inflict on Bohemia:[26]—­in that book, the woes inflicted on Paris by that adulterator of his kingdom’s money, who shall die by the hog’s teeth:—­in that book, the ambition which makes such mad fools of the Scotch and English kings, that they cannot keep within their bounds:—­in that book, the luxury of the Spaniard, and the effeminate life of the Bohemian, who neither knows nor cares for any thing worthy:—­in that book, the lame wretch of Jerusalem, whose value will be expressed by a unit, and his worthlessness by a million:—­in that book, the avarice and cowardice of the warder of the Isle of Fire, in which old Anchises died; and that the record may answer the better to his abundant littleness, the writing shall be in short-hand; and his uncle’s and his brother’s filthy doings shall be read in that book—­they who have made such rottenness of a good old house and two diadems; and there also shall the Portuguese and the Norwegian be known for what they are, and the coiner of Dalmatia, who beheld with such covetous eyes the Venetian ducat.  O blessed Hungary, if thou wouldst resolve to endure no longer!—­O blessed Navarre, if thou wouldst but keep out the Frenchman with thy mountain walls!  May the cries and groans of Nicosia and Famagosta be an earnest of those happier days, proclaiming as they do the vile habits of the beast, who keeps so close in the path of the herd his brethren.”

The blessed bird for a moment was silent; but as, at the going down of the sun, the heavens are darkened, and then break forth into innumerable stars which the sun lights up,[27] so the splendours within the figure of the bird suddenly became more splendid, and broke forth into songs too beautiful for mortal to remember.

O dulcet love, that dost shew thee forth in smiles, how ardent was thy manifestation in the lustrous sparkles which arose out of the mere thoughts of those pious hearts!

After the gems in that glittering figure had ceased chiming their angelic songs, the poet seemed to hear the murmur of a river which comes falling from rock to rock, and chews, by the fulness of its tone, the abundance of its mountain spring; and as the sound of the guitar is modulated on the neck of it, and the breath of the pipe is accordant to the spiracle from which it issues, so the murmuring within the eagle suddenly took voice, and, rising through the neck, again issued forth in words.  The bird now bade the poet fix his attention on its eye; because, of all the fires that composed its figure, those that sparkled in the eye were the noblest.  The spirit (it said) which Dante beheld in the pupil was that of the royal singer who danced before the ark, now enjoying the reward of his superiority to vulgar discernment.  Of the five spirits that composed the eyebrow, the one nearest the beak was Trajan, now experienced above all others in the knowledge of what it costs not to follow Christ, by reason of his having been in hell before he was translated to heaven.  Next to Trajan