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18 invented a language which seems expressly intended for the idiom of lovers. The honour of being the first inventor does not indeed, belong to our hero; long before his time the sentimental Celadons of Italy and Spain were in the habit of chaunting forth the feelings of their hearts, under the balconies of their donnas. Their melodious pathos, more powerful than the eloquence of Cicero or Demosthenes, rarely failed in its aim, and not only expressed the lover’s feelings, but was usually successful in exciting, in the object of his flame, similar warm and tender feelings. Of this circumstance, however, our illiterate youth had never either heard or read; the employment, therefore, of music, to express his feelings, and thus to convey them to the ears of his beloved Mela, was entirely his own invention.

In a melancholy hour he took his lute, and, far surpassing his usual strumming, he soon called forth sweet melodies from its harmonious chords, and, in less than a month, love had converted our hero into a second Amphion. His first attempts were little noticed, but, in a