TO HER GRACE THE DUCHESS OF BEAUFORT, THE FOLLOWING PAGES ARE, WITH HER GRACE'S PERMISSION, MOST RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED, BY THE AUTHOR. ADVERTISEMENT. THE respect due to public taste requires of me an apology for offering my Volumes, after the numerous works on Italy sent forth by persons of genius, erudition, and research. The manuscript of my pages was written in Italy, and intended originally for the perusal of private friends only recent circumstances have decided me to give them publicity. I wove by night the materials collected in the day: they were old, and snatched in haste from the store-house of antiquity; but if I have sent through all the warp a golden wire drawn from the inexhaustible treasures of creation and the written Word, my work may yet possess some value, and suit the evening tent of the Christian traveller, who always possesses this advantage over others- that, when earthly objects fade, "He sends his hopes on high, looks up, And, reaching forth his sickle, reaps the fields of heaven; And plucks the clusters from the vine of God." PROTESTANT VIGILS; OR, Evening Records OF A JOURNEY IN ITALY, IN THE YEARS 1826 AND 1827. BY HARRIET MORTON. Si! Gesù è la luce Che il Popolo smarito ; Il notto rischiarò : Questo è la Verga Che in fonte di salute Apre i macigni: Il Sacerdote è Questo Fra la vita e la morte Pietoso Mediator! IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: PUBLISHED BY R. B. SEELEY, AND W. BURNSIDE; AND SOLD BY L. B. SEELEY AND SONS, FLEET-STREET, AND MDCCCXXIX. 613. |