lint; others beg matrasses.

* * * * *

TRIBUTES TO GENIUS.

The Cuts represent unostentatious yet affectionate tributes to three of
the most illustrious names in literature and art: DANTE, and PETRARCH,
the celebrated Italian poets; and CANOVA, whose labours have all the
freshness and finish of yesterday's chisel. Lord Byron, whose enthusiasm
breathes and lives in words that "can never die," has enshrined these
memorials in the masterpiece of his genius. Associating Dante and
Petrarch with Boccaccio, he asks:

But where repose the all Etruscan three--
Dante and Petrarch, and scarce less than they,
The Bard of Prose, creative spirit! he
Of the Hundred Tales of Love--where did they lay
Their tones, distinguish'd from our common clay
In death as life? Are they resolved to dust,
And have their country's marbles naught to say?
Could not their quarries furnish forth one bust?
Did they not to her breast their filial earth entrust?[10]

[Illustration: (Dante's Tomb.)]

Dante was born at Florence in the year 1261. He fought in two battles,
and was fourteen times ambassador, and once prior of the republic.
Through one fatal error, he fell a victim to party persecution, which
ended in irrevocable banishment. His last resting-place was Ravenna,
where the persecution of his only patron is said to have caused the
poet's death. What an affecting record of gratitude! His last days at
Ravenna are thus referred to by an accomplished tourist:[11]

"Under the kind protection of Guido Novello da Polenta, here Dante found
an asylum from the malevolence of his enemies, and here he ended a life
embittered with many sorrows, as he has pathetically told to posterity,
'after having gone about like a mendicant; wandering over almost every
part to which our language extends; showing against my will the wound
with which fortune has smitten me, and which is so often imputed to his
ill-deserving, on whom it is inflicted.' The precise time of his death
is not accurately ascertained; but, it was either in July or September
of the year 1321. His friend in adversity, Guido da Polenta, mourned his
loss, and testified his sorrow and respect by a sumptuous funeral, and,
it is said, intended to have erected a monument to his memory; but, the
following year, contending factions deprived him of the sovereignty
which he had held for more than half a century; and he, in his turn,
like the g