The eldest child of Hercules and Renée was a daughter, Anna, born in 1531. Alphonso, the heir apparent, who succeeded to the Duchy in 1559, was born in 1533. Then came another daughter, Lucrezia, born in 1535, a third named Eleonora, in 1547, and lastly a second son, called Luigi, in 1538. Thus Anna, the eldest, was eight years old at the time of Morato's return to Ferrara; and her education, according to the newest fashion then in vogue, was the chief pre–occupation of the Duchess. The new learning was the fashionable mania of the day in ladies' bower, as in the halls of universities. A delicate taste for the charm of a Ciceronian style was as much necessary to the finished education of a noble lady then, as the graceful carriage of the person in crossing a room or entering a carriage is now. Male blockheadism had not yet suggested to the prudent jealousy of the lords of the creation the discovery, that learning tended to unfit women for the more special duties of wives and mothers. Not to be classical was to be nothing. So Anna d'Este was above all else to be a perfect Latinist and Grecian. It was in 1540, when she was only nine years old (!) that Calcagnini thus wrote to her, of course in Latin, only to be known from that of the purest Augustan mintage by its greater difficulty and a certain affected intricacy of construction, observable in most of the Latinists of that period:— "I have read the fables you have translated from the Tuscan into Latin, in an elegant and ornate style, as becomes a royal hand. On finishing the perusal I had only to regret, that it was so soon ended, and that my curiosity was left unsatisfied. I trust that these essays may be the seed of future compositions, which, when matured, will reflect honour on your name. I have already the pleasure of applauding these first steps on the path to fame." What the very young lady's own composition may have been we have no means of judging; but it must be presumed that she was at all events competent to read readily the letter in which these compliments are addressed to her; and we should now–a–days consider that much for a young lady of nine years, or young gentleman either. Other translations sent, as it seems, to Celio Curione in the following year, are acknowledged by him in still more flattering and flowery language. And the circumstance is remarkable on other grounds than as a testimony to the Princess Anna's classical proficiency. Curione was at that time, as has been seen, a refugee from ecclesiastical persecution, finding shelter and concealment in the house of Morato. Is it to be supposed that Duke Hercules would have tolerated his daughter's correspondence with one so situated, and that, too, after the unfortunate Calvin discovery? It seems to be but too clear, that Miss Anna and her mamma must have come to the understanding that papa was to know nothing about these literary intimacies with gentlemen under a cloud. [Sidenote: GOES TO COURT.]