CONTENTS. Character of some Antiquaries who have treated of Rome .... A Dissertation on the Destroyers of the City of Rome, and an Account of the gradual disappearance of the Ruins ........... Page Inquiry respecting the Story and the Site of the Temple of the Roman Piety On the Castle of St. Angelo Page ...... 187 190 Roman Catholic Religion, and the Ceremony of the Flagellants.-Probable Effects of Despotism in Italy........... 200 Account of some sepulchral Vases lately discovered in a Rock at Albano...... 207 ESSAY ON THE PRESENT LITERATURE OF ITALY, 221 ...... 306 et seq. LETTERS WRITTEN BY COLA DI RIENZI, Tribune of Rome, never before published, with Translations....... 326 et seq. Fac Simile of Tasso's Hand-writing.... Drawings of the Albano Vases...... HISTORICAL ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE FOURTH CANTO OF CHILDE HAROLD. Stanza XXXI. And 'tis their pride An honest pride-and let it be their praise, THERE is no country which can contend with Italy in the honours heaped upon the great men of past ages: and the present race accuse themselves of living upon the labours of their ancestors, and, as is the usual reproach of heirs, of finding in their transmitted wealth an inducement to inactivity. The territorial divisions and subdivisions which contributed to the emulation of these luminaries themselves, has tended to the preservation of their fame; and the jealousy of each little district guards the altar of its individual divinity, not only as the shrine which is to attract the pilgrims of united Europe, but as the birthright which is to distinguish it amongst the children of the same mother, and exalt it to a preference above its immediate neighbours. Italian rivalry, in default of those contests which employed the arts and arms of the middle ages, now vents itself in the invidious comparison of individual fasti, and in the innocent ostentatious display not of deeds but names. Thus it is that there is scarcely a village in which the traveller is not reminded of the birth, or the residence, or the death, or the deeds of one or more of the offspring of a soil, fruitful in every production, but more especially the land of men. The affection with which even the lower classes appropriate the fame of their departed countrymen is very striking to a foreigner; and such expressions as "our Corregio," and "our Ariosto," in the mouth of a peasant, revive, as it were, not only the memory, but the man himself. When Napoleon made his progress through his Italian dominions, the inhabitants of Reggio received him with a fête, the principal decoration of which was a temple of immortality, painted at the end of a gallery, adorned with a double range of tablets, to the honour of those worthies for whose existence the world had been indebted to the dutchy of Reggio. The pretensions of Reggio may exemplify those of the other provinces of Italy, and the reader may not object to survey the pompous list. Boiardo, Signore di Scandiano, epico, del secolo xv. Guida da Lazara, giureconsulto, del secolo xiii. Ludovico Ariosto, nato a Reggio, da Daria Maleguzi, Reggiana, lirico, comico, satirico, epico, del secolo xiv. Domenicho Toschi, Cardinale, Reggiano, giureconulto, del secolo xvi. Filippo Caroli, Reggiano, giureconsulto, del secolo xiv. Antonio Pacchioni, Reggiano, anatomico, del secolo xvii. Cesare Magati, Scandianese, medico e chirurgo, del secolo xvii. Gianntonio Rocca, Reggiano, matematico, del secolo xvii. Antonio Allegri, detto il Corregio da Corregio, pittore, del secolo xvi. Tomaso Cambiatori, Reggiano, giureconsulto, oratore, poeta, del secolo xvi. Sebastiano Conradi di Arceto, grammatico e critico, del secolo xvi. Lelio Orsi, Reggiano, pittore, del secolo xvi. Vincenzo Cartari, Reggiano, filologo, del secolo xvi. Guido Panciroli, Reggiano, giureconsulto, storico, filologo, del secolo xvi. Ludovico Parisetti, Reggiano, poeta Latino, del secolo xvi. Gasparo Scaroffi, Reggiano, œconomista, del secolo xvi. Luca Ferrari, Reggiano, pittore, del secolo xvii. Domenico Ceccati, da Stiano, scultore ed intagliatore, del secolo xvii. Antonio Vallisnera da Scandiano, medico, naturalista, del secolo xvii. Pelegrino Sallandri, Reggiano, poeta, del secolo xviii. Agostino Parradisi, Reggiano, œconomista, oratore, poeta, del secolo xviii. Francesco Fontanesi, Reggiano, poeta, del secolo xviii. Jacopo Zannoni da Montecchio, botanico, del secolo xvii. Lazari Spalanzani da Scandiano, naturalista, del secolo xviii. Laura Bassi di Scandiano, fisica, del secolo xviii. Carlo Antonioli da Corregio, filologo, del secolo xviii. Stanza XXXVI. And Tasso is their glory and their shame. In the hospital of St. Anna, at Ferrara, they show a cell, over the door of which is the following inscription: Rispettate, O Posteri, la celebrità di questa stanza, dove Torquato Tasso infermo piu di tristezza che delirio, ditenuto dimorà anni vii mesi 11, scrisse verse e prose, e fu rimesso in libertà ad instanza della città di Bergamo, nel giorno vi Luglio 1586. The dungeon is below the ground floor of the hospital, and the light penetrates through its grated window from a small yard, which seems to have been common to other cells. It is nine paces long, between five and six wide, and about seven feet high. The bedstead, so they tell, has been carried off piecemeal, and the door half cut away by the devotion of those whom "the verse and prose" of the prisoner have brought to Ferrara. The above address to posterity was inscribed at the instiga |