rature from all practical results is strongly exemplified later on in the biographies of Ausonius and Claudian, the relation they had to the emperors, and the position they occupied in the courts of Gratian, Theodosius, and Honorius. The bishops would quickly have driven the pagan laureates, celebrating catholic sovereigns and statesmen with mythological odes, from the imperial presence, if they had not felt assured that literature, in those days, was a blossoming, but not a fruit-bearing tree. The verses of Ausonius were not likely to do much harm in an age on whose deaf ear the eloquence of Symmachus died away so lightly and so feebly. It was ever thus with Roman literature. No elegiac verses won battles among Roman warriors; no subjects of national interest were forbidden to dramatists, for fear of the excesses of enthusiastic sympathy. Our own literature, in proportion as it has grown more real, has banished the mythological machinery in which even our great ancestors indulged. Milton would not have produced the exquisite Lycidas in the nineteenth century. Such machinery has been banished as unworthy, because it is unmeaning. A comparison between Milton's use of pagan faith, and Wordsworth's use of it, is fair, because the two poets are not far removed in point of excellence, and it is grateful, because it is significant of a more wholesome and real literature.

A fertile flat, through which the reedy Mincio steers his winding current, intervenes between De

zenzano and Verona, the road crossing the Mincio at Peschiera. Verona is a striking city at first sight, and full of relics of old times. It is also one of Shakspeare's cities, the city of the "poor forlorn Proteus, passionate Proteus," from whose sad case we learn, that "to wreath one's arms, like a malcontent, to relish a love song like a robin-red-breast, to walk alone, like one that hath the pestilence, to sigh like a school-boy that hath lost his A, B, C, to weep like a young wench that hath buried her grand-dam, to fast like one that takes diet, to watch like one that fears robbing, and to speak puling like a beggar at Hallowmass," are "special marks" of being in love. There is also a marble coffin shown near the Franciscan convent. It has holes for air, and a place for a candle, and goes by the name of Juliet's Tomb. But we found in more than one place abroad, that in some prolific soils the sedulous repetition of inquiries on the part of travellers has a power to create relics, and the earnest minuteness of the antiquary has certainly, in more than one instance, called into existence the tradition he was so anxious to find. The heights above Verona are also interesting. It was there that, after his march from Innsbruck over the Brenner Pass, and the capture of Tridentum, Attila paused with his fearful host. They took one long greedy look at the fruitful Veronese, and westward toward the Bergamasco and the Milanese, then swept down, darkening the face of the land, as a locust swarm darkens the air. I have seen the

muddy swamps where the Hungarian Tibiscus meets the Danube; and truly, to the Huns of the Bannat of Temeswar, the paradise of northern Italy would be a bewildering scene, an almost unintelligible land.

After mourning over the decayed splendor and cheerless palaces of Vicenza, we proceeded to Padua, the "many-domed" Padua. It is a delightful old city; just the place for a university. It is full of street- picturesque, and the architecture of the churches somewhat oriental. Most of the streets have colonnades at the sides, and in not a few grass grows between the stones in undisturbed luxuriance. But Padua is no longer the rival of Bologna, no longer the fourth city, raised by Frederick II. to be added to the three intellectual capitals of mediæval Europe, Paris, Bologna, and Oxford. There grew no grass in the streets of Padua when eighteen thousand students clustered round the chairs of their favorite professors. I know not why it should be so, but this quaint desert of streets and churches seems to be a type of the political decay of Italy, the death, or at least most deadly slumber, of Italian democracy. Such words may not be breathed in the streets of Austrian Italy. Even Padua is too populous for such regrets to be safely whispered, for echoes are loudest in desolate places. Let us come into the Euganean mountains, and seek some

dell, mid lawny hills,

Which the wild sea-murmur fills,

And soft sunshine, and the sound

Of old forests echoing round.

Here we may talk our fill of the hidden and hunted Carbonari.

It is an interesting, but by no means easy, labor to trace the current of Italian democracy. It has, for the most part, run underground; and where it has burst upon the surface, it has been in partial efforts, difficult to understand, and to which nearly invariable failure has given a bad name. History is in the hands of the other party, and who is bold enough to advocate the cause of the Carbonari? I have little sympathy with democratical feelings; and of course secret societies, labors in the dark, conspiracies, whether unarmed, for the propagation of opinions, or armed, for the actual assertion of liberty, must lead men into sins, and very great sins, as well as being contrary to the Christian duty of absolute, passive obedience to the civil power, so long as the conscience is not violated in the matter of religion. When the conscience is violated, the right to suffer for Christ's sake, rises at once to the gladdened view of the oppressed and persecuted party. Such are surely the general principles of political duty; yet it is not meant to deny that there are a few difficult cases in history, where conscience has been compelled to judge with a more independent authority, and to act in a bolder way, or rather, to speak accurately, to allow Providence to open out her way for her in new and perplexing emergencies. Admitting this, and

all things being candidly considered, I should not hesitate to assert that the reviled Carbonari of Italy are more respectable than almost any other democratical party with which history makes us acquainted. The materials, however, for their history are few and dubious, and the inferences from it consequently precarious: this applies especially to their present existence in the Austrian, Papal, and Neapolitan states. Yet a keen eye, looking along the particolored web of Italian history, will see one dark thread continuously interwoven there, catching the light here and there in a very marked way. Even the Carbonari have an old and high ancestry. They, as well as the house of Hapsburgh, have a tree of famous progenitors.

There are few things in history the contemplation of which is so inspiriting as the struggle of the "justissima et modestissima plebs" of early Rome. Their conduct unites such an assemblage of high political virtues that we do not know which to admire most, their unwearied energy, or super-human forbearance, or unimpassioned sagacity, or unclouded far-sightedness, or dignified demeanor, or profound worship of freedom, or intelligent homage to the inherent majesty of law. It is a magnificent spectacle to behold that people, those multitudes, every individual of which was almost worthy to fill a throne, marching onwards, amidst untold difficulties and ceaseless foreign wars, and the galling chains of unjust debt, to the consummation of their liberties,