rage.

With these observations, which might be indefinitely extended, I take
leave of the subject, simply remarking, that to the motions of birds, no
less than to their beauty of plumage and the sounds of their voices,
are we indebted for a great part of the picturesque attractions of
landscape; and the more we study them, the more are we convinced, that,
in whatever direction we turn our observations, we may extend them to
infinity. There is no limit to any study of Nature, and even one so
apparently insignificant as the flight of birds leads to an endless
series of interesting facts, and opens the eyes to new beauties in the
aspect of Nature and new sources of rational delight.

"THE NEW LIFE" OF DANTE.

[Concluded.]

III.

The year 1289 was one marked in the annals of Florence and of Italy by
events which are still famous, scored by the genius of Dante upon the
memory of the world. It was in this year that Count Ugolino and his sons
and grandsons were starved by the Pisans in their tower prison. A few
months later, Francesca da Rimini was murdered by her husband. Between
the dates of these two terrible events the Florentines had won the great
victory of Campaldino; and thus, in this short space, the materials had
been given to the poet for the two best-known and most powerful stories
and for one of the most striking episodes of the "Divina Commedia."

In the great and hard-fought battle of Campaldino Dante himself took
part. "I was at first greatly afraid," he says, in a letter of which
but a few sentences have been preserved,[A]--"but at the end I felt the
greatest joy,--according to the various chances of the battle." When the
victorious army returned to Florence, a splendid procession, with the
clergy at its head, with the arts of the city each under its banner, and
with all manner of pomp, went out to meet it. There were long-continued
feasts and rejoicings. The battle had been fought on the 11th of June,
the day of St. Barnabas, and the Republic, though already engaged in
magnificent works of church-building, decreed that a new church should
be erected in honor of the Saint on whose day the victory had been won.

[Footnote A: See Lionardo Aretino's _Vita di Dante._]

A little later in that summer, Dante was one of a troop of Florentines
who joined the forces of Lucca in levying war upon the Pisan territory.
The stronghold of Caprona was taken, and Dante was present at its
capture; for he says,