It Is no wonder that Italian history should be invested, In the eyes of Englishmen, with a perennial fascination, considering how profoundly we have been influenced at critical stages of our national development by the Italian genius. The catalogue of our obligations is too lengthy to be recited in a preface. A few examples must suffice. It is to an Italian, Gregory the Great, that we owe our Christian faith to Benedict of Nursia and to Francis of Assisi we are indebted for interpretations of that faith which have survived the Middle Ages and our own Reformation. It was on Italian soil that English humanists made their first acquaintance with the wisdom of antiquity and the spirit of free thought. Machiavelli first Inspired us to reason about the nature and the purpose of the modern State Mazzini taught us to respect the Idea of nationality. Dante and Petrarch, Ariosto and Tasso, have been accepted models in more than one great age of English poetry. Nowhere have the great Italian artists, from Giotto to Raphael, been better loved or more closely studied than in England. Our sense of these obligations is reflected in our historical literature, which Is full of admirable monographs on particular epochs of Italian history, and on the leaders of Italian religious and political movements. Yet it Is strangely difficult to find any general sketch of Italian vi Preface history, from the barbarian invasions to the present day, which can be recommended as an introduction to more detailed studies. It was to supply this need that the present volume was planned and written. The authors have taken a broad view of their subject. They have devoted considerable space to political and ecclesiastical history because Italy, long before she attained to national unity, was the scene of many fruitful experiments in political and ecclesiastical organization. But they have also called attention to the more remarkable achievements of the Italian spirit in the fields of art and philosophy and science, and the historical conditions which made these achievements possible. Finally, they have traced, so far as it is possible to do so in a textbook, the working of those instincts, deeply rooted in the national history and national character, which from age to age promoted or retarded the cause of national unity. It is the hope of the writers and the editor that this book may do something to encourage and direct its readers in studying the life-history of the Italian people, with whom our ancestors have been linked for centuries by ties of intellectual and spiritual sympathy, and with whom we are to-day united in defending the liberties of Europe.