[1] Matteo Villani expressly excepts the Hospital of S. Maria Nuova,
    which seems to have been well managed.

The whole work of the Villani remains a monument, unique in mediaeval literature, of statistical patience and economical sagacity, proving how far in advance of the other European nations were the Italians at this period.[1] Dante’s aim is wholly different.  Of statistics and of historical detail we gain but little from his prose works.  His mind was that of a philosopher who generalizes, and of a poet who seizes salient characteristics, not that of an annalist who aims at scrupulous fidelity in his account of facts.  I need not do more than mention here the concise and vivid portraits, which he has sketched in the Divine Comedy, of all the chief cities of Italy; but in his treatise ‘De Monarchia’ we possess the first attempt at political speculation, the first essay in constitutional philosophy, to which the literature of modern Europe gave birth; while his letters addressed to the princes of Italy, the cardinals, the emperor and the republic of Florence, are in like manner the first instances of political pamphlets setting forth a rationalized and consistent system of the rights and duties of nations.  In the ’De Monarchia’ Dante bases a theory of universal government upon a definite conception of the nature and the destinies of humanity.  Amid the anarchy and discord of Italy, where selfishness was everywhere predominant, and where the factions of the Papacy and Empire were but cloaks for party strife, Dante endeavors to bring his countrymen back to a sublime ideal of a single monarchy, a true imperium, distinct from the priestly authority of the Church, but not hostile to it,—­nay, rather seeking sanction from Christ’s Vicar upon earth and affording protection to the Holy See, as deriving its own right from the same Divine source.  Political science in this essay takes rank as an independent branch of philosophy, and the points which Dante seeks to establish are supported by arguments implying much historical knowledge, though quaintly scholastic in their application.  The Epistles contain the same thoughts:  peace, mutual respect, and obedience to a common head, the duty of the chief to his subordinates and of the governed to their lord, are urged with no less force, but in a more familiar style and with direct allusion to the events which called each letter forth.  They are in fact political brochures addressed by a thinker from his solitude to the chief actors in the drama of history around him.  Nor would it here be right to omit some notice of the essay ‘De Vulgari Eloquio,’ which, considering the date of its appearance, is no less original and indicative of a new spirit in the world than the treatise ’De Monarchia.’  It is an attempt to write the history of Italian as a member of the Romance Languages, to discuss the qualities of its several dialects, and to prove the advantages to be gained by the formation