e been sent in
answer to their applications, and the one communicated by MR. SYDNEY SMIRKE
is characterised by Melchiarre Delfico (_Memorie storiche della Repubblica
di San Marino._ Capolago, 1842, 8vo. p. 229.) as

"Del tutto didattica e parenetica intorno alla liberta, di cui i
Fiorentini facevano gran vanto, mentre erano quasi alla vigilia di
perderla intieramente."

San Marino was not attacked during the campaign, which terminated on the
30th of August of the same year (1469) with the battle of Vergiano, in
which Alessandro Sforza, the commander of the Papal forces, was signally
defeated by Federigo.

San Marino has never, so far as I have been able to ascertain, undergone
the calamity of a siege, and its inhabitants have uninterruptedly enjoyed
the blessing of self-government from the foundation of the Republic in the
third or fourth century to the present time, with the exception of the few
months of 1503, during which the infamous Cesare Borgia forced them to
accept a Podesta of his own nomination. Various causes have contributed to
this lengthened independence; but it may be stated that, in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries, the San Marinese owed it no less to their own
patriotism, courage, prudence, and good faith, than to the disinterested
protection of the Counts and Dukes of Urbino, whose history has been so
ably written by Mr. Dennistoun, in his recently published memoirs of that
chivalrous race.

The privileges of the Republic were confirmed on the 12th of February,
1797, by Napoleon Buonaparte, who offered to enlarge its territory,--a boon
which its citizens were wise enough to decline; thinking, perhaps, with
Montesquieu, that--

"Il est de la nature d'une republique qu'elle n'ait qu'un petit
territoire: sans cela, elle ne peut guere subsister."--_Esprit des
Lois_, liv. viii. chap. 16.

Your readers will find some notices of San {377} Marino in Addison's
_Remarks on several Parts of Italy_; Aristotle's _Politics_, translated by
Gillies, lib. ii. Appendix.

Its lofty and isolated situation has supplied Jean Paul with a simile in
his _Unsichtbare Loge_:

"Alle andre Wissenschaften theilen sich jetzt in eine Universal
Monarchie ueber alle Leser: aber die Alten sitzen mit ihren wenigen
philologischen Lehnsleuten einsam auf einem S. Marino-Felsen."--_Jean
Paul's_ Werke (Berlin, 1840, 8vo.), vol. i. p. 125.

In the first line of the letter, "ved_a_to" shou