be snatched by the hand of Herminric from the unchildlike youth, your words fall upon my ear heritage of life that I have so long struggled to with the music of a song of the olden time; it is preserve!" like a dream of the spirits that my fathers wor shiped, when I look up and behold you at my side!"'

Her voice had altered, as she pronounced these words, to an impressive lowness and mournfulness of tone. Its quiet, saddened accents were expressive of an almost divine resignation and sorrow; they seemed to be attuned to a mysterious and untraceable harmony with the melancholy stillness of the night-landscape. As she now stood gazing up with pale, calm counteDance, and gentle, tearless eyes, into the sky whose moonlight brightness shone softly over her form, the Virgin watching the approach of her angel messenger could hardly have been adorned with a more pure and simple loveliness, than now dwelt over the features of Numerian's forsaken child.

An expression of mingled confusion, pleasure and surprise, flushed the girl's half-averted coun tenance as she listened to the Goth. She rose with a smile of ineffable gratitude and delight, and pointed to the prospect beyond, as she softly rejoined :

'Let us go a little further onward, where the moonlight shines over the meadow below. My heart is bursting in this shadowy place! Let us seek the light that is yonder; it seems happy like me!"

They walked forward; and as they went, she told him again of the sorrows of her past day; of No longer master of his agitation; filled with her lonely and despairing progress from his tent awe, grief, and despair, as he looked on the vic- to the solitary house where he had found her tim of his heartless impatience; Hermanric in the night, and where she had resigned herbowed himself at the girl's feet, and, in the pas-self from the first to meet a death that had little sionate utterance of real remorse, offered up his horror for her then. There was no thought of supplications for pardon and his assurances of reproach, no feeling of complaint, in this renewal protection and love. All that the reader has of her melancholy narration. It was solely that already learned-the bitter self-upbraidings of she might luxuriate afresh in those delighting his evening, the sorrowful wanderings of his night, the mysterious attraction that had led him to the solitary house, his joy at once more discovering his lost charge-all these confessions he now poured forth in the unadorned and powerful eloquence of strong emotion and true regret.

expressions of repentance and devotion, which she knew that it would call forth from the lips of Hermanric, that she now thought of addressing him once more with the tale of her grief.

As they still went onward; as she listened to the rude fervent eloquence of the language of the Gradually and amazedly, as she listened to his Goth; as she looked on the stillness of the landwords, Antonina awoke from her abstraction. scape, and the soft transparency of the night sky; The expression of his countenance and the earnest-her mind, ever elastic under the shock of the ness of his manner, viewed by the intuitive pen-most violent emotions, ever ready to regain its etration of her sex and her position, wrought wonted healthfulness and hope-now recovered with kind and healing influence on her mind. its old tone, and reassumed its accustomed balShe started suddenly, a bright flush flew over ance. Again her memory began to store itself her colorless cheeks; she bent down and looked with its beloved remembrances, and her heart earnestly and wistfully into the Goth's face. Her to rejoice in its artless longings and visionary lips moved, but her quick convulsive breathing thoughts. In spite of all her fears and all her stifled the words that she vainly endeavored to sufferings, she now walked on blest in a disposiform. tion that woe had no shadow to darken long, and "Yes," continued Hermanric, rising and draw-neglect no influence to warp; still as happy in ing her toward him again, you shall never mourn, never fear, never weep more! Though you have lost your father, and the people of your nation are as strangers to you, though you have been threatened and forsaken, you shall still be beautiful-still be happy; for I will watch you, and you shall never be harmed; I will labor for you, and you shall never want! People and kindred-fame and duty, I will abandon them all to make atonement to you!”

Its youthful freshness and hope returned to the girl's heart, as water to the long-parched spring, when the young warrior ceased. The tears stood in her eyes, but she neither sighed nor spoke. Her frame trembled all over with the excess of her astonishment and delight, as she still stedfastly looked on him and still listened intently as ne proceeded:

herself; even yet as forgetful of her past, as hopeful for her future, as on that first evening when we beheld her in her father's garden singing to the music of her lute.

Insensibly as they had proceeded, they had diverged from the road, had entered a by-path, and now stood before a gate which led to a small farm-house, surrounded by its gardens and vineyards, and, like the suburbs that they had quitted, deserted by its inhabitants on the approach of the Goths. They passed through the gate, and arriving at the plot of ground in front of the house, paused for a moment to look around them.

The meadows had been already stripped of their grass, and the young trees of their branches, by the foragers of the invading army, but here the destruction of the little property had been "Fear, then, no longer for your safety-Gois- stayed. The house with its neat thatched roof intha, whom you dread, is far from us; she and shutters of variegated wood, the garden with Knows not that we are here; she cannot track its small stock of fruit and its carefully tended our footsteps now, to threaten or to harm you! beds of rare flowers, designed probably to grace Remember no more how you have suffered and the feast of a nobleman or the statue of a martyr, I have sinned! Think only how bitterly I have had presented no allurements to the rough tastes repented our morning's separation, and how of Alaric's soldiery. Not a mark of a footstep gladly I welcome our meeting of to-night! Oh, appeared on the turf before the house door; the Antonina! you are beautiful with a wondrous ivy crept in its wonted luxuriance about the loveliness, you are young with a perfected and pillars of the lowly porch; and as Hermanric

and Antonina walked toward the fishpond at the doned; the uncertainty of his future fortunes and extremity of the garden, the few water-fowl future fate; the presence of the lonely being so placed there by the owners of the cottage came inseparably connected with his past emotions and swimming toward the bank, as if to welcome his existence to come, so strangely attractive by her in their solitude the appearance of a human sex, her age, her person, her misfortunes, and herenform. dowments; all contributed to bewilder his facul

Far from being melancholy, there was some- ties. Goisvintha, the army, the besieged city, thing soothing and attractive about the loneliness the abandoned suburbs, seemed to hem him in of the deserted farm. Its ravaged outhouses and like a circle of shadowy and threatening judgplundered meadows, which might have appeared ments; and in the midst of them stood the young desolate by day, were so distanced, softened, and denizen of Rome, with her eloquent countenance obscured, by the atmosphere of night, that they and her inspiring words, ready to hurry him, he jarred not with the prevailing smoothness and lux- knew not whither, and able to influence him, he uriance of the landscape around. As Antonina be- felt not how. held the brightened fields and the shadowed woods, here mingled, there succeeding each other, stretched far onward and onward until they joined the distant mountains, that eloquent voice of nature, whose audience is the human heart, and whose theme is eternal love, spoke inspiringly to her attentive senses. She stretched out her arms as she looked with steady and enraptured gaze upon the bright view before her, as if she longed to see its beauties resolved into a single and living form -into a spirit human enough to be addressed, and visible enough to be adored.

Beautiful earth!" she murmured softly to herself, "Thy mountains are the watch-towers of angels, thy moonlight is the shadow of God!" Her eyes filled with bright, happy tears; she turned to Hermanric, who stood watching her, and continued :—

Unconsciously interpreting her companion's si lence into a wish to change the scene and the discourse, Antonina, after lingering over the view from the garden for a moment longer, led the way back toward the untenanted house. They removed the wooden padlock from the door of the dwelling, and guided by the brilliant moonlight, entered its principal apartment.

The homely adornments of the little room had remained undisturbed, and dimly distinguishable though they now were, gave it to the eyes of the two strangers, the same aspect of humble comfort which had probably once endeared it to its exiled occupants. As Hermanric seated himself by Antonina's side on the simple couch which made the principal piece of furniture in the place, and looked forth from the window over the same view that they had beheld in the garden, the magic stillness and novelty of the scene now began to affect his slow perceptions, as they had already influenced the finer and more sensitive faculties of the thoughtful girl. New hopes and tranquil ideas arose in his young mind, and conmunicated an unusual gentleness to his expression, an unusual softness to his voice, as he thus addressed his silent companion :—

"With such a home as this, with this garden, with that country beyond, with no warfare, no stern teachers, no enemy to threaten you; with companions and occupations that you loved-tell me, Antonina, would not your happiness be complete?"

Have you never thought that light, and air, and the perfume of flowers, might contain some relics of the beauties of Eden that escaped with Eve, when she wandered into the lonely world! They glowed and breathed for her, and she lived and was beautiful in them! They were united to one another, as the sunbeam is united to the earth that it warms; and could the sword of the cherubim have sundered them at once? When Eve went forth, did the closed gates shut back in the empty Paradise, all the beauty that had clung. and grown, and shone round her! Did no ray of her native light steal forth after her into the delateness of the world? Did no print of her lost flowers remain on the bosom they must once As he looked round at the girl to listen to her have pressed? It cannot be ! A part of her reply, he saw that her countenance had changed. possessions of Eden must have been spared to Their past expression of deep grief had again her with a part of her life. She must have re- returned to her features. Her eyes were fixed fined the void air of the earth when she entered on the short dagger that hung over the Goth's it, with a breath of the fragrant breezes, and a breast, which seemed to have suddenly aroused gleam of the truant sunshine of her lost Paradise! in her a train of melancholy and unwelcome They must have strengthened and brightened, thoughts. When she at length spoke, it was in and must now be strengthening and brightening a mournful and altered voice, and with a mingled with the slow lapse of mortal years, until, in the expression of resignation and despair. time when earth itself will be an Eden, they shall be made one again with the hidden world of perfection, from which they are yet separated. So that, even now, as I look forth over the landscape, the light that I behold has in it a glow of Paradise, and this flower that I gather a breath cf the fragrance that once stole over the senses of iny first mother Eve!"

Though she paused here, as if in expectation of in answer, the Goth preserved an unbroken silence. Neither by nature nor position was he capable of partaking the wild fancies and aspiring thoughts, drawn by the influences of the external world from their concealment in Antonina's heart.

The mystery of his present situation; his vague remembrances of the duties he had aban

You must leave me-we must be parted again," said she; "the sight of your weapons has reminded me of all that until now I had forgotten, of all that I have left in Rome, of all that you have abandoned before the city walls. Once I thought we might have escaped together from the turmoil and the danger around us, but now I know that it is better that you should depart ! Alas, for my hopes and my happiness, I must be left alone once more!"

She paused for an instant, struggling to retain her self-possession, and then continued:

"Yes, you must quit me, and return to your post before the city; for in the day of assault there will be none to care for my father but you! Until I know that he is safe, until I can see him once more, and ask him for pardon, and entrea

him for love, I dare not remove from the perilous precincts of Rome! Return, then, to your duties, and your companions, and your occupations of martial renown; and do not forget Numerian when the city is assailed, nor Antonina, who is left to think on you in the solitary plains!"

She rose from her place, as if to set the example of departing; but her strength and resolution both failed her, and she sank down again on the couch, incapable of making another movement, or uttering another word.

woe, basked as happily again in its native atmo sphere of joy, as a bird in the sunlight of morning and spring.

Then, when after an interval of delay their former tranquillity had returned to them, how softly and lightly the quiet hours of the remaining night flowed onward, to the two watchers in the lonely house! How happily the delighted girl disclosed her hidden thoughts, and poured forth her innocent confessions, to the dweller among other nations and the child of other im. Strong and conflicting emotions passed over the pressions, than her own! All the various reflec heart of the Goth. The language of the girl had tions aroused in her mind by the natural objects quickened the remembrance of his half-forgotten she had secretly studied, by the mighty imagery duties, and strengthened the failing influence of of her Bible lore, by the gloomy histories of his old predilections of education and race. Both saints' visions and martyrs' sufferings, which she his conscience and his inclinations now opposed had learnt and pondered over by her father's side, his disputing her urgent and unselfish request. were now drawn from their treasured places in For a few minutes he remained plunged in reflec- her memory, and addressed to the ear of the tion; then he rose and looked earnestly from Goth. As the child flies to the nurse with the the window; then back again upon Antonina, story of its first toy; as the girl resorts to the sisand the room they occupied. At length, as if ter with the confession of her first love; as the animated by a sudden determination, he again poet hurries to the friend with the plan of his first approached his companion, and thus addressed composition; so did Antonina seek the attention of Hermanric with the first outward revealings enjoyed by her faculties, and the first acknowledgment of her emotions liberated from her heart.

ber:

It is right that I should return. I will do your bidding, and depart for the camp (but not fill the break of day), while you, Antonina, remain in concealment and in safety here. None The longer the Goth listened to her, the more can come hither to disturb you. The Goths will perfect became the enchantment of her words, not revisit the fields they have already stripped; half struggling into poetry, and her voice half the husbandman who owns this dwelling is im- gliding into music. As her low, still varying prisoned in the beleaguered city; the peasants tones wound smoothly into his ear, his thoughts from the country beyond dare not approach so suddenly and intuitively reverted to her formerly near to the invading hosts; and Goisvintha, expressed remembrances of her lost lute, inciting whom you dread, knows not even of the exist-him to ask her, with new interest and animation, ence of such a refuge as this. Here, though lone- of the manner of her acquisition of that knowly, you will be secure; here you can await my ledge of song, which she had already assured him return, when each succeeding night gives me the that she possessed. opportunity of departing from the camp; and here I will warn you beforehand, if the city is devoted to an assault. Though solitary, you will not be abandoned,- -we shall not be parted one from the other. Often and often I shall return to look on you, and to listen to you, and to love you! You will be happier here, even in this lonely place, than ir. the former home that you bave lost through your father's wrath!"

"I have learned many odes of many poets," said she, quickly and confusedly avoiding the mention of Vetranio, which a direct answer to Hermanric's question must have produced; "but I remember none perfectly, save those whose theme is of spirits and of other worlds, and of the invisible beauty that we think of but cannot see. Of the few that I know of these, there is one that I first learned and love most. I will sing it, that you may be assured I will not fail to you in my promised art."

Oh, I will willingly remain-I will joyfully await you!" cried the girl, raising her beaming eyes to Hermanric's face. "I will never speak She hesitated for a moment. Sorrowful remournfully to you again; I will never remind membrances of the events that had followed the you more, of all that I have suffered, and all that utterance of the last notes she sang in her father's I have lost! How merciful you were to me, garden, swelled within her, and held her speechwhen I first saw you in your tent-how doubly less. Soon, however, after a short interval of merciful you are to me here! I am proud when silence, she recovered her self-possession, and beI look on your stature, and your strength, and gan to sing, in low, tremulous tones that haryour heavy weapons, and know that you are monized well with the character of the words happy in remaining with me; that you will suc- and the strain of the melody which she had for my father; that you will return from your chosen. glittering encampments to this farm-house, where I am left to await you! Already I have forgotten all that has happened to me of woe; already I am more joyful than ever I was in my life before! See, I am no longer weeping in sorrow! If there are any tears still on my cheeks, they are the tears of gladness that every one welcomes tears to sing and rejoice in!"

She ceased abruptly, as if words failed to give expression to her new delight. All the gloomy emotions that had oppressed her but a short time before, had now completely vanished; and the young fresh heart, superior still to despair and

THE MISSION OF THE TEAR.

The skies were its birth-place-the TEAR was the

child

of the dark maiden SORROW, by young Joy beguiled; It was born in convulsion; 'twas nurtured in woe; And the world was yet young when it wandered be

low.

song had begun. His expressions now glowed with a southern warmth; his words assumed a Roman fervor. Gradually as they discoursed. the voice of the girl was less frequently audible. A change was passing over her spirit; from the teacher, she was now becoming the pupil.

As she still listened to the Goth, as she felt the birth of new feelings within her while he spoke, her cheeks glowed, her features lightened up, her very form seemed to freshen and expand. No intruding thought or awakening remembrance disturbed her rapt attention. No cold doubt, no gloomy hesitation, appeared in her companion's words. The one listened, the other spoke, with the whole heart, the undivided soul. While a world-wide revolution was concentrating its hurricane forces around them; while the city of an Empire tottered already to its tremendous fall, while Goisvintha plotted new revenge; while Ul pius toiled for his revolution of bloodshed and ruin; while all these dark materials of public misery and private strife seethed and strengthen

For the first few minutes after she had conclud-ed around them, they could as completely forget ed the ode, Hermanric was hardly conscious that she had ceased; and when at length she looked up at him, her mute petition for approval had an eloquence which would have been marred to the Goth at that moment, by the utterance of a single word. A rapture, an inspiration, a new life moved within him. The hour and the scene completed what the magic of the

the stormy outward world, in themselves; they could think as serenely of tranquil love; the kiss could be given as passionately, and returned as tenderly, as if the lot of their existence had been cast in the pastoral days of the shepherd-poets, and the future of their duties and enjoyments was securely awaiting them in a land of eternal peace!

BOOK FOURTH.

"Qu'arrive-t-il? la mort, la mort fatale."--Voltaire.

CHAPTER I.

THE FAMINE.

| advancing over the cold flagstones of the Great Square, before the Basilica of St. John Lateran. The members of the assembly speak in whispers. THE end of November is approaching. Near-The weak are tearful-the strong are gloomyly a month has elapsed since the occurrence of they all move with slow and languid gait, and the events mentioned in the last Chapter, yet still the Gothic lines stretch round the city walls. Pome, that we left haughty and luxurious even while ruin threatened at her gates, has now suffered a terrible and warning change. As we approach her again, woe, horror, and desolation have already gone forth to shadow her lofty palaces and to darken her brilliant streets.

hold in their arms their dogs or other domestic animals. On the outskirts of the crowd march the enfeebled guards of the city, grasping in their rough hands, rare, favorite birds of gaudy plumage and melodious note, and followed by children and young girls vainly and piteously entreating that their favorites may be restored.

This strange procession pauses at length, before Over Pomp that spurned it, over Pleasure that a mighty caldron slung over a great fire in the defied it, over Plenty that scared it in its secret middle of the Square, round which stand the city rounds, the specter Hunger has now risen trium- butchers with bare knives, and the trustiest men phant at last. Day by day has the city's insuf- of the Roman legions with threatening weapons. ficient allowance of food been more and more A proclamation is then repeated, commanding the sparingly doled out; higher and higher has risen populace who have no money left to purchase the value of the coarsest and simplest provision; food, to bring up their domestic animals to be the hoarded supplies that pity and charity have boiled together over the public furnace, for the already bestowed to cheer the sinking people, sake of contributing to the public support. have reached their utmost limits. For the rich, The next minute, in pursuance of this edict, there is still corn in the city-treasure of food to the dumb favorites of the crowd passed from the be bartered for treasure of gold. For the poor, owner's caressing hand into the butchers' ready man's natural nourishment exists no more; the grasp. The faint cries of the animals, starved like season of famine's loathsome feasts, the first days their masters, mingled for a few moments with of the sacrifice of choice to necessity, have the sobs and lamentations of the women and darkly and irretrievably begun. children, to whom the greater part of them is morning. A sad and noiseless throng is belonged. For, in this the first stage of their

alamities, that severity of hunger which extin- tion with Alaric and the invading army; he guses pity and estranges grief was unknown to noticed lengthily the promises of assistance transthe populace; and though fast losing spirit, they mitted from Ravenna, after the perpetration of had not yet sunk to the depths of ferocious de- that ill-omened act. He spoke admiringly of the air, which even now were invisibly opening skill displayed by the government in making the beneath them. A thousand pangs were felt, a necessary and immediate reductions in the daily thousand humble tragedies were acted in the supplies of food; he lamented the terrible scarcity nef moments of separation between guardian which followed, too inevitably, those seasonable d charge. The child snatched its last kiss of reductions. He pronounced an eloquent eulogium the bird that had sung over its bed; the dog on the noble charity of Læta, the widow of the looked its last entreaty for protection from the emperor Gratian, who, with her mother, devoted mistress who had once never met it without a the store of provisions obtained by their imperial ress. Then came the short interval of agony revenues to succoring, at that important juncture, and death, then the steam rose fiercely from the the starving and desponding poor; he admitted greedy caldron, and then the people for a time the new scarcity consequent on the dissipation of dispersed; the sorrowful to linger near the Læta's stores; deplored the present necessity of connes of the fire, and the hungry to calm sacrificing the domestic animals of the citizens; their impatience by a visit to the neighboring condemned the enormous prices now demanded for the last remnants of wholesome food that

church.

The marble aisles of the noble Basilica held a were garnered up; announced it as the firm pergloomy congregation. Three small candles were suasion of every one that a few days more would alone lighted on the high altar. No sweet voices bring help from Ravenna; and ended his address sang melodious anthems or exulting hymns. The by informing his auditory that, as they had sufmonks, in hoarse tones and monotonous harmo- fered so much already, they could patiently suffer Lies, chanted the penitential psalms. Here and a little more, and that if after this they were so tere knelt a figure clothed in mourning robes, ill-fated as to sink under their calamities, they and absorbed in secret prayer; but over the would feel it a noble consolation to die in the prity of the assembly, either blank despon- cause of Catholic and Apostolic Rome, and would dency or sullen inattention universally prevailed. assuredly be canonized as saints and martyrs by As the last dull notes of the last psalm died the next generation of the pious in the first interaway among the lofty recesses of the church, a val of fertile and restoring peace. procession of pious Christians appeared at the door and advanced slowly to the altar. It was composed both of men and women, bare-footed, clothed in black garments, and with ashes scattered over their disheveled hair. Tears flowed from their eyes, and they beat their breasts as they bowed their foreheads on the marble pave

ment of the altar steps.

Flowing as was the eloquence of this oration, it yet possessed not the power of inducing one among those whom it addressed to forget the sensation of his present suffering, and to fix his attention on the vision of future advantage, spread before all listeners by the fluent priest. With the same murmurs of querulous complaint, and the same expressions of impotent hatred and This humble public expression of penitence defiance of the Goths, which had fallen from under the calamity that had now fallen on the them as they entered the church, the populace aty was, however, confined only to its few really now departed from it, to receive from the city religious inhabitants, and commanded neither officers the stinted allowance of repugnant food, Sympathy nor attention from the heartless and prepared for their hunger from the caldron in the obstinate population of Rome. Some still cher-public square. ished the delusive hope of assistance from the would ere long impatiently abandon their pro-zens press onward at the given signal, to meet tracted blockade, to stretch their ravages over them round the caldron's sides!

Court of Ravenna;

And see, already from other haunts in the others believed that the Goths neighboring quarter of Rome, their fellow-citi

The languid But the same blind confidence in the lost terrors the sickening prospect of the Gothic camp, and his gaze from of the Roman name, the same fierce and reckless hastens to share the public meal; the baker determination to defy the Goths to the very last, starts from sleeping on his empty counter, the Stained the sinking courage and crushed the beggar rises from his kennel in the butcher's despondent emotions of the great mass of the vacant outhouse, the slave deserts his place by suffering people; from the beggar who prowled the smouldering kitchen fire-all hurry to swell Dew and unwelcome nourishment of simple wretched feast. Rapidly and universally, the for garbage, to the patrician who sighed over his the numbers of the guests that are bidden to the While the penitents who formed the procession lofty gates; the priests and penitents retire from formance of their unnoticed and unshared duties crowded but a few moments before, there now above described were yet engaged in the per- the altar's foot, and in the great church, so

bread.

of penance and palpit of the

prayer, a priest ascended the great
Basílica, to attempt the ungrateful

congregation in the Basilica pours through its

only remains the figure of a solitary man.
Since the commencement of the service, neither

task of preaching patience and piety to the hungry addressed nor observed, this lonely being has fal

multitude at his feet.

He began his s

sermon by retracing the principal

tered round the circle of the congregation, gazing long and wistfully over the faces that met his Now that the sermon is ended, and the

Occurrences in Rome, since the beginning of the view.

Gothic blockade. He touched cautiously upon last lingerer has quitted the church, he turns from the first event that stained the annals of the be- the spot whence he has anxiously watched the Roman general Stilicho, on the unauthorized sus-feebly crouches down on his knees at the base of sieged city-the execution of the widow of the different members of the departing throng, and picion that she had held treasonable communica- a pillar that is near him. His eyes are hollow