We may conclude with this description of the outward man, emanating from one who revered and loved him as a preceptor and a friend. The world, in the days succeeding to those of revolution and preceding those of reform, was much divided between those who despaired and those who hoped. The latter now triumph; but Monti died before the milder light dawned on the world, and while change appeared inevitably accompanied by bloodshed and misery. His compassionate heart preferred the peace of submission, both for himself and others, to the suffering attendant on defeated struggles; and errors springing from so humane a source may be forgiven, even by those whose ardent natures lead them to overlook the toil and danger of the journey, in the hope of attaining the accomplishment of their desires. [Footnote 52: Maffei; Storia della Litteratura Italiana.] [Footnote 53: Bonetti.] UGO FOSCOLO 1778-1827. The most necessary quality of an author is, that he should impress us with the conviction that he has something to say. In reading his pages, we ought to feel that he puts down the overflowing of his mind--ideas and notions which, springing up spontaneously, force a birth for themselves from the womb of silence, and acquire an existence through their own native energy and vitality. An author, therefore, is a human being whose thoughts do not satisfy his mind, ruminated on merely in his own isolated bosom: he requires sympathy, a world to listen, and the echo of assent from his fellow-creatures. But this is not all. Few men can be excited by a mere abstraction, by the images of their own mind, and the desire of communicating them for the benefit of their fellow-creatures. Pride or vanity mingle essentially in the fabric of a writer's mind: the pride which leads him to desire to build up an enduring monument for his name, formed from his own compositions; or the vanity that leads him to introduce himself to the reader, and to court the notoriety which usually attends those who let the public into the secret of their individual passions or peculiarities.