gth and keenness of Dante's powers of
observation as many a passage in the _Divine Comedy_ in which Ravenna
and the rude and fierce world of the Romagna of that day live for
ever. It is in answer to the inquiries of the great _Guido of
Montefeltro_ that Dante speaks of Romagna in the _Inferno_. Feeble and
anaemic though the great lines become in any translation, even so all
their virtue is not lost:

"Never was thy Romagna without war
In her proud tyrants' bosoms, nor is now;
But open war there left I none. The state
Ravenna hath maintained this many a year
Is steadfast. There Polenta's eagle[1] broods,
And in his broad circumference of plume
O'ershadows Cervia[2]. The green talons[3] grasp
The land, that stood e'erwhile the proof so long
And piled in bloody heap the host of France.
The old mastiff of Verrucchio and the young[4]
That tore Montagna[5] in their wrath still make
Where they are wont, an augre of their fangs,
Lamone's[6] city and Santerno's[7] range
Under the lion of the snowy lair[8],
Inconstant partisan, that changeth sides
Or ever summer yields to winter's frost.
And she whose flank is washed of Savio's wave[9]
As 'twixt the level and the steep she lies,
Lives so 'twixt tyrant power and liberty."

[Footnote 1: The coat of the Polenta.]

[Footnote 2: Cervia, the least secure of the Polenta possessions.]

[Footnote 3: The green lion of the Ordelaffi of Forli.]

[Footnote 4: Malatesta and Malatestino, lords of Rimini, deriving from
Verrucchio, a castle in the hills.]

[Footnote 5: The Malatesta were Guelfs, Montagna de' Parcitati, whom
they murdered, was the leader of the Ghibelline party in Rimini.]

[Footnote 6: Faenza.]

[Footnote 7: Imola.]

[Footnote 8: Maghinardo Pagano, whose arms were a blue lion in a white
field.]

[Footnote 9: Cesena.]

All Romagna with its untamable fierceness and confusion lies in these
lines which, as Dante wrote them, seem as unalterable as those in
which the creation of the world is described.

Nor is Dante forgetful of the great destiny that had been Ravenna's.
In the sixth canto of the _Paradiso_ it is Justinian himself, "_Cesare
fui e son Giustiniano_" who recounts to Dante the victories of the
Roman eagle:

"When from Ravenna it came forth and leap'd
The Rubicon,"

or when

"with Belisarius
Heaven's high hand was linked,"

or when

"The Lombard tooth with fang impure
Did gore the bosom of the