Italy until the last days of the republic, when her independence was but a shadow.  Pisa, though a burgh of Tuscany, displayed no literary talent, while her architecture dates from the first period of the Commune.  Siena, whose republican existence lasted longer even than that of Florence, contributed nothing of importance to Italian literature.  The art of Perugia was developed during the ascendency of despotic families.  The painting of the Milanese School owed its origin to Lodovico Sforza, and survived the tragic catastrophes of his capital, which suffered more than any other from the brutalities of Spaniards and Frenchmen.  Next to Florence, the most brilliant centers of literary activity during the bright days of the Renaissance were princely Ferrara and royal Naples.  Lastly, we might insist upon the fact that the Italian language took its first flight in the court of imperial Palermo, while republican Rome remained dumb throughout the earlier stage of Italian literary evolution.  Thus the facts of the case seem to show that culture and republican independence were not so closely united in Italy as some historians would seek to make us believe.  On the other hand it is impossible to prove that the despotisms of the fifteenth century were necessary to the perfecting of art and literature.  All that can be safely advanced upon this subject, is that the pacification of Italy was demanded as a preliminary condition, and that this pacification came to pass through the action of the princes, checked and equilibrated by the oligarchies of Venice and Florence.  It might further be urged that the Despots were in close sympathy with the masses of the people, shared their enthusiasms, and promoted their industry.  When the classical revival took place at the close of the fourteenth century, they divined this movement of the Italic races to resume their past, and gave it all encouragement.  To be a prince, and not to be the patron of scholarship, the pupil of humanists, and the founder of libraries, was an impossibility.  In like manner they employed their wealth upon the development of arts and industries.  The great age of Florentine painting is indissolubly connected with the memories of Casa Medici.  Rome owes her magnificence to the despotic Popes.  Even the pottery of Gubbio was a creation of the ducal house of Urbino.

After the death of Henry VII. and the beginning of the Papal exile at Avignon, the Guelf party became the rallying-point of municipal independence, with its headquarters in Florence.  Ghibellinism united the princes in an opposite camp.  ‘The Guelf party,’ writes Giovanni Villani, ’forms the solid and unalterable basis of Italian liberty, and is so antagonistic to all tyranny that, if a Guelf become a tyrant, he must of necessity become at the same moment Ghibelline.’  Milan, first to assert the rights of the free burghs, was now the chief center of despotism; and the events of the next century resume themselves in the long struggle between Florence