e world."

Two objects specially invited my attention in Ferrara: the one was the
prison of Tasso,--the other the palace of Renee, the Duchess of Ferrara.
Tasso's prison is a mere vault in the courtyard of the hospital of St
Anna, built up at one end with a brick wall, and closed at the other by
a low and strong door. The floor is so damp that it yields to the foot;
and the arched roof is so low that there is barely room to stand
upright. I strongly doubt whether Tasso, or any other man, could have
passed seven years in this cell and come out alive. It is written all
over within and without with names, some of them illustrious ones.
"Byron" is conspicuous in the crowd, cut in strong square characters in
the stone; and near him is "Lamartine," in more graceful but smaller
letters.

Tasso seems to have regarded his country as a prisoner not less than
himself, and to have strung his harp at times to bewail its captivity.
The dungeon "in which Alphonso bade his poet dwell" was dreary enough,
but that of Italy was drearier still; for it is Italy, fully more than
the poet, that may be regarded as speaking in the following lines, which
furnish evidence that, along with Dante, and all the great minds of the
period, Torquato Tasso had seen the hollowness of the Papal Church, and
felt the galling bondage which that Church inflicts on both the
intellect and the soul.

"O God, from this Egyptian land of woe,
Teeming with idols and their monstrous train,
O'er which the galling yoke that I sustain
Like Nilus makes my tears to overflow,
To thee, her land of rest, my soul would go:
But who, ah! who will break my servile chain?
Who through the deep, and o'er the desert plain
Will aid and cheer me, and the path will show?
Shall God, indeed, the fowls and manna strew,--
My daily bread? and dare I to implore
Thy pillar and thy cloud to guide me, Lord?
Yes, he may hope for all who trusts thy word.
O then thy miracles in me renew;
Thine be the glory, and my boasting o'er."

From the reputed prison of Tasso I went to see the roof which had
sheltered the presiding intellect of the Reformation,--John Calvin.
Tasso's glory is like a star, burning with a lovely light in the deep
azure; Calvin's is like the sun, whose waxing splendour is irradiating
two hemispheres. The palace of the illustrious Renee,--now the Austrian
and Papal Legations, and literally a barrack for soldiers,--has no
pretensions to beau