'Has Laura's lover,' often said I to myself, 'ever sat down upon this stone?
Or has his foot ever pressed that turf ?' Some, especially of the female sex, could have felt sure of it; my answer was (impute it to my years), 'I fear, not.' Is it not in fact obvious that many of his love-verses must have flowed, I do not say from a wish to display his own talent, but from a habit of exercising his intellect in that way, rather than from an impulse of his heart?
It is otherwise with his Lyrical Poems, and particularly with the one upon the degradation of his country.

There he pours out his reproaches, lamentations, and aspirations like an ardent and sincere patriot.

But enough; it is time to turn to my own effusions, such as they are.
296.

_Ibid._ The Tour, of which the following Poems are very inadequate remembrances, was shortened by report, too well founded, of the prevalence of cholera at Naples.

To make some amends for what was reluctantly left unseen in the south of Italy, we visited the Tuscan Sanctuaries among the Apennines, and the principal Italian Lakes among the Alps.