shameless flattery blotted their pages, as they praised one another, and depicted themselves on the heights of Parnassus,--beside the waters of Hypocrene,--in the company of Apollo and the Muses; and the wonders of Orpheus and Amphion were renewed, to express the charms of each other's verses. No Arcadian dared imagine himself enamoured of a human being: she was no mortal woman, but a goddess,--a Venus sprung on the instant from the foam of the sea: lips, and eyes, and hair, had all their appropriate, still-repeated epithets: did their lady sigh, or did one word escape the paling of her ivory teeth,--tempests fled, the winds were stilled, and Jove was again tempted to transform himself into a bull for her sake."[52] Men can do strange things when they associate in companies, and keep each other in countenance by a wide-spread folly, that bars out the wholesome fear of ridicule. Thus, the Arcadians had colonies all over Italy. They gave feigned names to each other; they lauded, and celebrated, and crowned each other. Good sense and good taste were sacrificed in the emulation each felt to transcend his rivals in a sonorous and turgid system of words, in which neither passion nor thought appeared.[53] A new genius was wanted to trample on this overgrowth of vanity or folly, and to gift the tamed and chained language of Dante and Bojardo with wings and liberty. Such was the poet, the incidents of whose life we now proceed to detail. Vincenzo Monti was born in Romagna, on the 19th of February, 1754. His father's simple, and even humble, but pretty and agreeable, house was situated among the vineyards and agricultural country which lies between Fusignano and the Alfonsine, in the Ravennese territory. The air is healthy and serene, the country fertile and diversified, and the style of life of his parents such as at once cultivated simplicity of taste and kindness of heart. Nothing can be more primitive and patriarchal than the mode of life of the smaller landholders in Italy; and to this class Monti's father belonged. The farm-house--or villa, as it is called, if a little better than a cottage--is situated amidst the ground they cultivate. The name of _podere_ is given to these small farms, enclosed by hedges, within whose limits grapes, corn, vegetables, and fruits are all cultivated in a sort of picturesque confusion. The vines, trained on trellises, form covered walks; and the sound of the water-wheel is continually heard, and of the water trickling through the conduits that lead it to the various parts of the grounds. The Italian farmer works very hard, and the cottager still harder. He divides the produce of the land with his landlord, entertains few servants, and his habits are at once laborious and frugal. The parents of Monti were an excellent specimen of the virtues of this unpretending race. They are still remembered in the country by numbers of the poor whom they assisted and comforted. Their children were brought up to consider it a