In spite of the blots above designated, there will be found in the “Notti” a smaller proportion of stories calculated to outrage modern canons of taste than in any of the better known collections of Italian _novelle_. The judgments which have been dealt out to Straparola on the score of indecency by Landau (“Beiträge,” p. 130), by the writer of the article in the “Biographie Universelle,” and by Grimm in his notes to “Kinder und Hausmärchen,” seem to be unduly severe. In certain places he is no doubt brutally coarse, but the number of fables defaced in this manner is not large. If one were to take the trouble to compare the rendering given by Basile in the “Pentamerone,” of stories told also by Straparola, with the rendering of the same in the “Notti,” the award for propriety of language would assuredly not always be given to the Neapolitan, who, it should be remembered, was writing a book for young children. In few of the collections of a similar character is there to be found so genuine a vein of comedy, and for the sake of this one may perhaps be permitted to beg indulgence for occasional lapses—lapses which are assuredly fewer in number and probably not more heinous in character than those of novelists of greater fame. Straparola turns naturally towards the cheerful side of things, the lives of the men and women he deals with seem to be less oppressed with the _tædium vitæ_ than are the creatures of the Florentine and Sienese and Neapolitan novel-writers, and the reason of this is not far to seek. Life in Venice, when once the political constitution was firmly and finally fixed on an oligarchic basis, was more stable, more secure, more luxurious than in any of the other ruling cities of Italy. Social and political convulsion of the sort which vexed the neighbouring states was almost unknown, and, though the forces of the Republic might occasionally suffer defeat and disaster in distant seas and in the Levant, life went on peacefully and pleasantly within the shelter of the Lagunes. The religious conscience of the people was easy-going, orthodox, and laudably inclined to listen to the voice of authority; neither disposed to nourish within the hidden canker of heresy, nor to let itself be worked up into ecstatic fever by any sudden conviction of ungodliness such as led to the lighting of the Bonfire of Vanities in Florence. In a society thus constituted it was inevitable that life should be easier, more gladsome, and more secure than in Milan, with the constant struggle of Pope against Emperor, and later on under the turbulent despotism of the Viscontis and Sforzas; or than in Florence, with its constant civil broils and licentious public life, which not even the craft and power of the leaders of the Medici could discipline into public order; or than in Naples, dominated by the Aragonese kings and harried by the greedy mercenaries in the royal employ; or than in Rome itself, vexed continually by intrigue, political and religious, and