the hostess appealed to him by name: "But, Dr. Paley, what do you say to it ?" "Mighty flat, Madam," was the Doctor's pithy response. For even in the close and life-long relation of man and wife, Professor Reed holds it reasonable to believe that some, he will not say positive "differences" of character, but varieties of disposition, do effectually strengthen the affection due to that vow, which, in Spenser's fine phrase, "would endless matrimony make."+ Clayton the younger, in Mrs. Stowe's tale of the Dismal Swamp, professes himself not to want a wife who will be a mere mirror of his opinions and sentiments; he would rather not have an innocent sheet of blotting-paper, as he expresses it, meekly sucking up all he says, and giving just a fainter impression of his ideas. He wants a wife for an alterative-believing that all the vivacities of life lie in differences. But surely, his sister objects, one wants one's friends to be congenial? "So we do," he assents; "and there is nothing in the world so congenial as differences. To be sure, the differences must be harmonious. In music, now, for instance, one doesn't want a repetition of the same notes, but different notes that chord [sic]. Nay, even discords are indispensable to complete harmony." In Madame de Staël's description of the strange and powerful sympathy that exists between Oswald and Corinne, we read: "Their tastes were not the same; their opinions rarely accorded; yet in the centre of each soul dwelt kindred mysteries, drawn from one source;"§ and hence their mutual attraction. To apply a stanza of Mr. Coventry Patmore's: Like and like chime, same and same jar;

If she to womanhood is true,

To manhood he, their feelings are

In difference match'd, like red and blue.||

M. Dumas, in accounting for the sudden passion felt by Lewis the Fourteenth for Madame-after sneeringly supposing that physiology would explain it by some hackneyed common-place reasons-is satisfied with remarking, that Madame had the most beautiful black eyes in the world, while Lewis's eyes, as beautiful, were blue; and that while she was laughter-loving and unreserved in her manners, he was melancholy and diffident. "Summoned to meet each other, for the first time, upon the grounds of interest and common curiosity, these two opposite natures were naturally influenced by the contact of their reciprocal contradictions of character." Having described my Lady Gorgon as looking the mother of a regiment of grenadier guards-resembling in person one of her father, the brewer's heavy, healthy, broad-flanked, Roman-nosed, white dray-horses-Mr. Thackeray counts it "needless to say, after entering so largely into a description of Lady Gorgon, that her husband was a little, shrivelled, weazen-faced creature, eight inches shorter than her ladyship. This is the way of the world, as every single reader of this book must have remarked; for frolic love delights to join giants and pigmies of different sexes in the bonds of matrimony."** In another of

*Harford's Life of Bishop Burgess, ch. xv.

† English History as illustrated by Shakspeare, lect. vii.
Dred, ch. iii.
§ Corinne, 1. xv. ch. i.

The Angel in the House, Epilogue to book i.
Le Vicomte de Bragelonne, ch. cix.

**The Bedford-row Conspiracy, ch. i.

his works, Mr. Thackeray assures us that if his gentle Miss Hetty had had anything of the virago in her composition, she would no doubt have taken a fancy to a soft young fellow with a literary turn, or a genius for playing the flute, according to the laws of contrast and nature provided in those cases. "And who has not heard," he asks, "how great, strong men have an affinity for frail, tender little women; how tender little women are attracted by great, honest, strong men; and how your burly heroes and champions of war are constantly henpecked ?"* Mr. Tennyson, in one of his early idyls, which tells how poet and Eustace from the city went to see the Gardener's Daughter, has this passage to the point: My Eustace might have sat for Hercules;

So muscular he spread, so broad of breast.
He, by some law that holds in love, and draws
The greater to the lesser, long desired
A certain miracle of symmetry,

A miniature of loveliness, all grace
Summ'd up and closed in little.†

So in one of Mr. Procter's dramatic dialogues:
Ferd. I thought thou lov'dst a rose-cheek'd girl, and merry;
A laugher of sixteen summers; such there are:
But she is paler than a primrose morning,

Giul.

When Winter weds with Spring!

'Tis all the better.
It is my nature to abhor in others
That lightness which doth please me in myself.
I love not mine own parallel. The old giants,
Who stood as tall as trees, lov'd little women,
Or there's no truth in fable. Thus do I:
I love a sober face, a modest eye,

A step demure, a mien as grave as virtue.‡

So, again, in the most popular of Sheridan Knowles's dramas, where Sir Thomas Clifford indulges in this flight of blank versification:

In joining contrasts lieth love's delight.
Complexion, stature, nature, mateth it

Not with their kinds, but with their opposites.
Hence hands of snow in palms of russet lie;
The form of Hercules affects the sylph's;

And breasts that case the lion's fear-proof heart

Find their meet lodge in arms where tremors dwell. §

Of Mrs. Lynn Linton's recent Cumbrian story|| a discerning critic observed, that no one who did not believe in the theory of loving by contraries would suppose that so gusty and morbid a being as the heroine could see anything to admire in a clear-voiced young rector, with his clerical costume, smooth tranquil face, and notions of duty.

Miriam remonstrates with Donatello, in Mr. Hawthorne's Romance of Monte Beni, "Why should you love me, foolish boy? We have no points of sympathy at all. There are not two creatures more unlike, in this wide world, than you and I.” "You are yourself, and I am Donatello," he replies. "Therefore I love you. There needs no other ." And certainly, remarks the author, there was no better or more

reason."

* The Virginians, ch. lxii.

†The Gardener's Daughter.

Dramatic Fragments, by Barry Cornwall, No. 137.

The Hunchback, Act I. Sc. 3.

Sept.-VOL. CXXXVIII. NO. DXLIX.

Lizzie Lorton of Greyrigg.

E

explicable. For although it might have been imagined that Donatello's unsophisticated heart would be more readily attracted to a feminine nature of clear simplicity like his own, than to one already turbid with grief or wrong, as Miriam's seemed to be," perhaps, on the other hand, his character needed the dark element, which it found in her."* There is subsequently a conversation between Hilda and Kenyon, touching the possibility of their friend Miriam being won by poor half-witted Donatello. "Is there the slightest chance of his winning Miriam's affections?" suggests the sculptor. And Hilda repudiates the notion with scorn. "Miriam! she, so accomplished and gifted! and he, a rude, uncultivated boy! No, no, no!" But Kenyon is not so positively negative as all that, and reminds Hilda that people of high intellectual endowments do not require similar ones in those they love. And towards the close of the story, the remark is made of Hilda's own affection for the sculptor, that in him she found both congeniality and variety of taste, and likenesses and differences of character; these being as essential as those to any poignancy of mutual emotion.‡ One may apply what Eliante, in Molière, says of a certain couple :

Cela fait assez voir que l'amour, dans les cœurs,

N'est pas toujours produit par un rapport d'humeurs ;
Et toutes ces raisons de douces sympathies

Dans cet exemple-ci se trouvent démenties. §

Black men, Richardson's tedious-sprightly Lady G. has heard remarked, like fair women; fair men, black women; and tempers, she tells the Hon. Miss Byron, suit best with contraries. Were we all, she says, to like the same person equally, we should be for ever engaged in broils; adverting to her own instance, my lady observes, "So, my lord, being a soft man, fell in love, if it please you, with a saucy woman," which her ladyship certainly and rather ostentatiously is,-tant pis pour mylord. Mr. Banim assigns as one cause of Andy Awling's subjugation by Bridget Heart-in one of the O'Hara Family Tales-that she was Andy's negative-he being as tall and lean as she was short and stout¶—and the two presenting in juxtaposition the most salient possible of contrasts in every feature as well as in entire form. Theodore Hook assumes it to be the pride of a little man to have a large wife, and the taste of a tall man to possess a short one; a fair woman, he says, admires a dark Lothario, while a bright-eyed brunette delights in "blazing away upon a fair Romeo." A learned man, he goes on to say, eschews a blue partner; he relaxes into ease in the company of his ordinarily-educated better-half, and reposes from his graver studies in the agreeable common-places of an intelligent but not erudite associate; while the learned lady prefers the plodding spouse, and never desires that he should meddle with her arts and sciences.** In another work,†† Mr. Hook repeats the discourse almost word for word, on the theme of love being made up of contraries.

Miss Austen makes Fanny Price deprecate, to Sir Thomas Bertram, the notion of an alliance between Crawford and her: “We are so totally unlike; so very, very different in all our inclinations and ways, that I

*Transformation, ch. ix.

Le Misanthrope, Acte IV. Sc. 1.

† Ibid., ch. xii.

History of Sir Charles Grandison, vol. v. letter xxxviii.
Crohoore of the Bill-hook, ch. xii.

‡ Ibid., ch. xli.

** Jack Brag, ch. i.

tt Sayings and Doings, Second Series: Doubts and Fears, ch. ii.

consider it as quite impossible we should ever be tolerably happy together, even if I could like him. There never were two people more dissimilar. We have not one taste in common. We should be miserable." To which Sir Thomas replies that she is mistaken; that the dissimilarity is not so strong; and that what of it does exist, does not in the smallest degree make against the probability of their happiness together. "I am myself convinced," exclaims the old gentleman, "that it is rather a favourable circumstance. I am perfectly persuaded that the tempers had better be unlike; I mean unlike in the flow of the spirits, in the manners, in the inclination for much or little company, in the propensity to talk or to be silent, to be grave or to be gay." Some opposition here is, Sir Thomas is thoroughly convinced, friendly to matrimonial happiness. He excludes extremes, as a matter of course; and a close resemblance in all those points would be the likeliest way, in his opinion, to produce an extreme. In short, and in his stately way, he pronounces a counteraction, gentle and continual, to be the best safeguard of manners and conduct.* There is a well-matched pair in one of Mr. Hannay's fictions, of whom we read that the maiden, though like the man in important and essential respects, had yet more sentiment, more devotion, and far more poetry ; and though it is not true, remarks this author, that people love each other because they are opposite, it is true that the strongest affections are between those who, being like in essentials, are different in many other things. "A white rose and a red rose twine more prettily together than two similar roses, and, likewise, than two quite distinct flowers." In a subsequent chapter of the same work we have a third person recommending this particular damsel to this particular swain; because one should marry a person whose nature is a kind of complement of one's own, and yet one like us at heart.†

Scott's Mordaunt Mertoun is confessedly mistaken in supposing that Cleveland was likely to be disagreeable to Minna Troil, on account of the opposition of their characters in so many material particulars. Had his knowledge of the world been a little more extensive, he might have observed, says Sir Walter, that as unions are often formed between couples differing in complexion and stature, they take place still more frequently between persons totally differing in feelings, in tastes, in pursuits, and in understanding; "and it would not be saying, perhaps, too much, to aver, that two-thirds of the marriages around us have been contracted betwixt persons, who, judging à priori, we should have thought had scarce any charms for each other." Elena della Torre, in Mr. Henry Taylor's dramatic poem, thus instructs her attendant:

But mark you this, Cecile: your grave and wise

And melancholy men, if they have souls,

As commonly they have, susceptible

Of all impressions, lavish most their love
Upon the blithe and sportive, and on such
As yield their want and chase their sad excess
With jocund salutations, nimble talk,

And buoyant bearing.§

* Mansfield Park, ch. xxxiv.

The Pirate, ch. xiii.

† Eustace Conyers, ch. xxix., cf. ch. xxx.

Philip van Artevelde, Second Part, Act V. Sc. 1.

WANDERINGS THROUGH ITALY IN SEARCH OF ITS ANCIENT

REMAINS.

BY CRAUFURD TAIT RAMAGE, LL.D.

XV.

WHATEVER may be the vices of the Italians, I think you will allow that they are not deficient in hospitality and kindness to strangers. I should be inclined to say that their virtues were their own, and that the defects of their character were mainly caused by their system of government. Everything is done to repress their energies and to keep their minds in an obscure twilight, not altogether forbidding the cultivation of their intellect, but preventing, as far as possible, all benefit to be derived from mental pursuits. The clergy and the lawyers are the two classes that monopolise whatever learning is possessed by the nation. The interests of the former are intimately bound up with the maintenance of the power of the present royal family, and of course the distribution of patronage must secure the allegiance of a considerable portion of the latter. Still it was found, in the late attempts to establish a more liberal form of government, that the lawyers were by no means unwilling to have a wider arena for the display of their talents, and many of them were able members of the House of Deputies. On the other hand, the clergy were, with few exceptions, opposed to change, dreading lest the remnant of their property left by the French should be confiscated. I can perceive, by the tone of conversation held by the various classes, that the clergy have lost the respect of the educated part of the community, and that whatever calamities befal them will not be regretted. While I was at Naples, I made myself acquainted with the university course of study, and in that course nothing was left out that could be desired. Theology, jurisprudence, moral philosophy, literature, medicine, natural philosophy, and mathematics, were all on the programme; all these chairs were worthily represented; but when I began to inquire when and where the lectures were delivered, I saw that my inquiry was considered an impertinence, and that most of the programme was a mere myth. Jurisprudence and its concomitant subjects might lead the youth of Naples to debate on the various forms of political government, and what might not result from such a discussion? Yet Greek and Latin occupied a large portion of time, and some were malicious enough to maintain that this was done not without due calculation. In devoting so much time to the study of the classical languages, it was thought that they would serve as a sort of bugbear to frighten the youth from entering upon a course of study which was so indefinitely prolonged.

I left Nocera at an early hour this morning with my friendly host, and proceeded down the banks of the Savuto, passing groves of mulberries, which were growing in great abundance. Nocera had at one time been the seat of a considerable manufacture of silk; like everything else in the kingdom, it had dwindled to nothing. The ruins of the ancient city Terina are found about three miles from Nocera, close to the sea, at a