writings is probably his humorous account of the alarm created by an eruption of Vesuvius. After this group of economists--to whom the historian PIETRO VERRI may be added--should be recorded another of literary historians, eminently useful though not brilliant writers, and consummate men of letters. Of GIOVANNI MARIO CRESCIMBENI, the historian of Italian poetry, we shall have to speak in mentioning the Arcadian Academy, which he so largely contributed to found and maintain. He may be justly termed a pedant, but neither his book nor himself can be spared from Italian literary history. A much greater name is LODOVICO ANTONIO MURATORI (1672-1745), but his imperishable monument was raised not as author but as editor. The publication of twenty-seven folio volumes of mediæval Italian historians displays a man singly equal to many learned societies. No one has stamped his name more deeply on the historical literature of his country than he has done by this publication, by his _Antiquitates Italicæ Medii Ævi_, and by his _Annali_ from the Christian era to 1749. One of his original writings has an abiding place in literature, the _Della perfetta Poesia_, which indicates the high-water mark of good taste at the time of its publication. The affected style of the preceding century was then entirely out of fashion. On the negative side Muratori’s taste is almost faultless, and he often manifests great discrimination in the appreciation of exquisite beauties. Unfortunately he is all for the delicate and graceful, and has little feeling for the really great, of which the Italy of the eighteenth century saw hardly so much as the counterfeit until, late in the secular period, Cesarotti produced his version of Ossian. Muratori venerates Dante rather than admires him; like Confucius, he respects the gods, but keeps them at a distance.