most vertical cliffs above the stream. If the
stream be swift as in the western plateau of North America, the cutting
action will be rapid. The ideal conditions for developing a canyon are:
great altitude and slope causing swift streams, arid conditions with
absence of side-wash, and hard rock horizontally bedded which will hold
the walls up.

CANZONE, a form of verse which has reached us from Italian literature,
where from the earliest times it has been assiduously cultivated. The
word is derived from the Provencal _canso_, a song, but it was in
Italian first that the form became a literary one, and was dedicated to
the highest uses of poetry. The canzone-strophe consists of two parts,
the opening one being distinguished by Dante as the _fronte_, the
closing one as the _sirma_. These parts are connected by rhyme, it being
usual to make the rhyme of the last line of the _fronte_ identical with
that of the first line of the _sirma_. In other respects the canzone has
great liberty, as regards number and length of lines, arrangement of
rhymes and conduct of structure. An examination of the best Italian
models, however, shows that the tendency of the canzone-strophe is to
possess 9, 10, 11, 13, 14 or 16 verses, and that of these the strophe of
14 verses is so far the most frequent that it may almost be taken as the
type. In this form it resembles an irregular sonnet. The _Vita Nuova_
contains many examples of the canzone, and these are accompanied by so
many explanations of their form as to lead us to believe that the
canzone was originally invented or adopted by Dante. The following is
the _proemio_ or _fronte_ of one of the most celebrated canzoni in the
_Vita Nuova_ (which may be studied in English in Dante Gabriel
Rossetti's translation):--

"Donna pietosa e di novella etate,
Adorna assai di gentilezza umane,
Era la ov' io chiamava spesso Morte.
Veggendo gli occhi miei pien di pietate,
Ed ascoltando le parole vane,
Si mosse con paura a pianger forte;
Ed altro donne, che si furo accorte
Di me per quella che meco piangia,
Fecer lei partir via
Ed apprissarsi per farmi sentire.
Quel dicea: 'Non dormire';
E qual dicea: 'Perche si te sconforte?'
Allor lasciai la nuova fantasia,
Chiamando il nome della donna mia."

The _Canzoniere_ of Petrarch is of great authority as to the form of
this species of verse. In England the canzone was introduced at the end
of the sixteenth c