After the Memoirs and the journals, the most interesting portion of the miscellaneous works are _The Antiquities of the House of Brunswick_, which in their present form are merely the preparatory sketch of a large work.

It is too imperfect to allow us to judge of what Gibbon even designed to make of it.

But it contains some masterly pages, and the style in many places seems more nervous and supple than that of the _Decline and Fall._ For instance, this account of Albert Azo the Second:-- "Like one of his Tuscan ancestors Azo the Second was distinguished among the princes of Italy by the epithet of the _Rich_.

The particulars of his rentroll cannot now be ascertained.

An occasional though authentic deed of investiture enumerates eighty-three fiefs or manors which he held of the empire in Lombardy and Tuscany, from the Marquisate of Este to the county of Luni; but to these possessions must be added the lands which he enjoyed as the vassal of the Church, the ancient patrimony of Otbert (the terra Obertenga) in the counties of Arezzo, Pisa, and Lucca, and the marriage portion of his first wife, which, according to the various readings of the manuscripts, may be computed either at twenty or two hundred thousand English acres.