mpire of the East, a second with France, a third with
Spain. The North is overshadowed by Germany; the South is disquieted by
Islam. The types thus formed and thus discriminated are vital, and
persist for centuries with the tenacity of physical growths. Each
differentiation owes its origin to causes deeply rooted in the locality.
The freedom and apparent waywardness of nature, when she sets about to
form crystals of varying shapes and colors, that shall last and bear her
stamp for ever, have governed their uprising and their progress to
maturity. At the same time they exhibit the keen jealousies and mutual
hatreds of rival families in the animal kingdom. Pisa destroys Amalfi;
Genoa, Pisa; Venice, Genoa; with ruthless and remorseless egotism in the
conflict of commercial interests. Florence enslaves Pisa because she
needs a way to the sea. Siena and Perugia, upon their inland altitudes,
consume themselves in brilliant but unavailing efforts to expand. Milan
engulfs the lesser towns of Lombardy. Verona absorbs Padua and Treviso.
Venice extends dominion over the Friuli and the Veronese conquests.
Strife and covetousness reign from the Alps to the Ionian Sea. But it is
a strife of living energies, the covetousness of impassioned and
puissant units. Italy as a whole is almost invisible to the student by
reason of the many-sided, combative, self-centered crowd of numberless
Italian communities. Proximity foments hatred and stimulates hostility.
Fiesole looks down and threatens Florence. Florence returns frown for
frown, and does not rest till she has made her neighbor of the hills a
slave. Perugia and Assissi turn the Umbrian plain into a wilderness of
wolves by their recurrent warfare. Scowling at one another across the
Valdichiana, Perugia rears a tower against Chiusi, and Chiusi builds her
Becca Questa in responsive menace. The tiniest burgh upon the Arno
receives from Dante, the poet of this internecine strife and fierce
town-rivalry, its stigma of immortalizing satire and insulting epithet,
for no apparent reason but that its dwellers dare to drink of the same
water and to breathe the same air as Florence. It would seem as though
the most ancient furies of antagonistic races, enchained and suspended
for centuries by the magic of Rome, had been unloosed; as though the
indigenous populations of Italy, tamed by antique culture, were
reverting to their primal instincts, with all the discords and divisions
introduced by the mil