sing MS. copies of his
great work, which by its richness in Florentine allusions excited
an interest apart altogether from that created by its beauty, but by
public lectures on the poem, delivered in the churches by order of
the Signoria. The first Dante professor to be appointed was Giovanni
Boccaccio, the author of the "Decameron," who was born in 1313,
eight years before Dante's death, and became an enthusiast upon the
poet. The picture in the Duomo was placed there in 1465. Then came
printing to Florence and Dante passed quickly into his countrymen's
thoughts and language.

Michelangelo, who was born in time--1475--to enjoy in Lorenzo the
Magnificent's house the new and precious advantage of printed books,
became as a boy a profound student of the poet, and when later an
appeal was made from Florence to the Pope to sanction the removal of
Dante's bones to Florence, Michelangelo was among the signatories. But
it was not done. His death-mask from Ravenna is in the Bargello:
a few of his bones and their coffin are still in Ravenna, in the
monastery of Classe, piously preserved in a room filled with Dante
relics and literature; his tomb is elsewhere at Ravenna, a shrine
visited by thousands every year.

Ever since has Dante's fame been growing, so that only the Bible has
led to more literature; and to-day Florence is more proud of him than
any of her sons, except perhaps Michelangelo. We have seen one or
two reminders of him already; more are here where we stand. We have
seen the picture in honour of him which the Republic set up in the
cathedral; his head on a beautiful inlaid door in the Palazzo Vecchio,
the building where his sentence of banishment was devised and carried,
to be followed by death sentence thrice repeated (burning alive,
to be exact); and we have seen the head-quarters of the Florentine
Dante society in the guild house at Or San Michele. We have still
to see his statue opposite S. Croce, another fresco head in S. Maria
Novella, certain holograph relics at the library at S. Lorenzo, and
his head again by his friend Giotto, in the Bargello, where he would
have been confined while waiting for death had he been captured.

Dante's house has been rebuilt, very recently, and next to it is a
newer building still, with a long inscription in Italian upon it,
to the effect that the residence of Bella and Bellincione Alighieri
stood hereabouts, and in that abode was Dante born. The Commune of
Florence, it go