broke his disdainful silence, never replied to the questions of his youthful bride, never listened to her entreaties.  He waited, unmoved by her, for the air to produce its fatal effects.  The vapours of this unwholesome swamp were not long in tarnishing features the most beautiful, they say, that in that age had appeared upon earth.  In a few months she died.  Some chroniclers of these remote times report that Nello employed the dagger to hasten her end:  she died in the marshes in some horrible manner; but the mode of her death remained a mystery, even to her contemporaries.  Nello della Pietra survived, to pass the rest of his days in a silence which was never broken.”  Hazlitt’s Journey through France and Italy, p. 315.]

[Footnote 11:  Sordello was a famous Provencal poet; with whose writings the world has but lately been made acquainted through the researches of M. Raynouard, in his Choix des Poesies des Troubadours, &c.]

[Footnote 12:  “Fresco smeraldo in l’ora che si fiacca.”  An exquisite image of newness and brilliancy.]

[Footnote 13:  “Salve, Regina:”  the beginning of a Roman-Catholic chant to the Virgin.]

[Footnote 14:  “With nose deprest,” says Mr. Cary.  But Dante says, literally, “small nose,”—­nasetto.  So, further on, he says, “masculine nose,”—­maschio naso.  He meant to imply the greater or less determination of character, which the size of that feature is supposed to indicate.]

[Footnote 15:  An English reader is surprised to find here a sovereign for whom he has been taught to entertain little respect.  But Henry was a devout servant of the Church.]

[Footnote 16: 

  “Era gia l’ora che volge ’l desio
  A’ naviganti, e intenerisce ’l cuore
  Lo di ch’ an detto a’ dolci amici a Dio;

  E che lo nuovo peregrin d’amore
  Punge, se ode squilla di lontano
  Che paia ’l giorno pianger che si muore.”

A famous passage, untiring in the repetition.  It is, indeed, worthy to be the voice of Evening herself.

  ’Twas now the hour, when love of home melts through
  Men’s hearts at sea, and longing thoughts portray
  The moment when they bade sweet friends adieu;
  And the new pilgrim now, on his lone way,
  Thrills, if he hears the distant vesper-bell,
  That seems to mourn for the expiring day.

Every body knows the line in Gray’s Elegy, not unworthily echoed from Dante’s—­

  “The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.”

Nothing can equal, however, the tone in the Italian original,—­the

  “Paia ’l giorno pianger the si muore.”

Alas! why could not the great Tuscan have been superior enough to his personal griefs to write a whole book full of such beauties, and so have left us a work truly to be called Divine?]

[Footnote 17: 

“Te lucis ante terminum;”—­a hymn sung at evening service.]