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and delicate tree whose flexible branches have been beaten and weighed down by strong winds and heavy rains, but which gradually raises its graceful forms from the temporary prostration as sunshine and clear skies return, raised once more his young head, and began with a steady eye to view the map of the future, and to trace out a line of conduct for himself.

All interest had now ceased for him in his native valley, and he burned in desire to visit the people and cities of that world he only knew from books, and the eloquent speech of his lost father, and the gentle remembrances of his angel mother. He collected together the small property to which he had now become sole and undisputed heir, and bidding a long and sad farewell to the graves of the mourned, the cottage where he had been born, and where he had been surrounded by looks of love, and the forest where he mused, and the mountain where he first drank in long draughts of poetry, he set forth on his lone pilgrimage.

His first object was to visit Florence, the

birth-place of his parents, and the scene of their

first love.

Who can picture the emotions of this ardent and fresh mind on first mingling with the busy crowds of a city; listening to the hum of multitudes, the rolling of carriages, and the various sounds there to be encountered!

It was evening when Antonio entered Florence, and a glorious sunset flung its golden splendour over dome and palace, and shed its rich warmth into the young man's soul. He rejoiced inwardly, with youthful hope and sanguine wishes. He first sought out the house where his father had lodged, and secured an apartment in it; every spot in it breathed to him of holy memories. And now Antonio first revelled in the glorious enjoyment of the arts, as, day after day, in an intoxication of spirit, he stood entranced before their sublime trophies.

"There, too, the Goddess loves in stone, and fills
The air around with beauty."

Again and again, hour after hour, did the

youthful enthusiast return to gaze in speechless ecstacy on this more than realization of his wildest dreams, and yearned for a spark of the divine spirit which had created it. It was before this masterpiece of art that the ambition to excel, the noble fire of aspiring genius, which had long lain dormant, blazed forth in his bosom, and whilst his eyes flashed with enthusiasm, and his proud form dilated with kindling energy, he resolved to devote himself to poetry, and strive to win unfading laurels.

He went from the sublime creations of the painter and sculptor, to the silent tombs of the great dead, tombs to be approached with deep awe and reverence, as even the senseless dust is doubtless visited by guardian spirits. And as he read their inscriptions, a mournful feeling of the nothingness of life crept over his mind, and sobered down his intensely excited feelings into a state more befitting this stern, un-ideal world.

When he had satiated himself with sights of beauty and sounds of harmony, he began to experience the void of the heart which arises

from the consciousness of standing alone and uncared for amid thousands, and in the centre of a vast city to whom could he pour forth the bursting torrent of his admiration for the new world opening before him?-to whom could he communicate the flow of original and beautiful thoughts with which they inspired him? Alas! none sought him or coveted his sympathy; no eye looked sad if his frame drooped; no gentle voice soothed his spirit in its hours of gloom; and Antonio was overflowing with tenderness and love.

After some weeks of restless delight and sad monotony, he turned in good earnest to the prosecution of his schemes, which all had fame for their object; and, shut up for hours in his small, dark apartment, he plunged once again into the world of fiction and romance, and found forgetfulness of his desolate situation in the engrossing delights of his ideal creation. Again, seraph-forms and lands like Paradise visited his fancy, and gave beauty to his page; and what to him were the din and turmoil without,-the

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dreary solitude within-his habitation? Allpowerful mind made him regardless of the one and forgetful of the other; and no one who could have seen him in a moment of inspiration, with his head resting on his hand, his eyes upturned with the look of blended genius and enthusiasm illumining their dark orbs, whilst

proud and gratified smile played around the chiselled mouth; no one would have pitied the lone, friendless orphan, but rather envied him, and sighed to resemble him.

At length Antonio Cellini completed a poem, on which he had lavished all the richness of his young, fresh imagination; he felt and gloried in its merit, and fondly anticipated the most brilliant success from its appearance in the world; but too soon he made the sickening discovery that simple merit goes for nothing in the present corrupted state of things, and that his precious manuscript was coldly, though civilly, declined by all those to whom he offered it. Weary and desponding, as such ardent minds can alone despond, poor Antonio left his poem

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