The Emperor Frederic II., last of the imperial Hohenstaufens, died in 1250. Chivalrous, adventurous, despotic, as became the head of the conquering German races at their epoch of triumph,--imaginative, poetical, debauched, atheistical, as might be expected of a prince born in Italy, he seemed to justify the somewhat incongruous eagerness with which the Florentine mind sought political salvation in the bosom of the Church. Yet here seems the fatal flaw in the liberal system of Italy at that period. The Ghibelline party was at least consistent. To be an imperialist, a Hohenstaufenite, was at least definite; as much so as to be an absolutist, a Habsburgite, a Napoleonite to-day. But to be a Guelph,--to be in favor of municipal development, local self-government, intellectual progress, and to fight for all these things under the banner of the Church, in an age which witnessed the establishment of the Inquisition, in an age when the mighty spirit of Hildebrand was rising every day from his grave in more and more influential and imposing shape,--this was to place one's self in a false position. Dante, no doubt, felt all this to the core of his being. A poet by nature, with that intense, morbid, proud, uncomfortable, alternately benevolent and misanthropical temperament which occasionally accompanies the poetic faculty, he had little in common with the bustling, vivacious character of his fellow-townsmen. _Fiorentino di nascita, non di costumi_, as he describes himself, he had slight sympathy with Blacks or Whites, Guelphs or Ghibellines. A Guelph by birth, a Ghibelline by banishment, he was in reality an absolutist in politics, and a bigot in religion. Had a hell never been heard of, he would have invented one, for the mere comfort of roasting his enemies in it, and his friends along with them,--the solitary enjoyment of his lifetime. His part in public affairs has been much magnified. He was prior in 1300; but almost any citizen of Florence might be prior. He was once sent to Rome, on a diplomatic errand; but he was only the envoy of a party, only one of a set of delegates appointed by the Whites. He was banished for his political opinions, and afterwards condemned to death; but even this was no distinction; for six hundred other persons, most of them obscure men, were included in the same sentence, for the same offence. They all happened, in short, to belong to the party opposed to the one which was successful. His merits of style can hardly be exaggerated. Alone of mankind he almost created a language. Imagine the English, or the German, or the French poetry of the year 1300 flowing musically and familiarly from the lips of 1857! The culture, too, of his epoch might almost be measured by his personal accomplishments. The Aristotle, the Bacon, the Humboldt of Florence was one of the world's great poets into the bargain; but he was any thing but a statesman or a politician.