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rocognized as a mere mortal production, and at the distance of two centuries, when criticism and competition had sobered the judgment of the Italians, Dante was seriously declared superior to Homer, and although the preference appeared to some casuists "an heretical blasphemy worthy of the flames," the contest was vigorously maintained for nearly fifty years. In later times it was made a question which of the Lords of Verona could boast of having patronized him, and the jealous scepticism of one writer would not allow Ravenna the undoubted possession of his bones. Even the critical Tiraboschi was inclined to believe that the poet had foreseen and foretold one of the discoveries of Galileo. Like the has not always maintained the same level. The last age seemed inclined to undervalue him as a model and a study; and Bettinelli one day rebuked his pupil Monti, for poring over the harsh and obsolete extravagances of the Commedia. The present generation having recovered from the Gallic idolatries of Cesarotti has returned to the ancient worship, and the Danteggiare of the northern Italians is thought even indiscreet by the more moderate Tuscans.

terne, con qual sete di vendetta, con che osti- | mistress. When the Divine Comedy had been nata fede, con che lacrime. Quali porte se li serrerebeno? Quali popoli li negherebbeno la obbedienza? Quale Italiano li negherebbe l'ossequio? AD OGNUNO PUZZA QUESTO BARBARO DOMINIO." Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar. [p. 43. St. 57. Dante was born in Florence in the year 1261. He fought in two battles, was fourteen times ambassador, and once prior of the republic. When the party of Charles of Anjou triumphed over the Bianchi, he was absent on an embassy to Pope Boniface VIII., and was condemned to two years banishment, and to a fine of 8000 lire; on the non-payment of which he was further punished by the sequestration of all his property.great originals of other nations, his popularity The republic, however, was not content with this satisfaction, for in 1772 was discovered in the archives at Florence a sentence in which Dante is the eleventh of a list of fifteen condemned in 1302 to be burnt alive; Talis perveniens igne comburatur sic quod moriatur. The pretext for this judgment was a proof of unfair barter, extortions, and illicit gains: Baracteriarum iniquarum, extorsionum, et illicitorum lucrorum; and with such an accusation it is not strange that Dante should have always protested his There is still much curious information relainnocence, and the injustice of his fellow-citizens. tive to the life and writings of this great poet, His appeal to Florence was accompanied by which has not as yet been collected even by another to the Emperor Henry, and the death the Italians; but the celebrated Hugo Foscolo of that sovereign in 1313 was the signal for a meditates to supply this defect; and it is not to sentence of irrevocable banishment. He had be-be regretted that this national work has been fore lingered near Tuscany with hopes of recal; reserved for one so devoted to his country and then travelled into the north of Italy where the cause of truth. Verona had to boast of his longest residence, and he finally settled at Ravenna, which was his ordinary but not constant abode until his death. The refusal of the Venetians to grant him a public audience, on the part of Guido Novello da Polenta, his protector, is said to have been the principal cause of this event, which happened in 1321. He was buried ("in sacra minorum æde") at Ravenna, in a handsome tomb, which was erected by Guido, restored by Bernardo Bembo in 1483, pretor for that republic which had refused to hear him, again restored by Cardinal Corsi in 1692, and replaced by a more magnificent sepulchre, constructed in 1780 at the expense of the Cardinal Luigi Valenti Gonzaga. The offence or misfortune of Dante was an attachment to a defeated party, and, as his least favourable biographers allege against him, too great a freedom of speech and haughtiness of manner. But the next age paid honours almost divine to the exile. The Florentines, having in vain and frequently attempted to recover bis body, crowned his image in a church, and his picture is still one of the idols of their cathedral. They struck medals, they raised statues to him. The cities of Italy not being able to dispute about his own birth, contended for that of his great poem, and the Florentines thought it for their honour to prove that he had finished the seventh Canto, before they drove him from his native city. Fifty-one years after his death they endowed a professorial chair for the expounding of his verses, and Boccaccio was appointed to this patriotic employment. The example was imitated by Bologna and Pisa, and the commentators, if they performed but little service to literature, augmented the veneration which beheld a sacred or moral allegory in all the images of his mystic muse. His birth and his infancy were discovered to have been distinguished above those of ordinary men; the author of the Decameron, his earliest biographer, relates that his mother was warned in a dream of the importance of her pregnancy; and it was found, by others, that at ten years of age he had manifested his precocious passion for that wisdom or theology, which, under the name of Beatrice, had been mistaken for a substantial

Like Scipio buried by the upbraiding shore; Thy factions in their worse than civil war, Proscribed, etc. [p. 43. St. 57. The elder Scipio Africanus had a tomb if he retired to voluntary banishment. This tomb was was not buried at Liternum, whither he had near the sea-shore, and the story of an inscription upon it, Ingrata Patria, having given a name to a modern tower, is, if not true, an agreeable fiction. If he was not buried, he certainly lived there. *)

In così angusta e solitaria villa

Era 1 grand' nomo che d'Africa s'appella Perchè prima col ferro al vivo aprilla. Ingratitude is generally supposed the vice peculiar to republics; and it seems to be forgotten that for one instance of popular inconstancy, we have a hundred examples of the fall of courtly favourites. Besides, a people have often repented-a monarch seldom or never. Leaving apart many familiar proofs of this fact, a short story may show the difference between even an aristocracy and the multitude.

Vettor Pisani, having been defeated in 1354 at Portolongo, and many years afterwards in the more decisive action of Pola, by the Genoese, was recalled by the Venetian Government, and thrown into chains. The Avvogadori proposed to behead him, but the supreme tribunal was content with the sentence of imprisonment. Whilst Pisani was suffering this unmerited disgrace, Chioza, in the vicinity of the capital, was, by the assistance of the signor of Padua, delivered into the hands of Pietro Doria. At the intelligence of that disaster, the great bell of St. Mark's tower tolled to arms, and the people and the soldiery of the galleys were summoned to the repulse of the approaching enemy; but they protested they would not move a step, unless Pisani were liberated and placed at their head.

*) Vitam Literni egit eine desiderio urbis. LIV. Hist. lib xxxvIII. Livy reports that some said he was buried at Liternum, others at Rome.

The great council was instantly assembled: the prisoner was called before them, and the Doge, Andrea Contarini, informed him of the demands of the people and the necessities of the state, whose only hope of safety was reposed on his efforts, and who implored him to forget the indignities he had endured in her service. "I have submitted," replied the magnanimous republican, "I have submitted to your deliberations without complaint; I have supported patiently the pains of imprisonment, for they were inflicted at your command: this is no time to inquire whether I deserved them-the good of the republic may have seemed to require it, and that which the republic resolves is always resolved wisely. Behold me ready to lay down my life for the preservation of my country." Pisani was appointed generalissimo, and by his exertions, in conjunction with those of Carlo Zeno, the Venetians soon recovered the ascendancy over their maritime rivals.

Boccaccio to his parent earth bequeath'd His dust. [p. 43. St. 58. Boccaccio was buried in the church of St. Michael and St. James, at Certaldo, a small town in the Valdelsa, which was by some supposed the place of his birth. There he passed the latter part of his life in a course of laborious study, which shortened his existence; and there might his ashes have been secure, if not of honour, at least of repose. But the "hyæna bigots" of Certaldo tore up the tombstone of Boccaccio, and ejected it from the holy precincts of St. Michael and St. James. The occasion, and, it may be hoped, the excnse, of this ejectment was the making of a new floor for the church; but the fact is, that the tombstone was taken up and thrown aside at the bottom of the building. Ignorance may share the sin with bigotry. would be painful to relate such an exception to the devotion of the Italians for their great names, could it not be accompanied by a trait more honourably conformable to the general character of the nation. The principal person of the district, the last branch of the house of Medicis, afforded that protection to the memory of the insulted dead which her best ancestors had dispensed upon all cotemporary merit. The Marcaccio from the neglect in which it had some time lain, and found for it an honourable elevation in her own mansion. She has done more: the house in which the poet lived has been as little respected as his tomb, and is falling to ruin over the head of one indifferent to the name of its former tenant. It consists of two or three little chambers, and a low tower, on which Cosmo II. affixed an inscription. This house she has taken measures to purchase, and proposes to devote to it that care and consideration which are attached to the cradle and to the roof of genius.

The Italian communities were no less unjust to their citizens than the Greek republics. Liberty, both with the one and the other, seems to have been a national, not an individual object: and, notwithstanding the boasted equality before the laws, which an ancient Greek writer considered the great distinctive mark between his country-chioness Lenzoni rescued the tombstone of Bocmen and the barbarians, the mutual rights of fellow - citizens seem never to have been the principal scope of the old democracies. The world may have not yet seen an essay by the author of the Italian Republics, in which the distinction between the liberty of former states, and the signification attached to that word by the happier constitution of England, is ingeniously developed. The Italians, however, when they had ceased to be free, still looked back with a sigh upon those times of turbulence, when every citizen might rise to a share of sovereign power, and have never been taught fully to appreciate the repose of a monarchy. Sperone Speroni, when Francis Maria II., Duke of Rovere, proposed the question, "which was preferable, the republic or the principality-the perfect and not durable, or the less perfect and not so liable to change," replied, "that our happiness is to be measured by its quality, not by its duration; and that he preferred to live for one day like a man, than for a hundred years like a brute, a stock, or a stone." This was thought, and called, a magnificent answer, down to the last days of Italian servitude.

--And the crown Which Petrarch's laureat-brow supremely wore, Upon a far and foreign soil had grown.

[p. 43. St. 57. The Florentines did not take the opportunity of Petrarch's short visit to their city in 1350 to revoke the decree which confiscated the property of his father, who had been banished shortly after the exile of Dante. His crown did not dazzle them; but when in the next year they were in want of his assistance in the formation of their university, they repented of their injustice, and Boccaccio was sent to Padua to intreat the Laureate to conclude his wanderings in the bosom of his native country, where he might finish his immortal Africa, and enjoy, with his recovered possessions, the esteem of all classes of his fellow-citizens. They gave him the option of the book and the science he might condescend to expound; they called him the glory of his country, who was dear, and would be dearer to them; and they added, that if there was any thing unpleasing in their letter, he ought to return amongst them, were it only to correct their style. Petrarch seemed at first to listen to the flattery and to the intreaties of his friend, but he did not return to Florence, and preferred a pilgrimage to the tomb of Laura and the shades of Vaucluse.

This is not the place to undertake the defence of Boccaccio; but the man who exhausted his little patrimony in the acquirement of learning, who was amongst the first, if not the first, to allure the science and the poetry of Greece to the bosom of Italy;-who not only invented a new style, but founded, or certainly fixed, a new language; who, besides the esteem of every polite court of Europe, was thought worthy of employment by the predominant republic of his own country, and, what is more, of the friendship of Petrarch, who lived the life of a philosopher and a freeman, and who died in the pursuit of knowledge,-such a man might have found more consideration than he has met with from the priest of Certaldo, and from a late English traveller, who strikes off his portrait as an odious, contemptible, licentious writer, whose impure remains should be suffered to rot without a record *). That English traveller, unfortunate

*) Classical Tour, cap. ix. vol. 11. p. 355. edit. 3d. "Of Boccaccio, the modern Petronius, we say nothing; the abuse of genius is more odious and more contemptible than its absence; and it imports little where the impure remains of a licentious author are consigned to their kindred dust. For the same reason the traveller may pass unnoticed the tomb of the malignant Aretino."

"This dubious phrase is hardly enough to save the tourist from the suspicion of another blunder respecting the burial - place of Aretino, whose tomb was in the church of St. Luke at Venice, and gave rise to the famous controversy of which some notice is taken in Bayle. Now the words of Mr. Eustace would lead us to think the tomb was at Florence, or at least was to be somewhere recognized. Whether the inscription so much disputed was ever written on the tomb cannot now be decided, for all

ly for those who have to deplore the loss of a very amiable person, is beyond all criticism; but the mortality which did not protect Boccaccio from Mr. Eustace, must not defend Mr. Eustace from the impartial judgment of his successors. Death may canonize his virtues, not his errors; and it may be modestly pronounced that he transgressed, not only as an author, but as a man, when he evoked the shade of Boccaccio in company with that of Aretino, amidst the sepulchres of Santa Croce, merely to dismiss it with indignity. As far as respects

"Il flagello de Principi,

Il divin Pietro Aretino.

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only laughed at the gallant adventures so unjustly charged upon Queen Theodelinda, whilst the priesthood cried shame upon the debauches drawn from the convent and the hermitage; and, most probably, for the opposite reason, namely, that the picture was faithful to the life. Two of the novels are allowed to be facts usefully turned into tales, to deride the canonization of rogues and laymen. Ser Ciappelletto and Mar. cellinus are cited with applause even by the decent Muratori. The great Arnauld, as he is quoted in Bayle, states, that a new edition of the novels was proposed, of which the expurgait is of little import what censure is past upon other names. The literary history of Italy partion consisted in omitting the words "monk" a coxcomb who owes his present existence to ticularizes no such edition; but it was not long and "nun," and tacking the immoralities to the above burlesque character given to him by before the whole of Europe had but one opinion the poet whose amber has preserved many other of the Decameron; and the absolution of the augrubs and worms: but to classify Boccaccio with thor seems to have been a point settled at least such a person, and to excommunicate his very a hundred years ago: "On se ferait siffler si ashes, must of itself make us doubt of the qua- l'on prétendait convaincre Boccace de n'avoir lification of the classical tourist for writing upon pas été honnète homme, puisqu'il a fait le DéItalian, or, indeed, upon any other literature; for ignorance on one point may incapacitate an perhaps the best critic, that ever lived-the cameron." So said one of the best men, and author merely for that particular topic, but sub- very martyr to impartiality *). But as this injection to a professional prejudice must render formation, that in the beginning of the last him an unsafe director on all occasions. Any century one would have been hooted at for preperversion and injustice may be made what is tending that Boccaccio was not a good man, may vulgarly called "a case of conscience," and this seem to come from one of those enemies who poor excuse is all that can be offered for the are to be suspected, even when they make us a priest of Certaldo, or the author of the Classical present of truth, a Tour. It would have answered the purpose to with the proscription of the body, soul, and muse confine the censure to the novels of Boccaccio, of Boccaccio may be found in a few words from more acceptable contrast and gratitude to that source, which supplied the the virtuons, the patriotic cotemporary, who muse of Dryden with her last and most harmo- thought one nious numbers, might perhaps have restricted worthy a Latin version from his own pen. "I that censure to the objectionable qualities of have remarked elsewhere," says Petrarch, writof the tales of this impure writer the hundred tales. of Boccaccio might have arrested his exhumation, worried by certain dogs, but stoutly defended by At any rate, the repentance ing to Boccaccio, "that the book itself has been and it should have been recollected and told, your staff and voice. that in his old age he wrote a letter intreating I have had proof of the vigour of your mind, his friend to discourage the reading of the De- and I know you have fallen on that unaccomNor was I astonished, for cameron, for the sake of modesty, and for the modating incapable race of mortals who, whatever sake of the author, who would not have an apolo- they either like not, or know not, or cannot do, gist always at hand to state in his excuse that are sure to reprehend in others; and on those he wrote it when young, and at the command of occasions only put on a show of learning and superiors *). It is neither the licentiousness of eloquence, but otherwise are entirely dumb." **) the writer, nor the evil propensities of the reader, which have given to the Decameron alone, hood do not resemble those of Certaldo, and that of all the works of Boccaccio, a perpetual popu- one of them who did not possess the bones of It is satisfactory to find that all the priestlarity. The establishment of a new and delight-Boccaccio would not ful dialect conferred an immortality on the raising a cenotaph to his memory. Bevius, caworks in which it was first fixed. lose the opportunity of of Petrarch were, for the same reason, fated to tury, erected at Arquà, opposite to the tomb of The sonuets survive his self-admired Africa the "favourite the Laureate, a tablet, in which he associated non of Padua, at the beginning of the 16th cenof kings." The invariable traits of nature and Boccaccio to the equal honours of Dante and of feeling with which the novels, as well as the Petrarch. verses, abound, have doubtless been the chief source of the foreign celebrity of both authors; but Boccaccio, as a man, is no more to be estimated by that work, than Petrarch is to be regarded in no other light than as the lover of Laura. Even, however, had the father of the Tuscan prose been known only as the author of the Decameron, a considerate writer would have been cautious to pronounce a sentence irreconcileable with the unerring voice of many ages and nations. An irrevocable value has never been stamped upon any work solely recommended by impurity.

The true source of the outcry against Boccaccio, which began at a very early period, was the choice of his scandalous personages in the cloisters as well as the courts; but the princes

memorial of this author has disappeared from the church of St. Luke, which is now changed into a lamp-warehouse.

*) "Non enim ubique est, qui in excusationem meam consurgens dicat, Juvenis scripsit, et majoris coactus imperio."

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What is her pyramid of precious stones?

Cosmo, and expires with his grandson; that stream is pure only at the source; and it is in Our veneration for the Medici begins with [p. 44. St. 60. search of some memorial of the virtuous republicans of the family, that we visit the church of St. Lorenzo at Florence. The tawdry, glaring, unfinished chapel in that church, designed for the mausoleum of the Dukes of Tuscany, set round with crowns and coffins, gives birth to no emotions but those of contempt for the lavish

*) Eclaircissement, in the Supplement to Bayle's Dictionary.

"Animadverti alicubi librum ipsum canum dentibus lacessitum, tuo tamen baculo egregie tuàque voce defensum. Nec miratus sum: nam et vires ingenii tui novi, et scio expertus esses hominum genus insolens et ignavum, qui quicquid ipsi vel nolunt vel nesciunt, vel non possunt, in aliis reprehendunt; ad hoc unum docti et arguti, sed elingues ad reliqua.“

vanity of a race of despots, whilst the pavement- the cities of Italy, which turned the course of elab simply inscribed to the Father of his Country, rapid streams, poured back the sea upon the rireconciles us to the name of Medici ). It was vers, and tore down the very mountains, was not very natural for Corinna to suppose that the felt by one of the combatants.") Such is the statue raised to the Duke of Urbino in the ca description of Livy. It may be doubted whether pella de' depositi was intended for his great modern tactics would admit of such an abstraction. namesake; but the magnificent Lorenzo is only The site of the battle of Thrasimene is not to the sharer of a coffin half hidden in a niche of be mistaken. The traveller from the village the sacristy. The decay of Tuscany dates from under Cortona to Casa di Piano, the next stage the sovereignty of the Medici. Of the sepulchral on the way to Rome, has for the first two or peace, which succeeded to the establishment of three miles, around him, but more particularly the reigning families in Italy, our own Sidney to the right, that flat land which Hannibal laid has given us a glowing, but a faithful picture. waste in order to induce the Consul Flaminius "Notwithstanding all the seditions of Florence, to move from Arezzo. On his left, and in front and other cities of Tuscany, the horrid factions of him, is a ridge of hills, bending down towards of Guelphs and Ghibelins, Neri and Bianchi, the lake of Thrasimene, called by Livy "montes Nobles and Commons, they continued populous, Cortenenses," and now named the Gualandra. strong, and exceeding rich; but in the space of These hills he approaches at Ossaja, a village less than a hundred and fifty years the peace- which the itineraries pretend to have been so able reign of the Medices is thought to have denominated from the bones found there but destroyed nine parts in ten of the people of that there have been no bones found there, and the province. Amongst other things it is remarkable, battle was fought on the other side of the hill. that when Philip the Second of Spain gave From Ossaja the road begins to rise a little, Sienna to the Duke of Florence, his embassador but does not pass into the roots of the mounthen at Rome sent him word, that he had given tains until the sixty-seventh mile-stone from away more than 650,000 subjects; and it is not Florence. The ascent thence is not steep but believed there are now 20,000 souls inhabiting perpetual, and continues for twenty minutes. that city and territory. Pisa, Pistoia, Arezzo, The lake is soon seen below on the right, with Cortona, and other towns, that were then good Borghetto, a round tower close upon the water; and populous, are in the like proportion dimi- and the undulating hills partially covered with nished, and Florence more than any. When wood amongst which the road winds, sink by that city had been long troubled with seditions, degrees into the marshes near to this tower. tumults, and wars, for the most part unprosper- Lower than the road, down to the right, amidst ous, they still retained such strength, that when these woody hillocks, Hannibal placed his Charles VIII. of France, being admitted as a horse, **) in the jaws of or rather above the friend with his whole army, which soon after pass, which was between the lake and the conquered the kingdom of Naples, thought to present road, and most probably close to master them, the people taking arms, struck Borghetto, just under the lowest of the "tusuch a terror into him, that he was glad to de- muli." ***) On a summit to the left, above part upon such conditions as they thought fit to the road, is an old circular ruin which the peaimpose. Machiavel reports, that in that time sants call "the Tower of Hannibal the CarthaFlorence alone, with the Val d'Arno, a small ginian." Arrived at the highest point of the territory belonging to that city, could, in a few road, the traveller has a partial view of the hours, by the sound of a bell, bring together fatal plain which opens fully upon him as he 135,000 well-armed men; whereas now that city, descends the Gualandra. He soon finds himself with all the others in that province, are brought in a vale inclosed to the left and in front and to such despicable weakness, emptiness, poverty behind him by the Gualandra-hills, bending and baseness, that they can neither resist the round in a segment larger than a semicircle, oppressions of their own prince, nor defend him and running down at each end to the lake, which or themselves if they were assaulted by a foreign obliques to the right and forms the chord of this enemy. The people are dispersed or destroyed, mountain-arc. The position cannot be guessed and the best families sent to seek habitations in at from the plains of Cortona, nor appears to be Venice, Genoa, Rome, Naples, and Lucca. This so completely inclosed unless to one who is fairly is not the effect of war or pestilence; they, en- within the hills. It then, indeed, appears "a joy a perfect peace, and suffer no other plague place made as it were on purpose for a snare," than the government they are under." **) From locus insidiis natus. Borghetto is then found the usurper Cosmo down to the imbecil Gaston, to stand in a narrow marshy pass close to the we look in vain for any of those unmixed qua- hill and to the lake, whilst there is no other lities which should raise a patriot to the com- outlet at the opposite turn of the mountains than mand of his fellow-citizens. The Grand-Dukes, through the little town of Pasignano, which is and particularly the third Cosmo, had operated pushed into the water by the foot of a high rocky so entire a change in the Tuscan character, acclivity. +) There is a woody eminence that the candid Florentines in excuse for some branching down from the mountains into the imperfections in the philanthropic system of upper end of the plain nearer to the side of Leopold, are obliged to confess that the sovereign Passignano, and on this stands a white village was the only liberal man in his dominions. Yet called Torre. Polybius seems to allude to this that excellent prince himself had no other no-eminence as the one on which Hannibal encamption of a national assembly, than of a body to represent the wants and wishes, not the will of the people.

An earthquake reel'd unheededly away! [p. 44. St. 63. "And such was their mutual animosity, so intent were they upon the battle, that the earthquake, which overthrew in great part many of

*) Cosmus Medices, Decreto Publico, Pater Patria.

**) On Government, chap. 11. sect. XXVI. Sidney is, together with Locke and Hoadley, one of Mr. Hume's "despicable" writers.

ed and drew out his heavy armed Africans and Spaniards in a conspicuous position. From this spot he dispatched his Balearic and light

*) Tantusque fuit ardor animorum, adeo intentus pugnæ animus, ut eum terræ motum, qui multarum urbium Italiæ magnas partes prostravit, avertitque cursu rapido amnes, mare fluminibus invexit, montes lapsu ingenti proruit, nemo_pugnantium senserit." LIV. xxii. 12.

**) Equites ad ipsas fauces saltus tumulis apte tegentibus locat. Liv. XXII. 4. ****) Übi maxime montes Cortonenses Thrasimenus subit. Ibid.

†) Inde colles assurgunt. Ibid.

the Perugian lake. Flaminius is unknown; but the postilions on that road have been taught to show the very spot where il Console Romano was slain. Of all who fought and fell in the battle of Thrasimene, the historian himself has, besides the generals and Maharbal, preserved indeed only a single name. You overtake the Carthaginian again on the same road to Rome. The antiquary, that is, the hostler of the posthouse at Spoleto, tells you that his town repulsed the victorious enemy, and shows you the gate still called Porta di Anibale. It is hardly worth while to remark that a French travel - writer, well known by the name of the President Dupaty, saw Thrasimene in the lake of Bolsena, which lay conveniently on his way from Sienna to Rome.

armed troops round through the Gualandra-only ancient name remembered on the banks of heights to the right, so as to arrive unseen and form an ambush amongst the broken acclivities which the road now passes, and to be ready to act upon the left flank and above the enemy, whilst the horse shut up the pass behind. Fiaminius came to the lake near Borghetto at sunset; and, without sending any spies before him, marched through the pass the next morning before the day had quite broken, so that he perceived nothing of the horse and light troops above and about him, and saw only the heavy armed Carthaginians in front on the hill of Torre. *) The Consul began to draw out his army in the flat, and in the mean time the horse in ambush occupied the pass behind him at Borghetto. Thus the Romans were completely inclosed, having the lake on the right, the main army on the hill of Torre in front, the Gualandra-hills filled with the light-armed on their left flank, and being prevented from receding by the cavalry, who, the farther they alvanced, stopped up all the outlets in the rear. A fog rising from the lake now spread itself over the army of the Consul, but the high lands were in the sun-shine, and all the different corps in ambush looked towards the hill of Torre for the order of attack. Hannibal gave the signal, and moved down from his post on the height. At the same moment all his troops on the eminences, behind and in the flank of Flaminius, rushed forwards as it were with one accord into the plain. The Romans, who were forming their array in the mist, suddenly heard the shouts of the enemy amongst them, on every side, and before they could fall into their ranks, or draw their swords, or see by whom they were attacked, felt at once that they were surrounded and lost.

There are two little rivulets which run from the Gualandra into the lake. The traveller crosses the first of these at about a mile after he comes into the plain, and this divides the Tuscan from the Papal territories. The second, about a quarter of a mile further on, is called "the bloody rivulet," and the peasants point out an open spot to the left between the "Sanguinetto" and the hills, which, they say, was the principal scene of slaughter. The other part of the plain is covered with thick set olive-trees in corn-grounds, and is no where quite level except near the edge of the lake. It is, indeed, most probable that the battle was fought near this end of the valley, for the six thousand Romans who, at the beginning of the action, broke through the enemy, escaped to the summit of an eminence which must have been in this quarter, otherwise they would have had to traverse the whole plain and to pierce through the main army of Hannibal.

The Romans fought desperately for three hours, but the death of Flaminius was the signal for a general dispersion. The Carthaginian horse then burst in upon the fugitives, and the lake, the marsh about Borghetto, but chiefly the plain of the Sanguinetto and the passes of the Gualandra, were strewed with dead. Near some old walls on a bleak ridge to the left above the rivulet many human bones have been repeatedly found, and this has confirmed the pretensions and the name of the "stream of blood."

Every district of Italy has its hero. In the north some painter is the usual genius of the place, and the foreign Julio Romano more than divides Mantua with her native Virgil. **) To the south we hear of Roman names. Near Thrasimene tradition is still faithful to the fame of an enemy, and Hannibal the Carthaginian is the

*) A tergo et super caput decepere insidiæ. Liv, **) About the middle of the XIIth century the coins of Mantua bore on one side the image and figure of Virgil.

But thou, Clitumnus!

[p. 44. St. 66.

No book of travels has omitted to expatiate on the temple of the Clitummus, between Foligno and Spoleto; and no site, or scenery, even in Italy, is more worthy a description.

Charming the eye with dread,—a matchless
[p. 45. St. 71.

cataract.

I saw the "Cascata del marmore" of Terni twice, at different periods; once from the summit of the precipice, and again from the valley below. The lower view is far to be preferred, if the traveller has time for one only; but in any point of view, either from above or below, it is worth all the cascades and torrents of Switzerland put together; the Staubbach, Reichenbach, Pisse - Vache, fall of Arpenaz, are rills in comparative appearance. Of the fall of Schaffhausen I cannot speak, not yet having seen it.

An Iris site, amidst the infernal surge. [p. 45. St. 72. Of the time, place, and qualities of this kind of Iris the reader may see a short account in a note to Manfred. The fall looks so much like "the hell of waters" that Addison thought the descent alluded to by the gulph in which Alecto plunged into the infernal regions. It is singular enough that two of the finest cascades in Europe should be artificial-this of the Velino, and the one at Tivoli. The traveller is strongly recommended to trace the Velino, at least as high as the little lake called Pie' di Lup. The Reatine territory was the Italian Tempe, *) and the ancient naturalist, amongst other beautiful varieties, remarked the daily rainbows of the lake Velinus. **)

The thundering lauwine. [p. 45. St. 73.
In the greater part of Switzerland the ava-
lanches are known by the name of lauwine.
-I abhorr'd

Too much, to conquer for the poet's sake,
The drill'd dull lesson, forced down word by word.
[p. 45. St. 75.

These stanzas may probably remind the reader of Ensign Northerton's remarks: "D-n Homo," but our reasons for our dislike are not exactly the same. I wish to express that we become tired of the task before we can comprehend the beauty; that we learn by rote before we can get by heart; that the freshness is worn away, and the future pleasure and advantage deadened and destroyed by the didactic anticipation, at an age when we can neither feel nor understand the power of compositions which it requires an acquaintance with life, as well as Latin and

*) Reatini me ad sua Tempe duxerunt. CICERO, epist. ad Attic. iv. 15.

**) "In eodem lacu nullo non die apparere arcus." PLIN. Hist. Nat. 11. 42.

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