allowed himself so long to be "a fable to | dar, then in use. With that mixture of the populace," but his verses went to swell the amount of the fame which he prized so dearly; and it was no unmeaning allegory by which he identified the Laura of his affections with the laurel to which her name bore affinity; as Dante before him had identified his Beatrice with the vision of eternal Blessedness. And while we are just touching on this vexed subject of allegory, let us briefly advert to an objection brought forward, not without plausibility, against the reali ty of Petrarch's love altogether. In our Essay on Dante, we alluded to Professor Rossetti's remark upon the constant practice of the love-poets of this time, of referring the first sight of their mistress, or other marked epochs of their passion, to certain days in the holy week. We there observed that it was by no means improbable that they figuratively ascribed the character of a holy day to the days thus really consecrated in their memory, for example, that that day might have been called by them Easter Day, which awoke their soul to a new life; not, perhaps, very reverently, according to our present no. tions, but consistently enough with the mystical turn of thought then in fashion. But what is to be made of the sixth of April, the day of the month expressly assigned by Petrarch both for his first sight of Laura, and for her death? a coincidence of fact possible, no doubt, but, it must be owned, highly suspicious, all things considered. We find that the sixth of April was somehow a marked date with more than one mystic writer of those times. It has been calculated that the Wednesday before Easter, when Dante's supposed journey began, fell on a sixth of April. Professor Rossetti cites a curious work by Bartolo, a cotemporary and friend of Petrarch, representing a supposed legal prosecution before the tribunal of Christ; the accuser being the devil, the defender the Virgin Mary, and human nature the subject of prosecution. The cause is decided against the devil, and Bartolo dates the sentence April sixth. Rossetti's conclu sion is, that Petrarch's love and his Laura's existence were nothing but a political allegory, couched in symbolical references to the Holy Week. We think, on the other hand, that some reason is discoverable for the lover's mysticism in the fact that the sixth of April happens to have been the "Lady Day" of the old calen fact and fancy which was then customary, it seems likely enough that the festival consecrated to the honor of the Virgin Mary should have been assumed as allegorically marking the birth and death of a poet's love, allowing the love itself to have been real. Here, too, would be a reason why, in an extravaganza like Bartolo's, which tends especially to the glory of the Virgin, the sixth of April should be chosen as the supposed moment of her triumph. As it is our object in these pages rather to sketch Petrarch's life and character than to criticise his literary merits, we shall not attempt any special examination of his sonnets and canzoni with reference to their beauties or defects; but to one point of a literary nature we would direct attention, and that is, the profusion of verbal elaboration which distinguishes them from the more meager productions of antecedent Troubadours. The change began, in a marked manner, with Dante; the conscious cultivation of the style, as apart from the subject-matter of a poem. There is a remark by Coleridge which bears upon this subject. "There was a passion and a miracle of words," he says, "in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, after the long slumber of language in barbarism, which gave an almost romantic character, a virtuous quality and power, to what we read in a book, independently of the thoughts or images contained in it." The tendency is first perceptible in the universities, where, before the close of the twelfth century, professors of grammar had begun to be appointed, in addition to those who taught the sciences of jurispru dence and theology. By degrees it bore fruit in the belles-lettres. Dante's master, Brunetto Latini, gave as a reason for composing his most celebrated work, the Trésor, in French, that that language was the "most delectable" as well as the most generally known. Dante himself, besides writing a treatise on language, alludes in his great poem more than once to his own poetical style. Petrarchi's Italian poems abound with references to his "stile," and the applause it had gained him in the world. He says, when lamenting in one of his sonnets the death of Laura, that if he had known how much his verses would have been admired, he would have made them, "In numero più spesse, in stil più rare." 1861.] Though on another occasion he declares It is the second part of Petrarch's canzoniere, composed after Laura's death, which most touches and interests the reader. While Laura lives, the fancy of the Troubadour expends itself on praises of her hair, her eyes, or incidents of word or look; on lamentations which we feel to be unmanly; on longings which, however delicately expressed, it would be sin to gratify. After her death, we feel a rev erent sympathy for the mourner on whom the one great sorrow of humanity has fallen. However purposeless his adoration of the living Laura, we feel that she was indeed the light of his heart, and that the darkness he now laments is not feigned, but real. A poet of our own days has consecrated the memory of his early and passionate friendship by a poetical In Memoriam of twenty years' reminiscence. Why, then, doubt the genuineness of the emotion which dictated that earlier In Memoriam, the lament of Petrarch after his twenty years' worship of the fair one of Avignon? It is beside our purpose to pass in review here the exceeding beauties of this portion of Petrarch's poems; the human grief, the divine consolations, all so exquisitely portrayed that there is hardly a mourner of modern times but must find his very heart's chords struck by that master hand. But the poet's devotion to his lost mistress reserved itself for yet another effort, which he doubtless hoped at one time to make a crowning monument of his genius and his love, in a manner something similar to Dante's great poem, of which he borrowed the rhythm-that of the terza rima. The Trionfi di Francesco Petrarca in Vita ed in Morte di Madonna Laura, are the work of his old age. They consist of six books, divided into parts, or capitoli; one book treating of the Triumph of Love, the others of the Triumphs of Chastity, Death, Fame, Time, and Divinity, in succession. The poet imagines himself to witness, as in a vision, the concourse of mortals who have passed their probation on earth, and who by their lives and characters have illustrated the victory of one or the other principle. Laura is the key-note of the whole In the "Triumph of Love" poem. she appears beside him, and brings to Not like a flame quenched by some sudden force, But one that, self-consumed its light hath spent: E'en to the end, life held its wonted course. "Call her not pale, though whiter than the flakes Fast dropping, on a breathless winter's day O'er some hill side: her last repose she takes As one o'erwearied with a toilsome way. "Like softest slumber on her eyelids lying, When the freed spirit took its homeward flight, This was to die-the senseless call it dyingIn her bright aspect, Death itself seemed bright." Then follows the not less touching recital of the supposed interview between himself and Laura in the world of spirits, in which he consoles himself for all the sorrows of the past by imagining the confession of her love from her own lips. The passage is long, but with some omissions we feel impelled to insert it here. He supposes that in the night succeeding Laura's death he beholds her in a dream. She moves toward him "And that hand which I used so to long for, she proffered, while thus she spoke and sighed: "Dost thou recognize her who withdrew thy steps from the highway of the world when as thy youthful heart first became devoted to her?" And with a pensive and reverent mien she seated herself, and made me sit beside her on a bank overshadowed by a beech-tree and a laurel. "And how should I not know my heart's 'Oh! tell me, divinity?' I replied, with tears. art thou dead, or art thou living indeed?' "I live: 'tis thou whom death still holds,' she replied, and will hold until the last hour comes, which shall release thee from earth. But time is short, and long is all our hearts would say; wherefore be warned, and restrain thy speech within the limits which day will soon impose upon us.' "Then I resumed. At the end of that term | burnt equally within us both: but the one which men call life, tell me, for thou hast tasted sought display, the other concealment. Grief it, is it such grievous pain to die?' is not the lighter for being repressed; nor is it the heavier for the language of complaint. . . My heart was with thee: my eyes only I withheld. Dost thou murmur because I gave thee the better part, and denied the less? "She replied: "While thou followest the opinion of the vulgar herd, never canst thou be happy. To noble spirits, death is the end of a dark captivity; but to others, whose thoughts are buried in the slime of earth, it causes woe. My death, which so afflicts thy heart, would verily make thee rejoice, couldst thou but feel a thousandth part of the bliss that is mine!' | and saying this, she fixed her eyes devoutly on heaven. She was silent: and I continued: 'But tyrants, and mortal maladies, have made death seem bitter.' 'I can not deny,' she replied, that the sufferings which precede death cause anguish, and still more, thoughts of the terrors of eternity. But once the soul is comforted in God, and the heart, worn with cares, finds rest in him, then what is death but one short sigh? . . . . For me, even in the brightest period of my youth, when life was fresh and thy love for me was strongest, even then life seemed bitterness in comparison of that blessed death which has been my portion. Far happier was I during that mortal passage, than an exile returning to the home of his love. Only for thee my heart was grieved.' "Ah! lady,' said I, 'say, by that Faith which was then I doubt not made clear to thee, and is now yet more manifest in the face of Him who seeth all things, did Love ever lead thee to have pity on my long sorrow while yet thou didst not abandon thy pure intent? For thy sweet scorn and thy sweet ire, and the sweet peace written in thine eyes, held my desire in doubt for many years.' Scarce had I uttered these words, when I beheld the lightning of that delicious smile which was wont to gleam like sunshine on my darkened spirit. And smiling, she replied: 'Never was my heart estranged from thee, nor ever will be: but I tempered by my aspect the fierceness of thy flame. There was no other way for the security of our youthful fame. A mother is not less loving for the chastisement she inflicts. . . Many times did my countenance bear the hue of anger, while love was burning in my heart: but with me, passion never quelled the voice of Thus have I led thee on, now hot, now cold, now sad, now joyous, yet safe, at with joy I say it safe, though weary, to this time. 'Could I but think this,' I said trembling, and with tears, rich would be the fruit of all my constancy.' 'O thou of little faith! were it not true, wherefore should I say it?' and with these words a shade of anger passed across her brow. Whether thou wert dear to mine eyes in the world, I reveal not: it is enough to say that the tie which bound my heart was precious: and precious to me also was the fair fame I acquired through thy verse. It was temperance only that I required in thy love. That only was wanting; and while striving by piteous plaints to show me what was always manifest to my eyes, thou laidst bare thy heart to all the world besides. Love reason. all events Thy sweet and holy converse,' I said, 'has cast a softened hue over all my past sorrows. But, oh! to live without thee is very grievous. And therefore, dear lady, I would fain know if I am to follow thee soon, or at greater distance ?' If I augur rightly,' she said, 'thou wilt remain long time on earth without me.'" Yet once more the beloved memory hovers on his lips, and with these lines he closes the Trionfo della Divinità, the last of his poems: "Amid the high Cevennes a stream has birth, Beside whose banks love battled with me long, And still my heart bears record of the strife. Happy the stone that rests on that fair form! Ah! when the spirit hath resumed its robe, If he was blest who saw her once on earth, What will it be to gaze on her in heaven!" As age advanced, and with it many infirmities, the poetical melancholy of Petrarch's mind deepened into much of gloom and weariness. Change of place and constant study, the remedies to which it had been the habit of his life to resort, did not suffice to chase away the dark shadows. Yet peace attended his closing years, which he passed in retreat and domestic comfort at Arqua, near the Euganean hills, under the protection of the Lord of Padua, and in a dwelling the last of many which during his life he had caused to be built for himself. His love of learning attended him to the last. In one of his letters he thus describes his life: "Like a wearied traveler, I quicken my pace in proportion as I approach my journey's end. I read and write night and day: it is my only resource. My eyes are heavy with watching, my hand is wearied with writing, and my heart is worn with care. I desire to be known to posterity: if I can not succeed, I may be known to my own age, or at least to my friends. It would have satisfied me to have known myself; but in that I shall never succeed." The conviction of a sincere Christian spoke in some of his last words: "To philosophize," he said, “is to love wisdom; and true wisdom is Jesus Christ!"* We recur again to the point from which we set out. The problem which his life presents to us in connection with the general features of the times, is that of the influence and admiration acquired by one whose natural position as a man of action was so insignificant, in an age of low culture and turbulent party strife. The solution seems to be, that the world was just beginning to admit the growth of a new power in that intellectual accomplishment which was now for the first time asserting its existence independently of scholastic and conventual fore; and was inclined to ascribe to it more power over the general affairs of mankind than it was really fitted to exercise. The business of our many-sided life is best carried on by division of labor. A mind chiefly wrapt in the sphere of imagination and research is not that calculated to carry on the practical duties of civil polity. His death took place in the seventieth | a softening radiance on the troublous year of his age. It was truly a student's times in which his lot was cast. If his euthanasia. He was found one morning infirmity of purpose, the perpetual battle by his servants, seated in his library, with between his instincts and his reason, disa book open before him, on which his head pose us sometimes to a movement of conwas resting. With him the love of learn- tempt, that feeling is immediately checking had been no child's play, no mere ed by a sense of the pervading goodness pedantic vanity. When we think of his of his character, the loftiness of his aims, labors and achievements, and of the en- and the magnitude of his benefits to the thusiasm with which he describes them, cause of literature. it would seem to have been the one passion of his life, did we not know that he was equally ardent in patriotism and in love. His admiration of Virgil and Cicero was unbounded. We have seen that he attempted to emulate the former in his poem of Africa, of which, however, in later years he entertained the most humiliating estimate. Cicero's character and writings inspired him with a sort of personal affection, to which some similarity of character no doubt contributed. In the eloquent Roman he might recognize his own genial expansiveness of temperament, his ready interest in things great and small, his warmth of friendship, his love of literature, his little vanities, his quick sensitiveness, his unaffected pride in Rome and Italy; and he made Cicero his model in the vast and varied correspondence, literary, political, and familiar, which was the constant habit of his life. His Latin works were numerous, dealing chiefly with subjects of moral philosophy. It shows no small advance on the critical philosophy of his times that he was the first learned man who set on foot a collection of medals and coins as an aid to the study of history, and that he entered with ardor into geographical researches as a means to the same end. His freedom from the prevalent delusions of his day brought him into conflict with astrology, alchemy, and the half-superstitious, half-atheistic opinions maintained by some partisans of Aristotle and Averroes. To recover lost manuscripts of the classics, and to multiply existing ones by transcription, was a neverceasing interest and occupation to him. Personally or by deputy he examined the neglected repositories of distant convents, and went through the labor of transcribing whole volumes with his own hand, that he might be sure of no error creep ing in through the ignorance or carelessness of a hired scribe. On the whole, Petrarch's life is one which reflects honor on himself and sheds Ch' altra potenzia è quella che ascolta, Petrarch's special talents and his weaknesses-perhaps his virtues also--made it impossible for him to correspond in action to the ideal which his compatriots would fain have formed of him. Thus, though he was constantly consulted-so much so as to be called the Oracle of Italy-events, we find, generally speaking, took their course without much respect to his advice. We have seen on a former occasion how frequently Dante was employed on embassies. We meet with the same fact in the life of Petrarch. Doubtless, when the beauties of style first began to be appreciated, more was expected from the magic of eloquence than it is now likely to effect as an engine of business. In our days it is chiefly the cultured classes that are less strongly affected by rhetorical artifice in the fourteenth century sovereigns and nobles were mostly as uncultured as the lower classes are now. It was not in the nature of things that this exaggerated deference to literary merit, or rather this ascription to it of influence in a sphere not properly its own, should continue as mental education became more generally diffused. Petrarch's life marks a transition era. The intellectual leaders of the succeeding age pursued learning with unabated ardor, but sank from the rank of arbiters and oracles of states. A NIGHT IN THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. AFTER proceeding some dis- I had been down in the day, and that, on tance further, the path led rapidly down account of the darkness always existing an inclined plane to a series directly un- in the catacombs, night could not make derlying that with which I had hitherto the least difference, I went on. Having been acquainted. Here a number of works got over the ground that I had been in presented themselves, which were not only the habit of traversing, and there being a apparently of the highest antiquity, but considerable distance to go, through paswere in other respects particularly illustra- sages with which I was previously quite tive of the work on which I was engaged. unacquainted, I deemed it most prudent to I was in a dilemma; I could not bring commence operations by assuring myself myself to neglect the valuable material beyond the possibility of a doubt that I thus brought unexpectedly to my notice; knew my way. I therefore made notes but my stay in Rome was limited to a few in my sketch-book, of distances, and of hours only-till the next day at furthest; such objects as lay in my way that might and it being now late in the afternoon, I serve as land-marks. I also took care to determined to get the studies I wanted mark which passage I was to take out of by passing the night in the catacombs. several that converged on one spot, each Some objections were made by the custode, one as like the other as possible. I then on the score of the regulations, and the counted the number of passages, right and danger of the fever, (la febre ;) but these left, and especially noted the position of a yielding to the usual argument, it was ar- yawning well, or chasm, that lay without ranged that I should commence my opera- parapet right across the path, and which, tions immediately, and be called for by to judge from the time that elapsed before the man in charge at an early hour in the a stone reached the bottom, must have morning. Having provided myself with been sixty or one hundred feet deep. candles to last the required time, a box | Then there was the inclined plane to be of lucifer matches, and adjusted other pre-marked, that led down through no end of liminaries, I descended. I must confess abrupt turnings and windings, to the series to having felt an undefinable sort of sen- of catacombs below. In particular, I nosation on hearing the door closed and lock-ticed a gleam of cold blue light proceeding ed behind me, and finding myself alone in the long, dark passages-the only living being amidst the thousands of dead lying around. I had certainly often been down before without feeling any thing of the kind; but then it was in the daytime, and I carried with me the usual workingday tone of thought and enterprise; but now the night was rapidly approaching, and I felt myself cut off in a peculiar manner from the rest of the world I hesitated a moment; but remembering how often | from some fissure or aperture communi cating with the upper air-the sky itself was not visible, but the chimney-like aperture, widening as it descended, caught a few gleams of light on its projections, and on the cryptogamous plants that lined its sides. Having carefully noted all these things, and especially the position of a long tier of open graves, in which the human remains were in a remarkable state of preser vation, I saw a grim-looking picture of a saint, that seemed to keep watch over |