the lists now entered for the sweepstakes-a distinguished consonant is said to be the favourite, much against the wishes of the knowing Ones.

Note 12. Page 445.

"We have changed all that," says the Mock Doctor," 'tis all gone-Asmodeus knows where. After all, it is of no great importance how women's hearts are disposed of; they have nature's privilege to distribute them as absurdly as possible. But there are also some men with hearts so thoroughly bad, as to remind us of those phenomena often mentioned in natural history; viz. a mass of solid stone-only to be opened by force-and when divided, you discover a toad in the centre lively, and with the reputation of being venomous.'

n

Note 13. Page 445.

In Turkey a pertinent-here an impertinent and superfluous question—literally put, as in the text, by a Persian to Morier, on seeing a waltz in Pera.-Vide Morier's Travels.

ADVERTISEMENT.

Ar Ferrara (in the library) are preserved the original MSS. of Tasso's Gierusalemme and of Guarini's Pastor Fido, with letters of Tasso, one from Titian to Ariosto, and the inkstand and chair, the tomb and the house of the latter. But as misfortune has a greater interest for posterity, and little or none for the contemporary, the cell where Tasso was confined in the hospital of St. Anna attracts a more fixed attention than the residence or the monument of Ariosto-at least it had this effect on me. There are two inscriptions, one on the outer gate, the second over the ceil itself, inviting, unnecessarily, the wonder and the indignation of the spectator. Ferrara is much decayed and depopulated; the castle still exists entire; and I saw the court where Parisina and Hugo were beheaded, according to the annal of Gibbon.

THE LAMENT OF TASSO.

I.

LONG years! It tries the thrilling frame to bear,
And eagle-spirit of a child of song-

Long years of outrage, calumny, and wrong;
Imputed madness, prison'd solitude,
And the mind's canker in its savage mood,
When the impatient thirst of light and air
Parches the heart; and the abhorred grate,
Marring the sunbeams with its hideous shade,
Works through the throbbing eye-ball to the brain
With a hot sense of heaviness and pain;

And bare, at once, captivity display'd

Stands scoffing through the never-open'd gate,

Which nothing through its bars admits, save day
And tasteless food, which I have eat alone

Till its unsocial bitterness is gone;
And I can banquet like a beast of prey,
Sullen and lonely, couching in the cave,
Which is my lair, and—it may be-my grave.
All this hath somewhat worn me, and may wear,
But must be borne. I stoop not to despair;
For I have battled with mine agony,
And made me wings wherewith to overfly
The narrow circus of my dungeon-wall,
And freed the Holy-Sepulchre from thrail;
And revell'd among men and things divine,
And pour'd my spirit over Palestine,
In honour of the sacred war for him,
The God who was on earth and is in heaven,
For he hath strengthen'd me in heart and limb.
That through this sufferance I might be forgiven,
I have employ'd my penance to record
How Salem's shrine was won, and how adored.