"Oh, Love, thou art a strange wild thing,
A dancing beam of Mayday sun,
A life-morn song that angels sing,
A gift from Him, the Highest One!
Thou art a claude-tint thrown among
The Rembrandt shades that limn our strife!
The olive on thy lip is hung,
Thou dove, that bringest words of life."
"Love," BY PERCY.
COUNT CARLO ZANOTTI was a son of one of the noblest families in Venice—the heir of its titles, its wealth, its hereditary renown, and his prospects in the spring of life were golden as the trees in autumn. An incident in his father's history, which tinged the old man's declining years with a gloomy shadow, had also its effect upon the son, and, unmindful of the brilliant future, he brooded in sadness on the past. His mother, who was the beauty of her day, had yielded to the fascinations of a young and handsome Englishman, and in an unguarded moment left her home and her husband, to throw herself upon the poor protection of a profligate, and to meet the cold sneers and savage slights of a selfish and unforgiving world. How much the character, in its gradual development, is biased by a mother's influence, it is difficult to estimate; but we all know that "the thought which mirrors Eden in the face of home" has saved even the best of us from many an error and many a sin, and generated, even in the worst, some softening emotions, and caused some kindly acts. This holy influence, linked with a mother's memory, makes each thought of her, as the German beautifully expresses it, "a prayer to God," and we rise from musing upon her gentle love—kinder, better, wiser. "The wild sea of our hearts lies mute, and o'er the waves the Saviour walks." How terrible then to have that sanctuary defiled, to be taught that purity has fled, even from Dian's temple—to be brought up an atheist in the religion of the heart!