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the great Columbus of the heavens had made his revolutionizing discoveries. He also could gaze upon the moon,

"Whose orb,

Through optic glass, the Tuscan artist views

At evening from the top of Fesole,

Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands,

Rivers, and mountains in her spotty globe."

Milton made no secret of his religion when that subject was broached; and his friends, "with singular politeness," as he afterwards. said, conceded him full liberty of speech upon that delicate matter. They on their part did not conceal their sentiments, which in that bigot age there might have been danger in expressing to an unknown person. “I could recount," he wrote six years later in his "Plea for Unlicensed Printing" in England, "what I have seen and heard in other countries, where this kind of inquisition tyrannizes, when I have sat among their learned menfor that honor I had-and been accounted happy to be born in such a place of philosophic freedom as they supposed England was, while themselves did nothing but bemoan the servile condition into which learning among

them was brought-that this was it which had damped the glory of Italian wits, that nothing had been written there now these many years but flattery and fustian."

After the pleasantest of visits, Milton felt compelled to tear himself away from Florence, greatly to the regret of his many warm friends there, in order to set out for Rome, which city he reached in early October, 1638, when the unhealthy season of the Campagna was safely past.

Here he remained, he tells us, "nearly two months," detained by "the antiquity and ancient renown of the city." In Rome still more than in Florence might he dream of the shadowy past when standing in the capital, in the Coliseum, on the Tarpeian rock, or when visiting the temples, the baths, and the tombs, the monumental wonders, and all the garnered trophies of the spoiler Time.

Yet though the Rome of the past, of the mythical Latin-Etruscan kings, of the republican era, and of the empire, might throng his mind with the thrilling legends of antiquity, he was not so engrossed by it as to be unable to

see and commiserate the shrunken Rome of his own time. Still, "The Eternal City," though discrowned of its ancient glory, was a splendid ruin, and wonderfully rich in artistic beauties. St. Peter's was then but recently completed. There was also the adjacent Vatican. The whole city was flushed with the hues of painting; the public squares were crowded with statuary; the marvels of medieval art were scattered with lavish hand in all quarters— monuments which recalled the earlier and nobler popes, which connected those days with the brilliant episode of Rienzi and the schism.

It has been very plausibly conjectured that these immortal objects may, many of them, be traced in their effect upon Milton's subsequent poetry. The frescoes of Angelo, then fresh in the Sistine chapel, the beauties of the milder canvas of Raphael, the marbles of Bandinelli, who had executed statues of Adam and Eve-all these being illustrative of holy writ-it is not impossible that they did stimulate the mind of Milton, and direct it to the study of those early scenes of the creation which he has

grouped so marvellously in the "Paradise Lost."

In Rome, as in Florence, the young Englishman speedily formed the acquaintance of the most famous characters of the time. The kindness of Holstenius, the learned keeper of the Vatican library, not only opened to his favored eyes that grand but usually closed repository of literature, but introduced him to the friendly attentions of Cardinal Barberini, at that time possessed of the whole delegated sovereignty of Rome by his uncle the reigning pope, Urban VIII.

This prelate treated Milton with marked politeness, giving in his honor a magnificent concert, and bringing him by hand into the assembly. It was upon this occasion that he first listened to the singing of the celebrated Leonora Baroni, the Sontag or Jenny Lind of her age. Passionately fond of music, as we have seen, the beautiful cantatrice made a great impression upon Milton, who evinced his admiration for her vocal talents in two or three Latin epigrams.

In Rome, as in Florence before, several of

the literati addressed eulogistic couplets to the gifted stranger, all of which he amply repaid in kind. Nor was he more cautious in the expression of his views while sojourning in the very centre of intolerant Romanism, than he had been while seated in the more liberal academies of his Florentine friends. Upon all suitable occasions he freely mentioned his religious opinions, provoking by his boldness no little wonder among his associates.

Sometime in November, :1638, the young traveller quitted Rome for Naples, whither he journeyed in company with "a certain eremite friar," a man of some culture, who, upon arriving at the city of their destination, introduced him to that Manso, Marquis of Villa, who had been the constant patron of Tasso, and who, upon the death of that ill-used and unhappy poet, had been his biographer. Manso, who had formerly distinguished himself in the Spanish service, was then in advanced age, 'and with ample means he had returned to his native city to pass the remainder of his days. He received Milton, a poet yet superior to his immortal fellow-countryman and friend, with

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