and Italian.  We could make out little by the dim light, but they seemed to contain prophecies, detailed relations of events but lately passed; names, now well known, but of modern date; and often exclamations of exultation or woe, of victory or defeat, were traced on their thin scant pages.  This was certainly the Sibyl’s Cave; not indeed exactly as Virgil describes it, but the whole of this land had been so convulsed by earthquake and volcano, that the change was not wonderful, though the traces of ruin were effaced by time; and we probably owed the preservation of these leaves, to the accident which had closed the mouth of the cavern, and the swift-growing vegetation which had rendered its sole opening impervious to the storm.  We made a hasty selection of such of the leaves, whose writing one at least of us could understand; and then, laden with our treasure, we bade adieu to the dim hypaethric cavern, and after much difficulty succeeded in rejoining our guides.

During our stay at Naples, we often returned to this cave, sometimes alone, skimming the sun-lit sea, and each time added to our store.  Since that period, whenever the world’s circumstance has not imperiously called me away, or the temper of my mind impeded such study, I have been employed in deciphering these sacred remains.  Their meaning, wondrous and eloquent, has often repaid my toil, soothing me in sorrow, and exciting my imagination to daring flights, through the immensity of nature and the mind of man.  For awhile my labours were not solitary; but that time is gone; and, with the selected and matchless companion of my toils, their dearest reward is also lost to me—­

  Di mie tenere frondi altro lavoro
  Credea mostrarte; e qual fero pianeta
  Ne’ nvidio insieme, o mio nobil tesoro?

I present the public with my latest discoveries in the slight Sibylline pages.  Scattered and unconnected as they were, I have been obliged to add links, and model the work into a consistent form.  But the main substance rests on the truths contained in these poetic rhapsodies, and the divine intuition which the Cumaean damsel obtained from heaven.

I have often wondered at the subject of her verses, and at the English dress of the Latin poet.  Sometimes I have thought, that, obscure and chaotic as they are, they owe their present form to me, their decipherer.  As if we should give to another artist, the painted fragments which form the mosaic copy of Raphael’s Transfiguration in St. Peter’s; he would put them together in a form, whose mode would be fashioned by his own peculiar mind and talent.  Doubtless the leaves of the Cumaean Sibyl have suffered distortion and diminution of interest and excellence in my hands.  My only excuse for thus transforming them, is that they were unintelligible in their pristine condition.