We could say much more of Markham, but we must postpone it. Our present concern is with the mind of Clara Rivolta, and her sentiments of and towards this young man. He was to all intents the most agreeable man she had seen since her arrival in England; and his slight tincture of pedantry, and his love of quotation and recitation, tedious and stupid as they might have been to many others, were to her peculiarly agreeable. Men’s hearts are stolen through the eye--women’s through the ear. Clara was pleased with Markham’s voice because she liked poetry; and as the poetry first rendered his company delightful, and his voice to her ear musical, so in process of time his company and his voice rendered the poetical extracts more pleasing. Markham also understood Italian; but to a native of Italy he would not read or recite her own poetry; but he often brought to her Italian poetry, and her bright eyes sparkled at the sight, and she began to like the English people better, because they had paid reverence to the poets of her native land by printing their works beautifully. Markham wished to hear the poetry of Italy read by a native; Clara could not refuse him, because he had been so obliging as to read much English poetry to her; but she was almost afraid to read to him, because she could not read so well as he could. That is a pretty and pardonable piece of vanity. But the fact is, Markham did not read so remarkably well: he had a singing kind of a tone; he read in a kind of recitative; some used to say he read very ill. We should wish these people to be sentenced to hear reading without a tone. At all events, Markham’s reading was very pleasant to Clara; and to Markham’s ear there was no music so sweet as Clara’s voice. She had read to him two or three of the sonnets of Petrarch; and Markham thought that he should recollect the melody of that voice when he should be afar off sailing on the mighty deep. How sweetly can the closed eye, by its own internal light, call up bright scenes which time and space have put far from us! and as sweetly in night’s silence and its wakeful repose rings in our ear again the voice of the absent and the beloved. When Clara read to Markham, there was a tremulousness in her voice, and there was a tear in her eye; the tear was hardly visible, and not large enough to fall; but she felt it there, and her tremulousness increased. Scenes of this nature frequently occurred, and they produced their very natural effect. Clara felt herself very happy in Markham’s company, always asked his opinion on matters of taste and literature, was continually finding out new poetical beauties in Markham’s favorite authors, and perpetually discovering some philological difficulties in the English language, of which no one but Markham could give her a solution. It was not till she knew him that her mind was powerfully impressed with the absolute necessity of learning with very strict and minute attention the niceties of the English language.