e of years. It was long since Italy had
seen an Emperor at all.

But the old Ghibellinism had recovered new vigour from an unlooked-for
quarter. As the revival of the Roman law had given an artificial
prestige to the Empire in the twelfth century, so the revival of
classical literature threw a new halo around it in the fourteenth. To
Dante, penetrated with the greater Latin authors, Henry of Luxemburg is
no stranger from over the Alps, but the descendant of the Augustus whom
his own Vergil had loved and sung. The same classical feeling tells on
Dino. With him Florence is "the daughter of Rome." The pages of Sallust
and of Livy have stirred him to undertake her annals. "The remembrance
of ancient histories has long spurred my mind to write the events, full
of danger yet reaching to no prosperous end, that this noble city,
daughter of Rome, has encountered." It was the same sense that united
with his own practical appreciation of the necessities of the time in
his impatient longing for the intervention of the new Emperor. As Prior,
Dino had acted the part of a brave and honest man, striving to
conciliate party with party, refusing to break the law, chased at last
with the rest of the magistracy from the Palace of the Signory by the
violence of Corso Donati and the nobles. If he did not share Dante's
exile, he had at any rate acted with Dante in the course of policy
which brought that penalty on him. Both were Priors together in 1300;
both have the same passionate love of Florence, the same haughty disdain
of the factions that tore it to pieces. If the appeal of Dino to his
fellows in Santa Trinita is less thrilling than the verse of Dante, it
has its own pathetic force:--"My masters, why will ye confound and undo
so good a city? Against whom do ye will to fight? Against your brethren?
What victory will ye gain?--none other than weeping!" The words fell on
deaf ears, and the smoke of burning streets, slaughter, and exile forced
Dino to look to the stranger. There is something strangely touching in
the dry, passionless way in which he tracks Henry of Luxemburg from city
to city, the fire of his real longing only breaking out here and there
in pettish outbursts at each obstacle the Emperor finds. The weary
waiting came to nothing. Dino leaves us still looking for Henry's
coming; Dante tells us of the death that dashed all hope to the ground.
Even in the hour of his despair the poet could console himself by
setting his "divin