We have knelt down and said one prayer,
And sung one vesper strain-

My thoughts are dim with clouds of care:
Tell me those words again!

"Life hath been heavy on my head;
I come, a stricken deer,

Bearing the heart, 'midst crowds that bled,
To bleed in stillness here.

She gazed, till thoughts that long had slept
Shook all her thrilling frame-

She fell upon his neck, and wept,

And breathed her brother's name.

"Her brother's name! and who was he,
The weary one, th' unknown,
That came, the bitter world to flee,
A stranger to his own?

He was the bard of gifts divine,

To sway the hearts of men;

He of the song for Salem's shrine,

He of the Sword and Pen."*

But Tasso could not enjoy the quiet happiness of his own early home. He sighed for the Court of Ferrara, began again to petition the Duke that he might return, and finally set off for his old sphere of triumph and of suffering. But the poet found himself neglected by his former patrons, and infuriated by his treatment. he published his feelings with bitter contempt, retracting the praise he had once bestowed upon the House of Este, and in the most unguarded and indignant language expressing his feelings. But that was not the time or the place for unlicensed liberty of speech. It was the sixteenth century, and he was in the dominions of an absolute Italian prince. The consequences might have been easily predicted. The Duke ordered Tasso to be treated as lunatic, and confined in the Hospital of St. Anne. Again comes up the question as to the reality of Tasso's madWe confes we do not believe it. Genius is often on the verge of insanity, and so it probably was with him. His health was impaired, his love slighted, his glorious talents treated with contempt by sneering courtiers, and the romance of life was gone. With a mind then, thus clouded by the gloom of suspicion, and at times giving way to despair, is it any wonder that there were symptoms of what to the commonplace world looked like insanity?

ness.

* Mrs. Hemans.

Had he entered the hospital sound in mind, there was enough in that abode of human wretchedness to have turned the brain of the persecuted poet. What a picture does he himself give of his condition! "My melancholy," says he, "increases through the fear of continual imprisonment, and the indignities which I suffer increase. The squalidness and dust of my beard, of my hair, and of my dress, greatly annoy me; and above all, solitude, my cruel and natural enemy, afflicts me." Yet thus Tasso languished in imprisonment for seven long and weary years.

Reader! if ever you visit Ferrara, you will find the dungeon of Tasso one of the show places of the city, and you will wonder that for so long a time life could have existed there. It is low and dark, and lighted only by a grated window, sunk several feet below the surface of the ground, and filled with unwholesome damps which stain the walls. In the darkened corner a mark will be shown you on the wall, where we are told, his chains were riveted. As Shelley wrote, in his strong sympathy for his brother poet; It is a horrible abode for the coarsest and meanest thing that ever wore the shape of man, much more for one of delicate sensibilities and elevated fancies." Yet to this vile dungeon for centuries genius has come as to a pilgrims shrine, and we still find written on its walls the names of Byron, Rogers, Casimir Delavigne, and Lamartine.

In this melancholy abode the mind of Tasso seems to have preserved all its force and brilliancy and his genius showed the same glow of fancy that it had in his days of health and liberty. One piece after another, written thus in his confinement, was exhibited at the Court of Ferrara, as being the strongest proofs of his sanity, but his persecutor was inexorable. He himself addressed canzonets to his enemies imploring relief, but in vain.

If his ambitious love for the Princess Leonora had been any reason for his imprisonment, that cause in the second year was removed by her death. In the annals of the House of Este, the decease is thus recorded:-" On the 10th of February, 1581, died the Princess Leonora, daughter of Duke Hercules II. who preferred a life of celibacy." And but for the despised and suffering poet, this would have been the only remembrance left of her existence. These few lines in a forgotten chronicle would

have been her utmost space in the memory of mankind. All recollection of her rank and beauty would long since have perished. Yet the genius of Tasso has given her everlasting renown. The world is familiar with her name, and long as the Italian language lasts it shall live as one whom the first poet of that bright land loved, "not wisely, but too well." Well then has he redeemed his own pledge made in the consciousness of his

power

"To Scythia and to Lybia's sands thy name

Shall fly, in triumph borne, upon my lays,

And arms, and war, and heroes find their fame
Rivalled by Modesty and Beauty's praise."

It fulfils the prophecy which in his "Lament of Tasso," Lord Byron places in the poet's mouth

Yes, Leonora ! it shall be our fate

To be entwined forever; but too late!"

But how was Tasso affected by the death of her who for seventeen years had been the star that guided him—the object of his passionate idolatry? We know not, for no line of his records his feelings. The courtly poets of Ferrara all sung her praises, but no elegy came from the pen of him who when she was living had given immortality to the fame of her beauty. Yet why was this? Laura was commemorated by Petrach in a hundred sonnets; why then on a similar occasion was Tasso silent? Serassi ascribes it in one place to the jealousy of Ducchi, who collected the poems of Tasso, and then in another place intimates that the poet had ceased to love her, because she had shown so little interest in his sufferings. What miserable judges of the human heart! How much more eloquent is Tasso's silence than the studied praises of his brother poets! Leonora had been for years enshrined in "his heart of hearts," and now that she was gone should he profane her name by joining the crowd of courtly flatterers? His crushed and bleeding heart shrank from the thought, and in that dark and solitary cell he probably wept those bitter tears which were the noblest tribute to her memory.

Four years more passed away, and the unhappy poet was liberated. But the object of his life was gone. Ferrara was filled only with bitter memories, and he spent the rest of his days wandering between Rome and Naples. It was in the former city that his end overtook him, and amid its mouldering ruins the

heroic poet of Italy felt the shadows of the grave gathering about him. Yet it was in the hour of his triumph. The homage of Italy was given to his genius, and the Pope and Senate decreed to him the honor of being crowned in the Capitol with the laurel crown, as Petrarch and others had been before him. Yet he was not destined to wear the promised wreath. The hand of sickness was on him, and he felt that his mortal career was run. And is it not often thus with the prizes of this world?

"The boon for which we grasp in vain,
If hardly won at length, too late made ours
When the soul's wing is broken, comes like rain
Withheld till evening, on the stately flowers
Which wither'd in the noontide, ne'er again
To lift their heads in glory. So doth Earth
Breathe on her gifts, and melt away their worth.
The sailor dies in sight of that green shore,
Whose fields, in slumbering beauty, seemed to lie
On the deep's foam, amidst its hollow roar
Call'd up to sunlight by his fantasy-

And when the shining desert-mists that wore

The lake's bright semblance, have been all pass'd by,
The pilgrim sinks beside the fountain wave,

Which flashes from its rock, too late to save."*

Day after day the disease advanced, until Tasso desired that he might be removed to the monastery of Saint Onofrio. There the monks tended him, and in their company and religious conversation he prepared for his great change. In his last hours, his patron, Cardinal Cinzio, arrived, with the Pope's benediction, when the dying poet exclaimed-" This is the crown with which I hope to be crowned, not as a poet in the Capitol, but with the glory of the blessed in Heaven." And thus the gifted author of "Gerusalemme Liberata" breathed his last. You may now visit the venerable convent, and from the terraces of its garden, where Tasso used to sit, you can look as he did over the glory of Rome. Then enter the cloisters, and the monks will show you the room where he died, while in the church is a plain marble slab, bearing the simple inscription

TORQUATI TASSO OSSA.

But we have too far extended these " Musings in Ferrara." And yet these are the only thoughts which to us consecrate these old Italian cities. Ariosto and Tasso! in comparison with these

* Mrs. Hemans.

hallowed names how sink into insignificance the petty sovereigns of Este! Their house has vanished from the world's history, and the last of the race-he who persecuted the poet that immortalized him-reaped his earthly retribution. Alphonso survived the affections of his dependants, and deserted by them at his death, was interred without princely or even decent honors. His last wishes were neglected, and his testament cancelled. His kinsman, Don Cæsar, to whom his sceptre should have passed, was deprived of his dominions by the Pope, and shrinking from the excommunication of the Vatican, gave up his inheritance with scarcely a struggle. Thus, Ferrara passed away from the House of Este. And now, except for these recollections, what interest is there in the half deserted city of Ferrara!

"Tasso is their glory and their shame :

Hark to his strain! and then survey his cell!
And see how dearly earned 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
Scattered 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."