Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 026.djvu/371



, from.

the fall of Napoleon had given peace to Europe, and insipidity to a soldier’s life, I returned with my regiment to B, and too soon discovered, that the lounging habits and quiet security of parade and garrison service were miserable substitutes for the high and stirring excitement of the bivouac, the skirmish, and the battle. I found myself gradually sinking into a state of mental atrophy, perilous alike to physical and moral health; and, after a fruitless struggle of some months with these morbid longings for old habits and associations, I determined to quit the army, and to realize the favourite day-dream of my early youth—a walk through Italy: hoping, by two years of travel and incessant intercourse with men and books, to gain a fresh hold upon life and happiness, and to repair, in some measure, those deficiencies in my education, which the premature adoption of a military life had necessarily involved.

Pausing a few days at Vienna, I formed a friendly intimacy with a young and intelligent Venetian, of the ancient senatorial house of Fi; and, on my return through Venice, after a rewarding and delightful residence of two years in various parts of Italy, I met my Vienna friend in one of the taverns of St Mark’s. After a cordial greeting, he told me that he was obliged to leave Venice on the ensuing day, to take possession of an estate and villa in Lombardy, bequeathed to him by a deceased relative. The gardens, he added, covered the slope of a romantic and woody hill, which commanded a wide view over the classic shores and environs of the Lake of Garda; and the mansion, although time-worn and ruinous, contained some fine old paintings, and a store of old books and manuscripts, which had not seen the light for ages. I had already experienced the keen delight of exploring the mines of literary wealth contained in the old libraries of Italy, and I did not hesitate to accept the cordial invitation to accompany him, which closed this alluring description of his Lombard villa.

We left Venice the following morning, and, proceeding by easy journeys through Padua and Verona, we reached the villa on the evening of the third day, and installed ourselves in the least decayed apartments of the ruinous, but still imposing and spacious mansion. On the ensuing day I rose early, and hastened to examine some large fresco paintings in the saloon, which had powerfully excited my curiosity during a cursory view by lamp-light. They were admirably designed, and, from the recurrence in all of the remarkable form and features of a young man of great personal beauty, they were evidently a connected series; but, with the exception of two, the colouring and details were nearly obliterated by time and the humid air from the contiguous lake. Upon scrolls beneath the two least injured paintings were the inscriptions of La Scoperta and La Vendetta; and the incidents delineated in them were VOL. XXVI. NO. CLVI.