r its sins,--in which Petrarch was
crowned with laurel at Rome, and Dante wandered in despair from court
to court, learning in the bitterness of his exile's heart,

"come sa di sale
Lo pane altrui, e come e duro calle
Lo scendere e il salir per l'altrui scale."

It was a time ignorant of the simplest comfort, but debauched with the
vices of luxury; in which cities repressed the license of their people
by laws regulating the length of women's gowns and the outlays
at weddings and funerals. Every wild misdeed and filthy crime was
committed, and punished by terrible penalties, or atoned for by fines.
A fierce democracy reigned, banishing nobles, razing their palaces,
and ploughing up the salt-sown sites; till at last, in the uttermost
paroxysm of madness, it delivered itself up to lords to be defended
from itself, and was crushed into the abjectest depths of slavery.
Literature and architecture flourished, and the sister arts were born
amid the struggles of human nature convulsed with every abominable
passion.

For nearly four hundred years the Gonzagas continued to rule the city,
which the first prince of their line, having well-nigh destroyed,
now rebuilt and restored to greater splendor than ever; and it is the
Mantua of the Gonzagas which travellers of this day look upon when
they visit the famous old city. Their pride and their wealth adorned
it; their wisdom and prudence made it rich and prosperous; their
valor glorified it; their crimes stain its annals with infamy; their
wickedness and weakness ruined it and brought it low. They were a
race full of hereditary traits of magnificence, but one reads their
history, and learns to love, of all their long succession, only one or
two in their pride, learns to pity only one or two in their fall. They
were patriotic, but the patriotism of despotic princes is self-love.
They were liberal--in spending the revenues of the state for the glory
of their family. They were brave, and led many nameless Mantuans
to die in forgotten battles for alien quarrels which they never
understood.

The succession of the Gonzagas was of four captains, ending in 1407;
four marquises, ending in 1484; and ten dukes, ending in 1708.

The first of the captains was Luigi, as we know. In his time the great
Gothic fabric of the Castello di Corte was built; and having rebuilt
the portions of the city wasted by the sack, he devoted himself,
as far as might be in that age, to the arts of peace;