the
Accademia holds a festa in a little amphitheatre near "Tasso's oak," on
the Janiculum, at which his bust is crowned with laurel. The gardens in
which the seventeenth-century Arcadians disported themselves are now
known among the Romans as _il Bosco Parrasio degli Arcadi_.

Throughout Italy the fame of Vittoria Colonna only deepens with every
succeeding century. Her nobility of character, her lofty spirituality of
life, fitly crowned and perfected her intellectual force and brilliant
gifts. Although from the customs of the time the Marchesa lived much in
convents, she never, in any sense, save that of her fervent piety, lived
the conventual life. Her noble gifts linked her always to the larger
activities, and her gifts and rank invested her with certain demands and
responsibilities that she could not evade. She was one of the messengers
of life, and her place as a brilliant and distinguished figure in the
contemporary world was one that the line of destiny, which pervades all
circumstances and which, in her case, was so marked, absolutely
constrained her to fill. She had that supreme gift of the lofty nature,
the power of personal influence. Her exquisite courtesy and graciousness
of manner, her simple dignity and unaffected sincerity, her delicacy of
divination and her power of tender sympathy and liberal comprehension
all combined to make her the ideal companion, counsellor, and friend, as
well as the celebrity of letters and lyric art.

No poet has more exquisitely touched the friendship between Vittoria
Colonna and Michael Angelo than has Margaret J. Preston, in a poem
supposed to be addressed to the sculptor by Vittoria, in which occur the
lines:--

"We twain--one lingering on the violet verge,
And one with eyes raised to the twilight peaks--
Shall meet in the morn again.

* * * * *

... Supremest truth I gave;
Quick comprehension of thine unsaid thought,
Reverence, whose crystal sheen was never blurred
By faintest film of over-breathing doubt;
... helpfulness
Such as thou hadst not known of womanly hands;
And sympathies so urgent, they made bold
To press their way where never mortal yet
Entrance had gained,--even to thy soul."

This is the _Page de Conti_ that one reads in the air as he sails past
Ischia on the violet sea; and the _chant d'amour_ of the sirens catches
the echo of