Whether playing with her children (and she had two lovely ones--the eldest six years old), or teasing her calm and meditative husband, or pouring out extempore verses, or rattling over airs which she never finished, on the guitar or piano--or making excursions on the lake--or, in short, in whatever occupation she appeared as the Cynthia of the minute, she was always gay and mobile--never out of humour, never acknowledging a single care or cross in life--never susceptible of grief, save when her brother's delicate health or morbid temper saddened her atmosphere of sunshine.

Even then, the sanguine elasticity of her mind and constitution quickly recovered from the depression; and she persuaded herself that Castruccio would grow stronger every year, and ripen into a celebrated and happy man.

Castruccio himself lived what romantic poetasters call the "life of a poet." He loved to see the sun rise over the distant Alps--or the midnight moon sleeping on the lake.

He spent half the day, and often half the night, in solitary rambles, weaving his airy rhymes, or indulging his gloomy reveries, and he thought loneliness made the element of a poet.

Alas! Dante, Alfieri, even Petrarch might have taught him, that a poet must have intimate knowledge of men as well as mountains, if he desire to become the CREATOR.