contributions of the lovers of antiquity and art; and it had become under Paul V. one of the centres of European finance.  Recent Popes had added splendid architectural embellishments, and the tendency to secular display was well represented by Urban VIII., a great gatherer and a great dispenser of wealth, an accomplished amateur in many arts, and surrounded by a tribe of nephews, inordinately enriched by their indulgent uncle.  Milton arrived early in October.  The most vivid trace of his visit is his presence at a magnificent concert given by Cardinal Barberini, who, “himself waiting at the doors, and seeking me out in so great a crowd, nay, almost laying hold of me by the hand, admitted me within in a truly most honourable manner.”  There he heard the singer, Leonora Baroni, to whom he inscribed three Latin epigrams, omitted from the fifty-six compositions in honour of her published in the following year.  But we may see her as he saw her in the frontispiece, reproduced in Ademollo’s monograph upon her.  The face is full of sensibility, but not handsome.  She lived to be a great lady, and if any one spoke of her artist days she would say, Chi le ricercava queste memorie? Next to hers, the name most entwined with Milton’s Roman residence is that of Lucas Holstenius, a librarian of the Vatican.  Milton can have had little respect for a man who had changed his religion to become the dependant of Cardinal Barberini, but Holstenius’s obliging reception of him extorted his gratitude, expressed in an eloquent letter.  Of the venerable ruins and masterpieces of ancient and modern art which have inspired so many immortal compositions, Milton tells us nothing, and but one allusion to them is discoverable in his writings.  The study of antiquity, as distinguished from that of classical authors, was not yet a living element in European culture:  there is also truth in Coleridge’s observation that music always had a greater attraction for Milton than plastic art.

After two months’ stay in Rome, Milton proceeded to Naples, whence, after two months’ residence, he was recalled by tidings of the impending troubles at home, just as he was about to extend his travels to Sicily and Greece.  The only name associated with his at Naples is that of the Marquis Manso, then passing his seventy-ninth year with the halo of reverence due to a veteran who fifty years ago had soothed and shielded Tasso, and since had protected Marini.  He now entertained Milton with equal kindness, little dreaming that in return for hospitality he was receiving immortality.  Milton celebrated his desert as the friend of poets, in a Latin poem of singular elegance, praying for a like guardian of his own fame, in lines which should never be absent from the memory of his biographers.  He also unfolded the project which he then cherished of an epic on King Arthur, and assured Manso that Britain was not wholly barbarous, for the Druids were really very considerable poets.  He is silent on Chaucer and Shakespeare.  Manso requited