More than once the poet's hopes must have hung upon the fortunes of the mighty warrior Uguccione, whose prodigies of valour rivalled the fabled deeds of the knights of story. To this man Dante was bound by ties of closest friendship; to him he dedicated the Inferno, the first cantica of his Comedy, and he may possibly have been that hero ''twixt the two Feltros born'[16] to whom Dante first looked to slay the wolf of Rome. Far higher probably, and certainly far better grounded, were the poet's hopes when Henry VII. of Germany descended into Italy to bring order into her troubled states. To Dante, as we have seen, the Emperor was Emperor of Rome and not of Germany. He was Cæsar's successor, the natural representative of Italian unity, the Divinely appointed guardian of civil order. With what passionate yearning Dante looked across the Alps for a deliverer, how large a part of the woes of Italy he laid at the feet of Imperial neglect, may be gathered from many passages in his several works; but nowhere do these thoughts find stronger utterance than in the sixth canto of the Purgatory. The poet sees the shades of Virgil and the troubadour Sordello join in a loving embrace at the bare mention of the name of Mantua, where both of them were born. 'O Italy!' he cries, 'thou slave! thou hostelry of woe! Ship without helmsman, in the tempest rude! No queen of provinces, but house of shame! See how that gentle soul, e'en at the sweet sound of his country's name, was prompt to greet his fellow-citizen. Then see thy living sons, how one with other ever is at war, and whom the self-same wall and moat begird, gnaw at each other's lives. Search, wretched one, along thy sea-bound coasts, then inward turn to thine own breast, and see if any part of thee rejoice in peace. Of what avail Justinian's curb of law, with none to stride the saddle of command, except to shame thee more? Alas! ye priests, who should be at your prayers, leaving to Cæsar the high seat of rule, did ye read well the word of God to you, see ye not how the steed grows wild and fell by long exemption from the chastening spur, since that ye placed your hands upon the rein? O German Albert! who abandonest, wild and untamed, the steed thou should'st bestride, may the just sentence from the stars above fall on thy race in dire and open guise, that he who follows thee may see and fear. For, drawn by lust of conquest otherwhere, thou and thy sire, the garden of the empire have ye left a prey to desolation. Come, thou insensate one, and see the Montagues and Capulets, Monaldi, Philippeschi, for all whom the past has sadness or the future fear. Come, come, thou cruel one, and see oppression trampling on thy faithful ones, and heal their ills.... Come thou, and see thy Rome, who weeps for thee, a lonely widow crying day and night, "My Cæsar, wherefore hast thou left me thus?" Come, see how love here governs every heart! Or if our sorrows move thee not at all, blush for thine