The Argosy — page 368: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

346 re Anos VITTORIA COLONNA. } VEN in our days of luxurious travelling, there are few modes of visiting foreign lands more delightful than that of the nautical wanderer, who, reclining on the deck of his well-appointed yacht, is wafted each day past shores of ever-changeful form, and ever-changeful beauty. Now, in the dazzling haze of a drowsy southern moon, the vessel glides by a little sapphire bay, whose fairy waves leap up to kiss the boughs of orange groves that sometimes bend down towards them as. though they loved the caress, and sometimes, swayed by the wind, start coquettishly away. Now, in breezy twilight, she shoots past a busy town, with its clusters of twinkling lights, and its chimes of bells, and strains of music, that float fitfully in sweet accord across the water. Now, in the pearly glimmer of the msing moon, she fhts along a low promontory, where the shadowy crosses of a village cemetery are dimly seen among the dark foliage of olive-yards. Here, a ruined castle, or temple, perched upon a high rock, gives a thoughtful character to the landscape. There, the eye catches a brief glimpse of the brilliant iris that dances amid the sparkling foam of the fountain of‘a modern villa. The historical student, who 1s borne in the swift ship of imagination over the vast ocean of time, while he passes in review some series of events long gone by, reminds us much of such a traveller. Among all the subjects which can be thus examined, and which we may disentangle from the encircling folds of centuries to enchain the | interest, or to charm the fancy, there are few more nch, more picturesque, or more pregnant with thought, than the story of Woman. It is not our intention to try to compress within the limits of an article hke the present, so wide and suggestive a theme. We only desire to choose out one of the most conspicuous of the figures that crowd the canvas of woman’s history, and, if possible, with the hght of our modern days, to get a tolerably correct photograph of her. Independently of her remarkable personal attractions and high mental qualities, Vittona Colonna claims our especial attention from the pro- minent part that she played in an epoch which was one of transition, and of peculiar importance to her sex. Vittoria was sprung from one of the most ancient of old Roman patrician families, and an exalted idea of the greatness of her race, and of what was required from a member of it, would be one of the earliest things instilled into her childish mind. When the child began to toddle through the spacious galleries of the Colonna Palace, the grim portraits of her martial fore— ECOMnicoOOkKS.CoOm _