ccessive pilgrims in their efforts to get light on them,
that they are now utterly illegible. But if it is uncertain what were
Byron's emotions on visiting the prison of Tasso, there is no doubt
about Lady Morgan's: she "experienced a suffocating emotion; her
heart failed her on entering that cell; and she satisfied a melancholy
curiosity at the cost of a most painful sensation."

I find this amusing fact stated in a translation of her ladyship's
own language, in a clever guide-book called _Il Servitore di Piazza_,
which I bought at Ferrara, and from which, I confess, I have learnt
all I know to confirm me in my doubt of Tasso's prison. The Count
Avventi, who writes this book, prefaces it by saying that he is a
valet de place who knows how to read and write, and he employs these
unusual gifts with singular candor and clearness. No one, he says,
before the nineteenth century, ever dreamed of calling the cellar in
question Tasso's prison, and it was never before that time made the
shrine of sentimental pilgrimage, though it has since been visited by
every traveller who has passed through Ferrara. It was used during the
poet's time to hold charcoal and lime; and not long ago died an old
servant of the hospital, who remembered its use for that purpose. It
is damp, close, and dark, and Count Avventi thinks it hardly possible
that a delicate courtier could have lived seven years in a place
unwholesome enough to kill a stout laborer in two months; while it
seems to him not probable that Tasso should have received there the
visits of princes and other distinguished persons whom Duke Alfonso
allowed to see him, or that a prisoner who was often permitted to ride
about the city in a carriage should have been thrust back into such a
cavern on his return to the hospital. "After this," says our _valet
de place_ who knows how to read and write, "visit the prison of Tasso,
certain that _in the hospital of St. Anna_ that great man was confined
for many years;" and, with this chilly warning, leaves his reader to
his emotions.

I am afraid that if as frank caution were uttered in regard to other
memorable places, the objects of interest in Italy would dwindle sadly
in number, and the _valets de place_, whether they know how to read
and write or not, would be starved to death. Even the learning of
Italy is poetic; and an Italian would rather enjoy a fiction than know
a fact--in which preference I am not ready to pronounce him unwise.
But