Look up, my mother, Cade hath kept his covenant.
Could you read all my exile's history.
You would not blush for it. And now I've come
To shield and comfort thee."
This affecting scene was made to thrill every beholder to tears. As the poor widow sank fainting under the shock of surprise and joy, and her son knelt at her feet, all his own mother used to rise in his heart, and his acting was no simulation, but the breathing truth itself.
The ruminations of the exiled Cade in Italy, whose altars, unwarmed for a thousand years, were then lit up with the rekindled fires of free-born Rome,—how he remembered his pale mother, and burned to redeem his brethren, the herded and toil-worn bondmen,—this was described in a speech of amazing eloquence, whose delivery was so imaginative and natural in its free fervor that the images seemed visibly presented while the tones palpitated among the pulses of their hearers:
"One night,
Racked by these memories, methought a voice
Summoned me from my couch. I rose,—went forth.
The sky seemed a dark gulf, where fiery spirits