During nearly one hundred and ninety years, five Dukes of Urbino well and ably discharged the duties of their station, comparatively exempt from the personal immoralities of their age. The rugged frontier of their highland fief had, in that time, been extended far into the fertile March of Ancona, until it embraced a compact and influential state. Saving their subjects, by a gentle and judicious sway, from the wild ferments that distracted democratic communities, and from the yet more dire revolutions which from time to time convulsed adjoining principalities, they so cultivated the arts of war, and so encouraged the pursuits of peace, that their mountain-land gained a European reputation as the best nursery of arms, their capital as the favoured asylum of letters. That glory has now become faint; for the writers by whom it has been chiefly transmitted belong not to the existing generation, and command few sympathies in our times. But the echoes of its fame still linger around the mist-clad peaks of Umbria, and in the dilapidated palace-halls of the olden race. To gather its evanescent substance in a form not uninteresting to English readers, is the object of the present attempt. Should it be so far successful as to attract some of his countrymen to the history, literature, and arts of Italy, they will not, perhaps, be ungrateful to the humble pioneer who has indicated a path to literary treasures hitherto inadequately known to them. For such an undertaking he possesses no qualification, beyond a sincere interest in the past ages of that sunny land, and a warm admiration for her arts during their epoch of brilliancy. But a residence there of six years has afforded him considerable opportunities of collecting materials for this work, which he has been anxious not to neglect.