Sta Maria Novella, of Or San Michele, (changed from its original
object,) and Sta Croce,--the finest churches even now in
Florence,--were all begun and carried far on to completion. Each new
work was at once the fruit and the seed of glorious energy. The small
city, of less than one hundred thousand inhabitants, the little
republic, not so large as Rhode Island or Delaware, was setting an
example which later and bigger and richer republics have not
followed.[6] It might well, indeed, be called a "new life" for
Florence, as well as for Dante. When it was determined to supply the
place of the old church of Santa Reparata with a new cathedral, a
decree was passed in words of memorable spirit: "Whereas it is the
highest interest of a people of illustrious origin so to proceed in its
affairs that men may perceive from its external works that its doings
are at once wise and magnanimous, it is therefore ordered, that
Arnolfo, architect of our commune, prepare the model or design for the
rebuilding of Santa Reparata, with such supreme and lavish magnificence
that neither the industry nor the capacity of man shall be able to
devise anything more grand or more beautiful; inasmuch as the most
judicious in this city have pronounced the opinion, in public and
private conferences, that no work of the commune should be undertaken,
unless the design be to make it correspondent with a heart which is of
the greatest nature, because composed of the spirit of many citizens
united together in one single will."[7] The records of few other cities
contain a decree so magnificent as this.

It would be strange, indeed, if the youthful book of one so sensitive
to external influences as Dante did not give evidence of sympathy with
such pervading emotion. And so apparent is this,--that one may say that
only at such a period, when strength of sentiment was finding vent in
all manner of free expression, was such a book possible. Confidence,
frankness, directness in the rendering of personal feeling are rare,
except in conditions of society when the emotional spirit is stronger
than the critical. The secret of the active power of the arts at this
time was the conscious or unconscious resort of those who practised
them to the springs of Nature, from which the streams of all true Art
proceed. Dante was the first of the moderns to seek Poetry at the same
fountain, and to free her from the chains of conventionality which had
long bound her. In this he sh