IN our efforts to realise the leading events of our own history we experience no small difficulty from the fact that so much of the face of England has completely altered its outward appearance under the stress of modern development, so that we find it particularly hard to picture to ourselves their original setting. Our overgrown yet ever-spreading capital owns scarcely a feature to-day in common with the London of the Tudors or Plantagenets; the relentless pushing of industrial enterpris...

IN our efforts to realise the leading events of our own history we experience no small difficulty from the fact that so much of the face of England has completely altered its outward appearance under the stress of modern development, so that we find it particularly hard to picture to ourselves their original setting. Our overgrown yet ever-spreading capital owns scarcely a feature to-day in common with the London of the Tudors or Plantagenets; the relentless pushing of industrial enterpris...

IN our efforts to realise the leading events of our own history we experience no small difficulty from the fact that so much of the face of England has completely altered its outward appearance under the stress of modern development, so that we find it particularly hard to picture to ourselves their original setting. Our overgrown yet ever-spreading capital owns scarcely a feature to-day in common with the London of the Tudors or Plantagenets; the relentless pushing of industrial enterpris...

From the frightful spectacle of poverty, barbarity and ignorance, from the oppression of illiterate masters, and the sufferings of a degraded peasantry, which the annals of England and France present to us, it is delightful to turn to the opulent and enlightened states of Italy, to the vast and magnificent cities, the ports, the arsenals, the villas, the museums, the libraries, the marts filled with every article of comfort or luxury, the factories swarming with artisans... With peculiar p...

The Medici: Annotated and Illustrated in Two Complete Volumes by George Frederick Young. The Secrecy, the conspirators, the Rise and Fall of the House of the Medici. In this exquisitely written book, you get the history of thirteen generations of a family who brought Western Europe out of the cultural darkness of their time, the city of Florence to the pinnacle of its glory, and the art of masters like Michelangelo and Botticelli to the world. The Medici is a must read for anyone intereste...

Nicolo Machiavelli, born at Florence on 3rd May 1469. From 1494 to 1512 held an official post at Florence which included diplomatic missions to various European courts. Imprisoned in Florence, 1512; later exiled and returned to San Casciano. Died at Florence on 22nd June 1527

In the Middle Ages Italy was occupied by a vast number of political communities, some large, others very small, some self-governing, some under despotic rule. These small states were forever contending with each other, often to the death, for independence, or increase of territory, or control of trade-routes, or preponderance. They frequently grouped themselves in unstable alliance to meet some common peril or gratify some common greed. And the domestic politics of Italy were further subje...

In the year 476 an unfortunate young man, mocked with the great names of the founders of the City and of the Empire, Romulus Augustus, nicknamed Augustulus, was deposed from the throne of the Cæsars by a Barbarian general in the Imperial service, and the Roman Empire in Italy came to its end. This act was but the outward sign that the power of Italy was utterly gone, and that in the West at least the Barbarians were indisputably conquerors in the long struggle which they had carried on for...

The Sonnets, Triumphs, And Other Poems Of Petrarch by Petrarch.

When Innocent III. died, vast sums began to pour into the Roman banks. It was evident that the Papacy was for sale to the highest bidder, and that the bidding would run high. One of the competitors, Roderigo Borgia, the nephew of Calixtus III., was a man of great wealth. He expended it lavishly, and by this and by the unsparing but judicious placing of big promises, he got the requisite majority of votes. It is said that only five votes were not for sale. Roderigo was then a hale, sanguine...

This is a history of Italy in medieval times, the the creation of the city-states in the wake of the Roman Empire's collapse. 6th century that focuses on the Byzantine Empire and its most famous emperor, Justinian, who attempted to reconquer the former Western Roman Empire. From the preface: "When, in the early part of the eighteenth century, Italy was in measure released from Spanish subjection, the immediate revival of letters and scholarship gave evidence that the natural force and geni...

Lorenzo de' Medici, the Magnificent is a richly documented historical biography that situates its subject at the center of Florentine politics, humanist learning, diplomacy, and artistic patronage. Reumont presents Lorenzo not merely as a princely ruler without a crown, but as a statesman-poet whose influence shaped the intellectual climate of the Italian Renaissance. Written in the nineteenth-century tradition of archival, narrative history, the work combines careful political analysis wi...