In 1526 he was

Italian poetry. He was born at Siena in 1492. banished from his native city for some sin against that state, which, in the obscurity of its petty politics, is unknown to posterity. In 1529, he entered the service of Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici, and was employed by him in a mission to Vienna; and afterwards he became attached to Luigi Farnese, duke of Parma, who gave him the appointment of minister of justice in Placentia. In 1549 he was made bishop of Corsola. Besides his occasional residences elsewhere, he lived a considerable part of his life at Rome, where he died in 1554.

Tolommei was a very meritorious scholar; but as a poet he is most remarkable for a fantastic plan of introducing the Latin prosody into Italian verse. He composed stanzas to be scanned with dactyls and spondees; and was followed, at first, by a numerous school of imitators. But criticism, good sense, and experience, soon convinced the literary world of the absurdity of the attempt. In fact, the genius of the two languages, in the structure of verse, is so unlike, that this circumstance is only mentioned as a curious fact in literary history. English readers well know the success of a similar experiment on English verse, made first in the age of Elizabeth, and recently by Mr Southey, whose "Vision of Judgment" is so unsparingly but justly dealt with, by the Edinburgh Review (vol. xxxv. p. 422.)

ROTA.

BERNARDINO ROTA, a Neapolitan gentleman, born in 1509, and deceased in 1575, was a successful and polished writer of both Italian aud Latin poetry. His Piscatory Eclogues enjoyed some reputation in their day; but his sonnets are most remembered. He closely imitated Petrarca, and in his verses mourned the death of his wife Porzia Capece, as Petrarca did that of Laura. A single sonnet is selected from his pieces upon this subject.

My breast, my mind, my bursting heart shall be
Thy sepulchre, and not this marble tomb,
Which I prepare for thee in grief and gloom;
No meaner grave, my wife, is fitting thee.

Oh! ever cherished be thy memory;

And may thine image dear my path illume,
And leave my heart for other hopes no room,
While sad I sail o'er sorrow's troubled sea.
Sweet gentle soul, where thou wert used to reign,
My spirit's queen, when wrapt in mortal clay,
There, when immortal, shalt thou rule again.
Let death, then, tear my love from earth away;
Urned in my bosom, she will still remain,
Alive or dead, untarnished by decay.

C. C.

ORIGINAL POETRY.

THE MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE.

There was a time, when the o'erhanging sky,
And the fair earth with its variety,
Mountain and valley, continent and sea,
Were not alone the unmoving things that lie
Slumbering beneath the sun's unclouded eye;
But every fountain had its spirit then,
That held communion oft with holy men,

And frequent from the heavenward mountain came
Bright creatures, hovering round on wings of flame;
And some mysterious sybil darkly gave
Responses from the dim and hidden cave:-
Voices were heard waking the silent air,
A solemn music echoed from the wood,
And often from the bosom of the flood
Came forth a sportive Naiad passing fair,
The clear drops twinkling in her braided hair ;
And as the hunter through the forest strayed,
Quick-glancing beauty shot across the glade,
Her polished arrow levelled on her bow
Ready to meet the fawn or bounding roe;
And often on the mountain tops the horn
Rang round the rocky pinnacles, and played
In lighter echoes from the chequered shade,
Where through the silvery leaves at early morn
Stole the slant sunbeams, shedding on the grass
Brightness, that quivered with the quivering mass
Of thickly arching foliage ;-often there
Dian and all her troop of girls were seen
Dancing by moonlight on the dewy green,

When the cool night wind through the forest blew,
And every leaf in tremulous glances flew ;
And in the cloudless fields of upper air,

With coldly pale and melancholy smile

The moon looked down on that bright spot, the while, Which in the depth of darkness shone as fair,

As in lone southern seas a palmy isle;

And when a hunter-boy, who far away

Had wandered through the wild-wood from his home, Led by the eagerness of youth to roam,

Buried in deep unbroken slumber lay,—

Then as the full moon poured her mellow light
Full on the mossy pillow where he slept,

One more than nymph, in sylvan armour dight,
Bent fondly over him, and smiled, and wept.
Each lonely spot was hallowed then-the oak
That o'er the village altar hung, would tell

Strange hidden things;-the old remembered well,
How from its gloom a spirit often spoke.
There was not then a fountain or a cave,
But had its reverend oracle, and gave
Responses to the fearful crowd, who came
And called the indwelling Deity by name;
Then every snowy peak, that lifted high
Its shadowy cone to meet the bending sky,
Stood like a heaven of loveliness and light;-
And as the gilt cloud rolled its glory by,

Chariots and steeds of flame stood harnessed there,

And gods came forth and seized the golden reins,

Shook the bright scourge, and through the boundless air Rode over starry fields and azure plains.

It was a beautiful and glorious dream,

Such as would kindle high the soul of song;

The bard, who struck his harp to such a theme,
Gathered new beauty as he moved along-

His way was now through wilds and beds of flowers;
Rough mountains met him now, and then again
Gay valleys hung with vines in woven bowers
Led to the bright waves of the purple main.
All seemed one deep enchantment then ;-but now,
Since the long sought for goal of truth is won,
Nature stands forth unveiled, with cloudless brow,
On earth ONE SPIRIT OF LIFE, in heaven ONE SUN.

DREAM OF THE SEA.

I dreamt that I went down into the sea
Unpained amid the waters-and a world
Of splendid wrecks, formless and numberless,
Broke on my vision. It did seem the skies
Were o'er me pure as infancy-yet waves
Did rattle round my head, and fill mine ears
Like the measureless roar of the far fight
When battle has set up her trumpet shout!
I seemed to breathe the air; and yet the sea
Kept dallying with my life as I sunk down.
"T was in the fitful fashion of a dream—
Water and air-walking, and yet no earth.
The deep seemed bare and dry-and yet I went
With a rude dashing round my reeking face,
Until my outstretched and trembling feet
Stood still upon a bed of glittering pearls!
The hot sun was right over me, at noon-
Sudden it withered up the ocean-till
I seemed amidst a waste of shapeless clay.
A thousand bones were whitening in his rays,
Mass upon mass,-confused and without end.

P..

I walked on the parched wilderness, and saw

The hopeless beauty of a lifeless world!

Wealth that once made some poor vain heart grow light
And leap with it into the flood, was there
Clutched in the last mad agony. And gold
That makes of life a happiness and curse-
That vaunts on earth its brilliancy, lay here
(An outcast tyrant in his loneliness)

Beggared by jewels that ne'er shone through blood
Upon the brow of kings! Here there were all
The bright beginnings and the costly ends,
Which envied man enjoys and expiates,-

Splendour and death-silence, and human hopes,-
Gems, and smooth bones-life's pageantry! the cross
That thought to save some wretch in his late need
Hugged in its last idolatry-all, all

Lay here in deathly brotherhood-no breath-
No sympathy-no sound-no motion-and no hope
I stood and listened,-

!

The eternal flood rushed to its desolate grave!
And I could hear above me all the waves
Go bellowing to their bounds! Still I strode on,
Journeying amid the brightest of earth's things
Where yet was never life, nor hope, nor joy!
My eye could not but look, and my ear hear;
For now strange sights and beautiful and rare
Seemed ordered from the deep through the rich prism
Above me-and sounds undulated through
The surges, till my soul grew mad with visions!
Beneath the canopy of waters I could see
Palaces and cities crumbled-and the ships
Sunk in the engorging whirlpool, while the laugh
Of revelry went wild along their decks-and ere
The oath was strangled in their swollen throats;-
For there they lay, just hurried to one grave
With horrible contortions and fixed eyes
Waving among the cannon, as the surge
Would slowly lift them-and their streaming hair
Twining around the blades that were their pride.

And there were two locked in each others arms,
And they were lovers!

Oh God, how beautiful! cheek to cheek
And heart to heart upon that splendid deep,
A bridal bed of pearls! A burial

Worthy of two so young and innocent.

And they did seem to lie there, like two gems
The fairest in the halls of ocean-both
Sepulchred in love-a tearless death-one look,
One wish, one smile, one mantle for their shroud,
One hope, one kiss-and that not yet quite cold!
How beautiful to die in such fidelity!

E'er yet the curse has ripened, or the heart