In the village of Certaldo is still shown the house of BOCCACCIO; and on a turret are seen the arms of the Medici, which they had sculptured there, with an inscription alluding to a small house and a name which filled the world; and in Ferrara, the small house which ARIOSTO built was purchased, to be preserved, by the municipality, and there they still show the poet’s study; and under his bust a simple but affecting tribute to genius records that “Ludovico Ariosto in this apartment wrote.”  Two hundred and eighty years after the death of the divine poet it was purchased by the podesta, with the money of the commune, that “the public veneration may be maintained."[A] “Foreigners,” says Anthony Wood of MILTON, “have, out of pure devotion, gone to Bread-street to see the house and chamber where he was born;” and at Paris the house which VOLTAIRE inhabited, and at Ferney his study, are both preserved inviolate.  In the study of MONTESQUIEU at La Brede, near Bordeaux, the proprietor has preserved all the furniture, without altering anything, that the apartment where this great man meditated on his immortal work should want for nothing to assist the reveries of the spectator; and on the side of the chimney is still seen a place which while writing he was accustomed to rub his feet against, as they rested on it.  In a keep or dungeon of this feudal chateau, the local association suggested to the philosopher his chapter on “The Liberty of the Citizen.”  It is the second chapter of the twelfth book, of which the close is remarkable.

[Footnote A:  A public subscription secured the house in which Shakspeare was born at Stratford-on-Avon.  Durer’s house, at Nuremberg, is still religiously preserved, and its features are unaltered.  The house in which Michael Angelo resided at Florence is also carefully guarded, and the rooms are still in the condition in which they were left by the great master.—­Ed.]

Let us regret that the little villa of POPE, and the poetic Leasowes of SHENSTONE, have fallen the victims of property as much as if destroyed by the barbarous hand which cut down the consecrated tree of Shakspeare.  The very apartment of a man of genius, the chair he studied in, the table he wrote on, are contemplated with curiosity; the spot is full of local impressions.  And all this happens from an unsatisfied desire to see and hear him whom we never can see nor hear; yet, in a moment of illusion, if we listen to a traditional conversation, if we can revive one of his feelings, if we can catch but a dim image, we reproduce this man of genius before us, on whose features we so often dwell.  Even the rage of the military spirit has taught itself to respect the abode of genius; and Caesar and Sylla, who never spared the blood of their own Rome, alike felt their spirit rebuked, and alike saved the literary city of Athens.  Antiquity has preserved a beautiful incident of this nature, in the noble reply of the artist PROTOGENES.