the inhabitants were henceforth subjected entirely to the dominion of the Spanish sovereigns of the house of Austria.  The emperor, Charles V., appointed the Marquis de Villafranca, better known as Don Pedro de Toledo, to be Viceroy of Naples, who, like his despotic master, carried out his so-called reforms with a high hand, and interfered with the personal and domestic affairs of the inhabitants, so that he speedily roused their resentment.  Against the establishment of the Inquisition, which he set about under the mask of zeal for religion, but in reality for the intimidation of the nobles, the whole city rose up in violent opposition.  After having exhausted itself in a vain struggle with the viceroy, it resolved to petition the emperor, and commissioned the Prince of Salerno to plead its cause at the Court of Nuremberg.  But in consequence of being forestalled by the cunning Don Pedro, the prince, when he arrived, found the case prejudged, and all his arguments and pleadings were of no avail.  Disgusted with the failure of his errand, with the coldness of his reception, and with other indignities which he received at the hands of the emperor and his viceroy, he determined to abandon altogether the cause of Austria.  Repairing to Venice, he publicly gave effect to his decision; whereupon Don Pedro, too glad to have an opportunity of oppressing his personal enemy, declared the prince a rebel, confiscated his estates, and seized all his personal property.  In the misfortunes of his patron Bernardo Tasso shared.  He too was proscribed as a rebel; his property at Salerno was seized, and his wife and children were transferred by the viceroy’s orders to Naples, where her family resided, and where, under their cruel treatment, instigated by the viceroy, she was deprived of her fortune, and virtually held a prisoner to the day of her death.

Such were the dark clouds that, after a brief gleam of the brightest prosperity, hung over the early years of Torquato Tasso.  Deprived of the care of a father who followed from court to court the varied fortunes of his benefactor, and in the company of a mother worse than widowed, dependent upon the cold and niggardly charity of friends who were either too timid or superstitious to oppose the patron of the Inquisition, the child grew up in melancholy solitude, like an etiolated plant that has been deprived of the sunshine.  The original sadness and sensitiveness of his disposition was much increased by the family misfortunes.  In his seventh year he was sent to a school in the neighbourhood, opened by the Jesuits, who were at this time beginning to exert a powerful influence upon society, principally on account of their zeal in the cause of education.  At this school he remained for three years, acquiring a wonderful knowledge of Latin and Greek, and manifesting such enthusiasm in his studies that he rose long before day-break, and was so impatient to get to school that his mother was often obliged to send him away in the