I picked up a copy of it at Verona when I was a boy, and learned a good deal of it by heart, by way of helping myself with the language.

I remember some of it to this day:-- "'Voi, donne, e Cavalier del bel paese A cui propizio il ciel tanto concesse Di bene, udite il mio cantare,' &c., &c.
"I wonder, now, whether this is a redstreak." As their sons talked thus the two fathers approached, and gravely looked on at this scene of riotous and yet lovely desolation.

Nests with eggs in them adorned every little bush, vines having broken the trellis ran far along the ground.

John, remembering that the place must have painful thoughts connected with their dead brother for his father and uncle, continued to talk to Valentine, and did not address either of them: and whatever they may have felt they did not say a word; but Valentine presently observed the bed of lilies, and he and John moved on together, the two fathers following.
They outwalked their fathers, and Valentine, stooping over the bed, gathered two or three of the lovely flowers.
"The poor old grandmother!" he observed.

"Miss Melcombe told me she loved to watch this bed of lilies, and said only a few days ago, that she could wish they might never be disturbed." He turned--both the old men stood stock still behind him, looking down on the lily-bed.