he whose exploits in arms filled all men's mouths, so that there seemed hardly a limit to the possibilities of his ultimate dominion-to whom but Cane should Dante look, after the untimely death of Henry and the shattering of the hopes which had been founded upon him, to righten the wrongs of Italy and to take ultimately that place in Italian affairs which was vacant by the supineness of its legitimate holder? It is impossible to discuss here at any length the question of the prophecies in Dante's great poem which appear to have reference to Can Grande. It may be said, however, that modern students of Dante incline to the opinion that the "Veltro" (greyhound) of "Inferno," i., 101,* who "will be the salvation of that humble Italy," and drive the wolf of Avarice back into her native hell, and the Dux (duke or leader) of "Purgatorio," xxxiii., 43," the messenger of God," who "will kill the harlot and that giant who commits sin with her"-the reference being to the transfer of the Papal Court to Avignon through the criminal subservience of Pope Clement to Philip the Fair-both refer prophetically to Can Grande and to the hopes the poet founded upon him. And the last words of Cacciaguida's prophecy which Dante reports, hint at some almost inconceivable greatness as being in store for the Lord of Verona, Dante

* With the line, "Questi non ciberà terra nè peltro," cf., " Paradiso," xvii., 83-4: Ma pria che il Guasco l'alto Arrigo inganni,

Parran faville della sua virtute

In con curar d'argento, nè d'affanni,

where the reference is certainly to Cane. Benvenuto da Imola tells us, in confirmation of Cane's ingrained contempt for mere pelf, that being brought by his father, when a child, into a room containing much treasure, "levatis pannis, minxit super eum." The lines from the "Paradiso" very possibly refer in especial to the suppression of the Knights Templars throughout Christendom, which was prior by a few years to Clement's betrayal of the German Emperor in 1312 or 1313 ("pria che il Guasco"-Clement was a Gascon "l'alto Arrigo inganni"), and to Cane's generous behaviour in regard to the confiscated goods of the Templars in his dominions, which, instead of appropriating in any way, he handed over to the Knights of St. John.

t 'Un cinquecento diece e cinque," stated in Roman numerals, becomes DXV., easily transposed into DUX.

being told, but enjoined not to tell again, what is in store for Cane, as something which even those who should be witnesses to the event would find incredible. Now, we are to bear in mind Dante's well-known views (as expounded in the "De Monarchia") as to the two-fold government of mankind, instituted by Divine Providence in accordance with the two ends that Providence designed for man-the blessedness of this life and of life eternal. Man's eternal felicity, in Dante's view, was divinely committed to the Supreme Pontiff; his earthly felicity to the Emperor: both having their seat in Rome, as the centre of the world; each being supreme in his own field, without any invasion on the other's part; and both acting in perfect harmony for the general good.* Now what was the condition of Italy at the time Dante was writing the "Paradiso"? The Papal Court was in captivity at Avignon, dragged away thither like a slave or harlot (to use Dante's trenchant metaphor) at the behest of the King of France; all the hopes of the Italian Ghibellines had been dashed to the ground by the sudden death of the Emperor, from whom so much had not unnaturally been looked for, and there was no one to take his place everywhere was confusion, tyranny, rapacity, miserable intestine and external discord, among the little princedoms and commonwealths into which the" bel paese,' the garden of the Empire, was split up. It is not perhaps to be wondered at that the exalted imagination of Dante should have seen in the magnificent and victorious Lord of Verona, of whom he had from personal intercourse learned to form so high an opinion, the very man who might be the salvation of poor, oppressed Italy, and that

* "De Monarchia," Book III, c. 16. Dante, however, does not construe his principle so strictly as not to enjoin due reverence on the part of the Emperor to the Pope-of Cæsar to Peter-such reverence as the first-born son owes to his father.

he should have given a certain utterance to those expectations or hopes in these veiled prophecies. For, after all, he knew them to be no more than hopes, and it is rather probable (as suggested by Scartazzini, "Comm. Lips.," III., 471) that he purposely left much obscurity in his references to Cane. As in the "Veltro" of "Inferno," i., and the DXV of the close of the "Purgatorio," he has left in doubt the persons intended; so here, at the end of Cacciaguida's prophecy, where the person is unmistakable, he is silent as to the details of his future achievements, excusing himself by the injunctions he had received from his great-great-grandfather. The reason, doubtless, was that, great as were his hopes of Cane, he knew that after all they might not be verified, and he feared the risk of being accounted a false prophet. As a fact, Cane died suddenly in 1329, eight years after the poet, and at the early age of thirty-eight, having done nothing to fulfil the poet's expectations; and those exalted hopes of a great and beneficent imperial rule in Italy, based upon the theories expounded in the "De Monarchia," were never destined to be fulfilled. "With Henry the Seventh (says Mr. Bryce*) ends the history of the Empire in Italy, and Dante's book is an epitaph instead of a prophecy." But how great must have been Dante's estimate of Can Grande, when he not only looked forward to him as the "Veltro," the “Dux,” who might heal the internal discords of Italy, and restore both the Papacy and the Empire to their rightful place as co-workers for the general good, but also dedicated to him, as the best gift he had to bestow, his own "Paradiso," that divinely beautiful cantica of the "mystic, unfathomable song," and, perhaps, even sent it him piecemeal for his approval !

"The Holy Roman Empire." London: 1873; p. 264.

It should be added that Dante's son, Pietro, settled in Verona after his father's death, and became a distinguished lawyer there, and that the poet's direct line, after furnishing Verona with many more or less notable citizens, came to an end in the sixteenth century in Ginevra Alighieri, a daughter of the third Pietro, who was united in marriage to the Count Marcantonio Serego. "Thus," says Arrivabene, "that immortal blood was transfused, and is still preserved, to the glory of the city which was the first refuge of the divine ancestor, in the illustrious family Serego Alighieri.'

Many are the changes which, since Dante's time, have passed over beautiful Verona. After the fall of the Scaligers, both the Viscontis of Milan and the Carraras of Padua held it for a brief period, and early in the fifteenth century it was absorbed by the great Republic of Venice. From that date it has shared the fortunes of the rest of Venetia. An alien soldiery long held its garrisons and paraded its streets; but in 1866, on the occasion of the Austro-Prussian war, the hated Austrian was at length expelled, and Verona, together with Venice, became an integral part of free and united Italy. The year before, on the sixth centenary of Dante's birth, the city where he found "lo primo suo rifugio" raised in his honour one of the best of the modern statues of the poet to be found in Italy. There he stands, stately and severe, in the centre of the Piazza de' Signori, commanding a scene some of whose actual features must once have been present to his bodily eye. Hard by, in front of the charming Town Hall or Loggia, among a crowd of busts of distinguished Veronese, is to be seen the round chubby face of his host, Can

* F. Arrivabene, "Il Secolo di Dante," Firenze, 1830, in fine. Cf. also Vellutello, "Vita e Costumi del Poeta," in his "Commento"; and Pelli, "Memorie alla Vita di Dante Alighieri," Firenze, 1823, § 4, which contains a genealogical tree of the family.