before Michael Angelo erected the dome of St. Peter's.

But there was faith in the world, and rough virtues, sincerity, and
earnestness of character, though life was dismal. Men believed in
immortality and in expiation for sin. The rising universities had
gifted scholars whose abstruse speculations have never been
rivalled for acuteness and severity of logic. There were bards and
minstrels, and chivalric knights and tournaments and tilts, and
village fetes and hospitable convents and gentle ladies,--gentle
and lovely even in all states of civilization, winning by their
graces and inspiring men to deeds of heroism and gallantry.

In one of those domestic revolutions which were so common in Italy
Dante was banished, and his property was confiscated; and he at the
age of thirty-five, about the year 1300, when Giotto was painting
portraits, was sent forth a wanderer and an exile, now poor and
unimportant, to eat the bread of strangers and climb other people's
stairs; and so obnoxious was he to the dominant party in his native
city for his bitter spirit, that he was destined never to return to
his home and friends. His ancestors, boasting of Roman descent,
belonged to the patriotic party,--the Guelphs, who had the
ascendency in his early years,--that party which defended the
claims of the Popes against the Emperors of Germany. But this
party had its divisions and rival families,--those that sided with
the old feudal nobles who had once ruled the city, and the new
mercantile families that surpassed them in wealth and popular
favor. So, expelled by a fraction of his own party that had gained
power, Dante went over to the Ghibellines, and became an adherent
of imperial authority until he died.