The stirring period of the middle ages, rich in examples of bold emprise and events of romantic interest, includes no more striking and remarkable episode than the invasion and conquest, by the brother of St Louis, of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. As an episode it has hitherto been treated—introduced, and not unfrequently crushed into unmerited insignificance, in works of general history. By both historian and poet fragments have been brought into strong relief; as an independent whole, no writer, until the present time, has ventured and chosen to attempt its delineation. The virtues and misfortunes of the last legitimate descendant of the imperial house of Stauffen, a house once so numerous and powerful, have been wept over by the minstrels to whose fraternity he belonged, vaunted by indignant chroniclers, and sung by the greatest of Italy’s bards. The gallant and successful insurrection by which the brightest gem was wrenched from the French usurper’s fire-new diadem, and set in Arragon’s crown, has been repeatedly recorded and enlarged upon, and not unfrequently mistold. But the integral treatment of the conquest of Naples, in a work devoted to it alone, and worthy of the weight and interest of the subject—the narrative of the ousting of the German dynasty and establishment of a French one, including the circumstances that led to the change, and apart from contemporary and irrelevant history—were left for the elegant and capable pen of an author honourably known for extensive learning and indefatigable research. The puissant rule of Frederick the Hohenstauffe—the heroic virtues and Homeric feats of Charles of Anjou—the precocious talents, fatal errors, and untimely end of the luckless Conradin—have found a fit chronicler in the accomplished Count of St Priest.