The Crayon Papers

before the revolution; then wild and savage; they have become more thoughtful and reflective. It is only old Frenchmen, nowadays, that are gay and trivial; the young are very serious personages.
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    P.S.—In the course of a morning’s walk, about the time the above remarks were written, I observed the Duke of Wellington, who was on a brief visit to Paris. He was alone, simply attired in a blue frock; with an umbrella under his arm, and his hat drawn over his eyes, and sauntering across the Place Vendome, close by the Column of Napoleon. He gave a glance up at the column as he passed, and continued his loitering way up the Rue de la Paix; stopping occasionally to gaze in at the shop-windows; elbowed now and then by other gazers, who little suspected that the quiet, lounging individual they were jostling so unceremoniously was the conqueror who had twice entered their capital victoriously; had controlled the destinies of the nation, and eclipsed the glory of the military idol, at the base of whose column he was thus negligently sauntering.
    Some years afterward I was at an evening’s entertainment given by the duke at Apsley House, to William IV. The duke had manifested his admiration of his great adversary, by having portraits of him in different parts of the house. At the bottom of the grand staircase stood the colossal statue of the emperor, by Canova. It was of marble, in the antique style, with one arm partly extended, holding a figure of victory. Over this arm the ladies, in tripping upstairs to the ball, had thrown their shawls. It was a singular office for the statue of Napoleon to perform in the mansion of the Duke of Wellington!
    “Imperial Caesar dead, and turned to clay,” etc., etc.
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AMERICAN RESEARCHES IN ITALY
LIFE OF TASSO: RECOVERY OF A LOST PORTRAIT OF DANTE
    To the Editor of the Knickerbocker:
    Sir—Permit me through the pages of your magazine to call the attention of the public to the learned and elegant researches in Europe of one of our countrymen, Mr. R. H. Wilde, of Georgia, formerly a member of the House of Representatives. After leaving Congress, Mr. Wilde a few years since spent about eighteen months in traveling through different parts of Europe, until he became stationary for a time in Tuscany. Here he occupied himself with researches concerning the private life of Tasso, whose mysterious and romantic love for the Princess Leonora, his madness and imprisonment, had recently become the theme of a literary controversy, not yet ended; curious in itself, and rendered still more curious by some alleged manuscripts of the poet’s, brought forward by Count Alberti. Mr. Wilde entered into the investigation with the enthusiasm of a poet, and the patience and accuracy of a case-hunter; and has produced a work now in the press, in which the “vexed questions” concerning Tasso are most ably discussed, and lights thrown upon them by his letters, and by various of his sonnets, which last are rendered into English with rare felicity. While Mr. Wilde was occupied upon this work, he became acquainted with Signer Carlo Liverati, an artist of considerable merit, and especially well versed in the antiquities of Florence. This gentleman mentioned incidentally one day, in the course of conversation, that there once and probably still existed in the “Bargello,” anciently both the prison, and the palace of the republic, an authentic portrait of Dante. It was believed to be in fresco, on a wall which afterward, by some strange neglect or inadvertency, had been covered with whitewash. Signor Liverati mentioned the circumstance merely to deplore the loss of so precious a portrait, and to regret the almost utter hopelessness of its recovery.
    As Mr. Wilde had not as yet imbibed that enthusiastic admiration for Dante which possesses all Italians, by whom the poet is almost worshiped, this conversation made but a slight impression on him at the time. Subsequently, however, his researches concerning Tasso being ended, he began to amuse his leisure hours with attempts to translate some specimens of Italian lyric poetry, and to compose very short biographical sketches of the authors. In these specimens, which as yet exist only in manuscript, he has shown the same critical knowledge of the Italian language, and admirable command of the English, that characterize his translations of Tasso. He had not advanced far in these exercises, when the obscure and contradictory accounts of many