n. He took
his place among his fellow-citizens; he went out to war with them; he
fought, it is said, among the skirmishers at the great Guelf victory at
Campaldino; to qualify himself for office in the democracy, he enrolled
himself in one of the guilds of the people, and was matriculated in the
"art" of the apothecaries; he served the state as its agent abroad; he
went on important missions to the cities and courts of Italy according
to a Florentine tradition, which enumerates fourteen distinct embassies,
even to Hungary and France. In the memorable year of jubilee, 1300, he
was one of the priors of the Republic. There is no shrinking from
fellowship and cooperation and conflict with the keen or bold men of the
market-place and council hall, in that mind of exquisite and, as drawn
by itself, exaggerated sensibility. The doings and characters of men,
the workings of society, the fortunes of Italy, were watched and thought
of with as deep an interest as the courses of the stars, and read in the
real spectacle of life with as profound emotion as in the miraculous
page of Vergil; and no scholar ever read Vergil with such feeling--no
astronomer ever watched the stars with more eager inquisitiveness. The
whole man opens to the world around him; all affections and powers, soul
and sense, diligently and thoughtfully directed and trained, with free
and concurrent and equal energy, with distinct yet harmonious purposes,
seek out their respective and appropriate objects, moral, intellectual,
natural, spiritual, in that admirable scene and hard field where man is
placed to labor and love, to be exercised, proved, and judged.

The outlines of this part of Dante's history are so well known that it
is not necessary to dwell on them; and more than the outlines we know
not. The family quarrels came to a head, issued in parties, and the
parties took names; they borrowed them from two rival factions in a
neighboring town, Pistoia, whose feud was imported into Florence; and
the Guelfs became divided into the Black Guelfs, who were led by the
Donati, and the White Guelfs, who sided with Cerchi. It is still
professed to be but a family feud, confined to the great houses; but
they were too powerful and Florence too small for it not to affect the
whole Republic. The middle classes and the artisans looked on, and for a
time not without satisfaction, at the strife of the great men; but it
grew evident that one party must crush the other and beco