LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL IN 1877 DANTE Frontispiece 6 From a bas-relief at Ravenna by Pietro Lombardi, From the painting by Joseph Severn in the pos- O DANTE' 1872 N the banks of a little river so shrunken by the suns of summer that it seems fast passing into a tradition, but so swollen by the autumnal rains with Italian suddenness of passion that the massy bridge shudders under the impatient heap of waters behind it, stands a city which, in its period of bloom not so large as Boston, may well rank next to Athens in the history which teaches come l'uom s'eterna. Originally only a convenient spot in the valley where the fairs of the neighboring Etruscan city of Fiesole were held, it gradually grew from a huddle of booths to a town, and then to a city, which absorbed its ancestral neighbor and became a cradle for the arts, the letters, the science, and the commerce of modern Europe. For her 2 The Shadow of Dante, being an Essay towards studying Himself, his World, and his Pilgrimage. By Maria Francesca Rossetti. "Se Dio te lasci, lettor, prender frutto Di tua lezione." Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1872. 8vo, pp. 296. 2 The Florentines should seem to have invented or re-invented banks, book-keeping by double-entry, and bills of ex |