that he has lost nothing of his ancient admiration for martial prowess; while others, addressed to Queen Margherita, prove also his poetic sensibility to feminine grace. It is thus easy to explain Carducci’s apparent change of attitude, while at the same time fully understanding that the masses—not apt to enquire into the workings of a man’s mind, not apt to read with much attention or reflection—are simply struck by the difference in tone between his earlier poems (the “Ça Ira” in honour of the French Revolution, for instance), and his later laudations of the House of Savoy, and launch against him the charge to which we have alluded. It is difficult to choose, from the scathing scorn of the “Giambi” (“Iambics”), poured out in the incisive terseness of Carducci’s verse, any short passage which should give an idea of the whole series. We may mention, however, the terrible little poem entitled “Meminisse Horret,” written in 1867 while the Court was at Florence. He describes a horrible nightmare in which he sees Italy giving the lie to all her past traditions. Her ancient heroes are turned into cowards and supplicate those whom once they proudly defied; Dante, dressed like a clown, obsequiously shows strangers round Santa Croce; while Machiavelli, peeping slyly from behind a tomb, proclaims with a wink the adulteries of his mother-country in few words which cut to the quick. In the poem, written on the death of Giovanni Cairoli, the youth who, like his three brothers before him, died in battle for the unity of his country, to the grief yet glory of his widowed mother, the poet, branding, as Dante might have done, the infamy of those who dance and make love, and bring Italy to shame on the very graves of her heroes, goes so far as to curse his fatherland:— .... Cursed be thou, my ancient fatherland, on whom to-day’s shame and the vengeance of the centuries lie heaped! The plant of valour grows here yet but for thy mules to bed on; here the violet’s perfume ends in the dung-heap.