dinner these were unexpectedly shown above board, as tokens of his feasting prowess. "You have done great things to day!" exclaimed the prince, affecting surprise at such an exhibition. "Far otherwise," returned the poet; "for if I had been a dog, (_Cane_, his patron's name,) I should have devoured bones and all, as it appears you have done."[13] Other grandees, who gave the indignant wanderer an occasional asylum from the blasts of persecution, were the marchese Malespina, who, though belonging to the antagonist party, cordially entertained him in Lunigiana; the conte Guido Salvatico, of Cassentino; the signori della Faggiuolo, among the mountains of Urbino; and also the fathers of the monastery of Santa Croce di Fonte Avellana, in the district of Gubbio. In this romantic retreat, according to the Latin inscription under a marble bust of him against a wall in one of the chambers, Dante is recorded to have written a considerable portion of the "Divina Commedia." In a tower belonging to the conti Falucci, in the same territory, there is a tradition that he was often employed in the like manner. At the castle of Tulmino, the residence of the patriarch of Aquileia, a rock has been pointed out as a favourite resort of the inspired poet, while engaged in that marvellous and melancholy composition. "There, nobly pensive, _Dante_ sat and thought." Marius, banished from his country, and resting upon the ruins of Carthage, may have appeared a more august and mournful object; but Dante, in exile, want, and degradation, on a lonely crag, meditating thoughts, combining images, and creating a language for both in which they should for ever speak, presents a far more sublime and touching spectacle of fallen grandeur renovating itself under decay. Marius, having "mewed his mighty youth," flew back to Rome like the eagle to his quarry, surfeited himself with vengeance, and died in a debauch of blood, leaving a name to be execrated through all generations: Dante did not return to Florence; living or dead he did not return; but his name, cast out and abhorred as it had been, stands the earliest and the greatest of a long line of Tuscan poets, rivalling the most illustrious of their country, not excepting those of even Rome and Ferrara.