"

termed by universal consent the divine,' and lived to see three editions of the grief-cries, which escaped from her [she professed] 'without her will.' But modern English reviewers, while confessing real interest in her life, own themselves to be "but tepidly excited by her poems.' "We prefer her," says one candid authority," without any ink on her thumb." Fame does not possess a strong memory, remarks Sismondi -and for a long flight she relieves herself from all unnecessary encumbrances-rejecting in her course many who thought themselves accepted by her, and thus she comes down to late ages with the lightest possible burden. "Unable to choose between Bembo, Sadoleti, Sanazzaro, Bernardo Accolti, &c. &c., she relinquishes them all. Many other names will also escape her"-just as that of Vittoria Colonna "escapes" Simonde de Sismondi himself. Mr. Roscoe, however though it is rather by a stretch of chronology, as Hallam observes, that he reckons Vittoria, Berni, and several more, among the poets of Leo the Tenth's age§places her in the first class of Italian writers who have revived in their works the style of Petrarch: "her sonnets, many of which are addressed to the shade of her departed husband, or relate to the state of her own mind, possess more vigour of thought, vivacity of colouring, and natural pathos, than are generally to be found among the disciples of that school. Her Canzone, or monody to the memory of her husband, is, however, more deservedly celebrated, and is certainly in no respect inferior to that of Bembo on the death of his brother Carlo." But perhaps the most favourable specimen of her talents, adds our Medicean monographer, appears in her Stanze, or verses in ottava rima, which he pronounces equal in simplicity, harmony, and elegance of style, to the productions of any of her contemporaries, and in lively description and genuine poetry superior to them all, those of the "inimitable Ariosto"|| alone excepted. Comparing her as a poetess with any of her own countrywomen, she is confessedly pre-eminent. Of Gaspara Stampa, already alluded to in the lines from Leigh Hunt, and who has been thought to rival her in some respects, Mr. Hallam affirms that, not less in elevation of genius than in dignity of character, "she is very far inferior to Vittoria Colonna, or even to Veronica Gambara, a poetess who, without equalling Vittoria, had much of her nobleness and purity. We pity," he adds, "the Gasparas; we should worship, if we could find them, the Vittorias."

Mr. Adolphus Trollope holds in very slight regard the whole series of her in memoriam elegiacs. So poor an opinion has he of the Marchese, that he cannot, apparently, bring himself to believe in the complete sincerity of the Marchesa, thus mourning such a mate. He considers her "ten years' despair and lamentations, her apotheosis of the late cavalry captain, and longing to rejoin him," to have merely been "poetical properties brought out for use, when she sat down to make poetry for the perfectly self-conscious, though very laudable purpose of acquiring for herself a poet's reputation.

"But it must not be supposed that anything in the nature of hypo

crisy was involved in the assumption of the poetical rôle of inconsolable widow. Everybody understood that the poetess was only making poetry, and saying the usual and proper things for that purpose. . . . And from this prevailing absence of all real and genuine feeling, arises the utter coldness and shallow insipidity of the poets of that time and school. Literature has probably few more unreadable departments than the productions of the Petrarchists of the beginning of the sixteenth century." The critic allows, however, that when she began to write on religious subjects, Vittoria was more in earnest.

In that Reformation age, was she favourably disposed to the "new doctrines," which, directly and indirectly, were influencing so many Italian thinkers? Mr. Hallam notes the alarm of the Church at the rapid though rather secret progress of heresy among educated Italians. But even of those who had associated with the reformers, and have been in consequence reckoned among them, some, as he observes, were far from intending to break off from a Church which had been identified with all their prejudices and pursuits. "Such was Flaminio, one of the most elegant of poets and best of men; and such was the accomplished and admirable Vittoria Colonna."+ Towards the end of the year 1537 she took up her abode in Rome-where she had previously been received with open arms, and to which she returned, after visiting (ill at ease, it would seem, in mind and body) the "heresy-stricken city" of Lucca, and the "lettersloving" court of Ferrara, more letters-loving than ever since the marriage of its reigning duke, Hercules II., with Renée of France, Louis the Twelfth's daughter, whose Protestant sympathies were tending to make Ferrara an asylum for reformers in distress. Vittoria's arrival at the Eternal City was welcomed, as it had been before, almost in the style of a public ovation. Hopeful, men, with a reforming bias, gathered round her, the good Contarini, and other like-minded worthies, some fifty or sixty of whom had formed themselves into a society, called the Oratory of Divine Love.

It was at this period of her life-its last decade-that Vittoria began her acquaintance with Michel Angelo, she being then in her fortyseventh year, and he in his grand climacteric. Her influence on his religious feelings was very considerable. By her "he was made a devout Christian. The change is strongly marked in his poetry; and in several passages of the poems, four or five in number, addressed to her, he attributes it entirely to her influence

"Some silly stuff has been written by very silly writers, by way of imparting the interesting' character of a belle passion, more or less platonic, to the friendship between the sexagenarian artist and the immaculate Colonna. No argument is necessary to indicate the utter absurdity of an idea which implies thorough ignorance of the persons in question, of the circumstances of their friendship, and of all that remains on record of what passed between them."§ In the Imaginary Conversation between them Mr. Landor makes Buonarotti say: "I am apprehensive that I sometimes have written to you with an irrepressible gush of tenderness,

* Decade of Ital, Women, I. 344.

† Hallam, I. ch. vi. § 18.

+ See Harford's Michael Angelo, vol. ii. p. 148 et seq. § Trollope's Decade of Ital. Wom., I. 379.

which is but narrowed and deepened and precipitated by entering the channel of verse. This, falling upon vulgar ears, might be misinterpreted." To which Vittoria replies: "If I have deserved a wise man's praise and a virtuous man's affection, I am not to be defrauded of them by stealthy whispers, nor deterred from them by intemperate clamour. She whom Pescara selected for his own, must excite the envy of too many; but the object of envy is not the sufferer by it: there are those who convert it even into recreation. One star hath ruled my destiny and shaped my course. Perhaps. . . no, not perhaps, but surely, under that clear light I may enjoy unreproved the enthusiasm of his friend, the greatest man, the most ardent and universal genius, he has left behind him. Courage! courage! Lift up again the head which nothing on earth should lower. When death approaches me, be present, Michel Angelo, and shed as pure tears on this hand as I did shed on the hand of Pescara." "Madonna! they are these," he exclaims; "they are these! endure them now rather!" And, turning aside his head, the grand old painter prays: "Merciful God! if there is piety in either, grant me to behold her at that hour, not in the palace of a hero, not in the chamber of a saint, but from Thine everlasting mansions!"*

The aspiration here imputed to Michel Angelo was not to be fulfilled. He was still in the world-nor would leave it for long years to comewhen Pescara's widow fell on sleep. She used often to come from Viterbo to Rome, and hold kindly commune with the great artist. Her last years were far from happy; shattered health, and broken spirits, and family reverses combined to darken her eventide. The contrast from life's bright morning at Ischia deepened the gloom-for

this is truth the poet sings,

That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things. In 1544 she finally left Viterbo for Rome, where she took up her residence in the Benedictine convent of St. Anne. Thence she was, at the last, removed to the house of her only surviving kinswoman in that city, Giulia Cæsarini, née Colonna. She died in February, 1547, in her fiftyseventh year. Michel Angelo was a wistful watcher in that chamber of death. And in after years he was heard to say, that never had he ceased to regret, with all the earnestness of his impassioned nature, that he had not then ventured, for the first time and the last, to press his lips on the dead woman's white brow. Her hand, indeed, he had kissed; but why not this he asked himself, with this he reproached himself-why not that clay-cold face?

* Imaginary Conversations, by Walter Savage Landor. "Vittoria Colonna and Michel-Angelo Buonarotti."

THE COUNTRY BETWEEN CANADA AND BRITISH COLUMBIA.

Lake Winnipeg District-Red River Settlement-Buffalo Hunts-Saskatchewan or Bow River District The Prairies-The Rocky Mountains-Valley of the Columbia-Vancouver Island-Resources of British Columbia-The Grand Coulet-The Return.

THE prospects held out by the discovery of gold-fields in British Columbia to the future establishment of communication between Canada and that country-between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, in factwere summarily discussed in a late number of the Magazine, in which the explorations of Captain Palliser and his companions were also alluded to. It is gratifying to be able to intimate that, since that time, information has been received at the Colonial-office, and forwarded through Sir E. Bulwer Lytton to the Royal Geographical Society, to the effect that no less than eight passes have been examined by the gentlemen in question, one of which, discovered by Captain Palliser between the Kananaski, a tributary to the South Saskatchewan, or Bow River, and the Kutanie River, was practicable to horses; and another, discovered by Dr. Hector at a point of peculiar interest-at the transverse water-parting which divides the waters of the Columbia and those of the North Bow River, on the one hand, from those of the Kutanie and South Bow River, on the other-presented such great facilities for crossing the mountains as to leave little doubt in the traveller's mind of the practicability of constructing even a railroad, connecting the plains of the Bow River with the opposite side of the main chain of the Rocky Mountains.

The country thus explored, and that which is comprised between Canada and British Columbia, including the district of Lakes Winnipeg, Winnipigoos, Manitoba, and others, the promising regions of the two Saskatchewans, or Bow Rivers, a vast region of forest and prairies-at present the hunting-ground of the red men and the half-breeds-the Rocky Mountains themselves, and the steep descents along the deep valleys of the Columbia and Frazer's Rivers, present features of deep interest, from the scenes of wild unreclaimed nature teeming with animal and vegetable life, and from the lusty promises held out by these unappropriated territories to a future civilisation.

It is with pleasure, therefore, that we turn to the pages of Mr. Paul Kane, who, although his travels date now some time back, boldly effected

his

way by lake and river, by prairie and rocky mount, through forest and marsh, and over ice and snow, from Toronto to Victoria and back again, from the warm valley of the Columbia to the sterner climate of Upper Canada. It was hardly possible that the narrative of such an extensive exploratory journey should not be accompanied by some striking features, and we have not been disappointed in finding them.

Mr. Kane left Toronto in company with Governor Simpson on the 9th of May, 1846, for Sault St. Marie, in order to embark in the brigade of canoes which had left Lachine some time previously. Owing to various delays and misadventures, he did not arrive, however, at Fort William till the day after the brigade had started, and had to overtake them in a light canoe, which he did in about ten hours. The brigade consisted of

three canoes, with eight men in each, under charge of a gentleman named Lane. The men who usually work this brigade of canoes are hired at Lachine, and are called "mangeurs de lard," or bacon eaters, among the old hands in the interior, to whom they are unequal in encountering the difficulties incident to a voyage from Lachine to the mouth of the Columbia, and become almost skeletons by the time they reach their destination, through the unavoidable privations and hardships they have to undergo.

The progress of the canoes up the river is interrupted every few hours by portages; the falls at one of which, called "mountain portage," are said to surpass even those of Niagara in picturesque beauty, for, although far inferior in volume of water, their height is nearly equal, and the scenery surrounding them infinitely more wild and romantic. With the exception of these rocky passes, the Kamimstaqueah River is described as meandering through one of the loveliest valleys in nature, yet it is only a hunting-ground for Indians. Further up is the first of a series of lakes, which constitute the most remarkable feature of an extensive district, and which we have designated, after its central and largest sheet of water, the Winnipeg district. The water-parting between the tributaries to the Winnipeg and those to Lake Superior is alternately rocky and swampy, and lakes are soon met with; one of the first of which is designated as the Lake of the Thousand Islands. Most of these lakes appear to be very shallow, as is the case with Winnipeg, or "Mud" Lake itself, and the same character of country extends to Hudson's Bay; the Indians being also known as the Mas-ka-gau, or Swamp Indians. Ducks so abound in these marshes, that the Indians shoot as many as forty by firing at them in the water and rapidly loading and firing again whilst the flock is circling round. Vast quantities of white fish-sturgeon, pike, and other fish-are also taken in these lakes and rivers, which further abound in a fish that emits a strange sound, and somewhat resembles the Canadian bass.

The two largest lakes between Lake Superior and Winnipeg are Rainy Lake and Lake of the Woods, round which dwell the Saulteaux Indians, and the scenery of which is said to be very beautiful. The river Winnipeg itself is described as being broken by numerous rapids and falls, and as being one of the most picturesque rivers met with on the whole route. This region is, however, at times visited by a sad scourge. For full a hundred and fifty miles the trees were found to be literally stripped of their foliage by myriads of green caterpillars, which had indeed left nothing but the bare branches.

Besides the Winnipeg River, which is one of the highways to the west, the lake of same name is fed more to the west by the Red River, wellknown for its Scotch settlement. This now numbers three thousand inhabitants, living as farmers in great plenty, so far as mere food and clothing is concerned, but having no market nearer than St. Paul's on the Mississippi River, a distance of nearly seven hundred miles over the prairies. The half-breeds were more numerous than the whites, and amounted at the time of Mr. Kane's visit to six thousand. They all spoke the Cree language and the Lower Canadian patois. These halfbreeds are a very hardy race of men, capable of enduring the greatest hardships and fatigues; but their Indian propensities predominate, and, consequently, they make poor farmers, neglecting their land for the more exciting pleasures of the chase. Great buffalo hunts take place twice a