in two months; while it seems to him not probable that Tasso should have received there the visits of princes and other distinguished persons whom Duke Alfonso allowed to see him, or that a prisoner who was often permitted to ride about the city in a carriage should have been thrust back into such a cavern on his return to the hospital.  “After this,” says our valet de place who knows how to read and write, “visit the prison of Tasso, certain that in the hospital of St. Anna that great man was confined for many years;” and, with this chilly warning, leaves his reader to his emotions.

I am afraid that if as frank caution were uttered in regard to other memorable places, the objects of interest in Italy would dwindle sadly in number, and the valets de place, whether they know how to read and write or not, would be starved to death.  Even the learning of Italy is poetic; and an Italian would rather enjoy a fiction than know a fact—­in which preference I am not ready to pronounce him unwise.  But this characteristic of his embroiders the stranger’s progress throughout the whole land with fanciful improbabilities; so that if one use his eyes half as much as his wonder, he must see how much better it would have been to visit, in fancy, scenes that have an interest so largely imaginary.  The utmost he can make out of the most famous place is, that it is possibly what it is said to be, and is more probably as near that as any thing local enterprise could furnish.  He visits the very cell in which Tasso was confined, and has the satisfaction of knowing that it was the charcoal-cellar of the hospital in which the poet dwelt.  And the genius loci—­where is that?  Away in the American woods, very likely, whispering some dreamy, credulous youth,—­telling him charming fables of its locus, and proposing to itself to abandon him as soon as he sets foot upon its native ground.  You see, though I cared little about Tasso, and nothing about his prison, I was heavily disappointed in not being able to believe in it, and felt somehow that I had been awakened from a cherished dream.

II.

But I have no right to cast the unbroken shadow of my skepticism upon the reader, and so I tell him a story about Ferrara which I actually believe.  He must know that in Ferrara the streets are marvelous long and straight.  On the corners formed by the crossing of two of the longest and straightest of these streets stand four palaces, in only one of which we have a present interest.  This palace my guide took me to see, after our visit to Tasso’s prison, and, standing in its shadow, he related to me the occurrence which has given it a sad celebrity.  It was, in the time of the gifted toxicologist, the residence of Lucrezia Borgia, who used to make poisonous little suppers there, and ask the best families of Italy to partake of them.  It happened on one occasion that Lucrezia Borgia was thrust out of a