It will be a good indication of the improvement in the intellectual disposition of our people, when the study of Dante becomes more general. Meanwhile, on the part of his few students in America, we would offer our thanks to Lord Vernon and to Mr. Panizzi for the aid which the liberality of the one and the skill and learning of the other have given to us, and for the honor they have done to the memory of our common Author and Leader. _Notes of Travel and Study in Italy_. By CHARLES ELIOT NORTON. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1860. pp. x., 320. There is, perhaps, no country with which we are so intimate as with Italy,--none of which we are always so willing to hear more. Poets and prosers have alike compared her to a beautiful woman; and while one finds nothing but loveliness in her, another shudders at her fatal fascination. She is the very Witch-Venus of the Middle Ages. Roger Ascham says, "I was once in _Italy_ myself, but I thank God my abode there was but nine days; and yet I saw in that little time, in one city, more liberty to sin than ever I heard tell of in our noble city of London in nine years." He quotes triumphantly the proverb,--_Inglese italianato, diavolo incarnato_. A century later, the entertaining "Richard Lassels, Gent., who Travelled through Italy Five times as Tutor to several of the _English_ Nobility and Gentry," and who is open to new engagements in that kind, declares, that, "For the Country itself, it seemed to me to be _Nature's Darling_, and the _Eldest Sister_ of all other Countries; carrying away from them all the greatest blessings and favours, and receiving such gracious looks from the _Sun_ and _Heaven_, that, if there be any fault in _Italy_, it is, that her Mother _Nature_ hath cockered her too much, even to make her become Wanton." Plainly, our Tannhäuser is but too ready to go back to the Venus-berg! A new book on Italy seems a dangerous experiment. Has not all been told and told and told again? Is it not one chief charm of the land, that it is changeless without being Chinese? Did not Abbot Samson, in 1159, _Scotti habitum induens_, (which must have shown his massive calves to great advantage.) probably see much the same popular characteristics that Hawthorne saw seven hundred years later? Shall a man try to be entertaining after Montaigne, aesthetic after Winckelmann, wise after Goethe, or trenchant after Forsyth? Can he hope to bring back anything so useful as the _fork_, which honest Tom Coryate made prize of two centuries and a half ago, and put into the greasy fingers of Northern barbarians? Is not the "Descrittione" of Leandro Alberti still a competent itinerary? And can one hope to pick up a fresh Latin quotation, when Addison and Eustace have been before him with their scrap-baskets?