also with no trace of the worship of the past, except as an example to the present, or anything of the mystic spirit of genuine romanticism. Well timed as they were, their effect was extraordinary; but whether antique or contemporary in subject, they were essentially poems of the day, and such poetry cannot continue to be read unless it attains the level of Manzoni’s ode on the death of Napoleon and Tennyson’s on the death of Wellington. This Berchet knew. “My aim was not,” he said on one occasion, “to write a fine poem, but to perform a fine action.” His style is consequently defective; his poetry was not written to be criticised, but to inspire and inflame, and fully answered its purpose. “He has found,” says Settembrini, “all the maledictions that can possibly be hurled against the foreigner.” Upon Charles Albert’s conversion to the national cause, Berchet returned to Italy, and died a member of the Sardinian Parliament, universally honoured and beloved, nor will his countrymen forget him. “Accursed,” adds Settembrini, “be the Italian who forgets GABRIELE ROSSETTI.” Rossetti (1785-1854) assuredly will not be forgotten by England, for which he has done what no other inhabitant of these isles ever did in begetting two great poets. His claims to the gratitude of his countrymen are of quite another sort, resting chiefly upon the spirit and fluency of his political poems, which helped to keep the flame of patriotism alive at home, while the exiled author was teaching Italian at King’s College. His life is well known as an appendage to the biography of his more celebrated son. It is one of the most interesting speculations imaginable what kind of poetry Dante Gabriel Rossetti would have written if he had been born and brought up in Italy; certain it is that no prefigurement of his singular alliance of purity and transparency of feeling with intricacy of thought and opulence of illustration, or of his objectivity and marvellous pictorial gift, is to be found in his father’s simple, natural, rather overfluent verse. The elder Rossetti may, nevertheless, be ranked among the poets of the romantic school; and a similar place belongs to the amiable Luigi Carrer (1801-53) on account of his ballads, the most successful of his works. Francesco dall’ Ongaro, a good lyric poet in other departments, applied the popular _stornello_ to the purposes of patriotic poetry with eminent success.