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licentious song, instead of holy hymn and lamentation from woman's
lips; that it would become a dwelling for the wicked of every class-
-the most part destined to perpetual labour or to the gallows. And
in one century to come, what living being will be found in these
cells? Oh, mighty Time! unceasing mutability of things! Can he who
rightly views your power have reason for regret or despair when
Fortune withdraws her smile, when he is made captive, or the
scaffold presents itself to his eye? yesterday I thought myself one
of the happiest of men; to-day every pleasure, the least flower that
strewed my path, has disappeared. Liberty, social converse, the
face of my fellow-man, nay, hope itself hath fled. I feel it would
be folly to flatter myself; I shall not go hence, except to be
thrown into still more horrible receptacles of sorrow; perhaps,
bound, into the hands of the executioner. Well, well, the day after
my death it will be all one as if I had yielded my spirit in a
palace, and been conveyed to the tomb, accompanied with all the
pageantry of empty honours.
It was thus, by reflecting on the sweeping speed of time, that I
bore up against passing misfortune. Alas, this did not prevent the
forms of my father, my mother, two brothers, two sisters, and one
other family I had learned to love as if it were my own, from all
whom I was, doubtless, for ever cut off, from crossing my mind, and
rendering all my philosophical reasoning of no avail. I was unable
to resist the thought, and I wept even as a child.
CHAPTER II.
Three months previous to this time I had gone to Turin, where, after
several years of separation, I saw my parents, one of my brothers,
and two sisters. We had always been an attached family; no son had
ever been more deeply indebted to a father and a mother than I; I
remember I was affected at beholding a greater alteration in their
looks, the progress of age, than I had expected. I indulged a
secret wish to part from them no more, and soothe the pillow of
departing age by the grateful cares of a beloved son. How it vexed
me, too, I remember, during the few brief days I passed with them,
to be compelled by other duties to spend so much of the day from
home, and the society of those I had such reason to love and to
revere; yes, and I remember now what my mother said one day, with an
expression of sorrow, as I went out--"Ah! our Silvio has not come to
Turin to see US!" The morning of my departure for Milan was a truly
painful one. My poor father accompanied me about a mile on my way;
and, on leaving me, I more than once turned to look at him, and,
weeping, kissed the ring my mother had just given me; nor did I ever
before quit my family with a feeling of such painful presentiment.
I am not superstitious; but I was astonished at my own weakness, and
I more than once exclaimed in a tone of terror, "Good God! whence
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