abuse is now established and general." Thus far Caro, to whom Tasso replies, "Oh the wonderful charm of Italy, which every one seeks to destroy! It sufficed not that the Goths, the Vandals, and other strange and barbarous nations have sought, and still seek, to possess thee, and that multitudes flock hither from earth's farthest corners; even Lordships, never previously seen or known here, quitting their native Spain, are come in swarms to sojourn among us, and have so mastered our vanity and ambition that we cannot shake them from our shoulders." In a subsequent letter to Claudio Tolomei, Bernardo congratulates him on having applied the lash to such empty titles, and promises to follow his example by retrenching them all when he revises his own letters for the press.[133] But these attempts met with little success; redundant superlatives still lead Italian literature, and an Italian letter is little more than a tissue of exaggerated epithets, from its address to its signature.[134] [Footnote 133: _Lettere di Bernardo Tasso_, edit. 1733; vol. I., pp. 14-22 and 427-30.] [Footnote 134: In proof of this I give in IX. of the Appendix a letter of introduction, of which I was bearer, from one of the most accomplished _professori_ of Rome.] * * * * * Few branches of human knowledge more flourished during the palmy days of Italian literature than the exact sciences, especially in connection with military affairs, and the elegant arts. Their application to both objects was received with marked favour by the successive Dukes of Urbino, who, for a century and a half, combined the pursuit of arms with the patronage of art. We have seen this done by Federigo and Guidobaldo I., for the defence of their duchy and the decoration of their capital; we now have to mention the progress of similar studies under the della Rovere princes. During the latter epoch, pure mathematics were brought into fashion by numerous translations of standard Greek works into Latin or Italian, a labour shared by various literati of Urbino, but especially by Comandino, Baldi, and Alessandro Giorgi. This, however, but served to facilitate their practical development in pursuits more congenial to those martial dispositions for which the inhabitants of Romagna have in all ages been noted. Whilst the revived literature of Greece and the philosophy of Plato flourished on the banks of the Arno, the exact sciences were cultivated in the highlands of Umbria, and took the practical turn of strengthening those fastnesses with which nature had provided that mountain-land. Francesco di Giorgio, of Siena, was less in request by Dukes Federigo and Guidobaldo as architect of their stately palaces, than as the most famous military engineer of his time. Events which made their duchy the seat of repeated invasions early in the sixteenth century, as well as the warlike character of Francesco Maria I., maintained a demand for