In the chapter on the Arcadia, with which Vernon Lee opens her admirable Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy, she tells us of several visits which she recently paid to the Bosco Parrasio, long the chief fold of the Academy. She found it with difficulty on the road to the Villa Pamphili, in a neighborhood wholly ignorant of Arcadia and of the relation of Bosco Parrasio to it. “The house, once the summer resort of Arcadian sonneteers, was now abandoned to a family of market-gardeners, who hung their hats and jackets on the marble heads of improvvisatori and crowned poetesses, and threw their beans, maize, and garden-tools into the corners of the desolate reception-rooms, from whose mildewed walls looked down a host of celebrities--brocaded doges, powdered princesses, and scarlet-robed cardinals, simpering drearily in their desolation,” and “sad, haggard poetesses in sea-green and sky-blue draperies, with lank, powdered locks and meager arms, holding lyres; fat, ill-shaven priests in white bands and mop-wigs; sonneteering ladies, sweet and vapid in dove-colored stomachers and embroidered sleeves; jolly extemporary poets, flaunting in many-colored waistcoats and gorgeous shawls.” But whatever the material adversity of Arcadia, it still continues to reward ascertained merit by grants of pasturage out of its ideal domains. Indeed, it is but a few years since our own Longfellow, on a visit to Rome, was waited upon by the secretary of the Arch-Flock, and presented, after due ceremonies and the reading of a floral and herbaceous sonnet, with a parchment bestowing upon him some very magnificent possessions in that extraordinary dreamland. In telling me of this he tried to recall his Arcadian name, but could only remember that it was “Olympico something.” GIUSEPPE PARINI I In 1748 began for Italy a peace of nearly fifty years, when the Wars of the Succession, with which the contesting strangers had ravaged her soil, absolutely ceased. In Lombardy the Austrian rulers who had succeeded the Spaniards did and suffered to be done many things for the material improvement of a province which they were content to hold, while leaving the administration mainly to the Lombards; the Spanish Bourbon at Naples also did as little harm and as much good to his realm as a Bourbon could; Pier Leopoldo of Tuscany, Don Filippo I. of Parma, Francis III. of Modena, and the Popes Benedict XIV., Clement XIV., and Pius VI. were all disposed to be paternally beneficent to their peoples, who at least had repose under them, and in this period gave such names to science as those of Galvani and Volta, to humanity that of Beccaria, to letters those of Alfieri, Filicaja, Goldoni, Parini, and many others.