[5] Florence.

[6] It is the opinion of many historians that the _Divina
Commedia_ was commenced before the exile of Dante.--_Foscolo_.

[7] Petrarch was born in exile of Florentine parents.--_Ibid_.

[8] Alfieri. So Foscolo saw him in his last years.

[9] The poet, quoting Pausanias, says: "The sepulture of the
Athenians who fell in the battle took place on the plain of
Marathon, and there every night is heard the neighing of the
steeds, and the phantoms of the combatants appear."


The poem ends with the prophecy that poetry, after time destroys
the sepulchers, shall preserve the memories of the great and the
unhappy, and invokes the shades of Greece and Troy to give an
illusion of sublimity to the close. The poet doubts if there be
any comfort to the dead in monumental stones, but declares that
they keep memories alive, and concludes that only those who leave
no love behind should have little joy of their funeral urns. He
blames the promiscuous burial of the good and bad, the great and
base; he dwells on the beauty of the ancient cemeteries and the
pathetic charm of English churchyards. The poem of _I Sepolcri_
has peculiar beauties, yet it does not seem to me the grand work
which the Italians have esteemed it; though it has the pensive
charm which attaches to all elegiac verse. De Sanctis attaches
a great political and moral value to it. "The revolution, in the