was born, to the end of the century.  In these thirty-five years, the stout walls and the tall tower of the Bargello were built, the grand foundations of the Palazzo Vecchio and of the unrivalled Duomo were laid, and both in one year; the Baptistery—­Il mio bel San Giovanni—­was adorned with a new covering of marble; the churches of Sta Maria Novella, of Or San Michele, (changed from its original object,) and Sta Croce,—­the finest churches even now in Florence,—­were all begun and carried far on to completion.  Each new work was at once the fruit and the seed of glorious energy.  The small city, of less than one hundred thousand inhabitants, the little republic, not so large as Rhode Island or Delaware, was setting an example which later and bigger and richer republics have not followed.[6] It might well, indeed, be called a “new life” for Florence, as well as for Dante.  When it was determined to supply the place of the old church of Santa Reparata with a new cathedral, a decree was passed in words of memorable spirit:  “Whereas it is the highest interest of a people of illustrious origin so to proceed in its affairs that men may perceive from its external works that its doings are at once wise and magnanimous, it is therefore ordered, that Arnolfo, architect of our commune, prepare the model or design for the rebuilding of Santa Reparata, with such supreme and lavish magnificence that neither the industry nor the capacity of man shall be able to devise anything more grand or more beautiful; inasmuch as the most judicious in this city have pronounced the opinion, in public and private conferences, that no work of the commune should be undertaken, unless the design be to make it correspondent with a heart which is of the greatest nature, because composed of the spirit of many citizens united together in one single will."[7] The records of few other cities contain a decree so magnificent as this.

It would be strange, indeed, if the youthful book of one so sensitive to external influences as Dante did not give evidence of sympathy with such pervading emotion.  And so apparent is this,—­that one may say that only at such a period, when strength of sentiment was finding vent in all manner of free expression, was such a book possible.  Confidence, frankness, directness in the rendering of personal feeling are rare, except in conditions of society when the emotional spirit is stronger than the critical.  The secret of the active power of the arts at this time was the conscious or unconscious resort of those who practised them to the springs of Nature, from which the streams of all true Art proceed.  Dante was the first of the moderns to seek Poetry at the same fountain, and to free her from the chains of conventionality which had long bound her.  In this he shows his close relation to his times.  It is his fidelity to Nature which has made him a leader for all successive generations.  The “Vita Nuova” was the beginning of a new school of poetry and of prose as completely as Giotto’s O was the beginning of a new school of painting.