e which he published in Italy, and which it was to the interest of
Rome to destroy. Disappointed at not finding work to do in Venice, he
next went to Padua, which was the intellectual centre of Europe, as
Venice was the centre of printing and publishing; the most celebrated
professors of that epoch were to be found in the University of Padua,
but at the time of Bruno's sojourn there, Padua, like Venice, was
ravaged by the plague; the university was closed, and the printing-house
was not in operation. He remained there only a few days, lodging with
some monks of the Order of St. Dominic, who, he relates, "persuaded me
to wear the dress again, even though I would not profess the religion it
implied, because they said it would aid me in my wayfaring to be thus
attired; and so I got a white cloth robe, and I put on the hood which I
had preserved when I left Rome." Thus habited he wandered for several
months about the cities of Venetia and Lombardy; and although he
contrived for a time to evade his persecutors, he finally decided to
leave Italy, as it was repugnant to his disposition to live in forced
dissimulation, and he felt that he could do no good either for himself
or for his country, which was then overrun with Spaniards and scourged
by petty tyrants; and with the lower orders sunk in ignorance, and the
upper classes illiterate, uncultivated, and corrupt, the mission of
Giordano Bruno was impossible. "Altiora Peto" was Bruno's motto, and to
realize it he had gone forth with the pilgrim's staff in his hand,
sometimes covered with the cowl of the monk, at others wearing the
simple habit of a schoolmaster, or, again, clothed with the doublet of
the mechanic: he had found no resting-place--nowhere to lay his head, no
one who could understand him, but always many ready to denounce him. He
turned his back at last on his country, crossed the Alps on foot, and
directed his steps towards Switzerland. He visited the universities in
different towns of Switzerland, France, and Germany, and wherever he
went he left behind him traces of his visit in some hurried writings.
The only work of the Nolan, written in Italy, which has survived is "Il
Candelajo," which was published in Paris. Levi, in his Life of Bruno,
passes in review his various works; but it will suffice here to
reproduce what he says of the "Eroici Furori," the first part of which
I have translated, and to note his remarks upon the style of Bruno,
which presents many dif