[1] Madame de Staël gave Lucy, at three years of age, hair long enough to make a bracelet. She was thinking of French children. The formal Edgarmonds were not more likely to deviate from the English fashion than to christen Nevil's daughter Juliette.--TR.
Since Lord Nevil had been in Italy, he had not spoken a word of the language; it even made him ill to hear it. On the evening of his arrival at Milan, he heard a tap at the door, which was followed by the entrance of a man, whose dark and prominent face would have been expressive, if animated by natural enthusiasm: it wore an unvaryingly gracious smile, and a look that strove to be poetical. He stood at the door, improvising verses in praise of the group before him, but such as might have suited any other husband, wife, or child, just as truly; and so exaggerated, that the speaker seemed to think poetry _ought_ to have no connection with truth. Oswald perceived that he was a Roman; yet, harmonious as were the sounds he uttered, the vehemence of his declamation served but to indicate more plainly the unmeaning insipidity of all he said. Nothing could be more painful for Oswald than to hear the Roman tongue thus spoken, for the first time after so long an interval; to see his dearest memories travestied, and feel his melancholy renewed by an object so ridiculous. Lucy guessed all this, and would have dismissed the improvisatore; but it was impossible to make him hear her: he paced the chamber all gesture and exclamation, heedless of the disgust he dealt his hearers, proceeding like a machine that could not stop till after a certain moment. At last that time arrived and Lucy paid him to depart. "Poetic language," said Oswald, "is so easily parodied here, that it ought to be forbidden all save those who are worthy to employ it."--"True," observed Lucy, perhaps a little too pointedly: "it is very disagreeable to be reminded of what you admire, by such a burlesque as we have just endured."--"Not so," he answered; "the contrast only makes me more deeply feel the power of genius. This same language, which may be so miserably degraded, became celestial poetry from the lips of Corinne--_your sister_." Lucy felt overwhelmed; he had not pronounced that _name_ to her before; the addition of _your sister_ sounded as if conveying a reproach. She was half suffocated; and had she given way to her tears, this moment might have proved the sweetest in her life; but she restrained them, and the embarrassment between herself and husband became more painful than before. On the next day the sun broke forth, like an exile returning to his own land. The Nevils availed themselves of his brightness to visit Milan cathedral, the _chef-d'œuvre_ of Gothic architecture: it is built in the form of a cross--fair, melancholy image in the midst of wealth. Lofty as it is, the ornaments are elaborate as those lavished on some minute object of admiration. What time and patience must it have cost! This perseverance towards the same aim is transmitted from age to age, and the human race, stable at least in thought, can leave us proofs of this, imperishable almost as thought itself. A Gothic building engenders true religion: it has been said that the popes have consecrated more wealth to the building of modern temples than devotion to the memory of old churches. The light, falling through colored glass, the singular forms of the architecture, unite to give a silent image of that infinite mystery which the soul forever feels, and never comprehends.