On one wall of the library (which is a simple oblong room, in nowise remarkable) was a copy of verses in a frame, by Cesarotti, and on the wall opposite a tribute from Alfieri, both manu propria.  Over and above these are many other scribblings; and hanging over the door of the poet’s little nook was a criminal French lithograph likeness of “Petrarque” when young.

Alfieri’s verses are written in ink on the wall, while those of Cesarotti are on paper, and framed, I do not remember any reference to his visit to Petrarch’s house in Alfieri’s autobiography, though the visit must have taken place in 1783, when he sojourned at Padua, and “made the acquaintance of the celebrated Cesarotti, with whose lively and courteous manners he was no less satisfied than he had always been in reading his (Cesarotti’s) most masterly version of ‘Ossian.’” It is probable that the friends visited the house together.  At any rate, I care to believe that while Cesarotti sat “composing” his tribute comfortably at the table, Alfieri’s impetuous soul was lifting his tall body on tiptoe to scrawl its inspirations on the plastering.

Do you care, gentle reader, to be reminded that just before this visit Alfieri had heard in Venice of the “peace between England and the United Colonies,” and that he then and there “wrote the fifth ode of the ‘America Libera,’” and thus finished that poem?

After copying these verses we returned to the dining-room, and while one pilgrim strayed idly through the names in the visitor’s book, the other sketched Petrarch’s cat, before mentioned, and Petrarch’s inkstand of bronze—­a graceful little thing, having a cover surmounted by a roguish cupid, while the lower part is supported on three lion’s claws, and just above the feet, at either of the three corners, is an exquisite little female bust and head.  Thus sketching and idling, we held spell-bound our friends the youth of Arqua, as well as our driver, who, having brought innumerable people to see the house of Petrarch, now for the first time, with great astonishment, beheld the inside of it himself.

As to the authenticity of the house I think there can be no doubt, and as to the genuineness of the relics there, nothing in the world could shake my faith in them, though Muratori certainly characterizes them as “superstitions.”  The great poet was sixty-five years old when he came to rest at Arqua, and when, in his own pathetic words, “there remained to him only to consider and to desire how to make a good end.”  He says further, at the close of his autobiography:  “In one of the Euganean hills, near to ten miles from the city of Padua, I have built me a house, small but pleasant and decent, in the midst of slopes clothed with vines and olives, abundantly sufficient for a family not large and discreet.  Here I lead my life, and although, as I have said, infirm of body, yet tranquil of mind, without excitements, without distractions, without cares, reading always, and writing