smile illuminates his countenance. The victories of Egypt, of Marengo, and Hohenlinden, are commemorated; and the "British felon" assailed with the usual violence of hate. In the midst of the conversation of the friends, God appears with his cherubim,--one the herald of peace and pardon, the other of war and vengeance: they are sent out on the earth to assist and wait on the Gallic hero. This poem, like so many others of Monti, which celebrated what was then the present, and is therefore truncated of its catastrophe, is a fragment. Such praise, dressed in all the magnificence of poetry, must have sounded sweetly in Napoleon's ear. The "Mascheroniana," whose chief object is to bestow on him new wreaths of victory, is one of Monti's finest compositions. It is full of strength, vehemence, and beauty. His imitation of Dante is even more apparent than in the "Basvilliana." The machinery of the poem, and the peculiar versification, are borrowed from the "Divina Commedia." But, as we have before observed, Monti's was too original a mind to be a plagiarist. What he took from another, he remoulded and brought forth in a new form, in fresh and brilliant hues, all his own. He has not the sublimity, the sweetness and pathos, nor the distinct yet delicate painting, of his prototype; but no one can read his verses without feeling that the true spirit of poetry breathes in every line, and that the author pours out the overflowings of a genuine and rapt inspiration. His third tragedy of "Caius Gracchus" had been written at Paris, and he occupied himself in finishing and correcting it on his return to Milan. This tragedy has been praised by some as superior to "Aristodemo," but it is difficult to coincide in this opinion. It possesses fine passages and some energy, but it is wanting in poetry; and the characters want the simple heroism of antiquity, and resemble rather violent Italians of modern days. The defects of monotonous dialogue and often repeated situations flow also from an observation of the unities, which, by confining the subject in narrow limits, permit no variety of action, and, except in peculiar instances, force the poet to repeat himself; making one scene frequently little else than a repetition of what had gone before.