sound a high passionate tune played on a harp whose strings are relaxed. Looking at the printed Italian Dante beside the English, in a volume where opposite each English page is the corresponding page of the original, as in Mr. Dayman's, one cannot fail to be struck with the comparative narrowness of the Italian column. This comes of the comparative shortness of Italian syllables. For instance, as the strongest exemplification, the ever-recurring _and_, and the often-repeated _is_, are both expressed in Italian by a single letter, _e_. And this shortness comes of the numerousness of vowels. In lines of thirty letters Dante will have on an average sixteen consonants to fourteen vowels, nearly half and half; while his translators have about twenty consonants to ten vowels, or two to one. From this comparative rejection of consonants, Italian cannot, as English can, bind into one syllable words of seven or eight letters, like _friends_ and _straight_, nor even words of six letters, like _chimed_, _shoots_, _thwart_, _spring_; nor does Italian abound as English does in monosyllables, and the few it has are mostly of but two or three letters. In combination its syllables sometimes get to four letters, as in _fronte_ and _braccia_. As a consequence hereof, Dante's lines, although always of eleven syllables, average about twenty-nine letters, while those of the three translators about thirty-three. Hence, the poem in their versions carries more weight than the original; its soul is more cumbered with body. In order to the faithful reproduction of Dante, to the giving the best transcript, possible in English, of his thought and feeling, should not regard be had to the essential difference between the syllabic constitutions of the two languages, what may be called the physical basis of the two mediums of utterance? Here is the Francesca story, translated in the spirit of this suggestion:-- I turned to them, and then I spake: "Francesca! tears o'erfill mine eyes, Such pity thy keen pangs awake. But say: in th' hour of sweetest sighs, By what and how found Love relief And broke thy doubtful longing's spell?" And she: "There is no greater grief Than joy in sorrow to retell. But if so urgently one seeks To know our Love's first root, I will Do as he does who weeps and speaks. One day of Lancelot we still Read o'er, how love held him enchained. Without mistrust we were alone. Our cheeks oft were of color drained: One passage vanquished us, but one. When we read of lips longed for pressed By such a lover with a kiss, This one whom naught from me shall wrest, All trembling kissed my mouth. To this That book and writer brought us. We No farther read that day." While she Thus spake, the other spirit wept So bitterly, with pity I Fell motionless, my senses swept By swoon, as one about to die.