And, as the light streams gently from above, Sin’s gloomy mantle bursts its bonds in twain, And robed in white, I seem to feel again The first sweet sense of innocence and love. This gentle-hearted poet was a purist in style, and chiseled carefully the vase in which she put her thoughts, not for the sake of the vase, but reverently, to make it worthy of the thought. These hymns fall upon the ear like some thrilling strain from Palestrina, who translated into song the dreams, the aspirations, the baffled hopes, the sorrows of a race in its decline, and sent it along the centuries with its everlasting message of love and consolation. There was something akin in the two spirits that lived at the same time, though Palestrina was young when the poet neared the evening. It was he who first gave to music a living soul. Vittoria gave the world its first collection of religious poems, and poured her own heart into them. Both vibrated to the deepest note of their age. Only the arts differed, and the quality of thought, and the outer vestments of life. But we are far from the days when this beautiful woman in her magnificent robes of crimson velvet and gold, attended by six ladies in azure damask and as many grooms in blue and yellow satin, was one of the central figures in some royal wedding festivities at Naples. Mundane pleasures had long ago lost their charm, and the still lovely poet in her sable costume finds her consolation in ministering to the poor and suffering, and in an active interest in all the intellectual movements of her time. She was the friend of great men and distinguished women. Cardinal Bembo, the famous “dictator of letters,” lauds her virtues and her genius while he craves her favor. She writes of the gifts of her “divine Bembo,” addresses sonnets to him, and receives his “celestial, holy, and very Platonic” affection with gracious dignity. Castiglione sends her his manuscript of “Il Cortegiano” for criticism, and complains that she held it too long and copied it for other eyes. She gives discriminating praise of the “subject as well as the tact, elegance, and animation of the style,” but she suggests the wisdom of dwelling less persistently on the beauty and virtue of living women. The unscrupulous but keen-witted Aretino pays her compliments and begs her aid. “One must count with the tastes of one’s contemporaries,” he writes, in half-apology for his own base standards; “only amusement or scandal are lucrative; they burn with unholy passions, as you do with an inextinguishable angelic flame. Sermons and vespers for you, music and comedy for others.... Why write serious books? After all, I write to live.” This was the note of the new age in an ever-descending scale--the death-knell of all that is fine and noble in any age. It is needless to ask what this high-souled woman thought of sordid motives that were by no means confined to the Italian decadence; but she managed the vain and vindictive man, who