Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/361

Rh from my little Swiss sister, Louise C., who is preparing for her marriage and bridal tour, and for her new home on the enchanting Lake of Geneva; in the same category stands also that final completion of my latest written novel, which, the meantime, closes in a manner quite opposite to the last-mentioned romances. But the romance of youth is over with me, and appears to me now merely as one chapter in the great romance of human life, in which God is the hero, and the heroine the human soul. Everything else is prelude or episode.

I cannot leave our volcanic island without speaking of one of its most beautiful memories. Vittoria Colonna, Marchioness of Pescara, spent here several years of her life, and found, under great sorrow, consolation in the beautiful art which made her the most celebrated poetess of Italy. Her first poems are dedicated to the husband whose loss dimmed the sun of her existence. A change then occurred in her life; she beheld a new sun, and like a phenix, purified in the flames of suffering, she raised her wings towards it; and still more beautiful and clearer became her song, permeated by the glow of the purest love, of the highest yearning. Her life resembled her song. In an age of conflict and disruption, and amidst a race, the members of which combated one against another in the frantic strife of party, she came forth as a reconciling angel, and when she could not avert the conflict, she still lived to heal its wounds. To this purpose she applied her large property, her personal influence as a beautiful, noble, and highly-gifted woman, even her personal activity also as a sister of