As into some faint echo of the rocks—
A shadowy sound—a nothing!
There is something of a very touching beauty in the character of the Princess Leonora d’Este. She does not, indeed, resemble some of the lovely beings delineated by Shakspeare—the females, “graceful without design, and unforeseeing,” in whom, even under the pressure of heaviest calamity, it is easy to discern the existence of the sunny and gladsome nature which would spring up with fawn-like buoyancy were but the crushing weight withdrawn. The spirit of Leonora has been at once elevated and subdued by early trial: high thoughts, like messengers from heaven, have been its visitants in the solitude of the sick-chamber; and looking upon life and creation, as it were, through the softening veil of remembered suffering, it has settled into such majestic loveliness as the Italian painters delight to shadow forth on the calm brow of their Madonna. Its very tenderness is self-resignation; its inner existence serene, yet sad—“a being breathing thoughtful breath.” She is worshipped by the poet as his tutelary angel, and her secret affection for him might almost become that character. It has all the deep devotedness of a woman’s heart, with the still purity of a seraphic guardian, taking no part in the passionate dreams of earthly happiness. She feels his genius with a reverential appreciation; she watches over it with a religious tenderness, for ever interposing to screen its unfolding powers from every ruder breath. She rejoices in his presence as a flower filling its cup with gladness from the morning light; yet, preferring his wellbeing to all earthly things, she would meekly offer up, for the knowledge of his distant happiness, even the fulness of that only and unutterable joy. A deep feeling of woman’s lot on earth—the lot of endurance and of sacrifice—seems ever present to her soul, and speaks characteristically in these lines, with which she replies to a wish of Tasso’s for the return of the golden age:—
When earth has men to reverence female hearts,
To know the treasure of rich truth and love,
Set deep within a high-soul’d woman’s breast;
When the remembrance of our summer prime
Keeps brightly in man’s heart a holy place;
When the keen glance that pierces through so much
Looks also tenderly through that dim veil