feared to be overcome by the pathos of
the circumstances, strong emotions not being easily borne at the age
of eighty-two years. There were many moistened eyes in the assembly
as Sir Vincent read the communication from the poet's venerable friend
and survivor.

T.A.T.

GINO CAPPONI.

GINO CAPPONI, whose death, on the 3d of February last, has been
noticed in all the principal journals of Europe and America, belonged
to a family that has been honored in Florence for more than five
hundred years, and whose name occurs on almost every page of its
history. He was born in that city on the 14th of September, 1792. His
name in full was Gino Alessandro Giuseppe Gaspero, but no one ever
heard of him save as Gino. At seven years of age he shared the
exile of his parents, who followed their sovereign, the grand duke
Ferdinand, when he was driven from his dominions by the victorious
arms of France. He was little more than twenty when he went as a
member of the embassy sent to Napoleon I. immediately after the
battle of Leipsic, on which occasion he is recorded to have had a long
conversation with the emperor. After the restoration of the Tuscan
sovereign at the fall of Napoleon he traveled extensively in England,
Germany and France. Returning to his country, he was continually eager
in using his large hereditary wealth for the promotion of education
among all classes of his countrymen. He was one of the principal
founders and supporters of the celebrated periodical, the _Antologia_,
which played so large and conspicuous a part in preparing the public
mind for the awakening which finally issued in that resuscitation of
Italy which we have all witnessed.

In 1841 he mainly contributed to the foundation of the _Archivio
Storico Italiano_, the fruitful parent of various other publications
of the same kind which have within the last thirty years done
infinitely more for students of Italian history than all the three
centuries which preceded them. The famous bookseller Vieusseux, who
himself did much and suffered much in the cause of the nascent Italian
liberties, undertook the material portion of this enterprise, which
was rewarded by a large measure of literary success, and by the fear
and enmity of the oppressors of Italy throughout the Peninsula.

Capponi, however, would fain have avoided _revolution_ could it have
been avoided without sacrificing liberty. In July, 1847, when the
general state of Europe was bringing ho