Alexandria gazette & daily advertiser. [volume] (Alexandria [Va.]) 1817-1822, 1818-07-31
ALEXANDRIA:
Friday MORNING, JULY 81, 1913.
FOR THE GAZETTE.

Sf1ttCut fsSSdV OH Hte "" :" 1890
Caiae Harold,s Pilgrimage.
[No. 2.
After two stanzas devoted to Ariosto, The
Pilgrim thus apostrophises Italy:
Italia! Oh Italia! thou who hast
| The fatal Gift of beauty, which became
! A funeral dover Of present woes ana Past,
On thy sweet brow is sorrow pioughed py
shame,
| And annals graved in characters oil ilame'
| Oh God. that thou vert in thy nakedness
Less lovely or more powerful, and coniu 81
claim ~
Thy right, and awe the robbers back who
press
To shed thy blood, and drink the tears OF
thy distress.
Then might'st thou more appal; or, less
desird,
Re bomely and be peaceful, undeplored
For thy destructive charms; then, Sill un-
| tired, >,
Would notbe seen the armed torrents pour'd
Down the deep Alps; nor would Inc nos
tile horde
OF many-nation'd spoilers, from the 20
Oualf blood and water; nor the strangers
| sword
BE thy sad weapon OF detencc, and SO, =.
Victor or vanquish'd, thou the slave OF
! friend or foe.
n
XLvr.
! That page is now before me, and on nine
HIS country's ruin added to he mass
OF persisted states he mourn q IN their de-
/ cline,
And in desolation ali that ~as
Of them les ruction IS; and now, alas
, Rome-Rome imperial, bows her 10 Inc
storm,
In The same dust aud Llackness, and we
pass
The skeleton OF her Titanic form, =,
/ Wrecks of another. world, whose ashes still
are warm.
Yet Italy! through every ether land
Thy wrongs should ring, and shall, from
! side to side;
Mother of arts as once srnis; thy, hand
Was then our guardian, and is still our
guide;
Parent of our religion! whom the wide
Nations have knelt to for the keys iheaven!
! Europe, repentant of her parricide,
Shall vet redeem, and all backward driven,
Roll the barbarian tide, and sue TO be tor-
given.
Harold's visit TO Santa Croce is annorn-
ced in euiogy to the illnstrious persons
who are inferred within its precincts: Mi
chael Angelo, who had the rare felicity OF
! reaching eminence in both architecture and
painting Calico, the favorite of as!Fo-
nomy Machiayelli, the prince Of the mo-
/ dern continental historians and Alien,
who has become classic, without waiting
for, or needing the sanction OF time. A
note TO these passages contains an aiiec-
tiohate notice Of Madame de Stael. 10
speak without enthusiasm of this daughter
of glory-this marvel OF minds difficult
and undesirable. But the judgment OF pos
terity will fortiiy the warm sentiment OF
contemporary praise, ard accumulate no.
nors on the memory of the undying Corinna.
Possessing almost an Aristotelian aptitude
for philosophical inquiry, she conducted
the novice into the labyrinth of metaphy-
sizes, and the clew TO his egress were the
flowers she had scattered on his path. To
an Imagination impatient of reality, and
wandering in the world it had created, she
added heart delighting in the sympathles
and duties of ordinary life. In her, the
excellencies, which existing singly have
given eminence 10 other writers, were as
sociated and with socurious felicity, that
however varying in their nature, they har-
monized in their operation. Reason, often
a cold abstraction, was here made gracious
by fancy; fancy, often giddy phantom,
here received authority from reason; and
both were endeared by a seasibility which
| softened them, but could not enervate.
Such was the child Of Neckar--a literary
character, in many points without pa
rallel.
1t is known that Petrarca and Dante, tho
both natives Of Florence, were not there
buried. This knowledge derives fresh in
terest from the following stanza
And Santa Croce vans their mighty dust;
Yet for this want more noted, as OF yore
The Casar's pageant, shorn OF brutus bust,
Did but of Rome's best son remind hermore:
Happier Ravennai on thy hoary shore,
Fortress of falling empire bonored sleeps