FERRARA.

Città sin' ora a riverire assorgo,
L'amor, la cortesia, la gentilezza
De' tuoi signori, e gli onorati pregi
.Dei cavalier, dei cittadini egregi.

ARIOSTO.

Ils arrivèrent ensemble à Ferrare, l'une des villes d'Italie les plus tristes, car elle est à la fois vaste et deserte; le peu d'habitans qu'on y trouve marchent lentement, comme s'ils etaient assurés d'avoir du temps pour tout. On ne peut concevoir comment c'est dans ces mêmes lieux que la cour la plus brillante a existé, celle que fut chantée par l'Arioste et le Tasse.

DE STAEL.

It is the high privilege of genius to confer an undying interest upon the meanest spot which its presence has sanctified. Ferrara, sinking from her former lofty rank amongst the cities of Italy, possesses, amid the weeds which have crept over her streets, and the ruins which defile her churches and her palaces, a solitary grace and a grandeur which intellectual associations only can bestow. The prison of Tasso and the house of Ariosto are shrines before which the stranger-pilgrims of all nations bend in devotion.

While thou, Ferrara! when no longer dwell
The ducal chiefs within thee, shalt fall down,
And crumbling piecemeal view thy hearthless halls,

A poet's wreath shall be thine only crown,

A poet's dungeon thy most far renown,

While strangers wonder o'er thy unpeopled walls!

Tasso has indeed made

a temple of his cell,

Which nations yet shall visit for his sake:

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for amongst the different objects of interest which Ferrara presents, none can compete with the cell in which the poet was confined, in the hospital of St. Anna. "As misfortune," says Lord Byron, " has a greater interest for posterity and little or none for the cotemporary, the cell where Tasso was confined, in the hospital of St. Anna, attracts a more fixed attention than the residence or the monument of Ariosto-at least it had this effect on me." Over the entrance of the cell the traveller reads the following inscription.

Rispettate, O posteri, la celebrità di questa stanza, dove Torquato Tasso infermo piu di tristezza che delirio, detenuto demorò anni vII., mesi 11., scrisse versi e prose, e fu rimesso in libertà ad instanza della città di Bergamo, nel giorno vi., Luglio 1586."

ment.

Tradition (which, in Italy especially, is ever careful in tracking the footsteps of genius) has assigned this little chamber as the original place of the poet's confineThe cell, which is nine paces long, between four and six wide, and seven feet high, is below the ground floor of the hospital, and is dimly lighted through a grated window. To the narrow bounds of this dungeon did the Duke of Ferrara consign the poet who

revell'd amongst men and things divine, And pour'd his spirit over Palestine ;

and with the brand of shame

Stamp'd madness deep into his memory.

The inscription is incorrect, not only in stating that the poet owed his liberation to the city of Bergamo, but also in assigning the same cell as the place of the poet's imprisonment during the whole of his cruel confinement. He was incarcerated within its walls only from March, 1579, to December, 1580, when he was placed in a more commodious apartment, where, to use his own expression, he could philosophise and walk about. Subsequently, his imprisonment was rendered still less strict, and he was occasionally permitted to leave his prison during the day. The causes which led to the confinement of the poet have been the subject of much controversy, but it appears most probable, that the freedom with which he spoke of the duke and his court was the true ground of his punishment. The subject has been ably discussed by Mr. Hobhouse, in his Illustrations of the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold, and by Mr. Wiffen, in the Life prefixed to his excellent Translation of the Jerusalem.

"Historians," says Ugo Foscolo, "will be ever embarrassed to explain aright the reasons of Tasso's imprisonment; it is involved in the same obscurity as the exile of Ovid. Both were among those thunder-strokes that despotism darts forth. In crushing their victims they terrified them, and reduced spectators to silence. There are incidents in courts that, although known to many persons, remain in eternal oblivion-contemporaries dare not reveal, and posterity can only divine them." The misfortunes of the poet have given rise to one of the most beautiful efforts of Lord Byron's muse, "the Lament of Tasso," as well as to some of the most powerful stanzas in the fourth canto of Childe Harold.

Ferrara! in thy wide, and grass-grown streets,
Whose symmetry was not for solitude,

There seems as 'twere a curse upon the seats
Of former sovereigns, and the antique brood
Of Este, which for many an age made good
Its strength within thy walls, and was of yore
Patron or tyrant, as the changing mood

Of petty power impell'd, of those who wore
The wreath which Dante's brow alone had worn before.

And Tasso is their glory and their shame.
Hark to his strain! and then survey his cell;
And see how dearly earn'd Torquato's fame,
And where Alfonso bade his poet dwell:
The miserable despot could not quell

The insulted mind he sought to quench, and blend
With the surrounding maniacs, in the hell
Where he had plunged it. Glory without end
Scatter'd the clouds away-and on that name attend

The tears and praises of all time; while thine
Would rot in its oblivion-in the sink
Of worthless dust, which from thy boasted line
Is shaken into nothing; but the link
Thou formest in his fortunes bids us think

Of thy poor malice, naming thee with scorn-
Alfonso! how thy ducal pageants shrink

From thee! if in another station born,

Scarce fit to be the slave of him thou mad'st to mourn.

In the public library of Ferrara, founded so late as the year 1740, are preserved some inestimable relics of Tasso -an autograph copy of the Jerusalem, several letters written by the poet during his confinement in the hospital of St. Anna, and his last will. The letters and the testament have been published by Mr. Hobhouse, in his Historical Illustrations of the Fourth Canto of Childe