MAECHESE GIKO CAPPONT. S6T 



written years afterwards, when the dark cloud had passed away and 

 better days had come to Italy. " Since tlie days of Petrarch," he 

 writes in the letter prefixed to it, " the poetic law has been recognized 

 that the public is the proper confidant of the rhymer's affections. No 

 one who knows that you are the only one to whom I have recourse in 

 all which passes between myself and me (' tra me e me''), will wonder at 

 this public confession which I send you ; and to those who do not know 

 it, I have wished to say in verse what bonds unite us." These bonds, 

 be it said, were never severed until the 31st of March, 1850, when 

 Giusti, who had for months been the guest of his illustrious friend, ex- 

 pired at the Palazzo Capponi, and was thence carried to his grave in 

 the church of San Miniato. Himself an author of no mean repute, the 

 sympathies of men of letters centred round Gino Capponi. They had 

 none of that jealousy of him, which too often divides the craft, but for 

 half a century were in the habit of looking up to him as " a perma- 

 nent minister of literature." In him they found a wise adviser and an 

 infiuential friend, sympathetic, kind, hospitable, and generous. A short 

 abstract of the chief events of his life founded on Count Passerini's 

 biographical notice in Litta's Famiglie Celebri, as published in " La 

 Nazione," will suffice to show how nobly he filled the triple role of 

 patriot, patron, and friend. 



Son of the Marchese Pier Roberto and the Marchesa Maria Mad- 

 dalena Frescobaldi, Gino Alessandro Giuseppe Gasparo Capponi was 

 born 'at Florence, on the 14th of September, 1792. At the age of 

 seven, when the Grand Duke Ferdinand III. was driven out of Tus- 

 cany by the invading French, he left his native city with his parents ; 

 and during four years of exile, as also after his return home, pursued his 

 studies under the best-masters until 1813, when he was sent to France 

 as one of a deputation charged to off'er aid and assistance from the City 

 of Florence to the Emperor Napoleon, whose power and prestige had 

 received a rude shock in the Russian campaign and by the disastrous 

 battle of Leipsic. In recognition of his services on this important 

 mission, he was appointed Chamberlain to the Grand Duke, an office 

 which did not prevent him from visiting France, Germany, and Eng- 

 land, for the purpose of completing his education, and of gaining that 

 valuable experience of men and things, which he was to turn to good 

 account in after life. On his return to Italy, he immediately assumed 

 the position to which his birth, his talents, and his virtues entitled 

 him. Every good enterprise found in him a ready helper ; and through 

 the interest which he took in the opening of schools, savings banks, 

 and infant asylums, he did much to advance the cause of morality and 



