514 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



Savonarola and His Time," a work which immediately gave him a 

 reputation. He filled the chair of History at the University of Pisa 

 and then, after the Union of Tuscany to the new Kingdom of Italy, 

 he became a Professor in the Institute of Higher Studies at Florence. 

 Current political topics more and more engrossed his attention, and 

 he published many letters and pamphlets upon them. His Letter e 

 Meridionali on affairs in Southern Italy, and Sicily in particular, 

 caused much comment. He served on various Commissions, was 

 Minister of Public Instruction and, in 1884, by appointment of King 

 Humbert, he became a Senator. History remained, however, his 

 chief intellectual interest. In 1877 he published the first of a three 

 volume biography of Machiavelli, in which he completed his study of 

 the Italian Renaissance. At other times he also printed volumes on 

 earlier Italian history, and for many years to the Nuova Antologia 

 he contributed literary criticisms of the important books, or his recol- 

 lections, historical and personal. By editing the dispatches of the 

 Venetian Ambassador Antonio Giustiniani, he called attention to the 

 importance for historical students of the then almost unexplored 

 Venetian sources. In his later years he was President of the Dante 

 Alighieri Society, organized to promote the study of Italian and the 

 diffusion of Italian ideas outside Italy. He remained active to the 

 last, living to see the invasion of northern Italy by the Teutonic and 

 Slavic hordes, and being thus reminded of the invasions many cen- 

 turies before. His wife Signora Linda Villari was an English woman, 

 who translated into English his principal works and thus helped to 

 give him a reputation among English readers throughout the world. 

 He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy 

 of Arts and Sciences in 1904. 



William Roscoe Thayer. 



