strong Norman horse, winding his
way slowly along a green and pleasant path some miles from Avignon. At
length he found himself in a wild and romantic valley, through which
wandered that delightful river whose name the verse of Petrarch has
given to so beloved a fame. Sheltered by rocks, and in this part winding
through the greenest banks, enamelled with a thousand wild flowers and
water-weeds, went the crystal Sorgia. Advancing farther, the landscape
assumed a more sombre and sterile aspect. The valley seemed enclosed or
shut in by fantastic rocks of a thousand shapes, down which dashed and
glittered a thousand rivulets. And, in the very wildest of the scene,
the ground suddenly opened into a quaint and cultivated garden, through
which, amidst a profusion of foliage, was seen a small and lonely
mansion,--the hermitage of the place. The horseman was in the valley
of the Vaucluse; and before his eye lay the garden and the house of
PETRARCH! Carelessly, however, his eye scanned the consecrated spot;
and unconsciously it rested, for a moment, upon a solitary figure seated
musingly by the margin of the river. A large dog at the side of the
noonday idler barked at the horseman as he rode on. "A brave animal and
a deep bay!" thought the traveller; to him the dog seemed an object much
more interesting than its master. And so,--as the crowd of little men
pass unheeding and unmoved, those in whom Posterity shall acknowledge
the landmarks of their age,--the horseman turned his glance from the
Poet!

Thrice blessed name! Immortal Florentine! (I need scarcely say that it
is his origin, not his actual birth, which entitles us to term Petrarch
a Florentine.) not as the lover, nor even as the poet, do I bow before
thy consecrated memory--venerating thee as one it were sacrilege to
introduce in this unworthy page--save by name and as a shadow; but as
the first who ever asserted to people and to prince the august majesty
of Letters; who claimed to Genius the prerogative to influence states,
to control opinion, to hold an empire over the hearts of men, and
prepare events by animating passion, and guiding thought! What, (though
but feebly felt and dimly seen)--what do we yet owe to Thee if Knowledge
be now a Power; if MIND be a Prophet and a Fate, foretelling and
foredooming the things to come! From the greatest to the least of us, to
whom the pen is at once a sceptre and a sword, the low-born Florentine
has been the arch-messenger to sm