liberty were planted; for making a tumult about an outraged saint a mob was severely handled by the military, and for “insulting” a tree of liberty a poor fellow at Como was shot. Parini was chosen one of the municipal government, which, apparently popular, could really do nothing but register the decrees of the military commandant. He proved so little useful in this government that he was expelled from it, and, giving his salary to his native parish, he fell into something like his old poverty. He who had laughed to scorn the insolence and folly of the nobles could not enjoy the insolence and folly of the plebeians, and he was unhappy in that wild ferment of ideas, hopes, principles, sentiments, which Milan became in the time of the Cisalpine Republic. He led a retired life, and at last, in 1799, having risen one day to studies which he had never remitted, he died suddenly in his arm-chair. Many stories are told of his sayings and doings in those troubled days when he tried to serve the public. At the theater once some one cried out, “Long live the republic, death to the aristocrats!” “No,” shouted Parini, who abhorred the abominable bloodthirstiness of the liberators, “long live the republic, death to nobody!” They were going to take away a crucifix from a room where he appeared on public business. “Very well,” he observed; “where Citizen Christ cannot stay, I have nothing to do,” and went out. “Equality doesn't consist in dragging me down to your level,” he said to one who had impudently given him the _thou_, “but in raising you to mine, if possible. You will always be a pitiful creature, even though you call yourself Citizen; and though you call me Citizen, you can't help my being the Abbate Parini.” To another, who reproached him for kindness to an Austrian prisoner, he answered, “I would do as much for a Turk, a Jew, an Arab; I would do it even for you if you were in need.” In his closing years many sought him for literary counsel; those for whom there was hope he encouraged; those for whom there was none, he made it a matter of conscience not to praise. A poor fellow came to repeat him two sonnets, in order to be advised which to print; Parini heard the first, and, without waiting further, besought him “Print the other!” VITTORIO ALFIERI