Arizona republican., 1892-01-07

NEW 1oRk, l'tC. -N.--Et tIlNIa nus Nl' ways had a strange, sad sort or IascIna- ton for me, beyond that of almost any of the medieval capitals of Italy. have been there several times, and ] hope to go there again. Each time it impreSses me anew, as if on previous visits l had not fully caught it's atmosphere, had not sufficiently sympathized with it's historic and poetic associations. The very name has its sonorous charm. It sounds like condensation of the romance and beauty, the brilliance and seduction, the tragedy and pathos of the Italian Mid dle Ages.
 When l was small boy the name appealed to me, touched my heart, stirred my imagination. Shall ever, thought, set foot in Ferrara? My va grant mind was continually journeying thither, continually seeing, not the town of the present, but the fourishing city of the Sixteenth century. had reached mans estate before my body had fol- lowed my eager mind. remember viv- idly, as we were whirling over the rails from Bologna on delightful April morning, that the guard called out Ger rara." The three liquid syllables made my heart leap and my eyes motten. How could he take it so calmly! His voice was as even as the conductors at home when he announces Fordham or Mamaroneck. Was l actually in Fer rara at I,st9
 The weary years of waiting had finally borne fruit. As stepped out of the car at the station, l am not sure, in my ex- alted mood, that did not expect to be greeted by Boiardo, Tasso and Ariosto, and to see Lucrezia Borgia, beautiful and bewitching, anxiously looking for the arrival of one of her many lovers. But the mood passed, and was prepared to view things as they really were. jumped into a vettura, drove to the Stella d'Oro, deposited my luggage and set out for a stroll, using my own eyes and creating my own emotions
 Ferrara was not unlike my anticipa- tions. l had studied guide books suf- ficiently not to be disappointed at the shrunken, decayed town, containing less than 35,000 souls. Its outgiving was that of faded grandeur, conspicuous in its broad, regular, deserted streets, in which the grass was growing. The churches and palaces were moldy and impaired; the walls of the ancient city crumbling; the gnawing tooth of Time visible on every hand. All this comported with my idea of fitness. Every Italian capital with a history should look so. It was exceedingly picturesque, pro foundly interesting.
 My wish was to reconstruct it through my imagination; to revivify the dead; to restore the bygone. And with this purpose l wandered at my own sweet will, mentally intent on the ages fled and the events to which they had given birth. I went through the broad Via della Giovecca, the COrso di Pc and Wit torio Emmanuele and the other principal streets, steppingin to the Cathedral, the churches of San Andrea, San Benedetto, San Domenico, Santa Maria in Vado, of the Campo SantO and others. loitered in the Piazze Oca, Mercato, Ariostea, and sat on the old walls gazing off to the Pc and across the broad level toward the horizon.
 lJ lS udbul dA lildb lAlc DitsSC Dc unhealthy, from the requentinundation of the river, higher than the surround ing region, and its consequent marshy character. The citizens tell strangers that it is not nalarious now, though they themselves often have chills and fever, as their appearance indicates. It has always been malarious, and always will be, until the whole neighborhood is properly drained. As long ago as the first part of the Fifteenth century, when Pope Eugenius " held an ecumenical council there, the Greek emperor, John Paleolologus, being present, the council was driven elsewhere by the tainted at mosphere. Nearly all Italy is thus in. .fected. Its attractiveness is usually as- sociated-with a consciousness of danger to health and life, so that it may be said t. exercise kind of fatal charm. At Ferrara I particularly feel this, though my hygienic invulnerableness has hith- erto stood me in good stead.
 While observed on all sides decline and desertion-defaced statues, perish ing monuments, vacant streets, forsaken edifces-I looked at the city through my minds eye, and through the dead ages. was there not in the last half of the Nineteenth century, but in the me dieval time, during the dominance of the Estes, when the town boasted of 100, ,000 people, and the court was one of the most polished and sumptuous in Europe.
 l seemed to see Giotto painting fires coes in the Church of St. Agostino, Dosso Dossi decorating canvases for Alfonso dEste, Bastianino sketching his bold figures in the Cathedral. The stern face of Calvin fleeing from persecution ap- peared in the ducal palace and relaxed its sternness somewhat at the kind words of the Duchess Renee, daughter of Louis XII and wife of Ercole H. Clement Marot, the French poet, also fugitive, was born again and acted as pri- vate secretary of the duchess. In the house of Ariostc, in the Via di Mirasole, the poet was disclosed, as in Q vision, writing the "Orlando Furioso" and finally dying at fifty-eight over his studies-s true type of the devoted scholar. Tasso showed in the hospital of St. Anna as a prisoner, having been confined there by Alfonso d'Este from some unknown motive. The motive be- came clear to me there-it was his love for the dukes sister, Eleonora, which the duke pretended to treat as mental disorder. The university, founded in tho Eourtaaptb capturv raonvarad ;to