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walls, where before
their neat cottages had stood."
    Castruccio listened impatiently, and cried:--"Yet who would
not rather be a knight, than one of those peasants, whose minds are
as grovelling as their occupations?"
    "That would not I," replied Guinigi fervently;
"how must the human mind be distorted, which can delight in
that which is ill, in preference to the cultivation of the earth,
and the contemplation of its loveliness! What a strange mistake is
it, that a peasant's life is incompatible with intellectual
improvement! Alas! poor wretches; they are too hard-worked now to
learn much, and their toil, uncheered by the applause of their
fellow-creatures, appears a degradation; yet, when I would picture
happiness upon earth, my imagination conjures up the family of a
dweller among the fields, whose property is secure, and whose time
is passed between labour and intellectual pleasures. Such now is my
fate. The evening of my life steals gently on; and I have no
regrets for the past, no wish for the future, but to continue as I
am."
    "Yes," cried Castruccio, "You have passed through
life, and know what it is; but I would rather, while alive, enter
my tomb, than live unknown and unheard of. Is it not fame that
makes men gods? Do not urge me to pass my days in indolence; I must
act, to be happy,--to be any thing. My father did not wish me to
become a farmer and a vinedresser; but to tread in his steps, and
go beyond them, and that is my purpose, which I would die to
attain."
    A year passed while Castruccio still lived under the low roof of
Guinigi. He found that it was no vain boast, that this noble ate
the bread that he had sown: for he saw him hold the plough, trim
his vines, and enter into all the labours of the husbandman. There
is something picturesque in the toil of an Italian peasant. It is
not, as in more northern climates, where cold, and wet, and care
are endured, to be scantily repaid; and their unceasing anxiety is
often terminated by the destruction of their crops through the
severity of their climate. Guinigi and his fellow-labourers rose
with the sun, which, ascending from the ocean, illumined the wide
plain with its slant beams. The most beautiful vegetation
luxuriated around them: the strips of land were planted with Indian
corn, wheat and beans; they were divided, in some places by rows of
olives, in others by elms or Lombardy poplars, to which the vines
clung. The hedges were of myrtle, whose aromatic perfume weighed
upon the sluggish air of noon, as the labourers reposed, sleeping
under the trees, lulled by the rippling of the brooks that watered
their grounds. In the evening they ate their meal under the open
sky; the birds were asleep, but the ground was alive with
innumerable glow-worms, and the air with the lightning-like
fire-flies, small, humming crickets, and heavy beetles: the west
had quickly lost its splendour, but in the fading beams of sunset
sailed the boat-like moon, while Venus, as another satellite to
earth, beamed just above the crescent hardly brighter than itself,
and the outline of the rugged Apennines was marked darkly
below.
    Their harvests were plenteous and frequent. The moving of the
grass was quickly followed in June by the reaping, and the
well-trodden threshing floor, such as Virgil describes it, received
the grain; then came the harvest of the Indian corn; and last the
glorious vintage, when the beautiful dove-coloured oxen of Lombardy
could hardly drag the creaking wains laden with the fruit.
    Castruccio attended Guinigi in his labours; and Guinigi, resting
on his spade, would moralize on all around him, and win the ardent
imagination of the youth to follow his flights. All in the country
bore for him the immediate stamp of divine and eternal beauty; he
knew every flower of the field, and could describe their various
habits, and what insects best loved to suck their nectar. He knew
the form and the life of every little being of that peopled region,
where the sun seems to quicken