And what a politician is the great victim of these crises, Dante
Alighieri, matured alike by home and by exile ! He uttered his scorn of
the incessant changes and experiments in the constitution of his native
city in ringing verses, which will remain proverbial so long as
political events of the same kind recur;14 he addressed his home in
words of defiance and yearning which must have stirred the hearts of
his countrymen. But his thoughts ranged over Italy and the whole world;
and if his passion for the Empire, as he conceived it, was no more than
an illusion, it must yet be admitted that the youthful dreams of a
newborn political speculation are in his case not without a poetical
grandeur. He is proud to be the first who trod this path,16 certainly
in the footsteps of Aristotle, but in his own way independently. His
ideal emperor is a just and humane judge, dependent on God only, the
heir of the universal sway of Rome to which belonged the sanction of
nature, of right and of the will of God. The conquest of the world was,
according to this view, rightful, resting on a divine judgement between
Rome and the other nations of the earth, and God gave his approval to
this empire, since under it He became Man, submitting at His birth to
the census of the Emperor Augustus, and at His death to the judgement
of Pontius Pilate.
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