wild flowers and water-weeds, went the crystal Sorgia.  Advancing farther, the landscape assumed a more sombre and sterile aspect.  The valley seemed enclosed or shut in by fantastic rocks of a thousand shapes, down which dashed and glittered a thousand rivulets.  And, in the very wildest of the scene, the ground suddenly opened into a quaint and cultivated garden, through which, amidst a profusion of foliage, was seen a small and lonely mansion,—­the hermitage of the place.  The horseman was in the valley of the Vaucluse; and before his eye lay the garden and the house of petrarch!  Carelessly, however, his eye scanned the consecrated spot; and unconsciously it rested, for a moment, upon a solitary figure seated musingly by the margin of the river.  A large dog at the side of the noonday idler barked at the horseman as he rode on.  “A brave animal and a deep bay!” thought the traveller; to him the dog seemed an object much more interesting than its master.  And so,—­as the crowd of little men pass unheeding and unmoved, those in whom Posterity shall acknowledge the landmarks of their age,—­the horseman turned his glance from the Poet!

Thrice blessed name!  Immortal Florentine! (I need scarcely say that it is his origin, not his actual birth, which entitles us to term Petrarch a Florentine.) not as the lover, nor even as the poet, do I bow before thy consecrated memory—­venerating thee as one it were sacrilege to introduce in this unworthy page—­save by name and as a shadow; but as the first who ever asserted to people and to prince the august majesty of Letters; who claimed to Genius the prerogative to influence states, to control opinion, to hold an empire over the hearts of men, and prepare events by animating passion, and guiding thought!  What, (though but feebly felt and dimly seen)—­what do we yet owe to Thee if Knowledge be now a Power; if mind be a Prophet and a Fate, foretelling and foredooming the things to come!  From the greatest to the least of us, to whom the pen is at once a sceptre and a sword, the low-born Florentine has been the arch-messenger to smooth the way and prepare the welcome.  Yes! even the meanest of the aftercomers—­even he who now vents his gratitude,—­is thine everlasting debtor!  Thine, how largely is the honour, if his labours, humble though they be, find an audience wherever literature is known; preaching in remotest lands the moral of forgotten revolutions, and scattering in the palace and the marketplace the seeds that shall ripen into fruit when the hand of the sower shall be dust, and his very name, perhaps, be lost!  For few, alas! are they, whose names may outlive the grave; but the thoughts of every man who writes, are made undying;—­others appropriate, advance, exalt them; and millions of minds unknown, undreamt of, are required to produce the immortality of one!

Indulging meditations very different from those which the idea of Petrarch awakens in a later time, the Cavalier pursued his path.