regards that branch of the inquiry, but humbly to follow in a track you have been the first in England to open. Thus obliged to modify my original plan, and to forego much of its novelty, and many of its details, it is satisfactory to know that my desire has been accomplished by abler hands.'

Again, while selecting one of the princely houses of Italy as a medium for blending into one continuous narrative the incidents of war and politics, the development of letters and arts, with their influence on civilisation and national character, I may inadvertently have been competing with you in a field of literature which, in the charming "Lives of the Lindsays," you designate as "entirely new."

Trusting, however, that such coincidences may seem merits in your eyes, and bespeak favour in proportion to your interest in our common studies, I remain,

My dear Lord Lindsay,

Most sincerely yours,

Edinburgh, November, 1850.

JAMES DENNISTOUN.

PREFACE.

DURING nearly one hundred and ninety years, five Dukes of Urbino well and ably discharged the duties of their station, comparatively exempt from the personal immoralities of their age. The rugged frontier of their highland fief had, in that time, been extended far into the fertile March of Ancona, until it embraced a compact and influential state. Saving their subjects, by a gentle and judicious sway, from the wild ferments that distracted democratic communities, and from the yet more dire revolutions which from time to time convulsed adjoining principalities, they so cultivated the arts of war, and so encouraged the pursuits of peace, that their mountain-land gained a European reputation as the best nursery of arms, their capital as the favoured asylum of letters. That glory has now become faint; for the writers by whom it has been chiefly transmitted belong not to the existing generation, and command few sympathies in our times. But the echoes of its fame still linger around the mist-clad peaks of Umbria, and in the dilapidated palacehalls of the olden race. To gather its evanescent substance in a form not uninteresting to English readers, is the object of the present attempt. Should it be so far successful as to attract some of his countrymen to the history, literature, and arts of Italy, they will not, perhaps, be ungrateful to the humble pioneer who has indicated a path to literary treasures hitherto inadequately known to them. For such an undertaking he possesses no qualification, beyond a sincere interest in the past ages of that sunny land, and a warm admiration for her arts during their epoch of brilliancy. But a residence there of six

years has afforded him considerable opportunities of collecting materials for this work, which he has been anxious not to neglect.

A great portion of the duchy of Urbino, including its principal towns, has been thrice visited, and nearly every accessible library of Central Italy has been examined for unedited matter. To these researches, time and labour have been freely given; and in the few instances when his attempts were foiled by jealousy or accident, the author has generally had the satisfaction of believing that success would have been comparatively unproductive. To this, two exceptions should be mentioned. He was prevented by illness from recently visiting the libraries or archives at Venice; and the Barberini Library at Rome has been entirely closed for some years, in consequence of a disgraceful pillage of its treasures. Should the latter be again made accessible, the MSS. amassed by the Pontiff under whom Urbino devolved to the Church, and by his nephews, its two first Legates, can hardly fail to throw much light upon the duchy. The invaluable treasures of the Vatican archives have been to him, as to others, a sealed book; but the Urbino MSS. in the Vatican Library, those of the Oliveriana at Pesaro, and of the Magliabechiana at Florence, have afforded copious sources of original information, and have supplied means for rectifying omissions and errors of previous writers. Some of these materials had been freely drawn upon by Muzio, Leoni, and Baldi, biographers of the early dukes of Urbino, who have not, however, by any means exhausted the soil; the amount that remained for after inquirers may be estimated from the single instance of Sanzi's almost unnoticed rhyming Chronicle of Duke Federigo, in about 26,000 lines.

The reigns of Dukes Federigo, Guidobaldo I., and Francesco Maria I., from 1443 to 1538, formed the brightest era of Urbino, and included the most stirring period of Italian history, the golden age of Italian art; but our regnal series would be incomplete without Dukes Guidobaldo II. and Francesco Maria II., who prolonged the independence of the duchy until 1631, when it lapsed to the Holy See. Its history thus naturally divides itself into five books, representing as many reigns; yet, as these

sovereigns were of two different dynasties, it will be convenient to consider separately the origin of each, and the influence which they respectively exercised on literature and the fine arts, thus giving matter for four additional books. In Book First of these we shall briefly sketch the early condition of the duchy, with the establishment of the family of Montefeltro as Counts, and eventually as Dukes, of Urbino; but, regarding Duke Federigo as the earliest of them, worthy of detailed illustration, we shall, in Book Second, with his succession, enter upon the immediate scope of our work.

Among many interesting publications upon Italy which have recently issued from the English press, is that of Signor Mariotti.* With a command of our language rarely attained by foreigners, he has clothed a vast mass of information in an exuberant style, savouring of the sweet South. As an episode to his sketch of Tasso, he dedicates to the two dynasties who ruled in Urbino a single page, in which there occur seven misstatements. John or Giovanni della Rovere was never sovereign of Camerino; his cousin, Girolamo Riario, held no ecclesiastical dignity; the "unrivalled splendour" of the Montefeltrian reign at Urbino did not extend over even one century; the wife of Giovanni della Rovere was neither daughter nor heiress of Guidobaldo I. of Urbino, nor had she any "just claim to his throne;" Duke Francesco Maria did not remove either his library or treasures of art to Mantua. These slips, by a writer generally painstaking and correct, surely indicate some deficiency in the accessible sources of information regarding a principality which has for centuries been proverbial, in the words of Tasso, as "the stay and refuge of gifted men."

The truth is, that although the Dukes of Urbino figure every where as friends of learning and patrons of art, no work has yet appeared establishing their especial claim to such distinction, in a land where courts abounded and dilettanteship was a fashion. That of Riposati has indeed given us the series of

* I speak of the first edition of his Italy: the reprint of 1848 is enlarged but not improved.

these sovereigns, but his biographical sketches are meagre, and chiefly illustrative of their coinage. The lives of Dukes Federigo and Francesco Maria I., by Muzio and Leoni, are excessively rare; Baldi's crude biographies are either recently and obscurely published, or remain in manuscript. Out of Italy these authors are scarcely known. This paucity of illustration is not, however, the only cause why these princes have continued in unmerited obscurity. Whilst endeavouring to guard himself against undue hero-worship, and to subject the policy and character of those sovereigns to the tests within his reach, the author has been obliged in some instances to assume the functions of an advocate, and to defend them from charges unjustly or inadvisedly brought. This will be especially found in the life of Duke Francesco Maria I., who, as the victim of Leo X., and the opponent of Florence, has met with scanty justice from the three standard historians of that age in Italy, France, and England. The patriotism of Guicciardini, as a Florentine, was inherently provincial; as a partisan of the Medici, he had no sympathies with a prince whom they hated with the loathing of ingratitude; as an annalist he never forgot the day when he had cowered before that lofty spirit at the council-board. All that he has written of Francesco Maria is therefore tinged with gall, and his authority has been too implicitly followed by Sismondi, who, uniformly biassed against princes by his democratic prejudices, and seeing in Guicciardini an eminent denizen of a nominal republic, and in the Duke a petty autocrat, decided their respective merits accordingly. Again, Roscoe could save the consistency and justice of Leo only by misrepresenting the character of his early friend and eventual victim, and has not shrunk from the sacrifice. It has thus happened that, whilst ordinary readers have scanty access to details regarding Urbino and its dynasties, these names have been unduly excluded from many a page in Italian annals which they were well qualified to adorn.*

* Better evidence of the deficient information hitherto accessible could hardly be desired than the fact that Roscoe, in his Life of Lorenzo de Medici, ch. viii., entirely mistakes the family name of the first dynasty of Urbino.