Memoirs of My Youth

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1849 edition. Excerpt: ... insect called into existence by the summer heat, and murmuring beneath this lovely sky. This poor insect is man! who sings for a few days, in the presence of his Creator, his youth, and his loves, and then ceases for eternity. I could never listen to these notes filling the air from the top of the astricos, without stopping and feeling my throbbing heart ready to burst with inward joy, or with a pang of melancholy which overpowered me. VI. Such also were the attitudes, the music, and the voices upon the terrace of Andrea's roof. Graziella played upon the guitar, and Beppo, making his childish fingers rebound upon the little tambourine which nad served to lull him to sleep in his cradle, accompanied his sister. Although the. instruments were gay, and the attitudes were those of joy, the airs were sad, the slow and long-drawn notes causing the hidden chords of the heart to vibrate to their depths. It is ever thus with music, whenever it is not an empty amusement for the ear, but a harmonious vibration of the passions, which find an utterance in the voice. All its accents are sighs, all its notes blendtears with their sound. They can never strike forcibly upon the heart of man with'out his yielding them tears; so full is nature, to her depths, of sadness, and so invariably does whatever moves her, raise the cup of bitterness to our lips, and veil our eyes with a robe of mourning! VII. Even when the young girl, at our solicitation, modestly rose to dance the tarantella to the sound of the tambourine beaten by her brother, and when, carried away by the exciting movements of this national dance, she whirled round and round, her arms gracefully elevated, imitating with her fingers the clicking sound of the castanets, and quickening the...