from the wife to whom he gave his early affections; far from the child who has often wept for him in vain. Poor fellow! Why did he not remain at home, cultivating the field, and not come here to die? But we will leave Florence, however much we might wish to dwell upon its beauties and pleasures. We leave the city of Dante and Petrarch, the smiling Arno, the region of Italian poetry, the studios of the artists, and gay, delightful Florence itself, the city of flowers, as its name signifies, and pursue our way north, leaving behind us the gay scenes, in the midst of which we have spent a few delightful days. As we proceed, we go still farther from monkery and priestcraft, in proportion as we leave the Eternal City. We get some little out of the region of relics and rites; away from monks who will work any miracle for a franc, or for two scudi show you a bit of the true cross, the seamless coat, or, what is more ethereal, "A ray, imprimis, of the star that shone To the wise men ; a phial full of sounds, The musical chimes of the great bell that hung O, when will man look up to God, and appeal away from the miserable falsehood of a corrupt hierarchy, to the Truth and the Life, and cast down, in derision and holy zeal, the altars of this sanctified paganism, which has set up its empire in the very shadow of God's throne? XXXIII. BOLOGNA AND FERRARA. WE left Florence, in the diligence, one evening about dusk. As this vehicle was a fair specimen of the whole diligence tribe, I will describe it. We had four horses, as lean and lank as Pharaoh's lean kine, and as hungry, too. The harness was partly of leather, but mostly of rope, rotten as twine, and as clumsy as a bed cord. The diligence itself is a long, cumbersome vehicle, like an omnibus, and would not be tolerated in Yankeeland a half hour. It is divided into different compartments. The cabriolet is an open sort of a chaise on top; the coupe is the forward apartment, will hold four or five persons, and is considered as the best place for observation and ease; the interno, or interior, is an apartment with two seats opposite, like those in a coach, and is in the middle; while below is the rotunda, with two seats opposite, on the sides, like those of an omnibus. These seats will hold two, three, or four persons, according to the size of the vehicle. The baggage is put upon the top of the crazy carriage, and is liable every moment to fall through on to your head. The horses are changed every eight or ten miles, and the postilions leave with the horses. When they leave, they come to the windows of the carriage and demand something for drink, and if you refuse, will curse and swear prodigiously. It generally takes three men, sometimes only two, to get the diligence along. One is the postilion, one a sort of a driver, and the third a conductor. The whole arrangement is cumbrous and awkward, and traveling by it is slow and tedious. In such a contrivance we rode out of Florence, on St. Peter's day, when the boys were playing with powder, and the men were illuminating their houses, in honor of the great apostle. We rode all night, getting what sleep we could, and arrived at Bologna, the city of sausages, the next afternoon. On our way we were subjected to many inconveniences. If we borrowed an old iron pan to drink from, we were expected to pay for it, and we neither ate or drank without a fee, and were haunted by beggars without number. This is, beyond all account, the greatest country in the world to dupe travelers. Two thirds of the people seem to live on others, and the other third get a living I know not how. I was agreeably disappointed in Bologna, it being a much finer city than I supposed. It numbers about seventy thousand inhabitants, and is the second city in the dominions of the pope. Having washed off the dust of travel, secured a good dinner, and beginning to look a little more like human beings, we went out to see the objects of interest. We found our way to the Academy of Fine Arts, where we saw paintings of much merit-so artists say; the Martyrdom of St. Agnes, by Domenichino; the Massacre of the Innocents, by Guido; the Santa Cicilia, by Raphael; and many others. The cathedral at Bologna is a vast unfinished pile, the original plan of which would have made it one hundred feet longer than St. Peter's at Rome. Here, in the Church of San Dominicho, is the tomb of St. Dominic, the founder of the base and bloody Inquisition, for which LL the world curses his memory; also the tomb of the great painter Guido, and several others of much eminence. Here also are two famous leaning towers. They are rude square columns; the highest rises three hundred and sixteen feet, and inclines several feet. This inclination was caused by the settling of the ground in time of an earthquake. The two towers together present a quaint appearance, and what on earth they were erected for none can tell. The cemetery of Bologna is a singular arrangement. It is a vast pile of buildings, and the bodies are buried in niches. Connected with the buildings are inclosed gardens where graves are made. We spent an hour here musing on the brevity and vanity of human life, and then, having wandered over the city, and rode out to the hights of St. Michael, we retired to rest, to dream of home. The next morning we started for Ferrara, at which place we arrived in the afternoon of the same day. As was our custom, we proceeded, without loss of time, to see the town. It was once a fine city, but now is almost deserted, and the grass is growing in the streets. It has some galleries of paintings of merit, through which we ran, without stopping long enough to see any thing to advantage. Every stranger in Ferrara will visit the prison of Tasso, a little cell twenty feet long, and ten feet wide, where he was imprisoned by the duke for aspiring to the hand of his sister, the beautiful Eleanora. The history of Tasso was a sad one. All through life he seemed to be afflicted more than other men. In early life he was separated from his mother by a sad calamity, which he bewailed in his own affecting verse. "Me from my mother's breast, a child, The tears she shed, the kisses wild, She pressed, in her despair, To Heaven for me in air Never, ah! never more was I And feel my full heart beat more high I left her -O the pang severe ! Like young Camilla, or, more drear, Ascanius-like, to trace O'er hill and dale, through bush and brier, But his genius drew friends to his aid, and he became the companion of the nobles, and basked a while in their sunlight, and, at length, for the crime already specified, was thrown into prison by Alphonso. From this prison, where I do not see how any person could have lived long, and where on the walls Byron has scribbled his name, and which he has immortalized by his verse, came forth some of Tasso's choicest poems. One which he wrote to his friend, Scipio Gonzaga, is full of wild, enthusiastic eloquence. "Sure, pity, Scipio, on earth has fled From royal breasts to seek abode in heaven; |