Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1846,

BY C. S FRANCIS & CO.

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New-York.

Printed by

MUNROE & FRANCIS,

Boston.

PETRARCH.

THE traveller between Rome and Florence, by the Per ugia road, usually makes a noon-halt at Arezzo; and the ragged urchins of that decayed town, press eagerly around him and vociferously contend for the honour of being his guide to the house of Petrarch. In a few moments he stands before a homely, grey building, in a narrow and rude thoroughfare, upon the front of which is a marble tablet that proclaims it to be the humble dwelling where the poet was born, July 20th, 1304. An incident like this is apt to give an almost magical impulse to the wanderer's thoughts. As he proceeds on his way through a lonely country, over which broods the mellow atmosphere of the South, he is long haunted by the tale of human love thus vividly recalled to his memory. He muses, perhaps, with delight and wonder, upon the celestial power of genius which can thus preserve for the reverence and sympathy of after generations, one among the countless experiences of the heart. Literature has performed no more holy or delightful tasks than those dedicated to Affection. The minds are few that can bring home to themselves, with any cordial or benign effect, either the lessons of history or the maxims of philosophical wisdom. Uncommon clearness and strength of intellect are necessary in order to appropriate such teachings. But the heart, with its ardent impulses and divine instincts—its pleadings for sympathy, its tender regrets, its insatiable

desires, its infinite capacity for devotedness and self-denial —the heart is the grand interpreter of its own rich memorials. This it is which renders Petrarch so near to us in feeling, although removed by centuries from this our actual era. This it is which makes the transatlantic pilgrim gaze with emotion upon the spot of his nativity, and feel akin to him in being chartered with a similar, though perhaps undeveloped power and "strong necessity of loving." It is not like a dry antiquarian research to summon his person and character before us. As a man of civic and social responsibilities, he belongs to the thirteenth century; as a lover, he is a citizen of all time and a brother of all living men who find their chief joy, trial and inspiration, in the exercise and interchange of senti

ment.

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They keep his dust in Arqua where he died;
The mountain-village where his latter days

Went down the vale of years; and 'tis their pride-
An honest pride, and let it be their praise,

To offer to the passing stranger's gaze
His mansion and his sepulchre; both plain
And venerably simple, such as raise

A feeling more accordant with his strain,

Than if a pyramid formed his monumental fane."

It is not our intention to discuss the literary merits of Petrarch. This has been done too well and too often already. It is to the spirit which dictated and which has long been embalmed in his Sonnets, that we desired to call attention. Frequent doubts have, indeed, been cast upon the sincerity of these effusions. This, we imagine, results from the vain attempt to catch their legitimate meaning by a consecutive perusal. Devoted as they are to one subject, and cast in the same verbal form, a monotonous and artificial impression is the natural consequence of reading one after another, like the stanzas of a long