is our interest much more excited, even by the everlasting laurel which inspires the enamoured Petrarch with so ingenious a variety of concetti, as might reasonably cause it to be doubted whether the beautiful Laura, or the emblematic Tree, were the real object of the bard's affection; but the moment a patriotic chord is struck, our feelings are awakened, and we find it easy to sympathize with the emotions of a modern Roman, surrounded by the ruins of the Capitol; a Venetian, when contemplating the proud trophies won by his ancestors at Byzantium, or a Florentine amongst the tombs of the mighty dead, in the church of Santa Croce. It is not, perhaps, now, the time to plead, with any effect, the cause of Italy; yet cannot we consider that nation as altogether degraded, whose literature, from the dawn of its majestic immortality, has been consecrated to the nurture of every generous principle and ennobling recollection; and whose "choice and master-spirits," under the most adverse circumstances, have kept alive a flame, which may well be considered as imperishable, since the "ten thousand tyrants" of the land have failed to quench its brightness. We present our readers with a few of the minor effusions in which the indignant, though unavailing regrets of those, who, to use the words of Alfieri, are "Slaves, yet still indignant slaves,"* [1]have been feelingly pourtrayed. The first of these productions must, in the original, be familiar to every reader who has any acquaintance with Italian literature.
- ↑ * Schiavi siam, ma schiavi ognor frementi.—Alfieri.
