Venice, and there he began his education for the Church in the Seminary of the Madonna della Salute. The tourist who desires to see the Titians and Tintorettos in the sacristy of this superb church, or to wonder at the cold splendors of the interior of the temple, is sometimes obliged to seek admittance through the seminary, and it has doubtless happened to more than one of our readers to behold many little sedate old men in their teens, lounging up and down the cool, humid courts there, and trailing their black, priestly robes over the springing mould. The sun seldom strikes into that sad close, and when the boys form into long files, two by two, and march out for recreation, they have a torpid and melancholy aspect, upon which the daylight seems to smile in vain. They march solemnly up the long Zattere, with a pale young father at their head, and then march solemnly back again, sweet, genteel, pathetic spectres of childhood, and re-enter their common tomb, doubtless unenvied by the hungriest and raggedest biricchino, who asks charity of them as they pass, and hoarsely whispers "Raven!" when their leader is beyond hearing. There is no reason to suppose that a boy, born poet among the mountains, and full of the wild and free romance of his native scenes, could love the life led at the Seminary of the Salute, even though it included the study of literature and philosophy. From his childhood Dall' Ongaro had given proofs of his poetic gift, and the reverend ravens of the seminary were unconsciously hatching a bird as little like themselves as might be. Nevertheless, Dall' Ongaro left their school to enter the University of Padua as student of theology, and after graduating took orders, and went to Este, where he lived some time as a teacher of belles-lettres. At Este his life was without scope, and he was restless and unhappy, full of ardent and patriotic impulses, and doubly restrained by his narrow field and his priestly vocation. In no long time he had trouble with the Bishop of Padua, and, abandoning Este, seems also to have abandoned the Church forever. The chief fruit of his sojourn in that quaint and ancient village was a poem entitled Il Venerdì Santo, in which he celebrated some incidents of the life of Lord Byron, somewhat as Byron would have done. Dall' Ongaro's poems, however, confess the influence of the English poet less than those of other modern Italians, whom Byron infected so much more than his own nation, that it is still possible for them to speak of him as one of the greatest poets and as a generous man. From Este, Dall' Ongaro went to Trieste, where he taught literature and philosophy, wrote for the theatre, and established a journal in which, for ten years, he labored to educate the people in his ideas of Italian unity and progress. That these did not coincide with the ideas of most Italian dreamers and politicians of the time, may be inferred from the fact that he began in 1846 a course of lectures on Dante, in which he combated the clerical tendencies of Gioberti and Balbo, and criticised the first acts of Pius IX. He had as profound doubt of Papal liberality as Nicolini, at a time when other patriots were fondly cherishing the hope of a united Italy under an Italian pontiff; and at Rome, two years later, he sought to direct popular feeling from the man to the end, in one of the earliest of his graceful Stornelli. "PIO NONO. "Pio Nono is a name, and not the man Who saws the air from yonder Bishop's seat; Pio Nono is the offspring of our brain, Pio Nono is a banner, a refrain, A name that sounds well sung upon the street. "Who calls, Long live Pio Nono!' means to call, And country and good-will, these signify That it is well for Italy to die; But not to die for a vain dream or hope, Not to die for a throne and for a Pope!" During these years at Trieste, however, Dall' Ongaro seems to have been also much occupied with pure literature, and to have given a great deal of study to the sources of national poetry, as he discovered them in the popular life and legends. He had been touched with the prevailing romanticism; he had written hymns like Manzoni, and, like Carrer, he sought to poetize the traditions and superstitions of his countrymen. He found a richer and deeper vein than the Venetian poet among his native 66 hills and the neighboring mountains of Slavonia, but we cannot say that he wrought it to much better effect. The two volumes which he published in 1840 contain many ballads which are very graceful and musical, but which lack the fresh spirit of songs springing from the popular heart, while they also want the airy and delicate beauty of the modern German ballads. Among the best of them are two which Dall' Ongaro built up from mere lines and fragments of lines current among the people, as in these later years he has more successfully restored us two plays of Menander from the plots and a dozen verses of each. "One may imitate," he says, more or less fortunately, Manzoni, Byron, or any other poet, but not the simple inspirations of the people. And The Pilgrim who comes from Rome' and the Rosettina,' if one could have them complete as they once were, would probably make me blush for my elaborate variations." But study which was so well directed, and yet so conscious of its limitations, could not but be of the greatest value; and Dall' Ongaro, no doubt, owes to it his gift of speaking more authentically for the popular heart than any other living poet. That which he has done since shows that he studied the people's thought and expression con amore, and in no vain sentiment of dilettanteism, or antiquarian research, or literary patronage. It is not to be supposed that Dall' Ongaro's literary life had at this period an altogether objective tendency. In the volumes mentioned there is abundant evidence that he was of the same humor as all men of poetic genius must be at a certain time of life. Here are pretty verses of occasion, upon weddings and betrothals, such as people write in Italy; here are stanzas from albums, such as people used to write everywhere; here are didactic lines; here are bursts of mere sentiment and emotion. In the volume of Fantasie, published at Florence in 1866, Dall' Ongaro has collected some of the ballads from his early works, but has left out the more subjective effusions. Nevertheless, these are so pleasing of their kind, that we may give here at least one passionate little poem, and not wrong the author. "If, with delight and love aglow, Thou bendest thy brown eyes on me, They darken me to all I know, To all that lives and breathes But thee. "And if thou sufferest me to steal My soul were rapt among the blest, To heaven's glory from thy breast." This is well, we say, in its way, for it is the poetry of the senses, and yet not coarse; but we must take something else that the poet has rejected, from his early volume, because it is in a more unusual spirit than the above-given, and because, under a fantastic name and in a fantastic form, the poet expresses the most tragic and pathetic interest of the life to which he was himself vowed. "THE SISTER OF THE MOON. "Shine, moon, ah shine! and let thy pensive light I have a sister in the lonely night When I commune with thee. "Alone and friendless in the world am I, Like some poor dove abandonéd to die "Like some poor floweret in a desert land In vain upon the air its leaves expand, "No loving hand shall save it from the waste, My heart shall throb upon no loving breast "That trouble which consumes my weary soul No wisdom understand the secret dole Of the sad sighs I heave. 66 'My fond heart cherished once a hope, a vow, In convent gloom, a dim lamp burning low, “I shall have prayers and hymns like some dead saint But in love's blessed power to fall and faint, "Born to entwine my life with others, born Apart from all I lead my life forlorn, "Shine, moon, ah shine! and let thy tender light Speak to me of the life beyond the night It will here satisfy the strongest love of contrasts to turn from Dall' Ongaro the poet to Dall' Ongaro the politician, and find him on his feet, and making a speech at a public dinner given to Richard Cobden at Trieste, in 1847. Cobden was then, as always, the advocate of free trade, and Dall' Ongaro was then, as always, the advocate of free government. He saw in the union of the Italians under a customs-bond the hope of their political union, and in their emancipation from oppressive imposts their final escape from yet more galling oppression. He expressed something of this, and, though repeatedly interrupted by the police, he succeeded in saying so much as to secure his expulsion from Trieste. Italy was already in a ferment, and insurrections were preparing in Venice, Milan, Florence, and Rome; and Dall' Ongaro, consulting with the Venetian leaders Manin and Tommaseo, retired to Tuscany, and took part in the movements which wrung a constitution from the Grand Duke, and preceded the flight of that cowardly and treacherous prince. In December he went to Rome, where he joined himself with the Venetian refugees and with other Italian patriots, like D'Azeglio and Durando, who were striving to direct the popular mind toward Italian unity. The following March he was, as we |