The range of Mr. Trollope's investigations may be appreciated by the fact that, while he is the author of "A History of Florence from the Earliest Independence of the Commune to the Fall of the Republic in 1531," he has also given to the press the most clear and reliable account of the revolution of our own day, under the title of "Tuscany in 1849"; thus supplying the two chronicles of the past and the present which together reveal the origin, development, and character of the state and its people. In the Preface to the former work he suggests this vital connection between the ancient republic and the modern city. "It contains," he observes, "such an exposition of the old Guelph community as sufficiently demonstrates the fitness of this culmination of the grand old city's fortunes." It is this liberal and comprehensive tone, this "looking before and after," which, united to careful research and patient narration, renders the author so well equipped and inspired for his task. He has brought together the essential social and political facts of the past, and, associating them with local traits and transitions, enabled us to realize the rise, progress, and alternations of the Italian state, as it is next to impossible for the Anglo-Saxon reader to do while exploring the partial, prejudiced, and complicated annals of the native historians. This is a needful, a timely, and a gracious service, for which every intelligent and sympathetic traveller who has learned to love the Tuscan capital, and grown bewildered over the complex story of her civil strifes, will feel grateful, while his obligations are renewed by the moderate but candid statement of those later movements, which, culminating in a childlike triumph, were followed by a reaction whose hopelessness was more apparent than real, and has subsequently proved an auspicious trial and training for the discipline and privileges of constitutional liberty.