DANTE S TREATISE OX GOVERNMENT. 239 



cities which waged incessant wars with one another ; and their 

 •crowns were the stakes for which kings and princes played the 

 intricate game of Itahan pohtics. In the ardour of the game the 

 people were too often forgotten, and they suffered accordingly. 

 Peace was the first boon (only obtainable from a stable govern- 

 ment), for which all good men sighed, and no one more ardently 

 "than Dante. Only thus could Italy be truly free, and no more 

 •(pathetic cry of a stricken patriot was ever heard than his : 



Ahi, serva Italia ! Di dolor ostello 

 Nave senza uocchier in gran tempesta, 

 Non donna di provincie, ma bordello. 



iltaly's natural guardians, the Emperors Rudolf and Albert, had 

 ,not risen to the full height of their imperial responsibilities. 

 Divided between the cares of a German kingdom and a Roman 

 Kmpire, they were unable to do justice to both. 



But at last Dante thought he could hail the dawn of peace in 

 the appearance of Henry \'II. in Italy. After having seen the 

 \ ision of an ideal Empire, he thought that his eyes at last beheld 

 ihe ideal man to rule it, in the new Emperor. Hence his leading 

 idea in writing the de Monarcliia seems to have been to strengthen 

 Henry's power of healing his country's wounds by consolidating 

 the theoretical bases upon which that power rested. If we bear 

 this in mind we cease to wonder that he devoted a whole book to 

 -prove that this heaven-born hero Avas the heir of the old Roman 

 Empire, which enjoyed such a golden reputation in the Middle 

 .Ages. We do not wonder when we see a^nother book written to 

 ■ i:lear away any difficulties that the canonists may have alleged 

 against the Divine Right of the Emperor. 



But the ironv of six hundred vears gone bv has settled upon 

 all these questions now. Dante's treatise abounds in veiled pro- 

 phecies of the new world that Henry would create. It reads 

 to-day like an epitaph of the Imperial power in Italv. Henrv 

 -died of fever in Tuscany in the year 13 13, when the poet himself 

 was an exile from Florence. Although few could have suspected 

 it then, the Roman Empire was at an end in Italy for all prac- 

 -tical purposes. As far as that country was concerned Dante's 

 Empire was about to vanish from the earth at the verv moment 

 ■that the brightest visions of its future glory and usefulness were 

 being recorded by one of the acutest observers of the thirteenth 

 and fourteenth centuries. 



SURFACE TENSION OF LIQUID SULPHUR.— 



.An interesting series of observations with regard to molten sul- 

 phur, recorded bv Prof. W. A. D. Rudge, of Grev University 

 College, Bloemfontein, forms the subject of one of two papers by 

 that gentleman published in the Proceedings of the Cambridge 

 Philosophical Societv, \*ol. 16, Pt. i. The paper is accompanied 

 1\v photo-micrographic illustrations. Small crystals of sulphur 

 were melted on a glass plate and formed spherical drops which 

 flattened at i8o°C, and still more at 26o°C, but did not 



" * wet " the glass until higher temperatures were reached. 



