CAPTAIN NAPIER'S FLORENTINE HISTORY.
ALTHOUGH Florence was not less distinguished for arts and commerce, and much more eminent in her literary and scientific men than Venice, her history does not take the same hold upon the mind. Various cir- cumstances contribute to this. There is more singularity in the Vene- tian origin ; a greater extent and variety in the topics of her story. Istria, Dalmatia, Greece, the Islands, Constantinople, the Crusades, and the Turks, contribute richness and dignity to the picture; whilst the same causes, with the peculiar form of her institutions, position, and so- ciety, supply romance. Her commercial enterprise, if not greater than that of Florence, was more distinctly embodied, and more entirely her own—she had a marine as well as a foreign trade. But the true source of the greater interest of Venetian history is, that Venice was inde- pendent, and eminent. Byron speaks of " her thirteen hundred years of freedom " ; but for nearly half that time she was conspicu- ous in European policy, and sometimes its head; whereas Florence was rarely anything more than a subordinate ally, and sometimes little beyond a species of vassal. As far as mere wealth and material re- sources go, Florence might possibly vie with Venice ; but Venice was a master, Florence a servant ; Venice had the character of a state, Florence was only a city ; and even when the republic of Florence merged into the grand dutchy of Tuscany, the state did not attain the influence of an independent existence.
It follows that the history of Florence is one of epochs, like Roscoe's Lorenzo de Medici; or an exposition of art and so forth. Captain Na- pier is of a different opinion. Length and detail are his principles of writing, and he contemplates an account of Florentine story in six vo- lumes ; which, if the remainder bear any proportion to the first in bulk and closeness, will be nearer the substance of twelve than six, or about the length which most native historians have assigned to that of England, and Gibbon to the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The length, however, is not the only error of Captain Napier. He has carried out his principles wrongly. Fulness and detail do not of them- tielves give character to events, or impart information respecting the man- sera, opinions, and condition of a people; it must be well-chosen details. A single trait will often convey a better idea of the manners of an age than long stories digested from prosy chroniclers, where the common pre- dominates over the peculiar. In this volume, especially in the earlier part, Captain Napier selects for elaboration matter that has little interest, —municipal quarrels, of which one is pretty much the same as all, or antiquarian disquisitions upon disputed points : for from the first to the eleventh century nothing certain is known about Florence.
Captain Napier. is the brother of the "brothers Napier " ; and in spite of "ten years of sickness," he exhibits the same vigour of mind and style which characterizes William and Charles. But this quality, however ad- mirable in a description of things which the writer has actually seen, or
in clearly and forcibly narrating the incidents of a contemporary cam- paign, do not suffice for the philosophical estimate and exhibition of ages and their events that have long since passed away. We require a critical acumen to perceive what arc the essential circumstances in a masa of ever-occurring and therefore commonplace events, a patient judg- ment to disentangle even the leading events from the concomitants which overlay them, and the comprehension to grasp and the skill to present the whole in a well-planned order. The power of exhibiting the materials thus selected and disposed, in a clear and attractive manner, is also necessary for the historian ; and this quality Captain Napier possesses. In the other requisites he is deficient. The reader is not only encum- bered with disquisitions on matters of doubt, and exhausted by details, but the narrative is somewhat confused. Contemporary history is intro- duced on a greater scale than is necessary; and the author sometimes wanders backward and forward in his chronology, jumping back without sufficient notice for several hundred years. The historian, however, only fails from a mistaken plan. Whenever the subject is interesting in itself, and the authorities are clear, Captain Napier supports his claim to the character of historian. This description of a single incident in one of the city battles of Florence might emulate the military painting of the Peninsular War.
"A retreat was ,determined on; when they suddenly heard that Rustico Man- gonelli, one of their principal leaders, had expired: this gallant knight, after many valorous deeds, had fallen mortally wounded by an arrow from the tower of the Soldanieri ; and his fellows were too high-spirited to leave the body as an object of insult from a haughty faction, who, according to the then barbarous custom, would have dragged it ignominiously through the streets and plunged it in the Arno. Thoughtless of every danger, eager for the honour of their dead chief, and ani- mated by one spirit, they marched, tired as they were, to where the body lay, and carried it off to the temple of San Lorenzo, with a military pomp to which their dented shields gave more effect than all the misplaced trappings of a funeral train. These iron obsequies moved on in grim array; the bier was borne by six knights besmeared with blood and dust, each with a lance or cross-bow on the outward arm: no funeral torch was seen in flank or front; but in their stead, the grey gleam of battered arms with a flash from the spear or the partisan: it was more the triumph of a conqueror than a funeral, the torn and trailing banners and the bloody corpse alone proclaiming its mournful character. Not a countenance be- ttayed any emotion of fear or softness: grief was dimly seen, but ire and ven- geance were predominant. None pitied the fallen knight; each envied his re- nown and honourable death, but felt himself disgraced in still existing for future shame and long enduring sorrow.
" Such thoughts, first muttered, then audibly expressed, suddenly roused tip the Guelphic youth; who would have again begun the battle and fallen, and lie fester- ing in their fathers' sepulchres rather than wander as fugitives with their wives and children to exist on a stranger's bounty. Age and prudence prevailed: Rus- tico Mangonelli was interred in gloomy silence, and the defeated remnant of these Guelphic bands slowly and sullenly retired."
Nor is Captain Napier deficient in political sagacity. Here is an ex- ample, in his view of the advantage of large states.
"Their republic was in truth a goodly fabric, but ambition undermined it; for those fiery spirits that scarcely shake the mass of greater states often burst through the lighter pressure of small communities and destroy the social edifice. Large societies are commonly less open to personal influence; the population, though divided, acts in vast bodies; its voice, however loud, is seldom the voice of faction; and its leaders are borne on the opinion of millions. Pride, anger, enmity, ambition, all are there; but with only a partial influence, and perma- nently confined to the few: dispersed through a multitude their effects are com- paratively trifling, for though great masses follow popular chiefs it is not as vas- sals or clansmen; their leaders may a while deceive, but they ultimately work themselves free. Neither do such straggles materially affect the administration of privatejustice, nor are they likely to be made a cause of persecution by the winning faction: for this their antagonists are too strong, too numerous, and would never suffer themselves to be thinned out by banishment and confiscation. In petty communities the chiefs are chiefs of faction, and their success the success of a sect in which each individual follower relies for safety and stakes his life and fortune on the cast. Modern states have the press and impeachment; Rome had the tribunitial power as an outlet for public dissatisfaction; Florence neither: no efficient means were there provided to tannish a powerful offender or obtain justice for a friendless man: a culprit in authority feared no accusation, no sentence, no judgment, unsupported by physical force; and his means of defence were pre- cisely of the same nature: faction was necessarily opposed to faction, the punish- ment of leaders brought misfortune on numbers, the city was thinned, and public good impaired: in Rome the single transgressor suffered, and few exiles and fewer deaths disgraced that stormy commonwealth, until its liberty fell in the struggles between Sylla and Caius Marius."
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