Valery speaks of the delightful society which he met in the gray old
town; and it is said that Ferrara has an unusual share of culture in
her wealthy class, which is large. With such memories of learning and
literary splendor as belong to her, it would be strange if she did
not in some form keep alive the sacred flame. But, though there may
be refinement and erudition in Ferrara, she has given no great name to
modern Italian literature. Her men of letters seem to be of that race
of grubs singularly abundant in Italy,--men who dig out of archives
and libraries some topic of special and momentary interest and print
it, unstudied and unphilosophized. Their books are material, not
literature, and it is marvelous how many of them are published. A
writer on any given subject can heap together from them a mass of fact
and anecdote invaluable in its way; but it is a mass without life or
light, and must be vivified by him who uses it before it can serve the
world, which does not care for its dead local value. It remains to be
seen whether the free speech and free press of Italy can reawaken the
intellectual activity of the cities which once gave the land so many
literary capitals.

What numbers of people used to write verses in Ferrara! By operation
of the principle which causes things concerning whatever subject you
happen to be interested in to turn up in every direction, I found a
volume of these dead-and-gone immortals at a book-stall, one day, in
Venice. It is a curiously yellow and uncomfortable volume of the year
1703, printed all in italics. I suppose there are two hundred odd
rhymers selected from in that book,--and how droll the most of them
are, with their unmistakable traces of descent from Ariosto, Tasso,
and Guarini! What acres of enameled meadow there are in those pages!
Brooks enough to turn all the mills in the world go purling through
them. I should say some thousands of nymphs are constantly engaged