crime: and hence the custom in VENICE, a custom that long prevailed, for a cryer to cry out in the Court before a sentence was passed, ‘Ricordatevi del povero MARCOLINI !'*

Great indeed was the lamentation throughout the City; and the Judge, dying, directed that thenceforth and for ever a Mass should be sung every night in a chapel of the Ducal Church for his own soul and the soul of MARCOLINI and the souls of all who had suffered by an unjust judgment. Some land on the BRENTA was left by him for the purpose: and still is the Mass sung in the chapel; still every night, when the great square is illuminating and the casinos are filling fast with the gay and the dissipated, a bell is rung as for a service, and a ray of light seen to issue from a small gothic window that looks toward the place of execution, the place where on a scaffold MARCOLINI breathed his last.

* Remember the poor MARCOLINI!

ARQUA.

THREE leagues from PADUA stands and long has stood (The Paduan student knows it, honours it) A lonely tomb beside a mountain-church;

And I arrived there as the sun declined

Low in the west. The gentle airs, that breathe
Fragrance at eve, were rising, and the birds
Singing their farewell-song-the very song

They sung the night that tomb received a tenant;
When, as alive, clothed in his Canon's stole,
And slowly winding down the narrow path,
He came to rest there. Nobles of the land,
Princes and prelates mingled in his train,
Anxious by any act, while yet they could,
To catch a ray of glory by reflection;

And from that hour have kindred spirits flocked*

* I visited once more,' says Alfieri, the tomb of our

From distant countries, from the north, the south,

To see where he is laid.

Twelve years ago,

When I descended the impetuous RHONE,
Its vineyards of such great and old renown,*
Its castles, each with some romantic tale,
Vanishing fast-the pilot at the stern,
He who had steered so long, standing aloft,
His eyes on the white breakers, and his hands
On what was now his rudder, now his oar,
A huge misshapen plank-the bark itself
Frail and uncouth, launched to return no more,
Such as a shipwrecked man might hope to build,

master in love, the divine Petrarch; and there, as at Ravenna, consecrated a day to meditation and verse.'

He visited also the house; and in the Album there wrote a sonnet worthy of Petrarch himself.

"O Cameretta, che già in te chiudesti

Quel Grande alla cui fama è angusto il mondo,” &c.

Alfieri took great pleasure in what he called his poetical pilgrimages. At the birth-place and the grave of Tasso he was often to be found; and in the library at Ferrara he has left this memorial of himself on a blank leaf of the Orlando Furioso: 'VITTORIO ALFIERI vide e venerò. 18 giugno, 1783.'

* The Côte Rotie, the Hermitage, &c.

Urged by the love of home-Twelve years ago,
When like an arrow from the cord we flew,

Two long, long days, silence, suspense on board,
It was to offer at thy fount, VAUcluse,
Entering the arched Cave, to wander where
PETRARCH had wandered, to explore and sit
Where in his peasant-dress he loved to sit,
Musing, reciting-on some rock moss-grown,
Or the fantastic root of some old beech,
That drinks the living waters as they stream
Over their emerald-bed; and could I now
Neglect the place where, in a graver mood,*
When he had done and settled with the world,
When all the illusions of his Youth were fled,
Indulged perhaps too much, cherished too long,
He came for the conclusion? Half-way up
He built his house,† whence as by stealth he caught,

* This village, says Boccaccio, hitherto almost unknown even at Padua, is soon to become famous through the World; and the sailor on the Adriatic will prostrate himself, when he discovers the Euganean hills. 'Among them,' will he say, 'sleeps the Poet who is our glory. Ah, unhappy Florence! You neglected him-You deserved him not.'

+ ‘I have built, among the Euganean hills, a small house,

Among the hills, a glimpse of busy life

That soothed, not stirred.—But knock, and enter in.

This was his chamber. 'Tis as when he went;

As if he now were in his orchard-grove.

And this his closet.

Here he sat and read.

This was his chair; and in it, unobserved,

Reading, or thinking of his absent friends,
He passed away as in a quiet slumber.

Peace to this region!

Peace to each, to all!

They know his value-every coming step,

That draws the gazing children from their play, Would tell them if they knew not.-But could aught,

decent and proper; in which I hope to pass the rest of my days, thinking always of my dead or absent friends.' Among those still living, was Boccaccio; who is thus mentioned by him in his Will. To Don Giovanni of Certaldo, for a winter-gown at his evening-studies, I leave fifty golden florins; truly little enough for so great a man.'

When the Venetians over-ran the country, Petrarch prepared for flight. Write your name over your door,' said one of his friends, and you will be safe.'-'I am not so sure of that,' replied Petrarch, and fled with his books to Padua. His books he left to the Republic of Venice, laying, as it were, a foundation for the library of St. Mark; but they exist no longer. His legacy to his friend Francis Carrara the Elder, a Madonna painted by Giotto, is still preserved in the cathedral of Padua.