Chapter V: Front Matter (5)

"At the end of a full hour the masked woman stopped. 'It is well,' she said to the count: 'you have courage. If you had shown the least sign of fear during our walk, I would never have spoken to you again. But you were calm: I am satisfied with you. To-morrow, then, on the square of Santi Giovanni e Paolo, at eleven o'clock. Do not seek to follow me: it would be useless. Turn down this street to the right and you will see the piazza of St. Mark's. Au revoir!' She quickly pressed the count's hand, and before he had time to answer disappeared behind the angle of the street.

"The count remained for some time motionless, still perfectly astounded at what had passed, and undecided what to do. But having reflected on his slight chance of finding the mysterious lady again, and the risk he ran of losing himself by pursuing her, he resolved to return home. He followed, therefore, the street to the right, found himself in a few moments in the piazza of St. Mark's, and thence easily regained his hotel.

"The next day he was faithful to the rendezvous. He arrived in the square as the church-clock was striking eleven. He saw the masked woman standing waiting for him on the steps of the entrance.

"'It is well,' said she. 'You are punctual: let us enter.' So speaking, she turned immediately toward the church.

"Franz, who saw that the door was shut, and knew that it was never opened at night, thought the woman was mad. But what was his surprise at seeing the door yield to her first effort! He mechanically followed his guide, who quickly reclosed the door after he had entered. They then found themselves in darkness, but Franz, remembering that a second door without a lock still separated them from the nave, felt no uneasiness, and prepared to push it before him in order to enter. But she stopped him by a pressure of the arm. 'Have you ever come into this church?' she asked him abruptly.

"'Twenty times,' he answered. 'I know it as well as the architect who built it.'

"'Say you think you know it, for you do not really know it yet. Enter!'

"Franz pushed the second door, and they penetrated into the interior of the church. It was magnificently lighted on all sides, but completely empty.

"'What ceremony is to be performed here?' asked Franz, stupefied.

"'None: the church expected me to-night: that is all. Follow me.'

"The count vainly tried to understand the meaning of the words the Mask addressed to him, but, subjugated by a mysterious power, he followed her obediently. She led him into the middle of the church, made him notice, understand and admire its general architecture; then, passing to the examination of each part, she explained to him in detail, by turns, the nave, the colonnades, the chapels, the altars, the statues, the pictures, all the ornaments; showed him the meaning of everything, disclosed to him the idea hidden beneath each form, made him feel all the beauties of the works which composed the whole, and caused him to penetrate, so to speak, into the very entrails of the church. Franz listened with religious attention to all the words of the eloquent mouth which was pleased to instruct him, and from minute to minute recognized how little he had comprehended this ensemble of works which had seemed to him so easy to understand. When she finished the rays of morning, penetrating through the window-panes, caused the light of the tapers to pale. Although she had spoken for several hours, and had not sat down for an instant during the whole night, neither her voice nor her body betrayed any fatigue. Only her head drooped upon her bosom, which was throbbing violently, and seemed to listen to the sighs exhaling from it. Suddenly she lifted up her head, and raising her arms toward heaven, cried, 'O servitude! servitude!' At these words tears, rolling from beneath her mask, fell among the folds of her black dress.

"'Why do you weep?' asked Franz, approaching her.

"'To-morrow,' she answered, 'at midnight, before the Arsenal;' and went out by the side door at the left, which closed again heavily. At the same moment the Angelus sounded.

"Franz, astonished by the unexpected noise of the bell, turned and saw that all the tapers were extinguished. He remained for some time motionless from surprise, then left the church by the great door which the sacristan had just opened, and returned slowly home, endeavoring to guess who this woman, so bold, so artistic, so powerful, with such charm in her speech, such majesty in her appearance, could be.

"The next night at midnight the count was before the Arsenal. He found the Mask, who was waiting for him as on the previous night, and who, without saying anything, began to walk rapidly before him. Arrived before one of the side doors on the right, she stopped, inserted in the keyhole a golden key, which Franz saw glitter in the moonbeams, opened the door without making any noise, and entered first, signing to Franz to follow her. The latter hesitated an instant. To penetrate into the Arsenal at night by the aid of a false key was to expose one's self to a trial by a court-martial, if one were discovered; and it was almost impossible to avoid discovery in a place guarded by sentinels. But seeing the Mask on the point of closing the door upon him, he suddenly decided to pursue the adventure to the close, and entered. The masked woman first led him across several courts, then through corridors and galleries, all the doors of which she opened with her golden key, and ended by bringing him into vast halls filled with arms of all kinds and times, which had served, in the wars of the republic, either its defenders or its enemies. These halls were lighted by ships' lanterns placed at equal distances between the trophies. She showed the count the most curious and celebrated arms, telling him the names of those to whom they had belonged and of the battles in which they had been used, and relating to him in detail the exploits of which they had been the instruments. Thus she revived before the eyes of Franz the whole history of Venice. After having visited the four halls consecrated to this exhibition, she led him into a last one, larger than all the others, and lighted like them, but containing wood for shipbuilding, the débris of vessels of different forms and sizes, and fragments of the last Bucentaur. She told her companion the properties of these woods, the use of the ships, the time at which they had been built and the expeditions in which they had taken part: then pointing to the balcony of the Bucentaur, 'There,' said she, in a sad voice, 'are the remains of a past royalty. That was the last ship which bore a doge of Venice to wed the sea. Now Venice is a slave, and slaves never marry. O servitude! servitude!'

"As upon the previous evening, she went away after having pronounced these words, but this time taking the count with her, as he could not, without danger, remain in the Arsenal. Arrived in the square, they agreed on a new rendezvous for the morrow and parted.

"The next night and many succeeding nights she took Franz to the principal monuments of the city, introducing him everywhere with incomprehensible facility, explaining to him with admirable lucidity everything presented to their view, displaying to him marvelous treasures of intelligence and sensibility. He did not know which to admire most, the mind that had investigated so deeply or the heart that displayed itself in such beautiful bursts of feeling. What had at first been with him only a fancy, soon changed to a real and profound sentiment. Curiosity had caused him to form a connection with the Mask, and astonishment had led him to continue it. But at length the habit which he had formed of seeing her every night became to him a veritable necessity. Although the words of the unknown were always grave and often sad, Franz found in them an indefinable charm which attached him to her more and more, and he could not have fallen asleep at the break of day if he had not at night heard her sighs and seen her tears. He had such a sincere and profound respect for the grandeur and sufferings of which he suspected her that he had not dared beg her to take off her mask or to tell him her name. As she had not asked his, he would have blushed to show himself more curious and less discreet than she; and he was resolved to hope everything from her good-will and nothing from his own importunity. She seemed to appreciate the delicacy of his conduct, and to be pleased with it, for at each succeeding interview she showed him more confidence and sympathy. Although not a single word of love had been uttered between them, Franz had reason to believe that she knew his passion and felt disposed to share it. His hopes almost sufficed for his happiness, and when he felt a deeper desire to know her whom he already named internally his mistress, his imagination, impressed and as if assured by the marvels which surrounded him, painted her so perfect and so beautiful that he almost feared the moment in which she should be unveiled to him.

"One night, as they were wandering together under the arcades of St. Mark's, the masked woman made Franz stop before a picture which represented a girl kneeling before the patron saint of the basilica and the city. 'What do you think of this woman?' said she to him, after having given him time to examine it well.

"'It is,' he answered, 'the most wonderful beauty that one could, not see, but imagine. The artist's inspired soul has been able to give us its image, but the model can only exist in heaven.'

"The masked woman warmly pressed the hand of Franz. 'I,' she replied, 'know a face more beautiful than that of the glorious Saint Mark, and I could love no other than that which is the living image of it.'

"On hearing these words Franz paled and trembled as if seized with vertigo. He had just perceived that the face of the saint offered the most exact resemblance to his own. He fell on his knees before the unknown, and seizing her hand bathed it with his tears, without being able to utter a word.

"'I know now that thou belongest to me,' she said in a voice full of emotion, 'and that thou art worthy to know me and possess me. To-morrow, at the ball of the palace Servilio.' Then she left him as before, but without pronouncing the sacramental words, so to speak, which had terminated the conversation of each previous night.

"Intoxicated with joy, Franz wandered through the whole city, without being able to stop anywhere. He admired the sky, smiled upon the lagoons, saluted the houses and spoke to the wind. All who met him took him for a madman, and singled him out by their glances. He perceived it, but only laughed at the madness of those who found amusement in his. When his friends asked him what he had been doing for a month in which he had not been visible, he answered, 'I am going to be happy,' and passed on.

"Evening having arrived, he bought a magnificent scarf and new epaulettes, returned home to dress, took the greatest pains with his toilette, and then went, adorned with his uniform, to the palace Servilio. The ball was magnificent: every one except the officers of the garrison had come disguised, according to the injunction in the cards of invitation; and this multitude of varied and elegant costumes, mingling and moving to the sound of a numerous orchestra, presented the most brilliant and animated appearance. Franz traversed all the halls, approached all the groups and cast his eyes upon all the women. Several were remarkably beautiful, but none seemed to him worthy to arrest his regard. 'She is not here,' he said to himself. 'I was sure of it: it is not yet her hour.' He placed himself behind a column near the principal entrance and waited, his eyes fixed on the door. Many times it opened, many women entered, without causing the heart of Franz to throb, but at the moment when the clock struck eleven he started and cried out, loud enough to be heard by his neighbors, 'There she is!'

"All eyes turned toward him, as if to ask the meaning of his exclamation. But at the same moment the doors opened abruptly, and a woman who entered attracted all attention toward herself. Franz recognized her immediately. It was the young girl of the picture, dressed like a dogess of the fifteenth century, and rendered still more beautiful by the magnificence of her costume. She advanced with a slow and majestic step, looking about her with assurance, and saluting nobody, as if she had been the queen of the ball. No one except Franz knew her, but every one, conquered by her marvelous beauty and her lofty air, stood respectfully aside, and almost bowed down before her passage. Franz, at once dazzled and enchanted, followed her at a sufficient distance. At the moment she arrived in the last hall a handsome young man wearing the costume of Tasso was singing, accompanying himself on the guitar, a romance in honor of Venice. She walked straight toward him, and looking; fixedly at him asked him who he was that dared to wear such a costume and to sing of Venice. The young man, overwhelmed by her look, turned pale, bent his head and handed her his guitar. She took it, and drawing her fingers, white as alabaster, across the strings, she intoned in her turn, with a harmonious and powerful voice, a strange and irregular song: 'Dance, laugh, sing, gay children of Venice! For you the winter has no frosts, the night no shadows, life no cares. You are the happy ones of the world, and Venice is the queen of nations. Who says No? Take care: eyes see, ears hear, tongues speak. Fear the Council of Ten if you are not good citizens. Good citizens dance, laugh and sing, but do not speak. Dance, laugh, sing, gay children of Venice!--Venice, only city not created by the hand, but by the mind, of man! thou who seemst made to serve as the passing dwelling of the souls of the just, placed as a step for them from earth to heaven; walls which fairies inhabited, and which a magic breath still animates; aërial colonnades which tremble in the mist; light spires which one confounds with the floating masts of ships; arcades which seem to contain a thousand voices to answer each passing voice; ye myriads of angels and saints, who seem to bound upon the cupolas and move your bronze and marble wings when the breeze blows upon your damp brows; city which liest not, like others, on a dark and filthy soil, but which floatest, like a troop of swans, upon the waves,--rejoice, rejoice, rejoice! A new destiny is opening for you as beautiful as the first! The black eagle floats over the lion of St. Mark's, and Teutonic feet waltz in the palaces of the doges. Be silent, harmony of the night! Die, insensate noises of the ball! Be no more heard, holy song of the fishermen! Cease to murmur, voice of the Adriatic! Pale lamp of the Madonna! hide thyself for ever, silver queen of the night! There are no more Venetians in Venice. Do we dream? are we at a fête? Yes, yes: let us dance, let us laugh, let us sing! It is the hour when Faliero's shade descends slowly the staircase of the Giants, and seats himself, immovable, upon the lowest step. Let us dance, let us laugh, let us sing, for presently the voice of the clock will say, Midnight! and the chorus of the dead will come to cry in our ears, Servitude! servitude!'

"With these words she let fall the guitar, which gave forth a funereal sound on striking against the marble floor. Every one listened for the twelve strokes in a horrible silence. Then the master of the palace advanced toward the unknown with an air half terrified, half angry. 'Madame,' said he in a troubled voice, 'who has done me the honor to bring you to my house?'

"'I,' cried Franz, advancing, 'and if any one finds it ill, let him speak.'

"The unknown, who had appeared to pay no attention to the host's question, quickly raised her head on hearing the count's voice. 'I live,' she cried with enthusiasm, 'I shall live!' and she turned toward him with a radiant face. But as she looked at him her cheeks paled and her brow darkened with a sombre cloud. 'Why have you taken this disguise?' she said in a severe tone, pointing to his uniform.

"'It is not a disguise,' he answered: 'it is--' He could say no more: a terrible look from the unknown had as if petrified him. She regarded him some seconds in silence, then let fall from her eyes two large tears. Franz would have rushed toward her, but she did not give him time.

"'Follow me,' she said in a hollow voice: then rapidly breaking through the astonished crowd, she left the hall, followed by Franz.

"Arrived at the foot of the palace steps, she leaped into her gondola, and told Franz to enter after her and be seated. When he had done so he looked about him, and seeing no gondolier, 'Who will row us?' he asked.

"'I,' she answered, seizing the oar with a vigorous hand.

"'Rather let me.'

"'No: Austrian hands do not know the oar of Venice;' and giving a powerful impulse to the gondola, she sent it like an arrow into the canal. In a few moments they were far from the palace. Franz, who expected from the unknown an explanation of her anger, was astonished and unhappy at seeing her keep silence. 'Where are we going?' he said after a moment's reflection.

"'Where destiny wills us to go,' she replied in a terrible voice, and as if these words had reanimated her anger she began to row still more vigorously. The gondola, obeying the impulse of her powerful hand, seemed to fly over the water. Franz saw the foam dash with dazzling rapidity along the sides of the boat, and the ships on their course flee behind them like clouds borne away by the whirlwind. Soon the darkness grew deeper, the wind rose, and the young man heard nothing but the seething of the waves and the hissing of the air through his hair, and saw nothing before him but the tall white figure of his companion in the midst of the shadows. Standing at the stern, her hands on the oar, her hair scattered over her shoulders, and her long, white garments abandoned in disorder to the wind, she less resembled a woman than the spirit of shipwrecks playing upon the stormy sea.

"'Where are we?' cried Franz in an agitated voice.

"'The captain is afraid?' answered the unknown with a disdainful laugh.

"Franz did not reply. He felt that she was right, and that fear was gaining him. Not being able to master it, he wished at least to disguise it, and resolved to remain silent. But at the end of a few moments, seized with a sort of vertigo, he rose and walked toward the unknown.

"'Sit down!' she cried to him. 'Sit down!' she repeated in a furious voice; and seeing that he continued to advance, she stamped with so much violence that the boat trembled as if it would capsize. Franz was thrown down by the shock, and fell fainting on the bottom of the boat. When he came to himself he saw the unknown lying weeping at his feet. Touched by her bitter sorrow, and forgetting all that had just passed, he seized her in his arms, raised her up and made her sit by him; but she did not cease to weep.

"'Oh, my love,' cried Franz, pressing her against his heart, 'why these tears?'

"'The Lion! the Lion!' she answered, raising toward heaven her arm white as marble.

"Franz raised his eyes to the part of the sky toward which she pointed, and saw indeed the constellation of the Lion shining solitary amid the clouds: 'What matters it? The planets have no power over our destinies, and if they had we would find favorable constellations to struggle against fatal stars.'

"'Venus is set, alas! and the Lion rises; and yonder, look yonder! Who can struggle against what comes yonder?' She uttered these words in a sort of delirium, lowering her arms toward the horizon.

"Franz turned his eyes in the direction she designated, and saw a black point traced upon the waves in the midst of an aureole of fire. 'What is that?' he asked with profound astonishment.

"'It is destiny,' she answered, 'who comes to seek its victim. Which of us? thou wilt ask. Whichever I will. Thou hast heard of the Austrian nobles who came with me in my gondola, and were never seen again?'

"'Yes, but that story is false.'

"'It is true. I must devour or be devoured. Every man of thy nation who loves me, and whom I do not love, dies. As long as I do not love one, I shall live and I shall cause to die; and if I love one, I shall die: it is my fate.'

"'Oh, my God, who art thou, then?'

"'How it advances! In a minute it will be upon us! Dost thou hear? dost thou hear?' The black point had approached with inconceivable rapidity, and had taken the form of an immense boat. A red light came from its sides and surrounded it with flame: tall phantoms stood motionless on the deck, and innumerable oars rose and fell in measure, striking the water with a dreadful noise, while hollow voices chanted the _Dies Iræ_, accompanying themselves with the noise of chains.

"'O Life! O Life!' continued the unknown in a tone of despair. 'Oh, Franz, here is the ship: dost thou recognize it?'

"'No: I tremble before this terrible apparition, but I do not know it.'

"'It is the Bucentaur: it is that which engulfed thy countrymen. They were here in this same place, at this same hour, seated by my side in this gondola. The ship approached as it is approaching now: a voice cried to me, "Who goes there?" I answered, "Austrian." The voice cried to me, "Dost thou hate or love?" I answered, "I hate;" and the voice said to me, "Live!" Then the ship passed over the gondola, engulfed thy compatriots, and bore me in triumph on the waves.'

"'And to-day?'

"'Alas! the voice is going to speak.'

"In fact, a lugubrious and solemn voice, imposing silence on the funereal equipage of the Bucentaur, cried, 'Who goes there?'

"'Austrian,' replied the trembling voice of the unknown.

"A chorus of malediction burst from the Bucentaur, which approached with ever-increasing rapidity. Then a new silence fell, and the voice continued, 'Dost thou hate or love?'

"The unknown hesitated a moment, then in a voice thrilling like thunder she cried out, 'I love.'

"Then the voice said, 'Thou hast accomplished thy destiny--thou lovest Austria. Die, Venice!'

"A great cry, a heartrending, desperate cry, clove the air, and Franz sank in the waves. On coming to the surface he saw nothing--neither the gondola, the Bucentaur nor his beloved. Only on the horizon shone some little lights: they were the famous lanterns of the fishermen of Murano. He swam in the direction of the little isle, and arrived there at the end of an hour. Poor Venice!"

Beppa had finished speaking: tears fell from her eyes. We watched them flow in silence without seeking to console her. But suddenly she dried them, and said to us with her capricious vivacity, "Well, what is the matter with you that you are so sad? Is that the effect fairy-stories produce upon you? Have you never heard of Orco, the Venetian Trilby? Have you never met her at evening in the churches or on the Lido? She is a good devil, who only does harm to oppressors and traitors. One may say that she is the real genius of Venice. But the viceroy, having heard indirectly and confusedly of Count Lichtenstein's perilous adventure, begged the patriarch to pronounce a great exorcism over the lagoons, and since then Orco has never reappeared."

L. W. J.

IN THE ISLE OF WIGHT.

The Solent Sea, the channel dividing the Isle of Wight from the mainland, varies in breadth from one to six miles. The island must at one time have formed a portion of the mainland, and so late as when the Greeks traded with Cornwall for tin the Solent is said to have been passable at low water by men and carts.

The circumference of the island is about sixty miles, the surface undulating, with a range of fine downs running through from east to west, having here and there points of considerable elevation. It is said to have been well wooded formerly, but no forests remain, and the hedge-rows, coppices and scattered trees are all it can now offer in the way of foliage. The scenery of the north side of the island is quiet, pleasing, here and there picturesque, but the southern side is full of the beauty of bold cliffs, chasms, irregular coast- and hill-lines, tumbled rocks, bare, wind-swept hills, and sheltered coves where flowers bloom and ivy climbs from the very verge of the sea. On this side lies the famous region known as the Undercliff--a series of terraces rising ambitiously from the sea up the steep sides of St. Boniface's Down--the tract being about seven miles long, and from a quarter to half a mile broad.

On the one hand, the bold promontories, the shell-like bays of the sea-line; on the other, the lofty, rounded down, with here and there its buttress of gray rock coming out in naked grandeur; between the two a lovely irregularity of soft slope, sinuous or dimple-like valleys, dark ravines, velvet-smooth laps of terrace, with now and again a sudden springing brook, and everywhere the thickets of holly and cedar clambered rampantly over by masses of ivy and traveler's joy--_our_ Virgin's bower clematis--and such sunshine as falls not elsewhere in England over all.

Miss Sewell, the author of _Amy Herbert, Ivors_ and _Ursula_, who resides at Bonchurch with her sisters, where they have a school, says of the Undercliff: "There is a verse spoken of a very different country which often comes to my mind when I think of it: 'It is a land which the Lord thy God careth for. The eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year, even unto the end of the year.' Sometimes it has even seemed to me that heaven itself can scarcely be more beautiful."

It was Sir James Clark who discovered the Undercliff to the public. Up to the time of the publication of his work _On the Influence of Climate in the Prevention and Cure of Disease_, only a few fishermen's huts marked the spot that is now populous Ventnor. But the sheltered, sunny spot, the soft air, the plants flourishing even in winter, the charming surroundings, at once caught the fancy of invalids: they came in numbers, both for a summer visit and a winter residence, and of course suitable accommodation had to be provided for them. The "plague of building" lighted on Ventnor: almost every possible and impossible spot has been used for lodging--houses, hotels, shops, villas, churches, situated with utter disregard to the natural lines of the place. The building still goes on. There are everywhere ugly scars in the chalk-banks that Nature has not had time to heal: in short, Ventnor is spoiled for those who remember it in its early days, and for aristocratic dwellers roundabout, but it is a case of the greatest good to the greatest number; and when the quick-springing green shall have kindly softened and folded in the crowded, incongruous buildings, and blended into rounded masses above them, Ventnor will be forgiven its railway that has made this region accessible to the many-headed, in consideration of the comforts and amenities of life brought to the doors of circumjacent dwellers, instead of being, as once, lacking, or brought laboriously from London at serious individual expense.

To say that Ventnor is dull, to American notions, is only to say that it is an English sea-side resort. People live mostly in lodgings, which is the most unsocial way possible of living: there are no reading-rooms, no cafés, no hops, no places of meeting and introduction. There is the rapprochement of proximity on the Esplanade and the bathing beach, where one gets a little of his fellow-creatures in a sort of spiritual endosmose and exosmose. But nothing more, and I am afraid our average youthful American specimen of Solomon's lilies would, at the end of two days, cause all her crisp, snowy and varicolored petals to be refolded within their calyx "ark," and indignantly withdraw herself for evermore from the "Fair Island." "Her own loss?" Doubtless, but it is the race's as well that any single creature should be deaf, blind, without heart to feel, intellect and culture to appreciate, or with any exquisite sense of apprehension wanting.

But there are Americans _and_ Americans; and some of our countrymen and countrywomen who have been busiest at home, who have journeyed far and wide, seem to find it the most natural thing possible to linger for months in Capuan Ventnor--anywhere in the soft-aired, Sleepy-Hollow Undercliff; and to pluck themselves away from the sweet peace, the calm delights of sauntering and lying on the cliffs, watching "the wrinkled sea" that "beneath _them_ crawls," breathing the air that has no suggestion of ocean in it save its freshness, so entirely is all odor of brine and sea-weed overborne by the fragrance of flowers, notably that of the mignonette, sweet-pea and nasturtium, making little excursions on foot or coach-top along the coast, or to the charming inland famous spots,--a thing very grievous to be borne patiently.

Just above Ventnor, where the down is steepest, and almost at its top, is a wishing well; but if one would have his wish fulfilled, made while drinking its waters, he must climb to the spring without casting one backward glance. A sure foot and a head not easily dizzied are imperative necessities, and then one may climb, as I did, with carefulest directions, scramble to the very brow and find no drop of water on the way, get a superb view of the Undercliff and the Channel for miles and miles, gather handfuls of the lovely heather that clothes the down's top, then, plunging downward again, almost set foot unawares in the milky little basin no bigger than a kneading-bowl, that on the upward way would have been a very Kohinoor, and is now only glanced at with spiteful aversion. The ancients were right: there _is_ a malignity of matter.

At Ventnor died John Sterling, made known to the world through the biographies of Carlyle and Archdeacon Hare. He was buried in the churchyard of the old church at Bonchurch, a tiny Norman building, of date 1270, which has been for years deserted. Graves fill all the enclosure, ancient elms shade it, a noisy brook half winds about it, then dashes down the sudden slope to the restless sea, whose mighty murmur underlies the streamlet's plashes and gurgles and the ceaseless tender bird-notes, and makes for this little burial ground, that is only hidden, not widely removed from men, a wondrous sense of space and solemn solitude.

Bonchurch is perhaps a mile from Ventnor, and is the boskiest bit of loveliness in all the lovely island. By every approach you enter it under the interlacing arches of noble old trees; ivy and ferns mask all with tender and dark glossy green; the thatched cottages are masses of honeysuckle and jessamine, their tiny windows and gardens gay with old English flowers; you may stand beneath fuchsia trees so reddened with the profusion of blossoms that at a little distance they are like nothing so much as tall clumps of barberry bushes laden with the ripe berries; you may visit, by introduction or permission, gardens of the lovely villas nestled in dells here, perched on bold crags there, or backing against the abrupt gray cliff, which has here no turfy covering--gardens such as one could well dream away life in, with no wish to range beyond their bounds, had one in this work-filled world no conscience about long dalliance in an earthly paradise. In one of these gardens I wandered long one afternoon that was not sunny, and that was yet not sombre, the air of balmiest breath, all the earth and sky softened with the changing, tender tones one finds not out of England. The house was grandly placed against the cliff, and the garden, which was rather a succession of gardens, was all up and down on the scattered terraces provided by long-ago landslips. There were modern gardens with banks of color and mosaic parterres; old-fashioned gardens, clipt and quaint; a fernery brought bodily from Fairy-land; clematis, ivy, woodbine and jessamine clambering and flowering against the wall of crag, and fuchsias that seemed to have no foothold swinging long, jewel-hung branches from far overhead. In one place, from a broad low arch at the crag's base, a clear spring rushed forth. One could see some yards within the arch, discern rare ferns, a shimmer of ghostly lilies, and one vigorous tuft of maiden-hair that dropped a veil of tremulous green lace almost to the water's edge. Still, vines and vines, and in this little garden of the grot what a magnificent growth of canes, cannas and pampas-grass; with walks now dropping into densest shade, now climbing out upon a bare spur of rock or lap of smooth lawn; the musical rain of a fountain in the green depths below; the hamlet and neighboring villas so lost to sight that the very birds might well doubt where to pierce the leafy canopy to find home, wife and callow nestlings; beyond, and round all, the half ring of quiet-colored, placid sea--the emerald sea, rough with white caps; the blue sea, sparkling in sunshine; the moonlit sea, silver-gleaming, but melancholy, and terrible as eternity.

At Bonchurch lived the parents of the poet Swinburne, but they left some years since, because, it is affirmed, there was no church hereabouts sufficiently ritualistic to content their consciences. One cannot help thinking, with a little unmalicious amusement, what a cuckoo child the poet must have been to this pair. Here, too, lived a good old man and prolix poet, a friend of Tennyson. It is asserted, on authority, that the laureate, in his visits to the family, sometimes found himself so intolerably bored by his fellow-craftsman that he was fain to betake himself to a bathing-machine, dallying therein and over his bath for two or three hours to purchase the necessary respite.

Beyond Bonchurch are three lions--"the Landslip" and the Luccombe and Shanklin Chines. Many and many a rocky hillside pasture in New England is far finer than the Landslip, and the Chines (fissures or ravines--"He that in his day did chine the long-ribb'd Apennine," sings Dryden) are by no means impressive to American eyes. But the mixture of miniature wildernesses, tumbled rocks, stream, waterfall, airy little swells and falls of ground, elegant villas, charming walks where all is beautiful, finished, dainty, with incessant views of the really grand features of the scene--the sea and the down--forms an enchanting combination. The authoress who under the _nom-de-plume_ "Holme Lee" has done so much for the readers of circulating libraries, resides at Shanklin, and here in 1819 came Keats and tarried while writing _Lamia_.

From Ventnor south-west through the Undercliff to St. Catherine's Hill, the western bulwark of the Elysium of suave airs, the scenery is perhaps even finer to Western hemisphere taste than that of the more noted northern region. It is, if not wilder, more solitary, unimproved by art, less pervaded with tourists and tourists' needs: one feels less suffocated, crowded, and very, very covetous of one or another of the lovely, lonely homes scattered here and there.

On this side of Ventnor is situated the National Consumptive Hospital projected by Dr. Arthur Hill Hassall. It is on the cottage plan. There are to be sixteen cottages, each to contain about six patients. Several of the buildings are already completed and in use. The hospital is partly self-supporting, partly dependent upon voluntary aid, and in all the places of resort one sees the little alms-box with its eloquent appeal, "For I was sick, and ye visited me not."

High up upon the hill above Ventnor is the seaside refuge of the London city missionaries. The block of buildings was erected as a series of model cottages for laborers. Whether these found their intended homes too fine, too phalansterian, or what not, I cannot tell, but the group of houses was made over to the tired workers in the London slums, and the laborers perch upon all sorts of inaccessible places upon the down, scratching great unsightly places in the chalk, erecting therein the tiniest houses of red brick; and though the one or two windows may be filled with flowers, the ugly gashes do not heal quickly high on the wind-swept hill.

The longest, and certainly the most interesting, excursions to be made from Ventnor are those to Carisbrooke and to Freshwater. The first leads you into the very heart of the island, through lanes that must be the boweriest in all England. Often the road-bed drops for a long way into a deep cutting. Ivies cover all the sides, ferns, vetches, campions and arums spring thickly amid them, and the tall, straggling hedges of dog-roses, brambles and hawthorn that top the banks are luxuriantly overrun with honeysuckle, filling the whole air with its spicy fragrance. On either side are blossoming fields of clover and beans, the larks are mounting and singing in ecstasy overhead, the road climbs a steep ascent, and we have miles and miles of finished landscape in view. There are timber-tied farm-houses here and there, or tiny hamlets whose straw thatches are simply glorious with their patches of velvet moss and the brilliant golden blossoms of a succulent whose name I do not know--houses and hamlets one would like to seize in one's arms and drop them down in America, in the midst of New England's hideous factory-villages, ornamentless, shadeless, unrestful, glaring with white-painted deal.

For the _interior_ of the old English cottages there is not one word of defence to be uttered: the ugliest pine box of a house to be found anywhere in all the unlovely New England towns is more comfortable, more sanitary. The English cottage has a rheumatic floor of beaten earth or tile; its rooms are few and small, and very dark; the water-supply is scanty and most inconvenient; its chimney smokes; mice and rats find secure refuge in the thatch; the masses of clinging vines make it damp and earwiggy; but what a lovely bit it is in the landscape!--the neutral tints, the patches of color, the picturesque outlines, the pitch and curved border of its roof, the yellow ricks in the background, the little garden gorgeous with marigolds, wallflowers, stocks, pinks, balsams, or white and pure with stately ranks of the beautiful Virgin lily. For the interior, away with it! but can we get no hint from all the external beauty?

Of Carisbrooke too much might be said for the scope and limits of this paper: brief mention must suffice. It is the old capital of the island. The remains of a Roman villa were discovered about a dozen years since; the old church dates from the time of William the Conqueror; and the grand old castle, connected with almost every era of English history, had for its nucleus a Saxon stronghold, which succeeded a Roman fortress, as that in turn succeeded a Celtic camp. The ruin covers a large space of ground on a hill overlooking the old town. There is no majesty of beetling crags, no girdle of turbulent sea, but the dignity of its size, its age, its story, is all-satisfying. It is a good, a fitting spot for an American to make a pilgrimage to. A noble, eloquent, peaceful sadness pervades it, and generations shrink to dots. And Nature herself has had pity on these stones for the mirth, the heroism, the misery they have encompassed: she has propped up the tottering ramparts with forests of tall trees in the courts, balustraded the dizzy heights with a sturdy, bushy growth of ivy, and firmly bound together all the crumbling decay with a centuries-old cording of vine-stems.

A mile from Carisbrooke village lies Newport, the modern capital of the island--modern in its relation to Carisbrooke, but possessing some traces that it was formerly of Roman occupation also. It is pleasantly situated in a gentle valley, the temperature mild and damp like that of Devonshire, but is chiefly interesting to visitors for the attractions of the lovely region round about--stately Carisbrooke; Osborne, the royal manor of Her Majesty, and not far from thence the birthplace of Dr. Arnold; Godshill, a hamlet so beautiful one would like to wave over it an enchanter's wand that should fix for ever just the charm one sees in it to-day. The name of the village is accounted for by a tradition that is not uncommon. The builders of the church proposed to erect it at the foot of the hill, but each morning found the previous day's work undone and the materials carried to the top. After some days' perseverance they gave up the contest, and set up their beacon of the faith on the spot indicated by their invisible combatants.

Not far from Newport, by a way filled with delight, one reaches Shorwell, a little village beautifully placed, and with a curious old church full of interest. Upon one of the walls is an old fresco illustrating the life and adventures of St. Christopher, and there is a quaint memorial brass erected by Barnabas Leigh in honor of his two deceased wives, and with a flattering allusion to wife No. 3, then living! One wife is followed by a troop of children--the other is forlornly alone. There is also a memorial to Sir John Leigh and his grandson Barnabas, who died seven days after the grand-sire:

Inmate in grave he took his grandchild heire,
Whose soul did haste to make to him repaire;
And so to heaven along, as little page,
With him did poast to wait upon his age;

and to Lady Elizabeth Leigh--"Sixteene a maide, and fiftie yeares a wife."

In the opposite direction from Newport lies Arreton, where Legh Richmond found the heroine of a narrative we have all read--_The Dairyman's Daughter_. Her memorial is in the churchyard, which is unusually full of interesting inscriptions. Here is an early English one from a brass, dated 1430, within the church:

Here is yburied vnder this graue
Harry Hawles his soul God saue
Longe tyme steward of ye yle of Wyght
Have mercy on hym God ful of myght.

Legh Richmond was curate of two near-by villages, Brading and Yaverland, during the first years of the present century. Both villages are very old and full of interesting antiquities--churches, Jacobean manor- and farm-houses, parish stocks, a bull-ring where our enlightened forefathers amused themselves savagely as well as sadly.

The excursion to Freshwater, twenty-two miles from Ventnor, is sufficiently charming when made on top of a coach in the veiled yet warm friendliness of an English summer day; but the way of ways to make it, as indeed to see the whole island, is as a pedestrian. Freshwater is at the extreme western point of the island. In going thither from Ventnor one traverses all the western portion of the Undercliff, where every glimpse is a joy; then emerges into a wilder, solitary region, with a bold coast-line sharply indented with chines whose scenery varies from beautiful to savage and drear; finds always the little hamlets--this with its church, that with its inn, become a classic resort, another with its story of an old hermitage or tradition of gold-laden galleon foundered on its cruel rocks, the gold coins still now and then to be found in certain sands. Here a landslip has exposed the remains of a Romano-British pottery; there is a down with Pictish tumuli, and at long intervals one of the old farm-houses which it is impossible not to grudge to its possessor. The landscape has none of the exuberant luxuriance and variety of the Undercliff. Bare, lofty downs, shadeless fields, no coppices, great swampy pastures--an open, breezy country all swells and falls, with occasionally fine clumps and avenues of English elms, feathered to their roots. And so, at last, Freshwater, where downs are noblest, and the air, blown straight across the Atlantic, seems not less bracing and exhilarating than that of New England.

The old village of Freshwater is picturesque, but the new lodging-house portion, only lately sprung up because it has become a fashion with doctors to prescribe Freshwater as a holiday and sanitary place, is hideous in its newness of fiery red brick and freshly uptorn earth.

But it was not for Freshwater, old or new; not for its church, which has some very fine bits, and an epitaph celebrating "the most virtuous Mrs. Anne Toppe, in her widowhood, by a memorable providence, preserved out of the flames of the Irish rebellion;" not for the really superb character of the coast-cliffs, just here mined into caverns only accessible from the sea, with huge detached masses of chalk, one hollowed into a grand arch, through which the waters rush with magnificent music; not for "the Needles," the extreme western points of the middle range of downs, isolated masses of rock that are very fine seen from seaward, entering "the Race" between the Isle of Wight and Dorset; not for Alum Bay, whose gay sands we have all seen fantastically arranged in landscapes under glass, and whose cliffs have their vertical strata in brilliant stripes of deep, purplish-red, blue, yellow, gray that is almost white, and jet black, and contrast delightfully with the snowy sides of "the Needles;"--not for any or all the sublimity of sea and shore, did I make the pilgrimage to this out-of-the-way island corner. I went, as most lovers of our English tongue in its strength and poetry will go, because here for years was Tennyson's home--the home wherein most of his poems have been written--Farringford,

Where, far from noise of smoke and town,
I watch the twilight falling brown
All round a careless-ordered garden,
Close to the ridge of a noble down.

You'll have no scandal while you dine,
But honest talk and wholesome wine,
And only hear the magpie gossip
Garrulous, under a roof of pine.

For groves of pine on either hand.
To break the blasts of winter, stand,
And farther on, the hoary Channel
Tumbles a breaker on chalk and sand.

The house is by no means beautiful, but it is in the midst of such a network of peacefulest leafy lanes, the near-by surroundings are so grand, the "groves of pine" and the "careless-ordered garden" look so utterly fitted to be haunted by a poet's step and musings, the whole place must be so associated, so saturated with his reveries and fancies, so peopled with his creations, that it seems impossible any other spot _could_ be home to him; and one feels a great pang of sadness that the only true master of Farringford should have felt himself driven to leave it, and to set up his household gods where he would be comparatively unknown and unhunted.

An un-famous person finds it however, a little difficult to sympathize with Tennyson's overpowering horror of the troublesomely affectionate curiosity of which he is the object. Even such extreme cases of hero-worship as that of the American who climbed the tree at Farringford to survey its master at his leisure, and that of the bevy of ladies at a London exhibition who, occupying a lounge before one of the special pictures of the season, and beholding Tennyson approach for a look, overwhelmed him with discomfiture by impressively ceding to him the entire sofa,--even these, and others of their kind, have a humorous side that might serve to qualify their impertinence and ill-breeding.

Neither Browning nor George Eliot is unknown by sight to the reading world of London: neither was Thackeray nor Dickens. Did either of these ever make outcry at the friendly if vulgar glances? Yet it is true that no one of them, save Dickens, has been so widely read, and it is probable that Browning, who looks like nothing so much as a hale, hearty business-man, oftenest escapes detection, while Tennyson's late photograph reproduces him so faithfully that he declares he can go nowhere without being known. Of the mischievous fidelity of the picture I am myself a witness, for having driven up one day to the Victoria station of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, by which Tennyson's new home is reached, and being busied with extricating from my purse the cabman's fare, my companion suddenly caught my arm, crying out, "Oh, S----, there's Tennyson!" The purse dropped in my lap: he was so near the cab I could have touched him, and of course he had heard the exclamation and knew why two ladies had so utterly forgotten their manners; but if he had also known that one of us had a certain shabby-through-use edition of all his earlier poems, which during a space of a dozen years had never been separated from her, traveling in a crowded trunk for even the shortest absences from home--that for months of that time she had been used to read therefrom to a precocious child who came every night in her night-gown to nestle in the reader's lap and listen to the music without which she declined to undertake the business of sleep,--I think the look bestowed upon the absorbed twain might well have been more amiable than the one which really fell upon them and blighted their innocent delight. It was all the photograph's fault, and, enthusiastic American sisters, be content with beholding the representation, for the original looks neither more patient, more gracious, nor more hopeful. So sensitive is he to looks which have in them any recognition, any stress, that a visitor at Farringford relates that, wandering about the cliffs and shores with his host, the latter would every now and then nervously cry out, "Come! let's walk on--I hear tourists!" and his companion, delaying a little, would be able to answer reassuringly, "Oh no: see! there's nothing in sight but a flock of sheep."

Perhaps I ought to confess that finding in one of the Farringford lanes a lovely little green gate opening into one of the "groves of pine," I _did_ just try the latch. The door opened, and it looked all so still and shaded, whispery and ferny, so exactly as if Tennyson might any minute come pacing down between the tall trees, as if the "Talking Oak" was sure to stand just round a sun-lighted corner of the wood, that, incited thereto by a countrywoman of the poet's, who, herself a member of the guild, should know how poets' possessions may worthily be approached, I let my sacrilegious feet carry me a little way within that violated enclosure. But it was only a very tiny raid we made. We stood quietly for two or three minutes, just _feeling_ the place, then scurried hastily away like two timorous hares; and as I have since lost a much prized little fern-leaf plucked within the enclosure, I think Mr. Tennyson should agree that this intrusive American has been quite severely enough punished, and that much ought to be forgiven one who has loved so much.