those distinguished foreigners whom it might afterwards be an honor to have seen.

Unusually well informed beforehand respecting the geography, history, and social condition of Italy, and incalculably assisted by his familiarity with the language, Milton pressed southward by rapid stages towards the central and more interesting portions of the Italian peninsula. From Nice the coasting packet carried him to Genoa, where he tarried for a little, admiring the beauties of the bay, and observing "the proud palaces in and about, whereof there are two hundred within two miles of the town, and no two of them of the same form of building." At Genoa he also came first in contact with the swarms of lazzaroni or beggars, who then as now infested the country, affording a pathetic proof of its political mismanagement.

From Genoa Milton sailed by packet to Leghorn, from whence he passed inland some fourteen miles, to the ancient town of Pisa. Here he spent several delightful days viewing the gems of Pisan art. Once or twice during that time he ascended the old belfry, or lean

ing tower, from whose dizzy height he surveyed the surrounding country, and cast his eyes far out over the Tuscan sea.

From Pisa he went forty-five miles further inland, up the course of the Arno, to Florence, then as now the most charming city in Christendom. Here, as he himself informs us, Milton remained two months.

Much as he loved the whole of Italy, Milton felt a peculiar affection for Florence. Its history ran back to days that were legendary even to Dante. It contained the churches of Santa Croce, San Lorenzo, and many more. The Palazzo Vecchio, an old structure identified with the days of the republic, still reared its hoary walls. The city was synonymous with art and poetry. The grandest masters had here lived and wrought. Florence had witnessed the marvels of Angelo's chisel and the rich frescoes of his pencil. There was the Laurentian library, an immense collection of rare manuscripts, brought together by the princely Medici, when that illustrious house led the revival of learning. Here was the Baptistry in which Dante broke the carved

font in his haste to save a drowning child. Here was Dante's house. Here was the cell, in San Marco, of Savanarola; and here rested at that very time the telescopes of Galileo, upon whose living face Milton was fortunate enough to look. The chosen haunt of belleslettres scholarship and the fine arts, the very air was lovesick with music and poetry.

Milton's whole visit was one continued ovation. Into the living society of the city, at that time peculiarly agreeable and learned, he found instant and cordial admission, making friends to whom he continued life-long attached. "There immediately," he says, "I contracted acquaintance of many noble and learned men, whose private academies alsowhich are an institution of most praiseworthy effect, both for the cultivation of polite letters and the keeping up of friendships-I assiduously attended. The memory of you, Jacobo Gaddi, of you, Carlo Dati, of you, Frescobaldi, of you, Cattellini, Baumattei, Chimentelli, Francini, and of not a few others, always delightful and pleasant to me, time shall never destroy."

The academies of which Milton here speaks were institutions quite distinct from the universities, great museums, and libraries established in the chief cities of Europe, being nearer akin to what we now call literary clubs and philosophical societies. They originated in the fifteenth century, when Cosmo de Medici founded the "Platonic academy" at Florence for the purpose of reading and discussing the writings of Plato, and when "academies" were established for the same or similar purposes in Rome, Naples, and Venice, that scholars in those cities might get together, read the classic authors, compare manuscripts, and exchange their ideas and information. These institutions spread throughout Italy very speedily, so that at the period of Milton's visit every town of any importance in the peninsula contained several of them, though the academies of Florence and Rome were the most famous. They were precisely the kind of literary nests in which the great Englishman would delight to hide himself; and whatever specimens of his extraordinary powers he may have presented, the Florentine schol

ars soon came to regard him as the prodigy

he was.

Whenever he tired of the debates of the academies, he might stroll by the banks of the Arno, pass contemplatively through the ancient streets, or standing on some bridge, people the past with dusky historic figures, and live in imagination in those fierce days when Florence ordered that Dante to be burned alive whose dust she afterwards begged with vain tears from Ravenna; or most interesting of all, he might pass an hour at Galileo's villa, a little out of Florence, being greeted by the sage, then grown old and blind, with cordial kindness, while upon his part he gazed with reverend attention upon the mien of Italy's most famous son. "There it was," wrote Milton, "that I found and visited the famous Galileo, grown old, a prisoner to the Inquisition for thinking in astronomy otherwise than as the Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought."

Doubtless he wended his way, under the eager escort of one of Galileo's disciples, to the summit of the adjacent observatory, whence