It is rare to find a whole nation possessed of all in an equal measure of perfection.

Such, however, were the Florentines.[1] The mere sight of the city and her monuments would suffice to prove this.

But we are not reduced to the necessity of divining what Florence was by the inspection of her churches, palaces, and pictures.

That marvelous intelligence which was her pride, burned brightly in a long series of historians and annalists, who have handed down to us the biography of the city in volumes as remarkable for penetrative acumen as for definite delineation and dramatic interest.

We possess picture-galleries of pages in which the great men of Florence live again and seem to breathe and move, epics of the commonwealth's vicissitudes from her earliest commencement, detailed tragedies and highly finished episodes, studies of separate characters, and idylls detached from the main current of her story.