A DECADE OF ITALIAN WOMEN.
MY LORD CARDINAL'S DAUGHTER.
ONE remarkable circumstance among those which specially characterised the great intellectual movement in Italy in the sixteenth century, was the large part taken in it by women. The writers of literary history, a class especially abundant to the south of the Alps, enumerate a surprisingly long catalogue of ladies more or less celebrated for their works. The list of poetesses registered by Tiraboschi as flourishing during the first half of the sixteenth century, consists of some forty names. And he intimates, that it might have been made much longer, had he thought it worth while to record every name mentioned by the chroniclers of such matters, who preceded him. A great many more are noticed as having been "learned" or "skilled in polite literature."
Such facts constitute a very note-worthy feature of