knocked about with companions of their own age, instead of being left to solitary brooding with their minds preying upon themselves. They would then have returned home, fresh and buoyant, and happy to be again with their parents. Monaldo had been extravagant in his youth, his estates were considerably encumbered; motives of economy probably made him rejoice that his children were actually learning more at home than could be expected from pupils of the most famous seminaries. In later life, whilst willing and happy to keep them in a handsome style in his ancestral home at Recanati, he found it impossible to supply them with sufficient funds to live in Rome or Florence or Naples in the style to which they had always been accustomed. Therefore, he strongly opposed their desire to see the world. He was perfectly contented with his own surroundings, and he neither understood nor sympathised with Giacomo's longing to widen his sphere of experience. Painful misunderstandings were the result. Giacomo, owing to the utter prostration into which he had fallen, was obliged to remain a whole year without reading or writing, and he was thrown back upon his melancholy thoughts. He had already received sufficient praise to fire his youthful ambition and he chafed at the bondage in which he was kept. Pietro Giordani was the first literary man of eminence whose acquaintance he made, and long letters passed between the friends, letters full of admiration on the part of Giordani, full of impatience and despair on the part of Leopardi. That he exaggerated the horrors of his condition cannot for a moment be doubted. Many youths would have been thankful to take his place in a handsome and dignified home; but then few youths could possibly have been tormented by such bitter melancholy and such overweening ambition. At last a desperate resolve occurred to him. Permission to leave home was denied him; he would act on his own responsibility and take refuge in flight. He made preparations for secret departure, and wrote a long letter to his father explaining the motives of his desperate measure. Happily, the insane project was abandoned, but the letter was preserved by his brother Carlo, and it is deeply to be regretted that it was published some years ago. Far better would it have been to draw a veil across the eccentricities of a great mind and the misunderstandings between natures noble and upright, but painfully divergent in thought and action. However, the letter exists and must be dealt with. There is nothing discreditable in it either to the poet or to his father, but much that is inexpressibly painful.