the wild disorder of the darker ages: there is the heroic lawlessness of the ensuing: there is the creative energy of awakening civilization—awakened by freedom to weep over its fall: there is the dark and dreary despotism of succeeding times: and lastly, there is the glorious reign of Leopold the First, one of the few great men whose greatness is attested, not by misery which he has inflicted, but by the blessings which he has conferred upon his fellow-creatures. Every scene indeed of this five-act drama can furnish instruction to those who seek it.

And then there are tales of vengeance to chill the blood; and of sorrow to force the tear; and of wild generosity, and high honour, and passionate love to charm the fancy and enlist the feelings.

Italy has, indeed, ever been the land of all that is wonderful and beautiful either in art or nature; each province, nay, each town, possesses its own charter of renown, its own claim on the sympathies of mankind. And Tuscany demands pre-eminently our notice and our gratitude, in that she has twice been the civilizer of Western Europe.

It was to Tuscany that the able and beneficent Tarchun led his well-appointed and well-disciplined colony, bringing with him the art and science of Assyria and Egypt, and introducing those civil and political institutions, the beneficent influence of which is still felt in the Old World, and has now reached the New. It was to Tuscan wisdom and Tuscan skill that Rome owed all that was valuable in her constitution, and all that raised her in earlier ages above the wild tribes of the mountain and the wood. To Mastarna, the Servius Tullius of Roman romance, she owed those political and municipal institutions, which, however impaired by the sordid self-interest and ungoverned violence of her native barbarians, were the foundation of her greatness, and have been the original from the more or less exact copies of which Europe has thenceforth been pleased to mould her forms of civic order and national strength. From Tuscany, Rome obtained her public ceremonies and her religious rites. From Tuscany, her architecture. In fact, Tuscany was to Rome what Aristotle was to Alexander, though she requited her as Joash did Jehoiada.

And again, in after times, it was a Tuscan, the Lucumo Mecænas, whose fostering care supported, guarded, and brought forward the poets of the Augustan age; Virgil would have been a homeless outcast, Horace a needy adventurer, but for the protection and generosity of that truly great man. Nor was his systematic and universal patronage of true genius in every department of taste and letters his only merit; he possessed another excellence of equal value, especially in the eyes of a reviewer.

He could not tolerate mediocrity: one could almost imagine that he had dictated the famous couplet of Horace on this subject; for whilst his heart and his house were open to the literary giants of his day, they were inexorably closed against the dwarfs -the Blackmores, Masons, and Greens of his time-in short, he loved wits, but hated witlings; distinguishing them much in the same way that some persons do Newfoundlanders and Lapdogs.

And passing over the decline and fall of Roman dominion and European civilization, and the succeeding ages of darkness and disorder, the first glimmer of returning light greets us from Tuscan genius, and the glory of the bursting day gilds the valley of the Arno. It was the Florentine Dante who waked with a master's hand the spell that had been silent for ages; it was Florence, which, at a later period, became the birthplace of the imitative arts. It was Tuscan taste and Florentine munificence which gently restored to life the long defunct spirit of Roman literature, and offered a secure asylum to the learning of Greece.

And a mere allusion to the fact will serve to remind our readers, how much the earlier poets, even of our own land, owed to the influence of the strains which first arose in the valley of the Arno.

We may well, then, devote a portion of our existence to studying the history of such a people as the Tuscans; such a city as that of the Florentines; and though at the first view we may feel almost aghast at the sight of six thick volumes, let us but plunge boldly into the work before us, and we shall soon forget our fears and our qualms. It is written in a simple and easy style; the narrative is lucid, the pictures are well drawn, great research has been shown in the examination of authorities, and great impartiality in the account of facts, though the opinions expressed are at times far from correct, and we have noted one or two inaccuracies such as must necessarily occur in the first edition of so laborious a work.

Thus, when about to relate the history of the spoliation of Venice, our author prefaces his narrative by saying

"Monarchy, although beneficial, and perhaps requisite, to suppress disorder, and calm unsettled states ere civil liberty be planted, yet in all its aspects necessarily tends to evil; for self-gratification is the mainspring of human actions, and sovereigns with greater temptation, possess, from education, far weaker habits of self-control than other men."-Vol. iv. p. 136.

We know not which most to admire here-the faulty reasoning or the false conclusion. We should have imagined no surer

remedy for absolute republicanism than the careful perusal, not to say compilation, of the Florentine history; for why was Florence torn to pieces by factions? why did she finally sink under the sway of a tyrant? Simply because she wanted that only sure safeguard of freedom, a legitimate and constitutional king.

As an example of one of those minute errors which must almost necessarily occur in works of this nature, we cite the following:

"The English Pope, Adrian IV., died in 1159: twenty-three cardinals out of twenty-eight united in choosing Rolando de' Paperoni as his successor he was a native of Siena, and became afterwards celebrated under the name of Alexander III."

Celebrated he was for humbling the two greatest monarchs of his time, Henry II. of England, and Frederick Barbarossa; and he has obtained a less equivocal celebrity as the patron of learning and piety, and the successful champion of Italian freedom, but his name was not de' Paperoni, his family name was Bandinelli', his father Ranuccio Bandinelli having two sons, the one, Rolando, afterwards Alexander, the other a layman, whose descendants adopted the epithet Paparoni, in addition to their original patronymic, with the view of distinguishing themselves from the junior branches of the family, and of vindicating their claim to be the representatives of the Pope.

Having thus discharged the irksome duty of criticism, let us proceed to give some further idea of the excellent work under consideration. The origin and early history of Florence are involved in much obscurity; its nucleus would appear to have existed from remote antiquity as a suburb of the flourishing city of Fiesolethat city which was destined to fall beneath the rising power of its once insignificant dependant. Neither in the times of Etrurian independence nor Roman dominion does Florence figure in the drama of the world; but in the ages of anarchy and misrule which followed the dismemberment of the western empire, the lily of the Arno began to lift up her head above her companions, and the very tempest which shook her from summit to base, only gave her elasticity of stem and strength of root.

"In a public instrument of the year 774, Florence is mentioned rather as a suburb of Fiesole, than an independent city; and even in 801, a curious document given in Giovan-battista Ubaldini's history of his own family (by which several of them are made knights of the golden spur), describes it as deserted in consequence of the general misery. This expression related to what then remained of the city, as

1 See Muratori passim, and the inscription in the Church of San Giovanne di Laterano.

...

the term is 'derelict,' and not destroyed. Neither was it the custom at that epoch to appoint pastors where there was no flock, or a mere remnant. . . . And yet two bishops of Florence seem to have existed during the time of Narses. Moreover, in the acts past at Rome, confirming those of the sixth general council held at Constantinople in 681, the name of Reparato, Bishop of Florence, is, according to Borghini, to be seen.... There is . . . . reason to suppose that Tuscany, under the Lombards and Charlemagne, was governed according to the system of Longinus, in departments presided over by a duke, for as late as 786 we read of a Reginald, Duke of Chiusi, and a Guindibrand, Duke of Florence; but between that epoch and 806, the date of Charlemagne's will, counts were probably substituted, and the higher title reserved for the general governor of Tuscany. . . . . An exposition of the various troubles that afflicted Italy from Charlemagne's death in 814 until the coronation of Otho the Great in 962 is unnecessary: Florence shared in the general misery; yet in this universal darkness the embryo republic was gradually but unconsciously forming and preparing itself for coming events..... During these dark times we have but meagre accounts of Florence: Otho I. is said to have enlarged its territory from three miles to six in the year 962; and his grandson to have appointed Hugo, Marquis of Tuscany, his vicar in Italy, about 983, who established his court at Florence, and was celebrated for his great talent, but extreme licentiousness, until a vision reformed him. . . . . Sigonius affirms that Florence, as well as Pisa and Genoa, began to make a figure about the year 1003. .... Whether Florence was or was not so distinguished is uncertain; but that she enjoyed that progressive state of prosperity which justifies the assertion of Sigonius, may be inferred from subsequent indications of national independence, while improving the oppornity afforded to all the infant states for the achievement of their liberty during the wars of Ardoino of Ivrea, and Henry, Duke of Bavaria. . . . . Altogether there appears little reason to doubt the internal freedom of most Tuscan cities very early in the eleventh century; when no efficient governor existed, when the country was convulsed by civil war, and when each town, consulting only its own interests, sided with either monarch, and extracted concessions from both."-pp. 28-54.

In the year 1010 occurs the first great event of Florentine history, the capture of Fiesole, and absorption of the inhabitants of that town among the citizens of Florence. It were a wearisome task, to give a minute and necessarily succinct account of the struggles between the Popedom and the Empire, which continued throughout the greater part of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries-a contest, in which Florence universally sided with the Church against the throne. Yet in reading the fuller narrative of Captain Napier, there is much to interest and improve. The devout and heroic Matilda arrests our sym

2 Vol. i. p. 28.

pathy, whilst contending, under the banner of the Church which she adored, for the heritage of her father's house and the freedom of her native land; and we view, with a painful admiration, the mighty chiefs who struggled with an energy and a courage worthy of a better cause, for secular despotism or ecclesiastical tyranny. It is a mischievous notion, and one which has of late years done much evil to ardent minds, that where a struggle is going on, there must be a right and a wrong, i. e. that where there are two combatants engaged in a contest, one of them must be decidedly in the right, and the other decidedly in the wrong; so that it becomes our duty to choose our side in the fray. Now, the real truth revealed by Scripture, and exemplified by all countries and all ages, is, that frequently both parties are in the wrong. We might with as much reason be called upon to give a decided preference to one of the three evil principles which contend for pre-eminence in man's heart-the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life-as to determine in every case where two parties are striving for supremacy, which of them is in the right. St. James tells us plainly enough "from whence come wars and fightings amongst us," -we need seek no further for the motives which actuated either Pope or Emperor.

It is not till the beginning of the twelfth century, that we obtain any incontestable proof of Florentine freedom; the first authenticated act of independent power, is a contract with the castle and town of Pogna, in the Val d'Elsa in 1101, where the two consuls are named as representatives of the Florentine people, who on their part, promise to defend those of Pogna against all enemies except the Emperor or his nuncios, without allusion to Matilda or any other superior. During this century, two destructive fires visited the city, consuming amongst other remains of antiquity, the whole of the archives of the state. These calamities were considered as Divine judgments, inflicted for the heretical and sceptical opinions of many of the citizens, and their various breaches of the moral law. It is pleasing to turn from such subjects, to an instance of that strict and chivalrous honour, which always shines forth most brilliantly, in those cases where it is found in juxtaposition with a prevalent system of outrage and crime.

"Whatever," says our author, "may have been their private immorality, the Florentines as a people seem, at this time, not only to have had the confidence of their neighbours, but to have deserved it also; the Pisans, who were then in the full tide of military and commercial glory, on sending an expedition against the Saracens of Majorca,

3 p. 86.