United States or Taiwan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The Mantuan agent, Brognolo, informed his master of this event in a despatch dated November 29, 1494: "A calamity has happened which is also a great insult to the Pope.
The Saxons, the only power in alliance with the Romans, gained a victory over Henry in Germany at the very same time when Matilda's forces fled before his army in the Mantuan territory. Matilda had lately granted all her hereditary states to Gregory and his successors forever. Before the summer of the year 1080 the citizens of Rome saw the forces of Henry in the Campagna.
"He passed from me, and I joined the 'Ionian father of the rest' Homer, who, with a countenance of unspeakable majesty, was seated on a throne of rock, between the Mantuan Virgil of the laurel crown, Hugo, Sophocles, Milton, Lovelace, Tennyson, and Shelley. "At their feet I beheld, in a vast and gloomy hall, many an honest critic, many an erudite commentator, an army of reviewers.
The population was roused with patriotic cries of "Long live the Mantuan people!" and, as usual, believed, poor souls, that some good was meant them by those who came to overthrow their tyrants. The Bonacolsi were dreaming that pleasant morning of anything but ruin, and they offered no resistance to the insurrection till it burst out in the great square before the Castello di Corte.
At the carnival of 1506 at Urbino, Castiglione and his friend Cesare Gonzaga, of the great Mantuan family, recited the former's "Tirsi," dialogues in verse. The two interpreters wore pastoral costumes. The dialogue was couched in the customary pastoral phrase, but it was made plain that fulsome flattery of living personages was intended.
On this occasion the Gonzaga, with two hundred and sixty Mantuan gentlemen, mounted on superb horses, contested the prizes with the Marquis of Ferrara, at the head of two hundred Ferrarese, equally mounted, and attended by their squires and pages, magnificently dressed. There were sixty thousand spectators of the encounter.
While Don Carlos was thus employed in the conquest of Naples and Sicily, the Imperialists were hard pressed in Lombardy by the united forces of France and Piedmont, commanded by the king of Sardinia and the old mareschal duke de Villars. In the month of January they undertook the siege of Tortona, which they reduced; while the troops of the emperor began to pour in great numbers into the Mantuan.
Some damage would doubtless be thus inflicted by the fire, and perhaps a panic, suggested by the memories of Antwerp and by the knowledge that the famous Mantuan wizard was then a resident of England, would be still more effective. In Winter's opinion, the Armada might at least be compelled to slip its cables, and be thrown into some confusion if the project were fairly carried out.
Both princesses held fast to the ideal of their girlhood, and, leading the same pure and spotless life, left the same gracious memory behind them, alike in the old Mantuan city on the banks of the classic Mincio, where Isabella's presence lingers like some delicate perfume about the Camerini of the ancient Castello, and in that grander and more splendid court where Beatrice reigned for a few brief years by the Moro's side at Milan.
Maw my Arabella will, I know, forgive my reverting to the name under which she won her maiden laurels it cost me a pang, my dear Smiles, to reflect that the fame to be won here, the honour of having popularised HIM, here on the confines of his native Arden, will never be associated with the name of Mortimer. Sic vos non vobis, as the Mantuan has poignantly observed.
Word Of The Day