Romanticismo ! Upon Manzoni’s Inni Sacri ! Upon the shadows-and-moonlight poetry of the romantic movement, which he had compared to “Luna, Heaven’s pallid nun”! Per Bacco , this was a joy to listen to! And they ought to have heard Carducci interpret Dante, celebrating him as the citizen of a great city-state, who had spoken out against asceticism and the negation of life, and on the side of the world-transforming and reforming deed! It was not the sickly and mystagogic figure of Beatrice which the poet had celebrated under the name of “ donna gentil e pietosa ”; rather it had been his wife, who represented in the poem the principle of worldly knowledge and practical workaday life.