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isolated. We read of Lombardy being full of republicans at the time, and of the trouble they gave to Frederick Barbarossa. Arnold of Brescia thus represented two sets of men; as a republican, he represented the enthusiastic democrats of Italy in those days, whose views were merely political, and confined to the Italian peninsula; as an antipapalist, he represented a considerable party in the European Churches, who disliked the new character left upon the Church by the pontificate of Hildebrand. when so much unruly sin and sacrilegious violence marked some of the more notorious leaders of this party, the most respectable would shrink back and pass away unnoticed. It is impossible now to estimate the extent or amount of the dissatisfaction which existed within the Church at the medieval transmutation of her shape and mould, the dissatisfaction, that is, springing out of sincere conviction, a foresight of some of the consequences, or a backward yearning after primitive episcopacy. The existence of such a dissatisfaction is traceable here and here; but Arnold of Brescia was no type of it.

It was late on a dark and windy night that we reached Dezenzano on the Lago di Garda. We heard the dashing of the lake beneath our windows, like a pleasant serenade of home thoughts, and we wandered in our dreams by other lakes as blue and beautiful as old Benacus. However, the early morning unveiled a scene of great splendor. La Garda was stretched before us in miles of angry purple.

In front, with a sheet of the lake between, lay the lovely peninsula of Sirmione, where Catullus' villa stood, his jewel of "islands and peninsulas." To the north and west rose some ranges of mountains, of very bold outline, and the higher ones clothed with snow. Salo, a town thirteen miles up the lake, was the sweetest spot we found upon La Garda. The road to it, where it did not command views of the lake, was not very interesting; but at last a turn of the road brought us to the top of a high and steep hill, from whence the view was most enchanting. Opposite was a bold and rocky mountain, with the nakedness of its base somewhat concealed by grey olive trees; and below, crowding in to the brink of a lovely bay, stood Salo, fair, white and picturesque, embosomed in lofty hills except the outlet of the bay to the main lake; and possessing beside its basin of blue water, a basin of land of the most crowded and various luxuriance. Salo was one of those places which are enabled, from softness of feeling or openness of disposition at the time, to hew themselves a niche in one's recollection, higher and larger than their own intrinsic loveliness could justly claim. That sequestered bay with its private lake, and the sunny promontory which is its sentinel towards the north, are spots on which the mind may rest with unusual delight.

Whilst we were at Dezenzano, there came an evening of the most wonderful beauty. Softness and brightness were mingled in such a way as I have

never seen out of Italy and Greece. The earliness of the season gave the colors a greater paleness and transparency than they would probably have had in advanced summer. The narrow peninsula of Sirmione looked like a long green grove, floating on the water, without earth or foundation, whilst its shadowy trees bent in one mass to and fro in the deeps of La Garda, distinct and tremulous, as the evening wind made the watery mirror uncertain, without confusing the placid images upon it. The fact of Catullus having a villa so far from Rome, and set on a little peninsula, to look at rugged Alps, ought to be put down among the comparatively few instances we have of Romans caring for natural beauty. The Greek mythology, defective as it is in that respect, exhibits much more appreciation of, and more minute inquisition into, natural phenomena than either the religion or literature of the Romans. To a Roman mind every thing was objective. This characterizes even the early western theology. This intellectual habit it was, which in part, and by God's blessing, so long excluded the subtle heresies of the East from entering in and desecrating the Occidental Churches. The Latin hymn, called the Athanasian Creed, bears this impress upon it, even when compared with the orthodox symbol of the Nicene Council. The habit is still perceptible, though now weakened by the infusion of romantic principles into Europe. It is still dominant in a large section of French litera

ture, and was so amongst ourselves in the early part of the last century.

Yet it is strange, when we come to consider it, that Latin poetry should have made so little use of scenery, or of the domestic affections, the two main elements of all modern poetry. The Achilleis of Statius is the most likely old Latin poem to be mistaken for a modern one. Yet, perhaps, the Acme and Septimius of Catullus, and his plaintive invocation at his brother's tomb, have much of the affectionate modern spirit in them, though their imagery is not so modern as Statius' account of the Sorrentine villa of Pollius Felix, or his musings on the well and tree in the gardens of Atedius Melior on the Cælian Mount, or his invitation to Claudia his wife. Scenery, as it appears in most of the Latin poets, Virgil even, comes out in the shape of picturesque topography, or single, and often extremely powerful descriptive epithets, such as we have in Milton's description of the rivers, in much of Drayton's Polyolbion, and in which Walter Scott was more felicitous than in any other style. Every now and then, indeed, we catch expressions which imply, at first sight, that objects of natural beauty have been brooded on and learned by real contemplation, but which, notwithstanding, occur so rarely, they may more reasonably be attributed to that felicity of phrase which all poets, objective ones particularly, by a kind of compensation, possess in a greater or less degree. Such expressions may be

instanced as 'mordet aqua taciturnus amnis,''mobilibus pomaria rivis,' and specially such (but they are rare indeed) as Usticæ cubantis;' while, on the other hand, the calming of the sea in Virgil may be quoted as a remarkable instance of the tyrannous excess of the objective habit of old poetry.

It would be interesting to know whether Catullus ever sat for an hour alone, beating with his fingers on an olive-stump the wild metre of the Atys, so like the waving of a thyrsus, or looking at the Alps, or feeling a trouble in some glorious sunset, or a wild sympathy with the elements in the mountain storm, or whether the lights and shades, and solemn processions of mists and clouds which came and went before his eyes, impressed him with any idea of their mysterious order, or the laws of beautiful forms, and whether such visions were carried back with him from Sirmio to the great capital, haunting his memory; or rather, whether he did not come to his villa, accompanied by a few choice city wits, when Rome was dull, to eat Benacus trout, and enjoy the strong red wine of the neighboring Modrignolo, whose resinous flavor was not, perhaps, rougher than the stout Falernian; and then wrote pretty letters to his Roman friends, describing his villa with the pleased garrulity of Pliny, and deploring, with many a pathetic antithesis, his banishment from the city, amid rude and inaccessible mountains, horrid' forests, and a people as hard and contorted in mind and manners as the uncouth stumps of their own

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