come utterly indifferent to him. In the
monastery of St. Onofrio, a bent, sorrow-stricken man, old before his
time, joining with the monks in the duties of religion, Tasso appeals
more powerfully to our feelings than when in the full flush of youth
and happiness he shone the brightest star in the royal court of
Alfonso.

Awakening to the sense of the great loss that Italy was about to
sustain in his death, his friends and admirers proposed that the Pope
should confer upon him at the Capitol the laurel wreath that had
crowned the brow of Petrarch. But the weather during the winter proved
singularly unpropitious for such a ceremony. Rain fell almost every
day, and constant sirocco winds depressed the spirits of the people
and prevented all outdoor enjoyments. And thus the season wore on till
April dawned with the promise of brighter skies, and the day was
fixed, and all the _elite_ of Rome and of the chief cities of Italy
were invited to attend the coronation. Extensive preparations were
made; the whole city was in a flutter of excitement, and the people
looked forward to a holiday such as Rome had not seen since the days
of the Caesars. But by this time the poet was dying, fever-wasted, in
his lonely cell. He could see from his window, as he lay propped up
with pillows on his narrow couch, across the river and its broad
valley crowded with houses, the slender campanile of Michael Angelo
ascending from the Capitoline Hill, marking the spot where at the
moment the people were busy preparing for the magnificent ceremony of
the morrow. But not for him was the triumph; it came too late.
"Tomorrow," he said, "I shall be beyond the reach of all earthly
honour." He received the last rites of the Church from the hands of
the diocesan, and passed quietly away with the unfinished sentence
upon his lips, "Into thy hands, O Lord," while the concluding strains
of the vesper hymn were chanted by the monks. And they who came on the
morrow, to summon him to his coronation, found him in the sleep of
death. The laurel wreath that was meant for his brow was laid upon his
coffin, as it was carried on the very day of his intended coronation,
with great pomp, cardinals and princes bearing up the pall, and
deposited in the neighbouring church of the monastery. Ever since, the
anniversary of his death has been religiously kept by the monks of St.
Onofrio. They throw open on that day, the 25th of April, the monastery
and garden to the general pu