ne piu certa materia; perciocche da questi libri facilissimamente si traggono le cagioni delle guerre, i consigli, e i successi dell’ imprese.’  The Proemio to Varchi’s Storie Fiorentine (vol. i. pp. 42-44), which gives an account of his preparatory labors, is an unconscious treatise on the model historian.  Accuracy, patience, love of truth, sincerity in criticism, and laborious research, have all their proper place assigned to them.  Compare Guicciardini, Ricordi, No. cxliii., for sound remarks upon the historian’s duty of collecting the statistics of his own age and country.

[4] The prefaces to Giannotti’s critiques of Florence and of Venice show how thoroughly his mind had been imbued with the Politics of Aristotle.  Varchi acknowledges the direct influence of Polybius and Tacitus.  Livy is Machiavelli’s favorite.

[5] On this point the Relazioni of Italian ambassadors are invaluable.  What dryly philosophical compendia are the notes of Machiavelli upon the French Court and Cesare Borgia!  How astute are the Venetian letters on the opinions and qualities of the Roman Prelates!

    [6] Guicc. Ricordi, cciii. Op.  Ined. vol. i. p. 229.

The year 1300 marks the first development of historical research in Florence.  Two great writers, Dante Alighieri and Giovanni Villani, at this epoch pursued different lines of study, which determined the future of this branch of literature for the Italians.  It is not uncharacteristic of Florentine genius that while the chief city of Tuscany was deficient in historians of her achievements before the date which I have mentioned, her first essays in historiography should have been monumental and standard-making for the rest of Italy.  Just as the great burghs of Lombardy attained municipal independence somewhat earlier than those of Tuscany, so the historic sense developed itself in the valley of the Po at a period when the valley of the Arno had no chronicler.  Sire Raul and Ottone Morena, the annalists of Milan, Fra Salimbene, the sagacious and comprehensive historian of Parma, Rolandino, to whom we owe the chronicle of Ezzelino and the tragedy of the Trevisan Marches, have no rivals south of the Apennines in the thirteenth century.  Even the Chronicle of the Malespini family, written in the vulgar tongue from the beginning of the world to the year 1281, which occupies 146 volumes of Muratori’s Collection, and which used to be the pride of Tuscan antiquarians, has recently been shown to be in all probability a compilation based upon the Annals of Villani.[1] This makes the clear emergence of a scientific sense for history in the year 1300 at Florence all the more remarkable.  In order to estimate the high quality of the work achieved by the Villani it is only necessary to turn the pages of some early chronicles of sister cities which still breathe the spirit of unintelligent mediaeval industry, before the method of history had