During the last twenty-five years the rapid progress of political events in Italy seems to have absorbed the energies of the people, who have made little advance in literature. For the first time since the fall of the Roman empire the country has become a united kingdom, and in the national adjustment to the new conditions, and in the material and industrial development which has followed, the new literature has not yet, to any great extent, found voice. Yet this period of national formation and consolidation, however, has not been without its poets, among whom a few may be here named. Aleardo Aleardi (d. 1882) is one of the finest poetical geniuses that Italy has produced within the last century, but his writings show the ill effects of a poet sacrificing his art to a political cause, and when the patriot has ceased to declaim the poet ceases to sing. Prati (1815-1884), on the other hand, in his writings exemplifies the evil of a poet refusing to take part in the grand movement of his nation. He severs himself from all present interests and finds his subjects in sources which have no interest for his contemporaries. He has great metrical facility and his lyrics are highly praised. Carducci, like Aleardi, is a poet who has written on political subjects; he belongs to the class of closet democrats. His poems display a remarkable talent for the picturesque, forcible, and epigrammatic. The poems of Zanella are nearly all on scientific subjects connected with human feeling, and entitle him to a distinguished place among the refined poets of his country. A poet of greater promise than those already spoken of is Arnaboldi, who has the endowment requisite to become the first Italian poet of a new school, but who endangers his position by devoting his verse to utilitarian purposes. The tendency of the younger poets is to realism and to representing its most materialistic features as beautiful. Against this current of the new poetry Alessandro Rizzi, Guerzoni, and others have uttered a strong protest in poetry and prose. Among historians, Capponi is the author of a history of Florence; Zini has continued Farina's history of Italy; Bartoli, Settembrini, and De Sanctis have written histories of Italian literature; Villari is the author of able works on the life of Machiavelli and of Savonarola, and Berti has written the life of Giordano Bruno. In criticism philosophic, historical, and literary, Fiorentino, De Sanctis, Massarani, and Trezza are distinguished. Barili, Farina, Bersezio, and Giovagnoli are writers of fiction, and Cossa, Ferrari, and Giacosa are the authors of many dramatic works. The charming books of travel by De Amicis are extensively translated and very popular. FRENCH LITERATURE. INTRODUCTION.--1. French Literature and its Divisions.--2. The Language.