in the side aisle, under the barbaric she has to bear, and make it easier for figures of Byzantine mosaic. Franz was, at that moment, blushing painfully, from diffidence at finding himself alone with a strange lady; but even my hurried glance showed me the strong good-sense and the kindly heart in him which make the German so approachable. I saw no better way to relieve Franz's embarrassment and my own than to speak at once to the point. "You must not think me a stranger, Franz. Giulietta and I have been friends for a long time. She has told me everything about herself, and how kind you have been to her and to her little brother. She tells me, too, that you want her to go with you to Germany; and no wonder, for Giulietta is so good and so pretty she would make a dear wife for any one she loved; but, Franz, she does not love you." "She thinks so much of Italy, my lady," said Franz, his embarrassment passing away before his earnestness; "but when I am not a soldier, and not fighting against Italy, she will care for me." "I think she would," I answered, "because she knows and says how good you are; but then she cannot love you now, because she has loved somebody else ever since she was a little child. Indeed, it is nobody's fault: it is a misfortune that I am sure you will bear, and not blame her for. She has been afraid to tell you, because her mother is your friend, and wants her to listen to you." "Who is he?" said Franz, pale to his lips with his efforts to control himself. "Is he a good man? Perhaps her mother knows he is not fit for her." her, and not let her mother tease her. You will be kind to her, because you love her." I stopped, terrified at my own rashness, and looked at Franz. His mouth was firmly shut, and his brows drawn down. Suddenly he spoke. "You are very good, my lady, to trouble yourself about me, but you care for Giulietta. Yes, I will help her; she shall not have any more grief from me. But not now. I cannot see her now. Tell her that I will come and speak to her mother." And he was gone. The heavy door shut behind him, and I was almost alone in the cathedral. walked up to Giulietta, who stood leaning against a pillar by the shrine. I "Yes, Giulietta, you are right; Franz is a noble, brave, good man; and he promises that you shall have no more pain from him. But you must be very gentle with him, for he suffers a great deal." I stopped, feeling almost treacherous to the absent lover, while I was praising the present one, and Giulietta and I walked silently home; she too much afraid of my grave looks to venture a word, and I made sober by the responsibility that I had taken. Two days after, we left Venice. Giulietta kissed my hand and invoked blessings upon me with all the demonstrative vehemence of her country, and sent message after message to Antonio, sure that I should find him as soon as I crossed the frontier. "And give him this, signora," taking from her neck her little medal. "Tell him to wear it always next his heart, and perhaps the Holy Mother and the Saints will listen then to my prayers for him." "But, Giulietta, I may not see Antonio." "Ebbene, carissima signora, if you would wear it yourself! La povera Giulietta prays as often for you as for Antonio; and if the Virgin should open your heart to the true Church!" "What a wonderful while you have been with that pretty washerwoman," said my husband. "Are not her accounts right, or are you giving her all your old clothes? It is time we were off; there are Pietro and his new man with number seventy at the door. What has became of the young one?" There were several questions here which it was inconvenient to answer, so I hurried to the gondola, and, escaping as I best could from the farewells of Pietro, soon found myself turning my back on Venice, whose light faded into that of common day as the train approached Mestre station. We passed a weary day, -a day in which I tried to forget my own annoyance in wondering about my fellow-travellers. "Now don't let your imagination run away with you," said my husband. "You women see such wonderful things when there is nothing to see. If these people are not what they profess to be, you will not help them by looking anxious about them." This was very true, but my desire to look easy made me so uneasy that I drew a long breath, as if in a free country, when we saw Milan. "And now there is but one thing that I want here," I said, when a change of clothes and a good dinner had brought us back to a normal state, "and that is to find the young Count Giusti, who escaped from Venice a week or two ago." "What do you know about Count Giusti? I never heard of him." "And I never saw him; but I want very much to see him now." And out came the story of Antonio and the gray clothes. "Bless me! what a foolish thing to do. You do not know how much risk you ran. Suppose it had been found out, and I under obligations to the Austrian government," fumed my husband. Lucky I knew nothing about it: I should have been obliged to stop him. It's a good thing it is all over now." "Yes, it is all over now, and no harm has come." poor fellow's got away; but you must never do such a thing again." "O, I never shall; I shall never see Venice again; and now I know how wrong it was, I shall always ask your advice before I meddle with such things. But you will inquire about Count Giusti and Antonio. I must hear about them; and, perhaps," I added saucily, - -"perhaps you can get your gray clothes again.” Count Giusti was found, an intelligent young Italian, full of life and energy, like one wakened out of a long sleep by a sudden bright ray of hope which made all the future golden for him. He assured me that the medal, with Giulietta's message, should reach Antonio, who was then at Camerlata, bringing in provisions for the volunteers. Moreover, he promised to do his best to send back a comforting message to Giulietta. Nearly a year has passed and Venice is free. We must be thankful for that. But she is freed, not by the valor of her children, not by the arms of the Italians, but by the policy of Napoleon III. Verily the benefits of France are bitter to Italy. I love my humble Italian friends, and it would be pleasant to see them again, but I should shrink from the grief and mortification on their faces when they remembered the hopes they confided to me in the early days of the war. Through the kindness of Count Giusti and other Venetian friends, I know that Antonio is safe and Giulietta happy; but that is all, — all I shall ever know. Europe has passed away from me before the realities of home. I take up my life in America just where I left it, and my pleasant days in Venice are like something of which I have read in a book, her palaces and churches mere pictures, her gondoliers and peasants, soldiers and nobles, Pietro, Lisa, Franz, Count Giusti, the characters "Well, I am glad, after all, that the which give life to the story. THE NEGRO SPIRITUALS. 'HE war brought to some of us, besides its direct experiences, many a strange fulfilment of dreams of other days. For instance, the present writer had been a faithful student of the Scottish ballads, and had always envied Sir Walter the delight of tracing them out amid their own heather, and of writing them down piecemeal from the lips of aged crones. It was a strange enjoyment, therefore, to be suddenly brought into the midst of a kindred world of unwritten songs, as simple and indigenous as the Border Minstrelsy, more uniformly plaintive, almost always more quaint, and often as essentially poetic. This interest was rather increased by the fact that I had for many years heard of this class of songs under the name of "Negro Spirituals," and had even heard some of them sung by friends from South Carolina. I could now gather on their own soil these strange plants, which I had before seen as in museums alone. True, the individual songs rarely coincided; there was a line here, a chorus there, just enough to fix the class, but this was unmistakable. It was not strange that they differed, for the range seemed almost endless, and South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida seemed to have nothing but the generic character in common, until all were mingled in the united stock of campmelodies. Often in the starlit evening I have returned from some lonely ride by the swift river, or on the plover-haunted barrens, and, entering the camp, have silently approached some glimmering fire, round which the dusky figures moved in the rhythmical barbaric dance the negroes call a "shout," chanting, often harshly, but always in the most perfect time, some monotonous refrain. Writing down in the darkness, as I best could, perhaps with my hand in the safe covert of my pocket, - the words of the song, I have afterwards carried it to my tent, like some captured bird or insect, and then, after examination, put it by Or, summoning one of the men at some period of leisure, Corporal Robert Sutton, for instance, whose iron memory held all the details of a song as if it were a ford or a forest, I have completed the new specimen by supplying the absent parts. The music I could only retain by ear, and though the more common strains were repeated often enough to fix their impression, there were others that occurred only once or twice. The words will be here given, as nearly as possible, in the original dialect; and if the spelling seems sometimes inconsistent, or the misspelling insufficient, it is because I could get no nearer. I wished to avoid what seems to me the only error of Lowell's "Biglow Papers" in respect to dialect, the occasional use of an extreme misspelling, which merely confuses the eye, without taking us any closer to the peculiarity of sound. The favorite song in camp was the following, sung with no accompaniment but the measured clapping of hands and the clatter of many feet. It was sung perhaps twice as often as any other. This was partly due to the fact that it properly consisted of a chorus alone, with which the verses of other songs might be combined at random. I. HOLD YOUR LIGHT. "Hold your light, Brudder Robert, — Hold your light, Hold your light on Canaan's shore. "What make ole Satan for follow me so? Hold Hold your light, Hold your light, your light on Canaan's shore." This would be sung for half an hour at a time, perhaps, each person present being named in turn. It seemed the simplest primitive type of "spiritual.” The next in popularity was almost as elementary, and, like this, named suc cessively each one of the circle. It was, however, much more resounding and convivial in its music. II. BOUND TO GO. "Jordan River, I 'm bound to go, "My Brudder Robert, I'm bound to go, Bound to go, &c. "My Sister Lucy, I'm bound to go, Bound to go," &c. Sometimes it was "tink 'em" (think them) "fare ye well." The ye was so detached, that I thought at first it was "very" or "vary well." Another picturesque song, which seemed immensely popular, was at first I could not very bewildering to me. make out the first words of the chorus, and called it the "Romandàr," being reminded of some Romaic song which I had formerly heard. That association quite fell in with the Orientalism of the new tent-life. stance, had a true companion-in-arms heartiness about it, not impaired by the feminine invocation at the end. IV. HAIL MARY. 'One more valiant soldier here, O hail, Mary, hail ! To help me bear de cross." I fancied that the original reading might have been "soul," instead of "soldier," with some other syllable inserted, to fill out the metre, - and that the "Hail, Mary," might denote a Roman Catholic origin, as I had several men from St. Augustine who held in a dim way to that faith. It was a very ringing song, though not so grandly jubilant as the next, which was really impressive as the singers pealed it out, when marching or rowing or embarking. V. MY ARMY CROSS OVER. "My army cross over, My army cross over. O, Pharaoh's army drownded! My army cross over. "We'll cross de mighty river, We'll cross de river Jordan, We'll cross de danger water, My army cross over; We'll cross de mighty Myo, My army cross over. (Thrice.) I could get no explanation of the "mighty Myo," except that one of the old men thought it meant the river of death. Perhaps it is an African word. In the Cameroon dialect, "Mawa" signifies "to die." The next also has a military ring about it, and the first line is well matched by the music. The rest is conglomerate, and one or two lines show a more Northern origin. "Done" is a Virginia shibboleth, quite distinct from the "been" which replaces it in South Carolina. Yet one of their best choruses, without any fixed words, was, "De bell done ringing," for which, in "I want to go to Canaan, I want to go to Canaan, I want to go to Canaan, To meet 'em at de comin' day. O, remember, let me go to Canaan, (Thrice.) O brudder, let me go to Canaan, (Thrice.) My brudder, you-oh!- remember (Thrice.) The following begins with a startling affirmation, yet the last line quite outdoes the first. This, too, was a capital boat-song. X. ONE MORE RIVER. O, Jordan bank was a great old bank! O, Jordan stream will never run dry, Dere's a hill on my leff, and he catch on my right, I could get no explanation of this last riddle, except, "Dat mean, if you go on de leff, go to 'struction, ånd if you go on de right, go to God, for sure." In others, more of spiritual conflict is implied, as in this next. To drink from streams dat never run dry, In the next, the conflict is at its height, and the lurid imagery of the |