fathomless memory, he drew felicities which had clung to it in his vast reading, and gave them a new excellence by the art with which he presented them as new. The commonplace Italians long continued to speak awfully of Monti as a great poet, because the commonplace mind regards everything established as great. He is a classic of those classics common to all languages--dead corpses which retain their forms perfectly in the coffin, but crumble to dust as soon as exposed to the air. III From the _Bassvilliana_ I have translated the passage descriptive of Louis XVI.'s ascent to heaven; and I offer this, perhaps not quite justly, in illustration of what I have been saying of Monti as a poet. There is something of his curious verbal beauty in it, and his singular good luck of phrase, with his fortunate reminiscences of other poets; the collocation of the different parts is very comical, and the application of it all to Louis XVI. is one of the most preposterous things in literature. But one must remember that the poor king was merely a subject, a theme, with the poet. As when the sun uprears himself among The lesser dazzling substances, and drives His eager steeds along the fervid curve,-- When in one only hue is painted all The heavenly vault, and every other star Is touched with pallor and doth veil its front, So with sidereal splendor all aflame Amid a thousand glad souls following, High into heaven arose that beauteous soul. Smiled, as he passed them, the majestical, Tremulous daughters of the light, and shook Their glowing and dewy tresses as they moved, He among all with longing and with love Beaming, ascended until he was come Before the triune uncreated life; There his flight ceases, there the heart, become Aim of the threefold gaze divine, is stilled, And all the urgence of desire is lost; There on his temples he receives the crown Of living amaranth immortal, on His cheek the kiss of everlasting peace. And then were heard consonances and notes Of an ineffable sweetness, and the orbs Began again to move their starry wheels. More swiftly yet the steeds that bore the day Exulting flew, and with their mighty tread, Did beat the circuit of their airy way. In this there are three really beautiful lines; namely, those which describe the arrival of the spirit in the presence of God: There his flight ceases, there the heart, become Aim of the threefold gaze divine, is stilled, And all the urgence of desire is lost; Or, as it stands in the Italian: Ivi queta il suo voi, ivi s'appunta In tre sguardi beata, ivi il cor tace, E tutta perde del desio la punta.