Letter-writers and the authors of philosophical dialogues are, in fact, better evidences of the growing love of nature than the poets. The novelist Bandello, for example, observes rigorously the rules of his department of literature; he gives us in his novels themselves not a word more than is necessary on the natural scenery amid which the action of his tales takes place, but in the dedications which always precede them we meet with charming descriptions of nature as the setting for his dialogues and social pictures. Among letter-writers, Aretino unfortunately must be named as the first who has fully painted in words the splendid effect of light and shadow in an Italian sunset.
We sometimes find the feeling of the poets, also, attaching itself with tenderness to graceful scenes of country life. Tito Strozza, about the year 1480, describes in a Latin elegy the dwelling of his mistress. We are shown an old ivy-clad house, half hidden in trees, and adorned with weather-stained frescoes of the saints, and near it a chapel, much damaged by the violence of the river Po, which flowed hard by; not far off, the priest ploughs his few barren roods with borrowed cattle. This is no reminiscence of the Roman elegists, but true modern sentiment.
It may be objected that the German painters at the beginning of the sixteenth century succeed in representing with perfect mastery these scenes of country life, as, for instance, Albrecht Durer, in his engraving of the prodigal son. But it is one thing if a painter, brought up in a school of realism, introduces such scenes, and quite another thing if a poet, accustomed to an ideal or mythological framework, is driven by inward impulse into realism. Besides which, priority in point of time is here, as in the descriptions of country life, on the side of the Italian poets.
RIENZI'S REVOLUTION IN ROME
A.D. 1347
R. LODGE
When for nearly forty years Rome had been deserted by the popes, who had betaken themselves in 1309 to a long residence at Avignon, France, and when the Eternal City was virtually without an imperial government—the Teutonic emperors having likewise abandoned her—she fell back upon the memories of her great past, recalling the glories of her ancient supremacy and the means whereby it had been established and maintained. Whatever might promise to restore it she was ready to welcome.
At this time the real masters of Rome were the princes or barons dwelling in their fortified castles outside or in their strong palaces within the city. Over the northern district, near the Quirinal, reigned the celebrated old family of the Colonnas; while along the Tiber, from the Campo-di-Fiore to the Church of St. Peter, extended the sway of the new family of the Orsini. Other members of the nobility, in the country, held their seats in small fortified cities or castles. Under such domination Rome had become almost deserted. "The population of the seven-hilled city had come down to about thirty thousand souls." When at peace with one another—which was rarely—the barons exercised over the citizens and serfs a combined tyranny, while the farmers, travellers, and pilgrims were made victims of their plunder. At this period Petrarch—that "first modern man"—wrote to Pope Clement VI that Rome had become the abode of demons, the receptacle of all crimes, a hell for the living.