The attachment inspired by such a woman was not likely to be lessened by absence, or removed by death itself; and it is certain that the second part of the Canzonière of Petrarch, written after the death of Laura, is more beautiful than the first part: in a more impassioned style, a higher tone of feeling, with far fewer faults, both of taste and style. * * * * * It will be said perhaps that "the picture of such a mind as Petrarch's, enslaved and distracted by a dreaming passion, employed even in his declining years, in writing and polishing love verses, is a pitiable subject of contemplation; that if he had not left us his Canzonière, he would probably have performed some other excelling work of genius, which would have crowned him with equal or superior glory; and that if he had never been the lover of Laura, he would have been no less that master-spirit who gave the leading impulse to the age in which he lived, by consecrating his life, his energies, all his splendid talents, to the cultivation of philosophy and the fine arts, the extension of learning and liberty, and the general improvement of mankind." I doubt this, and I appeal to Petrarch himself. I believe there is no version into English of the 48th Canzone. If Lady Dacre had executed it--and in the same spirit as the "Chiare, fresche e dolce acque," and the "Italia mia," the reader had been spared my abortive prose sketch, which will give as just an idea of the original as a hasty penciled outline of one of Titian's or Domenichino's masterpieces would give us of all the magic colouring and effect of their glorious and half-breathing creations.