Eustace, John Cretwode: A classical tour through Italy An. MDCCCII (Vol. 3): 3. ed., rev. and enl (London: J. Mawman, 1815)

536

CLASSICAL TOUR

Ch. IX.

such a republic to the tranquillity and the tri-
umphs of the most splendid monarchy ?
It has been frequently and justly observed,
that the Italian republics of the middle ages bore
a striking resemblance to the commonwealths of
Greece ; and to this observation it may be added
that Florence had a strong similarity to Athens;
a similarity not only in government and temper,
but in genius and talents. Thus as in Athens so
in Florence, that genius seemed struck out by the
collision of parties and by the shock of war;
and as Euripides and Sophocles rose in the heat
of the Peloponnesian, so Dante and Bocaccio
sprung up amid the sanguinary broils of the
Ghibelline contest. And again, as Demosthenes
and Eschines, animated the decline of Aikens, and
cheered her once more with the language of li-
berty before she received the Macedonian yoke;
so Florence ere she sunk into slavery, gave as a
last bequest to liberty and literature, the works
of Guicciardini and Machiavelle.
In the interval, the perpetual struggle between
rival parties, and the vicissitudes that followed
each other so rapidly kept the powers of the mind
in continual action, and adapted them to* excel-
lence in every pursuit. Hence poets and states-
men, architects and painters, all of high merit