James Russell Lowell, Among my books

[28] itself often, and with touching unexpectedness. Even in the treatise De Vulgari Eloquio, he takes as one of his examples of style: ‘I have most pity for those, whosoever they are, that languish in exile, and revisit their country only in dreams.’ We have seen that the one decisive act of Dante's priorate was to expel from Florence the chiefs of both parties as the sowers of strife, and he tells us (Paradiso, XVII.) that he had formed a party by himself. The king of Saxony has well defined his political theory as being ‘an ideal Ghibellinism’¹ and he has been accused of want of patriotism only by those short-sighted persons who cannot see beyond their own parish. Dante's want of faith in freedom was of the same kind with Milton's refusing (as Tacitus had done before) to confound license with liberty. The argument of the De Monarchia is briefly this: As the object of the individual man is the highest development of his faculties, so is it also with men united in societies. But the individual can only attain the highest development when all his powers are in absolute subjection to the intellect, and society only when it subjects its individual caprices to an intelligent head. This is the order of nature, as in families, and men have followed it in the organization of villages, towns, cities. Again, since God made man in his own image, men and societies most nearly resemble him in proportion as they approach unity. But as in all societies questions must arise, so there is need of a monarchfor supreme arbiter. And only a universal monarch can be impartial enough for this, since kings of limited territories would always be liable to the temptation of private ends. With the internal policy of municipalities, commonwealths, and kingdoms, the monarch would have nothing to do, only interfering when there was danger of an infraction of the